Rabbi Michael Lerner is committed to full and complete reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinian people within the context of social justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel. His view is that solutions to intractable conflicts begin as increasing numbers on each side empathize with the other side's story. In his latest book, Embracing Israel/Palestine: A Strategy to Heal and Transform the Middle East, Lerner suggests that a change in consciousness is crucial to this reconciliation. He emphasizes that this new approach to the issue requires giving primacy to love, kindness, and generosity. It calls for challenging the master narratives in both Israel and Palestine, as well as the false idea that "homeland security" can be achieved through military, political, economic, or media domination.

In his previous book, Healing Israel/Palestine, published in 2003, he showed that it is possible to be both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, and provided a clear blueprint for a peace settlement.

Michael Lerner has been a national leader of the social change movement in the U.S. for the past forty-five years. He is a founding editor of Tikkun magazine and is co-founder of The Network of Spiritual Progressives - the interfaith advocacy arm of Tikkun magazine. He also leads Beyt Tikkun, a Jewish Renewal synagogue that meets in San Francisco and Berkeley.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back from the Religious Right (Harper San Francisco, 2006), is rabbi of the Bay Area congregation Beyt Tikkun and editor of Tikkun magazine: a bimonthly Jewish and interfaith critique of politics, culture, and society.

Tikkun is one of the most respected intellectual/cultural magazines in the Jewish world, but also one of the most controversial because of its stand in favor of the rights of Palestinians, on the one hand, which locates him in the minds of many as the leader and most prominent spokesperson in the United States of Jewish supporters of the Israeli peace movement, and on the other hand, because of his stand critiquing the anti-religious and anti-spiritual biases of the secular Left, insisting that they need to address the spiritual hunger of Americans as equally important to their material needs.

He is the co-author with Cornel West of a book entitled Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin, and several other books, including Healing Israel/Palestine. He is also the author of another ten books including The Politics of Meaning, Healing Israel/Palestine, The Socialism of Fools:Anti-Semitism on the Left, Spirit Matters, Jewish Renewal and a 2006 national best-seller: The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right.

For more information see: http://tikkun.org/index.php?topic=rabbilerner

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