Lessons from 53 Years of Social Justice Activism

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ABOUT THIS SPEAKER: Rabbi Michael Lerner, Ph.D., is a leading author, public intellectual, and spiritual leader.  He is the founder and Editor of Tikkun Magazine, the world’s most widely read and quoted liberal/progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine, started in 1986 as an alternative to the Jewish neo-conservatives.  Tikkun Magazine has received numerous awards for its creative synthesis of progressive politics and spiritual wisdom. Rabbi Lerner is also the Co-founder and Chairperson of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in San Francisco.

Rabbi Lerner received a Ph.D. in philosophy from UC Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Clinical/Social Psychology from Wright University.   He has been on the faculty at the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of California in Berkeley.

He is the author of eleven books, among them “Jewish Renewal,” a national best seller published in 1994 and “The Left Hand of God,” a New York Times National Best Seller in 2006.  In his book “The Left Hand of God” and through Tikkun Magazine, Rabbi Lerner presents a Global Marshall Plan as a model for America’s leadership to change from an attitude of domination to an attitude of generosity as a way of solving the world’s problems. 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, The Socialism of Fools: Anti-Semitism on the Left, and Healing Israel/Palestine.

In 2005, Morehouse College in Atlanta awarded Rabbi Lerner 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.” He has also 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.”

He remains passionately committed to transforming global capital towards a “New Bottom Line” in which institutions, legislation, and social practice gets judged to be “efficient, rational and productive” not only to the extent that they maximize money and power but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness, generosity, and ethical and ecological sensitivity; enhance our capacities to respond to other human beings as manifestations of the sacred; and enhance our capacity to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur of all that is.