Michael Lerner (rabbi)

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Michael Lerner is a political activist, and the editor of Tikkun, a prominent progressive Jewish and interfaith bimonthly magazine based in Berkeley, California. Lerner received a B.A. from Columbia and studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary and became the protoge' of Abraham Joshua Heschel. While at the Seminary, Lerner was elected national president of Atid, the college organization of the United Synagogue of America.

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[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and education

Lerner completed his undergraduate studies at Columbia University in 1964. That same year, he started his graduate studies in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, eventually earning in 1972 a Ph.D. in philosophy. He served as teaching assistant to professors Richard Lichtman, Thomas Nagel, Hubert Dreyfus, and (visiting from UCSD) Herbert Marcuse, and studied with Michael Scriven, Sheldon Wolin, Philip Selznick, Benson Mates, John Searle,and others. His dissertation argued for an objective foundation to ethics and against various forms of ethical relativism.

While at Berkeley, Lerner became a leader in the Berkeley student movement, a member of the executive committee of the Free Speech Movement, chair of the Free Student Union, and chair from 1966-1968 of the Berkeley chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society. After teaching philosophy of law at San Francisco State University, he took a job as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington and taught ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of literature and culture, and introduction to philosophy. Angry at the SDS group called The Weathermen who had introduced violence into the anti-war movement in response to police violence, Lerner created a new organization as an alternative to the Weathermen, called theSeattle Liberation Front. After police attacked a major demonstration that his organization had called to protest, the subsequent trial was the second nationally known federal trial against anti-war activists and became known as the Seattle Seven ("Seattle Seven").

When federal agents testifying at the trial admitted to having played a major role instigating the violence and the riot[citation needed], the pro-Nixon judge who presided sent the defendants to jail on the grounds of "contempt of court," and Lerner was transported out of the state of Washington (on the grounds that his supporters had so much public support that they might be able to "break him out" of the federal penitentiary in that state) to Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary in San Pedro, California, where Lerner served several months before the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court ordered Lerner released (despite the claim made by J. Edgar Hoover in a public statement repeated on radio and television that Lerner was "one of the most dangerous criminals in America" though he had never engaged in any act of violence). The main charges were eventually dropped by the Federal Government after the 9th Circuit overturned the conviction for contempt of court. Meanwhile, Lerner's contract was not renewed and the State of Washington Legislature had passed "the Lerner act" requiring that the University of Washington never hire anyone "who might engage in illegal political activity," a law later overturned by the Washington Supreme Court.

[edit] Became a professor and rabbi

After Lerner completed his PhD he moved to Hartford, Connecticut where he served as professor of philosophy at Trinity College till 1975, when he moved back to Berkeley, joined the faculty at the University of California in the Field Studies program and taught law and economics until 1976 when he accepted a position at Sonoma State College for one year in sociology, teaching courses in social psychology. Meanwhile, he completed in 1977 a second PhD, this one is social/clinical psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley.

In 1976 Lerner founded the Institute for Labor and Mental Health to work with the labor movement and do research on the psychodynamics of American society. In 1979 he received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to train union shop stewards as agents of prevention for mental health disorders, and he simultaneously extended his previous study of the psychodynamics of American society. With a subsequent grant from the NIMH he studied American politics and reported that "a spiritual crisis" was at the heart of the political transformation of American society as well as at the heart of much of the psychic pain that was being treated in individual therapy.

After serving for five years as dean of the graduate school of psychology at New College of California in San Francisco, Lerner and his then-wife Nan Fink created a general-interest intellectual magazine called Tikkun: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society. Tikkun was started with the intention of challenging the Left for its inability to understand the centrality of religious and spiritual concerns in the lives of ordinary Americans. With his associate editor Peter Gabel, Lerner developed a "politics of meaning" to speak to the hunger for meaning that was characteristic of the thousands of people that Lerner and his colleagues were studying at the Institute for Labor and Mental Health. Tikkun was formed to educate the public about the findings of the Institute and to develop some of the implications of that work. However, because it also had an interest in being an "alternative to the voices of Jewish conservatism," Tikkun was criticized by some Jewish groups.

He received rabbinic ordination in 1995 through a Jewish Renewal Beyt Din composed of three orthodox rabbis, headed by Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi, and is now a member of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco.

Rabbi Lerner has taught at the University of Washington, Trinity College, University of California, Berkeley and California State University at Sonoma before receiving a research grant (as principal investigator) from the National Institute of Mental Health. It was in doing this research that Lerner created the Institute for Labor and Mental Health and began his research on the psychodynamics of American society and American politics, and was from that research that Rabbi Lerner derived the data which provides the foundation for his latest (2006, Harper San Francisco) book The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right.” A national best seller in the Spring of 2006, Lerner’s book was praised in the L.A. Times, Washington Post, America (the Catholic magazine), and The Christian Century.

In 2005 he founded the Network of Spiritual Progressives and with co-chairs Cornel West and Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister. The network now has several thousand members, many of them clergy, around the U.S. and Canada.

[edit] His views

Lerner, a rabbi in the Aleph Alliance for Jewish Renewal, promotes the concept of Jewish Renewal, a small Jewish movement which he describes as "positive Judaism", rejecting what he considers to be ethnocentric interpretations of the Torah. His publications promote religious pluralism and progressive or liberal approaches to political problems. He has, for example, been outspoken against attacks on immigrant communities in the United States, and has attempted to build bridges with Christian, Buddhist and Muslim leaders around such issues.

Lerner strongly objected to Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip, and continues to object to its occupation of the West Bank. He supports the adoption of the Geneva Accords as a basis for an independent Palestinian state.

[edit] Awards and accolades

He was described by Utne Reader as “one of America’s most significant visionary thinkers” and by Rabbi Michael Paley as "the preeminent American Jewish liberal intellectual".

In 2005 he received the Martin Luther King Jr/Mahatma Gandhi Prize for Peacemaking (in recognition of his work in forging a “progressive middle path that is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine” in his book Healing Israel/Palestine and in his writing in Tikkun Magazine) from Morehouse College in Atlanta.

[edit] Books

Rabbi Lerner is the author of 10 books, including Jewish Renewal, which was described by Rabbi Brad Artson reviewing it in Conservative Judaism magazine as “stunning, miraculous and faith-renewing.” Prof. Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School described it as “taking its place alongside the writings of Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel as one of the outstanding works of contemporary theology.”

The book Blacks and Jews: A Dialogue on Race, Religion and Culture in America was coauthored by Rabbi Lerner and Cornel West.

His most famous books include Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul (which was described by the Los Angeles Times a “one of the most significant books of the year 2000”), The Politics of Meaning (about which U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone wrote: “Lerner’s ideas ought to inform our contemporary political discussion.” The Socialism of Fools: Anti-Semitism on the Left, and Healing Israel/Palestine for which Lerner received the PEN-Oakland award. He is also the editor of Best Contemporary Jewish Writing published in 2001 and Best Jewish Writing 2002.

Lerner has been hailed by Rev. Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, as “one of America’s most important spiritual teachers, a contemporary prophet whose insightful and visionary thinking has already had a profound impact on American culture and thought.” The NY Times Magazine did a five page feature on Lerner, titled “This Year’s Prophet.” He has also been featured in Newsweek, Business Week, US News and World Report, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, and the L.A. Times.

He recently wrote The Left Hand of God which became a New York Times best-seller in the Spring of 2006.

[edit] Criticism of leftist anti-Semitism

Lerner has had run-ins with left-wing opponents of Israel. Recently, Lerner accused the anti-war group International ANSWER of anti-Semitism, claiming that their decision to bar him from speaking at their rallies against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was due to his criticism of the anti-Semitism which he believes is reflected in the kind of rhetoric that is found at Answer-sponsored demonstrations.[1]

[edit] Recent activities

He appeared on C-SPAN to discuss his book The Left Hand of God on March 5, 2006. He appeared on NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert as one of a panel of various religious leaders on April 16, 2006. In the summer of 2006 he sponsored a full page ad in the NY Times and the LA Times, signed by 3,500 people including himself, calling for an immediate ceasefire in the war in Lebanon.

He has been a guest on Larry King Live several times, and on many other radio and television shows. He lectures around the world on issues related to transforming the politics of the West, building a spiritually grounded world, and building peace in Israel/Palestine. He, is also the co-founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

[edit] External links

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