Michael Lerner (rabbi)

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Michael Lerner is a political activist, and the editor of Tikkun, a prominent progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Family 1.2 Education 1.3 Student activism 1.4 Professorship and research 1.5 Tikkun magazine 1.6 Rabbinical ordination 1.7 Network of Spiritual Progressives 2 Lerner's views 2.1 Controversy 3 Awards and honors 4 Criticism of leftist antisemitism 5 Television appearances 6 Bibliography 6.1 Books 6.2 Anthologies 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Family

Lerner was married to Nan Fink until 1991, and married Debora Kohn in July of 1998.

[edit] Education

Lerner received a B.A. from Columbia University, studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary and became a protégé of Abraham Joshua Heschel. In 1964, 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.

[edit] Student activism

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 Weatherman, which had introduced violence into the anti-war movement in response to police violence, Lerner created a new organization as an alternative, called the Seattle 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.

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] Professorship and research

After completing his Ph.D. Lerner moved to Hartford, Connecticut where he served as professor of philosophy at Trinity College until 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 University for one year in sociology, teaching courses in social psychology. Meanwhile, he completed a second Ph.D. in 1977, 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.

[edit] Tikkun magazine

After serving for five years as dean of the graduate school of psychology at the 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.

Later, Lerner organized a group called the Tikkun Community among readers of Tikkun magazine and those who share its editorial vision.

[edit] Rabbinical ordination

Lerner received rabbinical ordination in 1995 through a Jewish Renewal beth din (rabbinical court) composed of three rabbis, "each of whom had received orthodox rabbinic ordination," headed by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. (The names of the other two rabbis are not known.)^[1] According to the San Francisco Jewish Chronicle, "mainstream rabbinical leaders of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements" have questioned the validity of private ordinations such as Lerner's.^[2] Lerner is the spiritual leader of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley and, despite the controversial nature of his ordination, a member of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California.

[edit] Network of Spiritual Progressives

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

[edit] Lerner's 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.

In February 2007, Lerner published a column entitled "There Is No New Anti-Semitism," in which he criticized some American Jewish organizations for labeling critics of Israel as antisemites. He was especially critical of the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which he characterized as "Israel-can-do-no-wrong voices in American politics." Lerner wrote that this mentality, which frequently leads to accusations that Jews who oppose Israel's policies toward the Palestinians are "self-hating Jews," is alienating young Jews who "say that they can no longer identify with their Jewishness."^[3]

In 2007, The Forward reported that Lerner had written in an essay that he "would not be surprised to learn that some branch of our government conspired either actively to promote or passively to allow" the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States. The essay was published in an anthology, 9/11 and American Empire: Christians, Jews, and Muslims Speak Out. In his essay, Lerner described himself as "agnostic on the question of what happened on 9/11," but wrote that he "salute[s] the people in this collection of articles who are doing an amazing job of examining what may prove to be one of the most perverse conspiracies in the history of democratic governments." In an interview with The Forward, Lerner said that he was "skeptical" toward conspiracy theories, although The Forward noted that the word never appeared in his essay.^[4]

[edit] Controversy

Lerner describes some of his views as "very controversial," particularly his concern about building peace between Israel and the Palestinians.^[1] In 2003, the San Diego Jewish Journal described Lerner as "the most controversial Jew in America," writing that "He is relentlessly critical of Israel. He eulogizes Rachel Corrie. And he's done more for peace than any conservative we know."^[5] That same year, the executive editor of the The Jewish Exponent wrote that Lerner "supports every measure against Israel short of its immediate destruction and often makes common cause with those who do plot the eradication of Israel's Jews."^[6]

[edit] Awards and honors

While at the Seminary, Lerner was elected national president of Atid, the college organization of the United Synagogue of America.

In 2005 Lerner received the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Community Builders Prize from Morehouse College in Atlanta 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.^[7]

[edit] Criticism of leftist antisemitism

For many years, Lerner has been an out-spoken critic of modern antisemitism that has arisen among some leftists. In 1992, he wrote The Socialism of Fools: Anti-Semitism on the Left, in which he described the manner in which the Left often denies the existence of antisemitism; defended Zionism and distinguished legitimate criticism of the State of Israel from Israel-bashing and antisemitism; and suggested ways in which progressives can fight antisemitism on the Left.

In 2003, Lerner criticized the left-wing anti-war International ANSWER coalition for the antisemitism that he and others believe is reflected in the rhetoric at ANSWER-sponsored demonstrations. He later claimed that the ANSWER coalition — of which Lerner's Tikkun Community was a member — barred him from speaking at their rallies against the 2003 invasion of Iraq because of his criticism.^[8]

[edit] Television appearances

Lerner has been a guest on Larry King Live several times. On March 5, 2006, he discussed his book The Left Hand of God on C-SPAN. Lerner was part of a panel of religious leaders on Meet the Press with Tim Russert on April 16, 2006.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books

• Surplus Powerlessness: The Psychodynamics of Everyday Life and the Psychology of Individual and Social Transformation (1986)
• The Socialism of Fools: Anti-Semitism on the Left (1992)
• Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation (1994)
• Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin (1995) - by Michael Lerner and Cornel West
• The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism (1996)
• Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul (2000)
• Healing Israel/Palestine: A Path to Peace and Reconciliation (2003)
• The Geneva Accord: And Other Strategies for Healing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2004)
• The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right (2006)

[edit] Anthologies

• Tikkun: To Heal, Repair, and Transform the World (1992) - edited by Michael Lerner
• Best Contemporary Jewish Writing (2001) - edited by Michael Lerner
• Best Jewish Writing 2002 (2002) - edited by Michael Lerner
• Tikkun Reader: Twentieth Anniversary (2006) - edited by Michael Lerner

[edit] See also

• Tikkun
• Network of Spiritual Progressives

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Tikkun community website
• Tikkun magazine
• Rabbi Michael Lerner: Bringing God Into It
• Interview with The Nation
• Network of Spiritual Progressives website
• Interview with Grist Magazine
• "Where the Violence Comes From" 9/12/2001
• Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: Media & the Israel-Palestine Conflict, documentary directed by Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff (2003) quotes Michael Lerner
• Intentblog, blog including contributions from Lerner.