Truthdig chooses Rabbi Lerner as “Truthdigger” of the Week

Truthdigger of the Week: Rabbi Michael Lerner

Posted on Mar 8,2015 on Truthdig

Every week the Truthdig editorial staff selects a Truthdigger of the Week, a group or person worthy of recognition for speaking truth to power, breaking the story or blowing the whistle. It is not a lifetime achievement award. Rather, we’re looking for newsmakers whose actions in a given week are worth celebrating.

As Benjamin Netanyahu’s fear-mongering speech echoed through the chambers of Congress, an American Jewish voice could be heard directly opposing the Israeli prime minister’s bellicose machinations – that of Rabbi Michael Lerner.

Rabbi Lerner, a political activist and longtime advocate of spiritual progressivity, in the 1980s co-founded the journal Tikkun , a journal of politics, culture and society. The quarterly, whose title comes from the Hebrew tikkun olam, meaning “healing or restoring the world,” focuses on providing an alternative to Jewish conservatism. Such an alternative has perhaps never been as important as it is today, a time when, to use Lerner’s words, “the fantasies that the right-wing discourse advances” increasingly dominate the politics of both the United States and Israel.

Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday was arranged by House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, without the agreement or cooperation of the White House. The day before the speech, Rabbi Lerner and Tikkun ran a full-page ad in The New York Times and, then, on Tuesday, repeated the ad in The Hill newspaper. It was topped with a simple, bold headline: “No, Mr. Netanyahu – you do not speak for American Jews. And … The American People Do Not Want a War with Iran!”

The ad, which used powerful evidence and arguments against the harmful ideas that the Israeli prime minister is spreading about both Iran and the Jewish-American diaspora, included more than 2,000 signatures from people who supported Tikkun’s protest. Rabbi Lerner spoke out in other ways, too. He had articles Tuesday on the Salon and Huffington Post websites in which he disassembled Netanyahu’s motives and arguments.

Although Netanyahu resorted to a language of hate and fear, Rabbi Lerner chose to propagate a positive message of dissidence and strength, and, most important and perhaps most courageously, an achievable plan for peace. In each ad and article, Lerner pointed toward an alternative to what the Israeli leader is so forcefully proposing. Netanyahu’s insistence on further escalating sanctions against Iran will lead to “two predictable consequences,” the rabbi argued, the first of which is that it would inspire the Iranian people to redirect their anger away from the mullahs’ regime and toward Israel and the U.S. Secondly, Lerner wrote, Iran currently requires nuclear power “to replace quickly depleting and earth-polluting energy supplies for [its] rapidly growing … population” but the nation “would move quickly to escalate its nuclear capacities and turn them toward military use” if it felt threatened by Israel and the U.S.

Lerner, in his Salon article, then offered an in-depth analysis of the motives behind Netanyahu’s belligerent plan:

Now Netanyahu and his cheerleaders in both parties of the U.S. Congress are no dummies. They can see this same plausible outcome. So why would they be advocating it? Sadly, the answer is that they actually want another war, this time with Iran. For some Israelis, a war led by the U.S. against Iran would be a perfect way to get rid of a state that has been funding Islamic groups closer to Israel like Hezbollah (though Iran has actually been attacking supporters of ISIS – the self proclaimed Islamic State whose barbarism rightly frightens most civilized people). For some American capitalists, the securing of Iranian oil reserves will give Big Oil several more decades of flourishing. For some right-wing Christians, fighting a war to rid the Middle East of Israel’s most significant competitor for regional influence is a way of alleviating their guilt from past failures to save the Jews. And for still other right-wing Christians, a war that decimated Iran would be a major step toward the Apocalypse that they hope will yield a return of their messiah to earth. We’ve already seen what this kind of a war looks like – we just barely are ending the Iraq war, which cost us a trillion dollars and led to the emergence of the ISIL/Islamic state.

Instead, Lerner wrote, the U.S. needs to move toward a “dramatic break” from the conflictive policies that have led it into several wars in the Middle East and, beyond that, move toward a breakthrough outlined by Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives in their “Global Marshall Plan,” the main ideas of which were given in Lerner’s Salon article:

Have the U.S. lead the other advanced industrial countries in each dedicating 1-2 percent of their Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty to once and for all end both domestic and international poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, and inadequate health care and repair the global environment;

Overturn all the trade agreements (and stop the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] currently being negotiated in secret by the Obama administration) that have favored the interests of Western globalized capitalist firms while undermining local economies and impoverishing tens of millions of small farmers in the global south and east who are then forced off their lands and into the big cities where they live in slums and become attracted to a politics of resentment;

Create local community-based economies outside the control of national governments or large corporations to make sure that this doesn’t turn out to be another pointless give-away program but instead becomes a program of genuine empowerment of local communities around the world.

Approach the peoples of the world with a spirit of humility and a genuine desire to learn from their cultures and experiences. That does not mean suspending our ethical values (we need not tolerate abuse of women or children under the guise of multiculturalism). But it does mean ridding ourselves of the false notion that having more material things and being richer than other societies is somehow a sign of being better or wiser. In fact, we need to open ourselves to the wisdom of those who may be poorer in things but richer in their cultural resources and in building communities in which people care for each other.

While the Global Marshall Plan can indeed be considered audacious, it is refreshing to witness a community leader using audacity for a peaceful cause, one that departs from the cycle of violence that the West has relied on for far too long in the face of threats. We’ve heard what Netanyahu has to say about Iran, Jews and the Middle East many times, and, as President Barack Obama pointed out in his response to Tuesday’s speech, “there [is] nothing new” in what the Israeli official has to offer. Rather it is the same emotional blackmail and misinformation that helped lead the U.S. into wars in the Middle East. It contains the same vitriol that was in Netanyahu’s 2002 contention , “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”

There is in Rabbi Lerner and Tikkun’s proposal an innovative and detailed approach toward a tired problem. After all, the trillion dollars that we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan could have been used to help fight homelessness and hunger across the globe, as the rabbi has pointed out. For taking out daring ads against Netanyahu, for his role in designing the Global Marshall Plan and for his commitment to a peaceful future for the nations of the earth, Rabbi Lerner is our Truthdigger of the Week.

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A Note From Tikkun:

While Tikkun has received many honors, most recently “Best Magazine of the Year 2014” from the Religion Newswriters Association, and Rabbi Lerner has received many awards including the “King/Gandhi Award” from MLK Jr.’s Atlanta-based institution Morehouse College, we are particularly delighted because this comes from a respected progressive site–TruthDig edited by the widely respected journalist Robert Scheer. Lerner actually worked on Scheer’s run for Congress in 1966 when anti-war activists were trying to replace Democratic Congressman and Vietnam-hawk Jeffrey Cohelan with a powerful anti-war voice. Although Scheer lost the election, and went on to become editor of Ramparts Magazine, the effort in 1966 pioneered a direction that would lead to the temporary takeover of the Democratic Party by pro-peace forces in many states and nationally in the next six years, leading in turn to an end to the war in Vietnam and the passage of many progressive pieces of legislation.

Lerner himself had this to say: “The people who deserve this honor most are the now over 3,100 people who signed the ad, and the close to 600 people who donated to make the ad possible. We are still seeking signatories and donors because our struggle is not only with Netanyahu, but with a worldview that seeks “security through domination, power-over, and war,” whereas we will use the money donated to this campaign to advance the idea of “security through generosity and genuine caring about the well-being of others and the well-being of the earth.” You can still read, sign and hopefully (though you don’t have to) donate to this ad at www.tikkun.org/peaceproject. The “No Mr. Netanyahu” ad was discussed in USA Today, and on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Public Radio International’s “The World,” PBS’ The News Hour, and on radio by Geraldo (yes, he’s still around–on Fox) in debate with Shmuley Boteach, and was reprinted in many regional newspapers and blogs.

You are invited to read, sign and donate to the ad at www.tikkun.org/peaceproject It is going to be a tough struggle to keep the U.S. out of a war with Iran, given the pressure inside the Democratic Party from AIPAC and others trapped in Holocaust-PTSD and unable to see that the best interests of the Jewish people lies in peaceful accommodation with its neighbors rather than war against them. The struggle to keep the US out of yet another disasterous Middle East war will probably go on for several years. That is one reason why we need more people to join the struggle against such a war, and of course, because we are Tikkun and look to root causes, more people to help us popularize a different kind of discourse in this country about the best path to security. And that in turn is why we want to encourage you to subscribe to Tikkun magazine at www.tikkun.org or better still, to join our (interfaith and secular-humanist-welcoming) Network of Spiritual Progressives which will be leading the struggle for peace and a new framework for thinking about these issues. Just read our Global Marshall Plan (download it at www.tikkun.org/gmp) and then if you are moved by its comprehensive vision, even if you are doubtful we will this anytime soon, please join the NSP at www.spiritulalprogressives.org (anyone who joins at the annual $50 or more level receives a free electronic subscription to Tikkun for one year). We need your active involvement, or, failing that, your financial support!!!!