Editor in Chief: Rabbi Michael Lerner

Tikkun’s editor, Michael Lerner, who co-founded the magazine in 1986, is a well-known public intellectual and expert on Jewish spirituality and the Middle East. Since November 2004, he has appeared on CNN, Tavis Smiley on both NPR and PBS (to discuss the new religious Left and separation of church and state),The O'Reilly factor (to discuss the commercialization of Christmas), and Larry King Live (to discuss where God was in the Tsunami). He is also rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in San Francisco, national co-chair of the interfaith peace and justice organization the Tikkun Community, and author of nine books including Healing Israel/Palestine, Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul,  and with Cornel West: Jews and Blacks: Reflections on Culture and Politics. He has been described as “the most courageous Jew in America” (at the award ceremony at which he received the PEN-Oakland Award) and “one of America’s 100 most significant visionaries” (by the Utne Reader).

Managing Editor: Dave Belden

Dave Belden joined Tikkun as Managing Editor in March 2007. He was previously a freelance web and business writer in New York's mid-Hudson Valley. Dave wrote over 40 columns on religion and politics worldwide for the global web magazine openDemocracy. He ran a weekly radio show, Spiritually Speaking, with a rabbi and a minister, to help counteract the overwhelming presence of conservative religion on the airwaves, and appeared regularly on WAMC, northeast public radio. The radio shows and some of Dave's articles can be found on the website of the Hudson Valley chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, which he founded with his wife, Debi Clifford, and colleague Mike Ignatowski.

Dave was a member and four year President of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskills, an experience he credits with turning him from an organization-phobic loner back into an activist citizen. The epiphany was that a spiritual community could be a place of warmth, intellectual openness, nourishment, activism and hope - even for an agnostic like himself (see www.uucckingston.org).  From there it was a natural step to seek out the leaders and writers who had most fully developed an analysis and practice of spiritually-based citizenship and radical politics. Rabbi Michael Lerner appeared to him to be the most convincing and deeply thoughtful of these. Dave is hard pressed to think of any job in the world he would rather be doing than editing Tikkun.

Born in Switzerland in 1949 and raised in England, Dave worked as a religious volunteer in India in 1967 and in Eritrea/Ethiopia after graduating from Oxford in 1970. His parents were leading members of the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) religious movement (better known to some by its earlier name of the Oxford Group, the movement within which Alcoholics Anonymous was  formed). After five years intense commitment to the movement's understanding of God, Dave left MRA and religion altogether. He wrote a historical and sociological study of the Oxford Group as his doctoral thesis at Oxford University, 1976. He was involved in radical community and third world politics, and then in his 30s turned to writing science fiction novels that explored gender and religion. From 1981, when he fell in love with Debi Clifford on a trip to San Francisco, until they moved with their then four-year-old son Rowan to the Hudson Valley in 1993, Dave financed writing science fiction novels and fatherhood by remodeling San Francisco Victorians. Rowan is now studying video game design at USC and Debi is director of fundraising and admin for WAGES -- a small women's economic development organization in Oakland, CA. They do wonderful work -- helping lower-income Latinas build worker-owned businesses that provide them with stable jobs, increased income, and a better quality of life. The Belden-Cliffords are a California family again.

Assistant Editor: Adina Allen

Adina moved to Berkeley in August of 2006 to be the assistant to Rabbi Lerner. From this job, she was hired to as the assistant editor of Tikkun magazine. She has been an active member of the NSP for the past two years. In 2005, she graduated from Tufts University in Massachusetts with a degree in Anthropology and Environmental Studies. In Boston, Adina worked for a number of non-profit environmental justice organizations and studied Hebrew and Jewish text at Hebrew College. In the fall of 2006 Adina participated in the Adamah fellowship at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, a three month residential leadership training program that integrates Jewish living and learning, organic agriculture, sustainable living skills, and community building. In the future, she plans on going to rabbinical school. Adina is passionate and positive about the work of healing and transforming the world.

Editor in Chief: Michael Lerner
Managing Editor: Dave Belden
Associate Editor: Peter Gabel
Assistant Editor: Adina Allen
Poetry Editor: Joshua Weiner
Art  Director: Design Action Collective
Web Management: Reach And Teach