Michael Lerner, a rabbi, psychologist and political activist who merged Judaism and progressive thought as the founding editor of Tikkun magazine, becoming a prominent if sometimes polarizing leader of the Jewish left, died Aug. 28 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 81.
By Emily Langer
Rabbi Lerner came of political age amid the social tumult of the 1960s. As a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, he protested the Vietnam War, supported Black Power as a participant in the civil rights movement and led the campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, a driving force within the New Left.
Throughout his professional life, as he established himself as a psychologist and, later, a public intellectual, Rabbi Lerner remained deeply committed to the political ideals of his youth.
But he grew to believe that the left, with its focus on economic well-being at the expense of spiritual health and on individual liberties instead of the collective good, was beginning to lose its soul.
What was needed, he argued, was a “politics of meaning,” a term that became a catchphrase in the 1990s. In Rabbi Lerner’s definition, this new politics would address “the psychological, ethical and spiritual needs of Americans” and incorporate “the liberal and progressive agenda” but place it “in a much deeper context.”
While critics derided Rabbi Lerner’s concept as hopelessly vague, like-minded thinkers regarded it as profound if not prophetic.
As Rabbi Lerner developed his critique of liberal thought, he also came to see Jewish thought as increasingly dominated by conservative voices exemplified by Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary magazine. In 1986, with his then-wife, Nan Fink, Rabbi Lerner co-founded Tikkun magazine as a counterpoint.
Tikkun was billed as a “Jewish critique of politics, culture and society.” The journal’s name, as its back cover noted, was drawn from the Hebrew phrase “tikkun olam,” meaning to heal and repair the world. “All the rest is commentary,” the back-cover explanation continued in a not-so-subtle jab at Tikkun’s rival publication.
First headquartered in northern California and later in New York City, Tikkun became a principal platform for intellectual discussion on the Jewish left but attracted many non-Jewish writers and readers as well.
The latter group included then-Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, the future Democratic president. By Rabbi Lerner’s account, Clinton wrote to him shortly after Democrat Michael Dukakis lost in a landslide to Republican George H.W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election.
Rabbi Lerner, in a commentary in Tikkun, had attributed Dukakis’s loss to the Democratic Party’s failure to address the “crisis in the meaning of life.”
“You have helped me clarify my own thinking … and to feel a little more convinced to say what I feel,” Clinton wrote to him, Rabbi Lerner told the New York Times.
Four years later, Clinton defeated Bush and won the White House. First lady Hillary Clinton appeared to invoke Rabbi Lerner’s ideas by referring in speeches to a “politics of meaning.” She met with him in the White House, giving rise to descriptions in the news media of Rabbi Lerner as the first lady’s “guru.”
Rabbi Lerner’s influence on the Clinton White House quickly waned, however, as detractors characterized his ideas as “psychobabble.”
“I was definitely misled,” Rabbi Lerner told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000. “The woman said, ‘We’re going to do this together, Michael. We’re going to make this “politics of meaning” the central reality in American politics today.’ Well, that was hard to resist.”
Tikkun magazine addressed a broad range of political, social and economic issues but was perhaps best known for its forceful criticism of Israeli policy toward Palestinians, including the occupation of the West Bank, the long-standing blockade of Gaza and the establishment of what Tikkun characterized as an “apartheid” society.
A chasm opened between those who shared Tikkun’s worldview and those who did not. Lawyer Alan Dershowitz, writing in the Jerusalem Post in 2006, declared that “Tikkun is quickly becoming the most virulently anti-Israel screed ever published under Jewish auspices.” Rabbi Lerner’s home was repeatedly vandalized, and he reported that he regularly received threats for his work.
Rabbi Lerner considered himself a Zionist and saw no contradiction between support for the existence of a Jewish state and criticism of the Israeli government.
“In its treatment of Palestinians, Israel has engaged in activities that are morally unacceptable — violations of fundamental human rights — and deserve to be criticized,” he wrote in the Times in 2001.
Rabbi Lerner founded Tikkun in part with Fink’s family inheritance, and after the couple divorced the magazine suffered financially.
In 1997, Rabbi Lerner admitted that he pseudonymously wrote letters to the editor published in the journal. He argued that he was merely expressing opinions that had been shared with him by readers but promised that the practice would not “be continued.”
Tikkun eventually ceased print publication, but Rabbi Lerner maintained an online operation until earlier this year, announcing the shuttering of the magazine in April. An archive remains online.
After the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Tikkun magazine and Beyt Tikkun, a San Francisco Bay-area congregation led by Rabbi Lerner, published a statement condemning the “horrific actions of Hamas.” The statement also asserted that the “unfolding horror in Israel and Gaza is an escalation of decades of state-sanctioned violence by Israel against Palestinians.”
“Although it feels like a time to stand with ‘our people,’” the statement read, “we know this is a time to come together. This is a time of great suffering for all; a time of painful emotions. It is only by recognizing our shared fears and our shared tears that we will find our way through this nightmare.”
Michael Phillip Lerner was born in Newark on Feb. 7, 1943. His father was a municipal judge and later head of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. His mother was an organizer for the Democratic Party. Both were active in Zionist organizations.
The civic involvement of Rabbi Lerner’s parents exposed him at an early age to politics, and he recalled reading the Congressional Record as a boy. But he was also drawn to the study of Judaism and was mentored by Abraham Joshua Heschel, a renowned Jewish theologian.
Rabbi Lerner was a 1964 philosophy graduate of Columbia University, which he attended while simultaneously studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He was ordained in 1995 within a movement known as Jewish Renewal, according to his son.
Rabbi Lerner continued his studies at Berkeley, where he became increasingly politically active.
In 1970, he helped organize a large antiwar demonstration in Seattle, where he had moved to teach philosophy at the University of Washington. He was one of seven organizers indicted on federal conspiracy and riot charges and, after being found in contempt of court, served 10 weeks in a federal penitentiary before the charges were ultimately dropped.
Rabbi Lerner received a PhD in social and clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley in 1977 and opened a psychology practice. By observing his patients, he came to believe that “there was a deeper level of reality that the [political] movements were not speaking to, which was the pain that people were experiencing in their daily lives,” he told the Times, “pain based on what I now call the deprivation of meaning.”
Rabbi Lerner found a close collaborator in Cornel West, a leading Black scholar who was a co-chairman with Rabbi Lerner of the Tikkun Community, an organization formed to promote a “politics of meaning.” Rabbi Lerner and West were co-authors of the book “Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin” (1995).
Rabbi Lerner’s other books included “Jewish Renewal” (1994), “The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism” (1996) and “The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country From the Religious Right” (2006).
Rabbi Lerner was married in a religious ceremony to Theirrie Cook, the mother of his son. They later separated. His subsequent marriages to Fink and Debora Kohn ended in divorce. He and his wife Cat Zavis initiated divorce proceedings this year.
Besides his son, of San Francisco, survivors include two grandchildren.
Rabbi Lerner conceded that Tikkun was “unapologetically Utopian” but insisted on the need to combine Jewish beliefs and liberalism in political life.
“Judaism has things specific to teach the liberal and progressive world,” he told the Times in 1986. “We’ve been in a struggle against slavery and the forms in which the human spirit has been suppressed. So our experience is rich in how to carry that struggle on and not be destroyed.”
