May / June 2006:

God's Left Hand Man
In his new book, Michael Lerner is taking aim at the religious right, and he's doing it with a spiritual message that could put some secular liberals ill at ease.

Story by Bradford R. Pilcher | Photo by Lionel Da Silva



"Right on dude"

This is, for the record, the thirteenth time the man working the counter has said these words. I stopped counting the iterations of "Awesome," after about ten minutes. We're in a small sandwich shop on Peachtree in the heart of midtown Atlanta. It's about as far from California as you can get, but here I am sitting across from the most West Coast Jewish thinker you've ever met while he scarfs down a California Tuna Wrap. Then there's surfer dude behind the counter, well into middle-age and repeatedly interrupting to pose his own questions.

This would be annoying; it really would, if it weren't so funny. I'm sitting across from an author with a new book out. I have my own questions to ask, an interview to conduct, except I can't escape the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle who served us our food. Still how can you get mad at a guy who says, "Far out," with such sincerity?

Rabbi Michael Lerner, the aforementioned West Coast Jew and author of the aforementioned hardback The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right, doesn't seem to mind one bit. Then again, he's used to this. Crisscrossing the country for speaking engagements, activist conferences, and protest rallies, Lerner bumps into plenty of people and plenty of them have questions.

Born in 1943, Lerner has spent the past half century becoming one of the most controversial figures in American Jewry. In 1970, he was the leader of the famous "Seattle Seven," a group of anti-war protesters charged with inciting a riot at the city's Federal Courthouse. He received rabbinical ordination in 1995, though his critics still refuse to recognize the title, and he's advised former president and first lady Bill and Hillary Clinton, enraging conservative Jews who see him — and his organization, Tikkun — as a hippie relic from Berkeley.

Nevertheless, it is his outspoken views on the Arab-Israeli conflict that have created the biggest backlash, and at the moment — and despite Mr. Right On's interruptions — he's explaining why such criticism is unfair

"My son," Lerner states with obvious emotion, "I raised him to be a Zionist. He went into the [Israeli] army. He's an American who went there for the sole purpose of serving." The rabbi from Berkeley proceeds to explain the IDF's ben yakhid regulation, whereby an only child cannot serve in combat without a parent's consent.

"This was terrifying for me, but I love Israel, so I signed the permission." Lerner pauses at this then adds, "People call me a self-hating Jew, they say I hate Israel."

The vitriol directed at the wiry-haired sexagenarian is predictable when coming from the right. What most people forget, or perhaps never learn to begin with, is that Lerner has spent just as much time taking fire from the more extreme left. Three years ago, he was banned from speaking at a major anti-war rally in San Francisco for publicly criticizing one of the event sponsors. International A.N.S.W.E.R.'s continual blending of anti-Israel rhetoric, a good deal of it laced with anti-Semitism, with their anti-war activities prompted Lerner's rebuke.

(Full disclosure: I wrote a column at the time defending Lerner and encouraging mainstream Jewish leaders to publicly support him.)

"From all sides I find the zealots denouncing me for not being pure enough," recounts Lerner in the sandwich shop. "I'm constantly amazed by how many synagogues refuse to have me as a speaker, because they believe I'm a self-hating Jew. That's the flip side of people on the left who see me as an apologist for Zionism."

It's this quality of being stuck between both sides of an issue that I suspect played a role both in Lerner's controversial stand against A.N.S.W.E.R. and his latest book. In it, he spends less time denouncing the right-wing fetish for putting God into politics and more time begging the left to stop ignoring the "spiritual hungers of the American people." It's hardly the argument you'd expect from an uber-lefty, so I ask him about it.

"I start from the supposition that there's good in most people. When people are doing things that are crazy and destructive, those of us who want to heal the world need to look for the part of them that is good, that is motivating what they are doing," says Lerner after snagging a slice of cake. "That vision makes it hard to polarize. Instead, you find the common humanity in the other."

Then, pushing cake into his mouth between sentences, the rabbi with two Ph.D.'s — one in philosophy and another in clinical psychology — presides over a meandering, but surprisingly eloquent, explanation of his views. It all starts with the Nazis.

"My family, a significant portion was wiped out in the Holocaust," recounts Lerner. "In my childhood, I tried to figure out how that could happen. The Jewish world had a standard answer."

I'm forced to smile as Lerner utters this answer with a deep boom in his voice, as if mimicking a divine proclamation. "The goyim will always hate the Jews."

He leans in, smiling coyly as he shrugs off this maxim. "I was meeting plenty of non-Jews," he says. "They didn't seem to hate the Jews, so I began to study what was going on in Germany in the 1920s. Most people were not starting out as Nazis. The Nazi movement was speaking to some need the government wasn't, namely the sense of isolation and confusion from the rapid industrial revolution."

In the manner of a man used to being misconstrued, Lerner adds, "I hope you understand that I don't support the Nazis, but people had a desire for community and purpose in contrast to a marketplace that says you're all on your own."

In his studies, Lerner became "very committed to 'Never again,'" though he admits his vision of that principle differs largely from the mainstream of the Jewish community. "Never again shall we allow fascist or nationalist sentiment to take over a society and make it insensitive to the oppressed," he says after his cake is all gone.

That, more or less, is what motivates Lerner to seek out a bridge between opposing sides, and he says — without even being asked — it's why he wrote The Left Hand of God.

"There's this deep anti-religiosity on [the left], and there are people from the religious right who say I'm not really supporting religion, I'm just using it to parrot old liberal ideas," says Lerner. "I'm arguing against both.

"The public sphere is dominated by the worldview of materialism and selfishness. The religious right says, 'This arena isn't neutral, so we're going to bring in Jesus.' The left says, 'We don't want values and Christianity to come in and wreck this neutral public square.' But it's not neutral!" Rabbi Lerner's hands shoot up in the air as he makes his point. "The left has only kept their own values out of the marketplace by demanding non-existent neutrality."

The rabbi has to leave. He only landed in Atlanta a couple hours before, and he's got to get ready to attend Sabbath services that night, so I ask him a more personal question. Does the political condemnation bother him more or that from his fellow Jews? At this he finally pauses.

"[Politics] is easier," he answers after furrowing his already well-furrowed brow for a good half-minute. "I don't feel so hurt and so misrecognized, because my fundamental identity is as a religious Jew. Where does spiritual progressivism come from? It's because I'm a religious Jew, so when other Jews don't see that, it's more hurtful."

At this, our surfer friend, who has been listening nearby, leans over and utters the immortal words: "Right on, dude."



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