Luminary: Rabbi Michael Lerner

Luminary: Rabbi Michael Lerner

Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back from the Relligious Right (2006) is rabbi of Beyt Tikkun and editor of Tikkun Magazine: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society. Tikkun is one of the most respected intellectual/cultural magazines in the Jewish world, but also one of the most controversial because of its stand in favor of the rights of Palestinians, on the one hand, which locates him in the minds of many as the leader and most prominent spokesperson in the U.S. of Jewish supporters of the Israeli peace movement, and on the other hand, because of his stand critiquing the anti-religious and anti-spiritual biases of the secular Left, insisting that they need to address the spiritual hunger of Americans as equally important to their material needs (he calls this a hunger for "meaning" and says that for many Americans the desire to transcend the individualism and selfishness of the competitive marketplace and connect their lives to higher meaning is as important as any interest in money or things, and that one reason why people who might on purely economic grounds be supporting the liberal and progressive social change movements actually end up supporting the Right is that the Left doesn't have a "politics of meaning"). He is the co-author with Cornel West of a book entitled Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin, and several other books.

In January of 2002 Lerner founded the Tikkun Community, an international interfaith organization dedicated to peace, justice, non-violence, generosity, caring, love and compassion (read the Core Vision) which he chairs with Cornel West. Each year, The Tikkun Community has brought hundreds of people to Washington, D.C. to a Teach-In to Congress on Middle East Peace. In 2003, North Atlantic Books published Lerner's book Healing Israel/Palestine, the first serious attempt to tell the story of the Middle East in a way that would be compassionate toward both Israelis and Palestinians, and critical of both sides as well. In 2004 North Atlantic Books published Lerner’s book The Geneva Accord and Other Strategies for Middle East Peace.