Generousity and Caring: A Path to National Security

Author: LILIPOH interviews Rabbi Michael Lerner
Issue: LILIPOH #37 - FALL 2004: SEXUALITY: A CONTEMPORARY LOOK
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Michael Lerner is the rabbi for Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco. He is best known as editor of Tikkun Magazine: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society. Among his many books: Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin (with Cornell West); The Politics of Meaning; and Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul.

LILIPOH: What do you see as the core issue today?

ML: The core issue today is the struggle between hope and fear. The best way to understand politics today is not to think in terms of the usual left-right polarity, but as a continuum between hope and fear. At the fear end is the worldview that the world is a fundamentally scary place where security can only be attained through domination and control over others. My teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel*, identified its key tenet as: “Suspect your neighbor as yourself.” You have to get the jump on them before they do it to you.

At the hope end is the belief that the world has a real capacity for people to be filled with loving, caring and generosity. Security is achieved, then, through cooperation and through nurturing, caring and loving relationships between people. In more recent years, it has often been fashionable to articulate this view, but to base your actions on the other one.

LILIPOH: How do you see that in the current presidential election?

ML: In a one-sided way. Kerry and Bush will be debating over who is more efficient in taking care of fear. They affirm that we are hemmed in by enemies and to look strong they surround themselves with military people, making constant references to Iraq and 9/11. Seeing the world this way becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

LILIPOH: And clearly you think there is an alternative.

ML: Yes, there is another worldview, the Tikkun community perspective that says that the actual path to security comes through generosity and cooperation, not through toughness.

LILIPOH: Is anyone else articulating that view?

ML: Dennis Kucinich is closer to our view. He became a victim of the desperation in the liberal and progressive forces that defined electability as the central issue for this election.

Also, an important opportunity to speak out of that worldview was missed after 9/11. It would have been a great moment had there been any progressive leadership in place. Unfortunately, the progressive/liberal world went into hiding, fearful that they would be accused of supporting Al Qaeda or of being anti-American. So the left made itself largely irrelevant at that historic moment.

LILIPOH: What could it have done?

ML: You can validate justifiable fear of terrorism on the one hand while providing an alternative analysis and strategy as to how to fight it on the other.

We have proposed a three-step plan for providing security for the US. It includes our becoming the leading force fighting global poverty, homelessness, and hunger. It includes providing health care and education, and rectifying the damage caused by 150 years of industrialization. The industrialized nations need to create a Marshall plan to rebuild the infrastructure of the Third World by dedicating 10% of their GNP for the next 30 years. The details are on our website [http://www.tikkun.org/]. Also, we need to be perceived as a society that has caring and generosity as its bottom line in place of the current ethos of selfishness and materialism. So, our strategy for providing security differs radically