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Outspoken rabbi feels the heat
Jewish backlash over stance on Palestinians
Chip Johnson
Monday, February 25, 2002
�2002 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/25/MN151601.DTL
Berkeley -- For more than 30 years, Berkeley Rabbi Michael Lerner has been a thorn
in the side of conservative Jews, but the backlash has never been so furious.
Whether he is calling for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli settlers and soldiers
from the West Bank and Gaza Strip or promoting his own humanitarian- based
political formulas, some hard-line Jews describe him as one of the most self-loathing
Jews on the planet.
Now, his critics have launched a campaign to kill off Tikkun, the magazine Lerner co-
founded 15 years ago as an organ for liberal intellectuals, Jewish and otherwise.
Lerner calls Tikkun the nation's only multi-issue Jewish magazine.
The contributing writers of the San Francisco magazine include some of the nation's
most progressive thinkers, including feminist Susan Faludi, Noam Chomsky and
Harvard Professor Cornel West.
But 17 months of renewed fighting in the Middle East against the backdrop of the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America has given conservative Jews a lever to try to
pry people away from supporting the magazine, Lerner said.
"We've lost some of our financial support, about one-quarter, but we've said all along
that the best way to security (in Israel) is open-hearted and generous reconciliation
with the Palestinian people," Lerner said.
Lerner is fighting a battle fought by every member of an ethnic group at one time or
another. It is the unrelenting peer pressure to succumb to group- think or face being
labeled a traitor.
Thinking "outside the box" is now a trendy term for independent thinking in the
business world, but it's still widely discouraged in many of the nation's ethnic
communities.
There is a huge difference in supporting your community and being controlled by it.
In recent months, Lerner has received threatening e-mails, many from pro- Israeli
Web sites that describe him as a traitor.
And while that is not uncommon for Lerner, a 1960s radical once indicted as a
member of the "Seattle Seven" for inciting a riot at in a Seattle courtroom, the
strident anger and the campaign to intimidate and silence the leftist writer-activist
has
escalated.
His home address was published on www.masada2000.org, a vehemently pro-
Israeli Web site. It included directions to his home and encouraged motivated
readers to "pay him a visit."
"For the first time in my life I've had to put up a burglar alarm in my home -- for
potential assassins," he said.
The directions and address were recently removed from the site, but Lerner is not
taking it lightly.
Last month in New York, Lerner and about 700 supporters, a cross-cultural mix of
Jews, Arabs and others, formed the Tikkun community to stand up against the
withering campaign against the magazine.
In addition to the new organization -- which espouses a universal humanitarian
political philosophy -- Tikkun has launched an Earth-bound advertising campaign
aimed at restoring its image, good name -- and its funding.
Harvard's West, one of the nation's most celebrated liberal intellectuals, pitched the
magazine to liberals of all hues.
"I want to ask your assistance in keeping alive one of the most significant visionary
voices for social justice and social healing in the world today -- Tikkun Magazine,"
West wrote.
Supporters have also drawn up advertisements that they hope to place in some of
the nation's largest newspapers to fend off the heavy criticism coming from the
conservative Jewish community.
But political correctness can be a double-edged sword in the magazine's quest for
survival, Lerner explained.
"One of the things we're up against is this: Most Christians, especially morally
sensitive non-Jews, look at the news and see there is something wrong, but feel it is
inappropriate, because of the Holocaust, to criticize them," he said.
"There is a PC view toward Jews, but real friends would stand up and criticize Israel
when it does something self-destructive," he said.
Lerner's refusal to toe the company line is infuriating enough, but his insistence on
recognizing that pain is being inflicted on both sides of the battle is considered
treasonous in the eyes of his critics.
He makes no distinction between Israeli civilians who live in fear of the next wave of
terrorist bombings or their Palestinian counterparts, who hunker down in preparation
for the inevitable -- and ferocious -- response from Israeli defense forces.
He also condemns the U.S. government and the media for allowing a double-
standard that portrays Palestinians as the initiators of violence and Israelis as the
victims.
He calls on Jews everywhere to "allow themselves to hear the cries of pain of the
Palestinian people."
It's a position that Lerner knows well, given the attacks aimed at him in recent
months.
E-mail Chip Johnson at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or write to him at 483 Ninth St.,
Suite 100, Oakland CA 94607.
�2002 San Francisco Chronicle Page B - 1
End<{{{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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