Rabbi Michael Lerner is the co-founder of Tikkun magazine and serves as the editor of Tikkun’s print and online magazine (www.tikkun.org). He founded The Tikkun Community (now renamed as The Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org) an international interfaith organization dedicated to peace, justice, nonviolence, generosity, caring, love and compassion, and serves as chair of this peace organization.

Rabbi Lerner has received numerous awards, including the Martin Luther King, Jr./Mahatma Gandhi Award from Morehouse College, largely for his role as a spokesperson for reconciliation and peace between Israel and Palestine, as well as for his role as a leading opponent of the war in Iraq. He was also awarded the PEN Oakland Award, and the Champion of Forgiveness Award. He was identified by Utne Reader as one of America’s 100 most significant visionaries and by Newsweek as one of America’s most influential rabbis. He is the author of eleven books including Jewish Renewal, The Politics of Meaning, The Socialism of Fools: Anti-Semitism on the Left, Spirit Matters, Jews and Blacks (with Cornel West), and The Left Hand of God and his latest Embracing Israel/Palestine: A Strategy to Heal and Transform the Middle East.

He received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972 and a Ph.D. in social/clinical psychology from Berkeley’s Wright Institute in 1977. He serves as director of the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, and he has served as dean of the Graduate School of Psychology at New College of California and founder of Beyt Midrash le’Shalom in Jerusalem, Israel.
Lerner became very controversial among the denizens of the Jewish establishment and in the Jewish media because of the role he has taken in trying to build bridges of understanding between Jews and Palestinians.

return to guest index