NSP and Atheists

An unknown writer asks:

If the Network of Spiritual Progressives puts serious emphasis on spirituality, what happens to people who agree with all of your Spiritual Covenant but describe ourselves as atheists or agnostics? One does not have to have a belief in God in order to live a spiritual life or have a spiritual practice.

Rabbi Lerner responds:

Atheists and agnostics are specifically welcome, if:

a. they feel comfortable with an organization that uses words like Spiritual, Spirit, God, love, generosity, awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation, and atonement and repentance; and

b. if they will not challenge other people who do believe in God and make them feel that such a belief is controversial within our organization; and

c. will not contend against our desire to encourage people to have a daily spiritual practice (but of course, as you point out and I also point out many times when I talk, one does not have to believe in God or a Supreme Being to have a spiritual life and a spiritual practice).

So, if you feel the people fit in these respects, please encourage them to join the NSP.

But please note that the dynamics of the Left are such that we are not worried that we are going to be hostile to atheists and agnostics, but rather that atheists and agnostics are going to make people who believe in God feel put down and dissed. So in our organization, I think we want to be sensitive to that dynamic, because I've never heard of an instance in any of our chapters where any agnostic or atheist was dissed but I have heard religious people feeling put down when others start saying that religion is fundamentally irrational.

Thanks for asking.

Rabbi Michael Lerner

My Thesis

Stewart Mills Sydney, Australia asks:

Dear Rabbi Lerner,

I am an Australian Christian who worked as a volunteer
in Neve Shalom/Wahat Al Salam for a 6 week period in
2000 and returned there in 2001.

Subsequently, I completed a Masters of Arts in Peace
and Conflict Studies.  My thesis was Empathising with
the Enemy: transformation of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict by overcomng social and psychological
obstacles.

I have put this thesis online:

http://palestineisraelsolutions.blogspot.com/

I have recently got into a discussion with some
colleagues regarding the conflict.  They have just
come back from Israel after being sponsored by a
Jewish group from Melbourne.  The discussions have
been tense.

After returning to Australia they now see the conflict
as grey, as not having a stronger party and that is
best left to Palestinians and Jews to solve.

From my experience I would agree that yes, the
conflict is complex, and yes there is grey.However,
are there not significant quantitative
differences?  In particular stark disparities in power
dynamics between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians at
all levels: social (health, education, employment),
political, economic, and military. Is it not the duty of people
of good faith to stand up
for those on the margins?  Should not the party which
has the means to sustain greater levels of adversity
do so and display more generous
acts of conciliation.
 Following on from this:

 1)Who is on the margins in the issue of Palestine and
 Israel?

 2)What is the process we as a community can help
those on the margin in the issue of Palestine and
Israel?

 3)Can individuals make comment on issues of Palestine
 and Israel if they are neither Palestinian or Jewish?

 4)Can individuals comment on issues affecting other
 people if the individuals are not of the identity
 directly experiencing the injustice?  Think about
 Rwanda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Nazi Germany,
US foreign policy, indigenous Australian issues (or
for that matter slavery or the suffragette movement).

I look forward to your reply.

Shalom,

Sydney, Australia

Rabbi Lerner responds:

    Of course you have the same right and moral responsibility
that everyone else has on the planet to challenge immoral policies
in societies in which they don't live. Just as Jews today
challenge the policies of Darfur, so too do non-Jews have the
right to challenge the policies of Israel. And from a Tikkun
perspective, the reality of the 21st century is that our survival
as a planet depends on us developing a growing recognition of the
unity of all being and the onenesss of the human race, overcoming
destructive forms of nationalism that have diverted our attention
from the real challenge of this century: working together as one
human race to avert the coming environmental catastrophe. As we
develop this new consciousness, we also develop a higher level of
understanding that all of us have a moral duty to care for and
protect each other from abuse. This is another dimension of
recgnizing our interconnectedness (a recognition that was first
articualted by the rabbis of the Talmud commenting on the portion
of the Torah which makes clear that we all come from one common
source and hence are all mutually related, "blood brothers and
sisters" so to speak. So of course you have the right and
obligation to speak out whenever you see moral injustice.

I cannot at this moment give a full answer, though it is there in
my book Healing Israel/Palestine. A shortened, vulgarized, and
hence easily misunderstood answer is this: Israel has the greater
power and hence has a greater moral responsibility to take the
first steps toward genuine teshuva (repentance), atonement, and
reconciliation. However, Jews remain a traumatized people, unable
to see their own moral responsibility or even self-interest,
because we perceive ourselves to be constantly threatened with
repeats of the traumas of the past two thousand years. There is no
way to get out of a trauma by yelling to those within the trauma
that they are acting immorally or irrationally, because in this
case, that only intensifies the certainty that the traumatized
have that everyone is going to hurt them the first occasion they
have to do so.
     So what can be done? First, the world has to stop attacking
Israel and instead acknowledge unequivocally its responsibility
for creating a traumatized subject, the Jewish people. It has to
acknowledge that the UN created Israel in 1947 at least in part to
deal with the guilt the world had for not saving the Jews from
genocide. And it has to acknolwedge that the Palestinian people's
refusal to accept the 1947 UN resolution was an important
component in creating the current realities facing the
Palestinians. Most important, it has to demand that terror against
Israel cease. Unequivocally and unilaterally on the part of the
Palesitnians.
      Second, the Palestinian people need to renounce violence,
unequivocally and unilaterally. As long as violence is part of the
equation, the Israeli public and Jews around the world will revert
to their trauma. The violence cannot possibly overcome the
superior violence of the Israeli state, but it contributes
dramatically to reenforcing the trauma of the Jewish people and to
the political credibility of the least humane elements within the
Jewish people. It is only when the Palestinian people have adopted
an unequivocal commitment to non-violence, and enforced it among
its own population, that it can launch non-violent demonstrations
that will move the conscience of the Israeli people. It is
pointless to say, "But consider demonstration X--it was totally
nonviolent and yet suppressed by the Israeli Army." As long as the
larger context is one of violent struggle against Israel, any
particular non-violent demonstration will simply be perceived as a
tactical adjustment in the larger violent struggle.
         Moreover, the Palestinian side must adopt non-violence
not only as a strategy but as a moral principle, ensuring that
once it gains real freedom that it will not use that freedom to
revert to the violence that characterized its struggle for the
past decades.
         Why this burden on the oppressed? There is no moral
reason. It's merely a question of political smarts. If the
Palestinians and their supporters wish to be morally right, they
can remain as perpetual victims. But if they are looking for a
strategy to change the political equation, this is the only path
that will work. There's a difference between being morally right
and being smart, and for those of us who wish to see the end of
the suffering of the Palesitnian people, we are praying that they
will finally become smart enough to follow the path that worked so
well for Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela (at least at
the end of his political career in the late 80s and early 90s of
the last century).
           For those of us who are Jews, all we can do is repent,
pray for a healing of the Jewish people, and work towards that
healing in every way we can. But I don't think we will see that
healing in our generation as long as acts of terror against Jews
continue in Israel, and assaults on Jews and Jewish targets around
the world continue as a (in my view totally illegitimate) form of
protest against Israeli policies toward Palestinians.
            Yes, we can support interventions, pressures on
Israel, etc.--but they won't work until the
psychological/spiritual equation has been dealt with.  Of course,
I'm sure that there is a strong argument on the Palestinian side
for how difficult it is to deal with their trauma after the Nakba
of 1947-49, and certainly their case is legitimate (it doesn't pay
to try to argue that the genocide of the Jews was even more
traumatic--because traumas can't be compared in that kind of a
way). For those who have the access and strategy, they ought to be
working on curing the Palestinian trauma just as we who have
access to israelis need to do what we can to bring healing to the
Jewish people.
             There is one intervention worth considering: the
introduction of an international force to separate both sides and
protect each side from the other.That force, if it could impose an
end to violence against each side, would create the conditions for
further steps toward healing the underlying traums on both sides. 
But given the current and continuing power of AIPAC despite all
the public scandals about its means of operation, it seems
unlikely that the US government would do aught but to torpedo such
an international plan.
             Meanwhile, steps to disinvest in Israel simply repeat
the perception of Israelis and Jews worldwide that they are being
singled out for special disdain (given that there are no similar
moves to disinvest in far greater human rights violators, as in
China's relationship with Tibet, Russia's with Chechnya, the human
rights abuses in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, and
in the US itself). This is  strategy, then, that only reenforces
the most fearful elements in the Jewish psyche.
               So, yes, this is a very complex reality, and other
historical analogies have only limited applicability.
               Many blessings to all those who seek peace, justice
and reconcialition and a new opening of the heart so that each
side can see the humanity and pathos of the other side.
               Rabbi Michael Lerner

Anti-Zionists

David ben Yaacov asks:

Don't you think you and this magazine are made up of traitorous Anti-Zionists. Am I wrong or are you in league with the Christian and Islamic heretics? The left and right wing radical nutjobs? You cannot honestly believe in that the anti-Israeli liars and opponents are not anti-Jewish? Are you and the writers of this magazine sick in the head? The Arabs (I will NEVER acknowledge the fiction of this "Palestine" created by Roman oppressors who disappeared from history. The non-Israeli Arabs are living in a culture of death, how the hell can you negotiate with fanatics bent on our destruction? Until things change with the Arabs OCCUPYING Jewish land - Judea, Samaria, the Galilee, there will be no peace. The Arabs always try to win what they keep losing through their incredible stupidity and losses in war. They will never stop trying to destroy our Jewish nation. How can you honestly believe that the Arabs are going to stop murdering our citizens, our men, women and children? You and many others are completely deluded by this pie in the sky wishful thinking that we will have peace. The Arabs should have and should be expelled from Israel, from Judea, from the Yesha. Hard problems call for hard solutions. Im sorry but that is the only way I see out. Screw the Arabs, they lost, they support their terrorist brethren including Al-Qaeda, let them take their own people in. I am sick of traitors including Sharon caving into this defeatist, traitorous deluded thinking that giving up land automatically gives us peace. Let Israel kill those who kills its citizens. How can we let these heretics who pervert our faith occupy the holy Temple, with their obscene Dome of the Rock? over 800,000 Jews were EXPELLED from the Arab world from 1948 on. Do we ask for the Arabs to compensate them? Of course not. Israel is ours, we won it, they lost, thats the reality. Israel has nukes, they dare to attack us we should not hesitate to use them. If you pretend that Israel is based on a secular Judaism, you are sorely mistaken. The whole land of Israel is needed for it to grow, not just because of the historically Jewish sites and the significance of these and the fact that Jews have always lived in the land of Israel and Judah, but also because strategically speaking, Israel would be protected from an Arab army splitting the country in two if God forbid they attack us again. Your magazine and its left wing in the clouds writers and editors are secular fools who think you can actually negotiate with murderers. It sickens me that fellow Jews are anti-Zionist and collaborate openly and actively with the enemy. Are these heretics, because lets face it, Christians and Muslims basically stole our religion and developed their heretical perverted doctine from us. Whether they hate us or support Israel, like those right wing nutjob Christians who support Israel because in their mistaken heretical beliefs Israel somehow figures in their insane theology that in the end of course the Jews go to hell. A bunch of lunatic bastards who gall me with their heresy and polytheistic blasphemy. How will you answer to Jews and people of common sense, to God, your spineless, good intentioned yet impractical view and tactics. Israel has been unified, let us expel the Arabs who will not accept Israel. Two peoples who cannot live in peace side by side have to be separated, the Arabs must go.

Rabbi Lerner responds:

Every day I pray that you and people who share your perspective will someday come to realize that those of us who believe that Israel’s best interests for survival and peace lies with an open-hearted reconciliation with the Palestinian people are actually as much concerned about serving God, Judaism and the Jewish people as you. I hope that you’ll read my book Healing Israel/Palestine to see how one can understand the facts differently than you do. Meanwhile, I pray that your fervent energy will be directed toward building more love between and among peoples so that God’s house can become a house of prayer for all peoples!

Nuclear Option

Greg Rowe asks:

How do you respond to the ADL's attacks on Senator Byrd's comparison of Senator Frist's "nuclear option" regarding judicial confirmations to the lack of meaningful legislative process in Nazi Germany?  Has the ADL in your view lost credibility as a civil rights organization since 9/11?   

Rabbi Lerner responds:

The ADL lost most of it credibility in my eyes as a civil rights organization when it began to identify criticisms of Israel with anti-Semitism, still more when it failed to defend me when I was receiving threats to my life from right-wing Jewish groups because of my critique of Israeli policy toward Palestinians (it said that these were not threats that came from my being Jewish, so therefore they were not within their area of concern). However, I think Byrd’s comparison was over-the-top and illegitimate. There was no serious dissent possible in Nazi Germany, and there is serious dissent possible, both within and outside the US Congress today, so Byrd made a stupid mistake in using the Nazi-analogy to make a criticism that was in its essence totally on target. When people use the Nazis analogy they set themselves up for this kind of attack, allowing the substance of what they say to be totally missed.

Tsunami

Ian Stuart istuart@berkeley.edu asks:

Question: Most religions seem to imply that their is order and reason which guide the events of the world: God's wll or karma for example. The recent tragedies in South and Southeast Asia for me exemplify a problem I have with these ideas in religions of rhyme and reason. To me, the tsunamis and a range of other unfair things in the world make these notions of order and reason very problematic and unacceptable. To me, it seems to iimply that people are deserving of their horrid fates, which I cannot toleratle. If this is misguided and misinterpretation of these concepts of order and reason, order and reason also raise the questions: why not me? Why was i born here and not there? Why not a Tutsi in Rwanda?Why not in Botswana with a life expectancy of 30? Why was I not hit by a car today when someone else was? The suffering of others and this big questions about how the wolrd works brings a tremendous sense of guilt and confusion for being alive and having my family alive. Order seems disgusting and evil, while a certain amount of randomness beyond cause and effect we can feel and touch, though sad, seems more likely to me. My big, probobly unanswerable question is: How do you, or the Tikkun community understand such events? I know in a book of yours to talk of these concepts being used by those in power to uphold inequality and opression. But what decides who lives and who dies and where we are born? If there is no answer how do we accept that there isn't and not be overwhelmed and paralyzed by these thoughts? Thank you for opening yourself up for questions. It is much appreciated.

Rabbi Lerner responds:

I don't know. I think that whatever else I say below, I want to start with the fact that I do not know, that there is a limitation of knowledge and understanding built into being a human being at this stage in the develoment of the consciousness of the universe. I was not there when the foundations of the universe were being put together—and that is a point that was made to Job long ago when he similarly questioned the way the universe works.
Having said that, I want to consider several lines of possible response, as long as you understand that I know that these are NOT ANSWERS but only responses to the question as you pose it.
1. I'll start with a response I have less sympathy with, but which I cannot rule out. The tectonic moves of the earth are part of a totally integrated moral system that has been in place since the earth began to evolve. That moral system, described by the Bible, tells us that the physical world will be unable to function in a peaceful and gentle way until the moral/spiritual dimension manifest in the behavior of God's creatures coheres with God's will: that is, is filled with justice, peace, generosity and kindness. The earth is a biological/ethical/spiritual unity, and its functioning is in accord with its aspirations toward consciousness, love, enviromental sensitivity, generosity, and social justice but when there are contradictions or constraints in the development of love, consciousness, environmental sensitivity, social justice, and generosity then there is a malfunction which eventually manifests in physical disorders, whether they be disease or whether they be earthquakes or tornadoes or floods or other disruptions of nature. This is basically the point of the Bible's account of the plagues facing Egypt, but now working on a global level. As the Torah makes clear, this karmic order doesn't happen on a one-to-one basis: i.e. it isn't as if everyone who suffered in the plagues of Egypt was directly responsible for the enslavement and oppression of Jewish slaves, and the Torah's claim that if we do not create a society based on love, kindness, generosity, justice and peace we will face ecological disaster is not a claim that each person who suffers from ths disaster will be equally responsible for the moral disorder that generated the ecological crisis. But what the Torah is implying is this: there is noone alive on the planet who doesn't have some part of the responsibility for the craziness that manifests in lack of justice, kindness, generosity, peace and love. We are all ONE, and that means the totality of the moral craziness is our collective responsibility, and the environmental dysfunction that that moral craziness produces will eventually impact on all of us alike. Now, if you answer, "but why strike the weak in SouthEast Asia and not the strong in the US?" the answer might be, "it will happen here as well, has been happening in many ways already in the form of cancer epidemics and other environmental diseases," but it might also be, "we are all one, and when the earth is morally dysfunctional the tectonic movement of its plates manifests all over and not in ways that we can directly correlate in a one to one relationship with who did the latest moral outrage and where." An analogy: when we inhale and eat various environmental poisions which we ourselves created in the factories of advanced industrial societies, they may eventually cause cancer of the liver or the kidneys or the stomach. Now imagine a stomach or liver cell making the following argument: "It wasn't me who took in this cancer-causing material, but the brain, the mouth, the hands—so it is unfair that I should be suffering when it was done by these other organs!" Well, I guess it has a case to be made, but only on the supposition that the liver cell or the kidney or stomach cell isn't part of the same unity as the hand, brain or mouth that ingested the poison in the first place. In any event, this is the current form of the argument that there is in fact a karmic explanation for what is happening today that should alert us to the need to do immediate tikkun olam to bring the world into a lasting harmony.
2. But will there really be no earthquakes in the messianic era—the period when human beings create our institutiions based on love, generosity, environmental sensitivity, kindness, compassion for all life, social justice, non-violence nd peace? The first point above needs to claim that that is how it will be, but I'm not sure that that is true. So if it is not, then we need to reject the notion that everything that happens has a divine cause. We need not reject that there is a karmic order such as is described in point one, only that it does not explain IT DOES NOT EXPLAIN EVERYTHING. But, if it doesn't, the questioner can legitimately ask, how do we understand the nature of God? My answer here is very tentative, because I know how very little I can possibly know about the ultimate reality of the universe. So what I say must be filled with the crude level of understanding that we humans have gotten to at this point in the evolution of consciousness. But here is what I would say: First, stop thinking of God as some big man up in heaven sitting there and making individual judgments about who shall live and who shall die, where he should put a tsunami and where he should put a beautiful sunset. Instead, understand God as THE FORCE OF HEALING AND TRANSFORMATION IN THE UNIVERSE, the aspect of the universe that is the source of love, kindness, generosity, social justice, peace and evolving consciousness, and that this aspect of the universe permeates every ounce of being, every cell, and unifies all being as it moves the beiing of the universe toward greater and greater levels of love and connection and consciousness, and makes possible the transcending of that which is toward that which ought to be. Seen this way, God is not the all-powerful being that determines every moment of creation, but rather the part of creation aspiring toward love, kindness, generosity, peace, and social justice which is evolving toward greater power to shape our common destiny to the extent that we choose to embody it more fully. Heresy, you say? Only if your conception of God derives from a Greek notion of the All-Knowing, All Powerful Unmoved Mover—a conception which at times has seeped into and shaped medieval theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but which isn't the only possible way to understand God. If, on the other hand, we take our cues from parts of Torah that think of God as bemoaning the choices that human beings made, even at times thinking that maybe S/He made a mistake in creating humans, or as weeping over the consequences of Diaspora (Shechina, the Divine presence, going into Exile with the Jews according to one midrash), or as sufferiing from the consequences of human choices, or the Christian vision of God as needing to suffer on the Cross, then you get a different and more vulnerable vision of God, one more in accord with the notion of God not as the one responsible for everything that happens, but as an emerging voice of compassion and love in the midst of a world not totally under His/Her control.In that case, and this conception aligns more closely to what I understand with my limited understanding, God is joining us in mourning for the victims of the Tsunami, not its cause. Or, to put it another way, God is the part of Being (including the part of us) that is yearning for a world in which this kind of suffering will be diminished and in which those parts of the suffering that can't be stopped will be accompanied by responses of generosity and kindness.

Should I listen to my mother?

Sarah asks:

Since college, I have ceased to believe in god, but I would like to
participate in a few holiday services a year at my temple. My mother
says that my presence (based on my beliefs) is worthless and could be
an offense to members of the congregation who are deeply religious.
(Keep in mind that this is a reform synagogue, unlike my conservative
one back home.) I think she is just hurt, and striking back. She says
that I should sit down with the Rabbi and explain my new beliefs, but I
do not feel that is necessary. Furthermore, I am currently trying to
gain admission to medical school, and I mentioned that I would like to
practice volunteer medicine for at least a year in Israel when I finish
my medical education. She said that I shouldn't bother. (!!!) I am
Jewish, and I want to be with my people, support Israel, and
participate in our cultural traditions. Is that so bad? Should I listen
to my mother?

Rabbi Lerner responds:

Lets separate out the issues. First, which particular conception of God
don't you believe in? Have you ever read my book Jewish Renewal: A Path
to Healing and Transformation, and the books of other progressive
spiritual mystics (Arthur Green, Arthur Waskow, Zalman Schachter
Shalomi)? I can't accept on face value that you don't believe in
God—because many of us don't believe in the God that we were taught
about as kids, but have found a radically different conception with
deep roots in the Jewish mystical tradition which was absent in most
synagogues.<br>
Second, I think you have every right to find your own path to
connection with your people and with a faith community. I invite you to
come to Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco for High Holidays (you
can get the information on how to register at www.BeytTikkun.org). But
perhaps you can find something closer to home.<br>
Third, I do think that your mother also has a right to find her own
path, and if she is made uncomfortable by your presence in her
religious community, I'd urge you to respect her feelings and find
instead another community with whom to pray.<br>
Fourth, I wouldn't worry about having your opposition to God be a
factor in not letting you practice volunteer medicine. Israel is a
mostly secular society and Jewishness by their criteria is not a matter
of belief or religious practice (except in matters of birth, marriage
and divorce) but of racial heritage and birth. It is really not a
society geared to spiritual or religious values. I'm glad you'd like to
support Israel—and I hope when you are there you will also provide
services to the Palestinian people who are currently suffering and in
need of medical care as a result of Israel's oppressive Occupation.
Serving your own people can best be done by serving others as well
(though not in place of also serving our own people).<br>

Promiscuity

Michai Freeman michai@earthlink.net asks:

I really want to support gay and lesbian right to marry but I do not agree with the promiscus sexual lifestyle and behavior that many of my friends have who are gay. I am the same way about hetrosexual promiscuity. I am really struggling with this because marriage is more than about love; its about commitment and honor to each other.

Rabbi Lerner responds:

The point of gay and lesbian marriage is to provide a societal support for precisely the kind of commitment and honoring which you support. There was a time when radical gay activists attacked me personally because of my call for a progressive pro-families movement even though I included support for gay and lesbian families. In the late 1970s and early 1980s there were some who argued that gay liberation included breaking down patriarchal lifestyles, and they included family life as one such patriarchal institution. Though that extremism was particularly helpful to the Right, allowing it to portray all gays and lesbians as wrecklessly promiscuous, the gay and lesbian community today has evolved away from support for that perspective, and the call for gay and lesbian marriage is in part a support for a much more committed lifestyle. Like heterosexuals, gays and lesbians in marriages may fall out of love, or may fall for others while in love. The question of monogamy is quite different from that of promiscuity—the Biblical Abraham had both Sarah and Hagar, Jacob had Leah and Rachel and Zilpah and Bilhah, and the ban on more than one wife at a time was only formalized in Judaism in the Middle Ages. You may not want to follow the path of Biblical patriarchs, but noone thinks of them as promiscuous. But bathhouse sex, with its anonymity and lack of commitment, not only spread AIDS but also spread an infectious lack of respect for the other. That approach is the polar opposite of the honoring of commitment that is meant to be the essence of gay and lesbian marriage.