Thank you for your recent column entitled “Michael Lerner Looks Back as Tikkun Turns 25” (April 21, 2011). I, for one, was heartened to learn that Tikkun’s circulation is dwindling and that a full 40% of its remaining readership is non-Jewish. It cogently confirms that Lerner’s “unapologetically utopian” vision of extreme left politics coupled with personal spirituality is not the message that connects the Jewish mind to the Jewish soul.
Calling Israel “a Pharaoh” does not and never will draw secularized youth back to Judaism. It will keep them mired in the valueless decadence first promoted by Egypt. Endlessly bemoaning Israel’s faults – real or imagined – to the world with religious devotion and linguistic eloquence, does not and will not bring the world to moral virtue. It may gain Rabbi Lerner the standing of “Messianic Visionary” in the eyes of left wing agitators and Jewish apologists. But it will do nothing to usher in a world of peace and prosperity.
Heartland America and traditional Jews understand that the United States and Israel are all that stand in the way of a savage culture whose policies and aspirations would usher in a long period of global darkness. The true Utopist – surely the Jewish Utopist – should be doing all he can to strengthen, inspire, and eloquently express the moral mission of those two exceptional nations to the world.
Cordially,
Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt
Dallas, Texas
