A Progressive Rabbi Speaks out on Sept. 11

Where Does This Violence Come From?
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, TIKKUN Magazine

There is never any justification for acts of terror against innocent
civilians--it is the quintessential act of dehumanizaiton and not
recognizing the sanctity of others. The violence being directed
against Americans today, like the violence being directed against
Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists, or the violence being directed
against Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army occupying the West
Bank and Gaza, seem to point to a world increasingly irrational and
out of control.

It's understandable why many of us will feel anger. Demagogues will
try to direct that anger at various "target groups" (Muslims are in
particular danger, though Yassir Arafat and other Islamic leaders have
unequivocally denounced these terrorist acts). The militarists will use
this as a moment to call for increased defense spending at the expense
of the needy. Right wing may even seek to limit civil liberties. President
Bush will feel pressure to look "decisive" and take "strong" action--
phrases that can be manipulated toward irrational responses to an
irrational attack.

To counter that potential of mass panic, or the manipulation of our
fear and anger for narrow political ends, a well-meaning media will
instead try to narrow our focus solely on the task of finding and punishing
the perpetrators. These people, of course, should be caught and punished.

But in some ways this exclusive focus allows us to avoid dealing with
the underlying issues. When violence becomes so prevalent throughout
the planet, it's too easy to simply talk of "deranged minds." We need to
ask ourselves, "What is it in the way that we are living, organizing our
societies, and treating each other that makes violence seem plausible to
so many people?"

Its true, but not enough, to say that the current violence is a reflection
of our estrangement from God. More precisely, it is the way we fail to
respond to each other as embodiments of the sacred. We may tell
ourselves that the current violence has "nothing to do" with the way that
we've learned to close our ears when told that one out of every three
people on this planet does not have enough food, and that one billion are
literally starving. We may reassure ourselves that the hoarding of the
world's resources by the richest society in world history, and our frantic
attempts to accelerate globalization with its attendant inequalities of wealth,
has nothing to do with the resentment that others feel toward us. We may
tell ourselves that the suffering of refugees and the oppressed have
nothing to do with us--that that's a different story that is going on somewhere
else. But we live in one world, increasingly interconnected with everyone,
and the forces that lead people to feel outrage, anger and desperation
eventually impact on our own daily lives.

When people have learned to de-sanctify each other, to treat each
other as means to our own ends, to not feel the pain of those who are
suffering, we end up creating a world in which these kinds of terrible acts
of violence become more common. No one should use this as an excuse
for these terrible acts of violence--the absolute quintessence of
de-sanctification. I categorically reject any notion that violence is ever
justified. It is always an act of de-sanctification, of not being able to see
the divine in the other. .

We should pray for the victims and the families of those who have been
hurt or murdered in these crazy acts. Yet we should also pray that
America does not return to "business as usual," but rather turns to a period
of repentance and atonement, a turn in direction of our society at every
level, a return to the most basic Biblical ideal: that every human life is
sacred, that "the bottom line" should be the creation of a world of love
and caring, and that the best way to prevent these kinds of acts is not to
turn ourselves into a police state, but turn ourselves into a society in
which social justice, love, and compassion are so prevalent that violence
becomes only a distant memory.

--Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of TIKKUN Magazine and rabbi of Beyt
Tikkun Synagogue in San Francisco. He is the author of Jewish Renewal: A
Path to Healing and Transformation and of Spirit Matters: Global Healing and
the Wisdom of the Soul. RabbiLerner@tikkun.org www.Tikkun.org