What Israel needs is what the world needs.  In response to September 11^th, what the world needs is a day or a week or a longer period of atonement, of repentance of the sins that we have committed in being insensitive of building society based on selfishness and materialism, on looking out for number one, and maximizing money and power as our bottom line.  And instead we need a whole new direction.  

I’ve said, I think I said it earlier here, maybe I didn't say it in this interview, but it’s like this: if the United States wants to be effective in blocking the ability of these terrorists to recruit, then let the United States – instead of being seen as a force that has blocked every possible ecological treaty and opposed any restraints on global warming and has accumulated for itself a greater and greater wealth at the expense of a third world and has blocked human rights treaties and has been insensitive – let the United Stated be the leader, the world's leading force for ecological sanity.  Fighting for new restraints on [auto] emissions. Let the United States be the leading force for social justice and for redistributing the wealth of our own country, as well as the other advanced industrial countries, so as to build up the infrastructure of Third World countries so they would have an adequate material well-being.  

Let the United States be the force that sees it as an international emergency that 2 billion out of 6 billion human beings go to sleep every night hungry.  Let the United States be the force that defines poverty as an international crisis that must be dealt with as the number one priority.  Let the United States be the force in the world that challenges internally our own ethos of selfishness and materialism and says, “Instead of defining institutions as productive or efficient just because they maximize money and power, let’s define them as productive or efficient to the extent that they maximize love and caring, ethical, and spiritual and ecological sensitivity and our capacities to respond to the world with awe and wonder at the magnificence of nature instead of seeing the world as simply something that can be sold and turned into ...or turned into a commodity.”  

Now let the United States be the force that is the force of open-heartedness, of love, of caring for our neighbors.  Let that be the reality inside and outside, and the bin Ladens of the world will have tremendous trouble recruiting people to join in the struggle against the United States.  That's not to say that those people will go away.  Bin Laden is not a poor person; he is a rich person.  Many of the people who joined him are economically not oppressed, but still where they recruit and where they swim, and they swim in a sea of support that is generated by the wrong role of the United States in the world.  Let us have a period of atonement for the way we have been and transform ourselves from the most selfish to the most generous society of the world.

Now the same thing goes for Israel.  Israel needs an atonement for what it has done, for the way it has failed to recognize the humanity, the sanctity of life, of Palestinians.  It has to acknowledge that is was very much responsible, not solely responsible but just proportionately responsible, for the Palestinian refugees.  And it has to in some way make recompense for those it has hurt.  But that can only happen if the Israeli people open their hearts to the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian people simultaneously open their hearts to the Israeli people.  What we need there is for both sides to articulate the story of the other side in a compassionate and open-hearted way. And that's the direction that we need to go.  It’s not military solutions; it’s not political solutions.  They will flow once we have opened our hearts to the other and recognize the spirit of God in each other.

Rabbi Michael Lerner
951 Cragmont Ave.
Berkeley, Ca. 94708
Phone: 510-526-6889

 Michael Lerner, do you REALLY think this is why they attacked us!

                     Masada2000.org reaction to this "blame the victim" hogwash!      

A NOTE TO LERNER:  The sort of Islamic terrorism the world is now witnessing is not in response to ANYTHING having to do with auto emissions, global warming or the plight of the "Palestinians."  At best, the Arabs of "Palestine" are being used at the EXCUSE for this terrorism... a red herring to mask the real causes. The real reason the United States was attacked was not in response to anything she DID but rather for what she IS... a nation where ALL religions are respected, where the government is democratically elected, where people are not jailed or executed without legal representation and where bearded mullahs, clerics and imams do not incite suicide/homicidal bombers to go on a worldwide Jihad against the non-Muslim "infidels" all the while guaranteeing them that 72 virgins are awaiting them in Paradise!

Clear-thinking Americans do not blame our President for the horrific actions of Muslim fanatics, nor are we self-hating Jews siding with, apologizing for or legitimizing the actions of those who would destroy Israel. Unlike you, rabbi, proud Americans AND proud Jews do not make excuses for those who commit barbarous acts against his country or any other country. What in the world is wrong with YOU?