Tikkun (magazine)

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January/February 2007 issue

Tikkun is a bi-monthly English-language magazine published in the United States. It was founded in 1986 by Nan Fink and Michael Lerner, who remains the publisher and editor-in-chief.

1 Magazine
2 Acclaim
3 Criticism
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Magazine

The title of the magazine comes from the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam which means "to repair or renew the world". Tikkun analyzes American and Israeli culture, politics, religion and history from a leftist-progressive Jewish viewpoint, and provides commentary about Israeli politics and Jewish life in North America, and consistently publishes the work of Israeli and Palestinian left-wing intellectuals in English. Tikkun also publishes book and music reviews, personal essays and poetry, generally on Jewish themes.

Tikkun's creation was influenced by the political concerns of the 1960s civil rights movement and 1970s multiculturalist ideology. It promotes interfaith dialogue, and what it sees as a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since George W. Bush became President of the United States in 2001, Tikkun has also worked towards the promotion of what it views as religious social justice concerns in the United States.

Some of the magazine's writers include Michael Bader, Stephen Zunes, Joel Schalit, Shaul Magid, and Or N. Rose.

In every issue, Tikkun states that its articles "do not necessarily Tikkun's position on any issue,"^[1] and its editor, Rabbi Michael Lerner, has written that he "often consciously seeks to print articles with which he disagrees."^[2]

[edit] Acclaim

The Utne Reader awarded Tikkun its 2006 Independent Press Award for Best Spiritual Coverage. Tikkun was praised for its "adept analysis" of the political influence of American fundamentalists, the international conflict among religious zealots, and the inability of many progressives to understand people's yearning for faith. Utne also cited the magazine's "pragmatic vision for change."^[3]

[edit] Criticism

In 2005, Manfred Gerstenfeld cited an article published by Tikkun — Joel Kovel’s "On Left anti-Semitism and the Special Status of Israel" (May/June 2003) — as one of two examples of "essays of Jewish authors using anti-Semitic arguments."^[4] In his article, Kovel described Israel as a racist state that "automatically generates crimes against humanity and lacks the internal means of correcting them," adding that such a state "cannot have that legitimacy which gives it the right to exist."^[5]

In a 2006 column, Alan Dershowitz wrote that "Tikkun is quickly becoming the most virulently anti-Israel screed ever published under Jewish auspices" and that "support for Tikkun is support for the enemies of Israel."^[6] Dershowitz and his books have been the targets of criticism in the pages of Tikkun (for example: May/June 1997, September/October 1997, November/December 1997, January/February 1999).