The Rabbi Who Would Save the World

Lerner admits that, like most humans, he is afflicted with character flaws. "Sometimes I say or do things in anger that I regret." He wrote in his 1994 book Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation that followers should recognize that leaders may "have selfish motives, ego needs, and at times are petty, self-aggrandizing, insensitive to others." He speaks of himself as a "wounded healer." He declined to psychoanalyze himself for this story, but it is clear that the institutions he controls act as a sort of buffer, keeping away those who would challenge his authority. This is a reaction to bitter experience.

While getting his doctorate in philosophy at Berkeley during the politically roiling 1960s, Lerner was a leader of Students for a Democratic Society, an anti-Vietnam War organization that fractured into warring splinter groups. In 1968, Lerner was indicted for "intending to incite a riot" in Seattle; he did time in Terminal Island Penitentiary for contempt of court. (The original riot charges were eventually dropped.) As the revolutionary fervor of the '60s abated, Lerner and a friend founded the Graduate School of Psychology at New College in San Francisco. Working as psychotherapists, they determined that the main mental stressor in the lives of middle-class people is not lack of money but lack of spiritual meaning and purpose. Appalled by the growing influence of right-wing Christian fundamentalist groups, such as the Moral Majority, Lerner coined the slogan "politics of meaning" to inject a dose of spirituality into the secular arena of leftist politics.

In 1986, Lerner and his then-wife, Longs Drugstore heiress Nan Fink, founded Tikkun magazine, which attracted attention by harshly criticizing Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Tikkun drew tens of thousands of liberal-minded readers, including the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, who periodically sought Lerner's counsel. When Hillary Clinton referred positively to Lerner's politics of meaning in a 1993 speech about universal health care, the magazine editor was attacked as a New Age "guru" by the establishment media, including the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the New Republic, and the Wall Street Journal. The First Couple quickly dropped their association with Lerner.

Lerner was ordained a rabbi in 1995 and soon thereafter wrote The Politics of Meaning, Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism. In 1996, he founded the Beyt Tikkun synagogue, which now has a congregation of 120 families who have agreed that their "social and Jewish concerns will adhere to the positions articulated within [Jewish Renewal and The Politics of Meaning]."

Lerner is not an advocate of democracy in the organizations he leads. The "founding perspective" of his Beyt Tikkun ("House of Healing and Love") synagogue states: "People who have little knowledge, spiritual experience, or psychological sophistication sometimes use the democratic process to work out unresolved childhood issues. ... Some of the most talented leaders find themselves the targets of unwarranted suspicion and hostility. They often withdraw, leaving the democratic group under the control of the most psychologically needy people. ... What we intend to do is create a context in which Rabbi Lerner is given the real opportunity to lead, to teach, and to shape a spiritual reality. ... [Democracy] is not the practice or expectation of this community."

Lerner says that, in practice, he is the ultimate authority in his congregation only in spiritual matters; the members are allowed to decide nontheological questions.

"Some people thought I was authoritarian," Lerner says. "They wanted to buy pizza on Shabbat [the day of rest]. It is forbidden to use money on Shabbat. I said no. They left.

"I would be scared if Catholics, or people who are just dipping a toe into the [religious] water, could vote on what prayers to use; that would not be satisfying to me. I want a place for me to pray, where others can join."

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It is a perfect-weather day on the Berkeley campus, a good place to recruit members for what Lerner calls the "vanguard." About 50 curious people -- students, housewives, nonprofit lawyers, fresh-faced peace activists, and gray-haired revolutionaries -- gather at the International House to hear Lerner lecture about politics, meaning, and Israel. Most of them say they came because they are appalled by the slaughter in the Middle East and want to "do something."

Lerner begins by voicing the meditation that he practices twice a day. Audience members close their eyes as the rabbi lets loose a stream-of-consciousness prayer that situates each person in the context of his brain, his body, the group, the neighborhood, the city, the country, the planet, the solar system, the universe, the mind of God. Then, for the next hour, the rabbi unhesitatingly renders an account of human history from the dawn of slave society to the dusk of our market-dominated world populated "by screwed-up people in pain."

Stacks of his book Spirit Matters and piles of Tikkun line the table behind Lerner, who passes around a sign-up sheet for contact information for those interested in learning more about the Spiritual Party.