Tikkun...to Heal, Repair and Transform the World: An Anthology

by Michael Lerner (Editor)

You don't have to be Jewish to find this collection of articles a stimulating contribution to contemporary political, cultural, and intellectual debate. Anyone who remains dedicated to healing and transforming the world--despite the manifest failures of liberal and progressive social movements in the twentieth century--will find in Tikkun a collection of ideas that provide a fresh new direction that transcends the failed ideologies of the leftist past and the sterile academic debates of the present. The articles in this collection are likely to be at the center of liberal and progressive thought throughout the 1990s, and may help set the political agenda for the 21st century.
Regardless of your ethnicity or religious background, the specific issues that arise in Jewish culture and politics have universal significance and important lessons for contemporary intellectuals. But even those who may choose to disregard the sections of this collection concerning Jewish issues will find in the political and cultural sections of Tikkun some of the cutting edge discussions for contemporary progressive thought.
On the other hand, if you are Jewish, you will find in this collection a series of articles that provide guidance for a new way to be Jewish. Here is a vision of Judaism and of Jewish peoplehood that speaks to the deepest needs of our age. Yet this is not a new attempt to "sell" an old package--it is a profound rethinking of the Jewish tradition that is at once authentically based on Jewish tradition, and yet, like the tradition itself, revolutionary. It presents a Judaism capable of speaking to the realities of contemporary life without becoming so trendy that it loses its authenticity or intellectual and spiritual complexity. Tikkun presents a Jewish sensibility that has important lessons for secular Jews and for non-Jews, as well as for those committed to traditional Judaism. This collection presents a way of being Jewish that stands in stark contrast to the materialism, anti-intellectualism, conservatism, and spiritual deadness that too often permeate some sectors of the organized Jewish community.

Genres: Religion, Jewish

550 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Michael Lerner was an American political activist, the editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California, and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in Berkeley.