On recently rereading Rabbi Michael Lerner's book Jewish Renewal, clinical psychologist Julie Oxenberg wrote him her reflections under several headings, to each of which Rabbi Lerner responded, below. Julie Oxenberg then wrote this introduction to the exchange.

Introduction

"CRUELTY IS NOT DESTINY," DECLARES RABBI LERNER IN HIS SEMINAL WORK Jewish Renewal. "The world we inherit is deeply flawed yet, according to Judaism, its flaws are not part of its essence." In fact, the central message of Torah, Lerner proclaims, is that "This world can and should be transformed."

If so, then what is the purpose of Judaism and what role are Jews called to play in the world?

If you haven't read Jewish Renewal you may not fully appreciate the theological worldview that animates Rabbi Lerner and underlies the Network of Spiritual Progressives' mission of "tikkun." After all, why is "tikkun" (a Hebrew word meaning to mend, repair, heal) the mission of our social justice organization and what, at the root, are we working to "heal" anyway?

The two voices in the Bible

IN THE BOOK, RABBI LERNER INFORMS US THAT TWO VOICES CAN BE HEARD IN THE BIBLE: the "voice of God" and the "voice of accumulated pain." He also describes God as "the Force in the world that makes possible the transformation of that which is to that which ought to be."

Jewish Renewal begins with a description of Abraham's traumatic childhood drawn not from the Bible, but from the "Midrash" (Midrash Rabbah 28:13) and also alluded to in the Qur'an. Idol worship was the predominant religious practice of young Abraham's society. It served to reinforce the established power structure. As a spiritually precocious youth Abraham saw through the logic of worshiping material items and thus rejected the practice of idolatry. In response, his father, a manufacturer of idols, delivered Abraham to his community's ruler, Nimrod, for what we today might call "re-education." When, despite Nimrod's best efforts at persuasion, Abraham continued to reject idol worship, Nimrod threw the rebellious child into a fiery furnace. Although Abraham's exceptional spiritual strength (rooted in his conviction that a power beyond the material realm governs the world) allowed him to survive this ordeal, Lerner argues that Abraham's psyche was left badly traumatized.

In his adult life Abraham demonstrates both a capacity to serve as a powerful witness to the prophetic message of God, and a tendency at other times to behave in hurtful ways influenced by the unhealed wounds he continues to carry from his childhood history of accumulated pain. In this sense, Abraham's struggle is humanity's struggle: to resist reacting to life's new challenges from the perspective of our "voice of accumulated pain," and instead pump up the volume and influence of our "voice of God" within.

In psychological terms, our task is to heal the "repetition compulsion" cycle--our tendency to repeat traumatic patterns from our past in new relationships--patterns we're often drawn to recreate in the unconscious hope of mastering situations in which we originally felt powerless and victimized. But, how do we accomplish this demanding task of "breaking the cycle"?

How Abraham transcended the compulsion to repeat

ONE HINT IS GIVEN TO US IN THE TORAH'S "BINDING OF ISSAC" STORY.

"The greatness of Abraham," according to Rabbi Lerner, "is not that he takes his son Isaac to Mount Moriah" to be sacrificed in burnt offering (an act Lerner suggests was motivated by Abraham's response to the "voice of accumulated pain" within, or his compulsion to pass on to his son his own trauma of being thrown into fire as a child). "The greatness of Abraham," Lerner tells us, "is that he doesn't go through with it ... This is the moment of transcendence." The pattern of passing on to the next generation the pain and cruelty we have suffered can be broken. "It is this moment of breaking the chain of necessity--transcending the psychological repetition pattern which makes us do unto the next generation that which was done to us--that makes Abraham the father of our people."

How exactly did Abraham achieve this capacity for transcendence?

We see in the "Binding of Isaac" tale how the repetition compulsion itself can actually help us to achieve transcendence. If we can recognize the impulse toward healing that drives this "compulsion" we can learn how to take advantage of its transformative potential. For, by "compulsively" recreating "the scene of the crime," our psyche keeps setting up the conditions that can ideally allow us (now, from our more conscious adult vantage-point), to finally recognize and feel the emotional impact of hurts we've endured, and to reclaim and heal parts of ourselves that got exiled, frozen, or shamed long-ago as a result. Thus by "compelling" us toward dynamics which hold the potential for healing, something deep within the human psyche knows that the way we are (too often emotionally numb to our own pain and the pain of others), is not the way we could or should be.

Had Abraham not, according to Lerner, "heard the voice of accumulated pain" (or the gods of his past) tell him to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him in burnt offering, he wouldn't have set up the opportunity to "look into the eyes of the son he has bound for slaughter" and, in that moment, overcome the emotional deadness that had plagued his life ever since childhood, when he himself had been thrown into fire by the leader of his community. Only at that moment of staring into his son's eyes, Lerner tells us, is Abraham finally able to hear the true voice of God.

However, lacking insight and skill, we all too often end up merely repeating the hurts of our past and passing this harmful behavior onto others, rather than healing and transcending the repetition cycle itself.

Fortunately, according to Rabbi Lerner the Torah informs us that there is a "Force of Healing and Transformation" toward which we can turn that can make transcendence of this cycle possible. In fact, Lerner indicates that by receiving the Torah and entering into the covenant, Jews agreed "to serve as a witness to the possibility of healing and transformation, and to be part of a vanguard people working to heal and transform the world."

The radical political implications

UNFORTUNATELY, ABRAHAM DISCOVERED FIRSTHAND JUST HOW THREATENING TO entrenched powers this Jewish message proclaiming the human potential for transformation, and responsibility to work for transcendence, can be. In fact, Lerner labels this message of'possibility to which Jews are called to bear witness, "radical," due to its inherent threat to established power. Indeed, fear generated by this threat to power, Lerner suggests, helped provoke the extreme persecution Jews have faced episodically throughout their history. In response, he notes, Jews have often run away from the most revolutionary implications of the revelation they received at Sinai.

Before rereading Jewish Renewal I didn't fully appreciate the extent to which, according to this "Renewal" interpretation of Judaism, the project of life through history centers upon growth, with our task being to heal our consciousness (through diminishing our tendency toward harmful repetition) and subsequently, to transform our world--thus the impetus for "tikkun." This perspective allows us to be deeply self-accepting since we are, after all, a work in progress, subject to conflicting internal "voices" and so often in need of healing and discernment. However, it also calls us to be ambitious and visionary as we realize that our world (including ourselves) can and thus must be transformed from how things are to how things could and should be.

As I consider our project of "tikkun," I find myself asking questions like: "How can we engage the 'Force of Healing and Transformation' to help us with our internal and external work of 'tikkun'?" "Can we appeal to this Force collectively, in the service of our collective healing?" "How do we cultivate 'faith' in this Force and sustain such 'faith' during times of trial and adversity?" and "Why isn't this Force more evident in our world?"

Reflections on Jewish Renewal

JULIE OXENBERGE: THE ONGOING HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, INCLUDING OUR suffering and our perpetration of harm, could be viewed as part of an evolving, profound psychospiritual story of healing, transformation, and growth. From this spiritual perspective on the growth of consciousness, the different chapters of Jewish history could be seen as purposeful, if not necessary, despite the significant pain they've engendered for us and for others.

1. The Special Role of the Jews?

You, Rabbi Lerner, note in Jewish Renewal that: "There is no solution to the Jewish problem that isn't simultaneously a solution to the world's problem no solution to the Jewish problem that isn't simultaneously a solution to the world's problem" (p. 216). Right before I met you for the first time (and before I had read any of your work) I had written an article that explored this theme. Since the Jews have served as a virtual archetypal "Other" throughout much of our history, I suggested that we may not find lasting peace until the conditions and consciousness of the world are such that people have little remaining need to project their rage and frustrations onto an "Other."

Lacking a religious background, however, I had never heard the Jewish mission described as you boldly express it: "To serve as a witness to the possibility of healing and transformation, and to be a vanguard people working to heal and transform the world."

If the above is our mission then perhaps it makes sense that we can never fully be at "peace" in the world until that mission is fulfilled.

MICHAEL LERNER: I do want to point out that in my view "Israel" refers to anyone who is Yisra-el, that is, wrestling with God (to connect more deeply), and that that vanguard consists of all those who are seeking actively with their fullest life commitments to build a world of justice, peace, ecological sanity, love, kindness, generosity, awe and wonder at the universe, and embodying the sacred. That includes some Jews, some Christians, some Muslims, some Buddhists, some Hindus, some atheists and some "spiritual but not religious" secularists. One reason why we are trying to make Tikkun more interfaith and have created an interfaith organization--the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP)--is to get away from the tendency of Jews (even progressive Jews) to fall back into unconscious chauvinistic ideas about the role of Jews in the world. I believe that Jews have, because of our Torah and our history of identifying with the oppressed that manifests in telling a foundation story about ourselves as slaves in Egypt who were able to get out of that slavery, and our history of being the most rebellious and iconoclastic of peoples through much of our history (thereby setting ourselves up also to be the enemy of ruling elites by the very revolutionary nature of our Torah and its teachings), a strong foundation for becoming part of that vanguard needed to heal our planet. In my book Jewish Renewal, and in the weekly class I teach on explicating the weekly Torah portion, I've tried to unpack the way that the Jewish holidays and the observance of Shabbat can dramatically strengthen our identification with the liberatory struggles of all peoples.

But as we've sometimes demonstrated in the pages of Tikkun, the dominant strands of Zionism, the policies of the State of Israel, and the way these have impacted Jewish thought and Jewish religious practice around the world, have all led many Jewish people to be less likely to want to be part of any transformative vanguard. On the contrary, Jews influenced by the narrow vision of what Israel is and can be that currently predominates in the discourse of the State of Israel and in the organized Jewish communities of the Diaspora, have become increasingly open to forms of chauvinistic nationalism and militarism that stand in sharp contrast with the peace-and-justice-oriented proclivities of Judaism throughout the ages. Happily, there is a counter-tendency in the Jewish world, a tendency to renew the peace-and-justice orientation of Judais, and I'm proud that Tikkun magazine has played an important role in giving voice to that tendency.

Of course, this is not just a Jewish problem. Every other religious and national community on the planet is split between what I call "the Right Hand of God" (oriented toward "power over others") and "The Left Hand of God" (oriented toward love and generosity). So, the vanguard that needs to emerge to accelerate the healing needed by the people of this planet, a vanguard that I hope the NSP can participate in shaping and nurturing, will come from all peoples, races, genders and religions (and anti-religions), and I look forward to working with all who are ready to join with us in the NSP. Those people will become the inheritors of the task that the Jewish people as a biological construction are no longer fulfilling. Indeed, given the shrinking of the world and the growing consciousness of our unity with all other human beings, the ability of many Jews to grow beyond nationalist chauvinism and to welcome the inclusion of all people into the spiritual vanguard that is needed in this historical period, is a manifestation of the very spiritual consciousness that is a fulfillment of Isaiah's vision for the future.

2. The value of the Bible's two vices

OXENBERG: You point out that two very different voices can legitimately be heard in the Bible, and that perhaps this tension is not regrettable. You note that the two voices (the "voice of God" and the "voice of accumulated pain") are the two tendencies so often vying with one another inside the human psyche. If I understand correctly what you are suggesting, the process of "wrestling" with the text requires us to "wrestle" with the different sides of our nature. Through this process we can eventually come to recognize that our voice of forgiveness, love, generosity, mercy ... is our more essential voice, the one that can offer us genuine healing and peace, unlike our more reactive voice of vengeance and domination. Thus, we will hopefully conclude that the loving, generous, and forgiving "voice" in the Bible is the true voice of God.

As I understand the above, the wrestling process you describe is worthwhile because it leads to growth. Had the Bible just included the loving and caring voice, it wouldn't have spoken to our inner struggle. Some might have tried to emulate this loving voice, if they could (and repress more vengeful impulses) primarily to gain favor with God in this and/or whatever afterlife may occur. But the fact that the text is ambiguous requires us to wrestle with (rather than repress) our different sides and eventually "choose" consciously which voice to work to emulate.

LERNER: That may be a good outcome, but I doubt if there was a someone there thinking this through and making the decisions in the conscious way your formulation seems to suggest. I don't believe that there is a God who intends to shape history and then makes things happen in history. Rather, I think that God's message has always been available, that it is built into the evolving structure of the universe, which is a structure encouraging greater levels of love, consciousness, and freedom. Human freedom has been used both to hear the message of love and also to undermine it, and both of these things happen within the daily life experience of human beings. All of us have in our consciousness two voices or master narratives about "reality"--a voice of fear that seeks protection through domination of others, and a voice of hope that seeks protection through love and generosity toward others. All of us sometimes hear God as tilting more toward the voice of fear (which inevitably leads to a politics of domination and control over others), what I call "the right hand of God" (as Moses' sister calls it when she talks about God's right hand wiping out the Egyptians), or more towards the voice of hope or love (which leads to a politics of generosity and building caring and open-hearted alliances), or what I call the left hand, something I try to explain more fully in my 2006 national best-seller The Left Hand Of God.

3. The "repetition compulsion" cycle and Israel-Palestine

OXENBERG: As with the two examples above, perhaps the fact that when the Jews "leapt from the burning buildings of Europe," we "landed on the backs of the Palestinians," could serve an evolutionary purpose as well, despite the suffering it has caused, thus far, to both parties. For, had the Jews been able to find a truly uninhabited, undisputed "home" after the genocidal suffering we experienced in Europe, we wouldn't be forced to grow (through healing), to achieve peace.

Further, had our story ended peacefully there, after our excruciating final chapter in Europe, we would have established great credentials to bear witness to suffering, and perhaps to the potential for inner healing, but we wouldn't be challenged to work to "transform" the victim/perpetrator, repetition compulsion cycle that has characterized much of human history.

Instead, faced with an inherent conflict over the land and a still traumatized consciousness, while amassing increasing power we've been confronting the ease with which one can become a "victim/perpetrator," along with the potential impetus to work to heal and transform this uncomfortable identity dialectic. In this role we have been getting to know, firsthand, the complexity of emotions and psychological dynamics that can affect behavior while one is still traumatized and faced with difficult external/interpersonal circumstances (including fear, legitimate anger over the actions of one's "adversary," greed, aggression, projection, rationalization, projective identification, etc.).

With such experience, we can attest to the complex psychological processes that often underlie behavior that can be deemed "destructive," "oppressive," or even "evil" by others. Thus, we can attest as well to the "non-ontological" nature of much of what gets labeled "Evil."

Lerner: Yes, this is a positive way of reading that history.

I see both Israelis and Palestinians as suffering from PTSD (see my analysis of Israel/Palestine in the May/June 2008 issue of Tikkun).

One thing for sure: suffering doesn't automatically produce higher levels of consciousness or awareness, and quite frequently it produces paranoia, anger, hatred of others, and other psycho-spiritual distortions. But it can on occasion, and with the right help, also be a spur to growth and deeper levels of wisdom and of identification with and caring about the suffering of others. Both sets of consequences have happened to Jews throughout our history. The expulsion from our ancient homeland and the creation of a rabbinic Judaism appropriate for survival in the 1800 years of our dispersion opened up a creative and deep form of religious experience and sustainable religious practice that made possible a post-Diaspora Judaism confronting different questions than those that faced the Jewish people in the days when we had animal sacrifice in our Temple. But I've also witnessed the distorted ways that some Jews have used our suffering in the Holocaust as a warrant to become indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinian people. So I now feel very cautious about any claim that suffering necessarily produces a greater love or identification with others who are suffering. And I'm suspicious when any oppressed group claims higher levels of virtue, wisdom or legitimate rights because of the ways that they have been maltreated in the past.

4. Going Deeper than Oslo

OXENBERG: Yes, how we respond to our suffering affects whether it can potentially serve as a spur to growth or will merely feed and expand the victimization/perpetration cycle.

Related to these two possibilities, perhaps the fact that the Oslo process broke down when it did, although very painful, could also make room for a greater healing, if wise choices are made. As you know, at the time of the 2000 Camp David summit--and still today--neither the Jews nor the Palestinians had engaged in the level of inner healing that would have allowed for a real transformation in their relationship and a truly sustainable, deep-rooted peace. As you have written, this was a key reason why Oslo broke down in the first place. However, even if Oslo had "succeeded," it would have masked significantly unhealed psyches on both sides, and thus would likely have led to a cold peace at best, with great potential for renewed conflict. Unfortunately this critique may still be applicable today even if the current efforts to achieve "peace" result in some success.

Further, as you've written, Israel has not acted as a "Jewish" state, but rather a state where many Jewish people happened to live. As you've noted, Israel has adopted many of the values and habits of other Western, market-based societies in which materialism, consumerism, and selfishness serve as stand-ins for more meaning-based priorities. Sadly, Israel has lost much of the idealistic dimension of the original Zionist vision. Perhaps Israel will only find lasting, deep-rooted peace when it can better serve as "a light unto the nations," rather than as yet another alienating, competitive, market-based society. Although many argue that holding Israel to a "higher standard" than other countries is a form of anti-Semitism, and it may be, the Torah clearly holds the Jews to a particular standard. Israel's path to lasting peace may well depend upon its ability to better embody Torah values.

LERNER: Yes, this a central point of my perspective on the Middle East. Israel will never be "the" light unto the nations, but it could be one of the lights unto the nations--and in the twenty-first century it could play a very important role if it could model a hurt people overcoming its nationalist chauvinism and acting and talking in a way that embodied the notion that our own well-being as a people depends on the well-being of the Palestinian people, or Arabs, and of all people on this planet. That would make Israel a light unto the nations. It is also, in my view, the only plausible survival strategy for Israel and for the Jewish people.

Few of the current crop of leaders of Israel or Jewry in the United States outside the Tikkun world are able or willing to articulate this as a goal, much less to act upon it. In fact, apart from the community around Tikkun and Rabbis for Human Rights, the overwhelming majority of the current leaders, rabbis, and Jewish journalists, editorialists, op-ed writers, college professors, politicians, etc. are either fanning the flames of Jewish or Israeli chauvinism or they are quietly accepting those who do so as legitimate leaders and providing no alternative discourse and no public critique.

Or, like some of the Jewish peace organizations, they quietly affirm a peace-oriented perspective on Israel but then tip-toe around the Jewish world, fearful that they will be called anti-Semitic or self-hating Jews should they dare to forcefully criticize Israel's most recent violations of human rights (e.g., the war in Lebanon in 2006 or the collective punishment of the people of Gaza in 2008) in a way that would be heard by the public.

I've been particularly disappointed at Jewish peace groups that are so concerned about maintaining their own legitimacy that they refuse to publicly mourn the suffering of the Palestinian people, instead focusing only on why Israel's policies are bad for the Jews. While that claim is 1000% true, when that focus becomes dominant it tends to reinforce the consciousness that "what's good for the Jews" is the primary criterion by which Jews should evaluate what we do in the world. That can only be a legitimate criterion if we take the broadest possible view of "what's good for the Jews," as we do in Tikkun, namely that what's good for the Jews is the wellbeing of the planet earth and of all the people who live on it, and that consequently Jewish self-interest cannot be separated from the ecological, peace, social justice, survival, connection to God, and love-maximization interests of the entire population of the world.

5. Healing collective traumas

OXENBERG: Perhaps we can make the argument that it is now time for Jews, and hopefully Palestinians, to actually do the deeper-rooted healing necessary to transform our consciousness in a manner that can allow a lasting peace to emerge. In your book you describe an outline of the emotional healing process that the Jewish community needs to engage in to finally heal the scars that continue to haunt our collective psyche.

While numerous Israel/Palestine co-existence projects and inter-cultural dialogue groups have been run over the past decade or more, very few procedures have been developed to help either the Jewish or Palestinian community directly process, mourn, and heal the impact of their historic traumas.

Perhaps Tikkun can take the lead on this front. The Middle East Healing Project that is being sponsored by the Tikkun Institute is designed to address this need. We're working to bring together experts (e.g., trauma specialists, mental health experts, conflict resolution professionals) to develop a group process that can provide a space for deep community mourning of collective loss, and for healing the impact of collective trauma. We are incorporating techniques drawn from depth psychology, particularly the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychotherapy (a brief synopsis of IFS theory is attached to the end of this paper).

To read more about our Middle East Healing Project go to: www.tikkun.org/oxenberg

Two features of the IFS process may render it particularly relevant to the project of Middle East healing you describe in your book. 1) IFS work helps individuals and groups learn to identify, witness, and heal wounds incurred by the different "voices" within, so that we become less inclined to automatically identify with our "voices" of accumulated pain. 2) IFS theory is psycho-spiritual at its core. Through helping individuals and groups "unblend" from (or dis-identify with) various "parts" within, the IFS process enables us to make more sustained contact with our "higher Self" (perhaps equivalent to our "voice of God" within), which is viewed in this system as the ultimate agent of healing and transformation.

LERNER: I applaud your efforts and those of all others who are truly practicing psycho-spiritual healing. The next step that I do not yet see happening is that healers need to train activists on how to reach beyond those who would voluntarily come to their programs, to do mass outreach to those who have been turned off to the possibility of peace and reconciliation. This is going to take a major commitment of time and money, and a major challenge to the political culture in both Israeli and Palestinian society. I believe that those best situated to make such a challenge would be those who could present themselves as articulators of the deepest truths of the spiritual wisdom of Judaism, Christianity and/or Islam.

6. The possible future

OXENBERG: Clearly no group therapeutic healing experience in itself can change the consciousness in Israel/Palestine or transform the collective psyche of Israelis or Palestinians. Our project, expanding upon the tradition of your book Healing Israel/Palestine is focused primarily on presenting a simple, accessible analysis of how many harmful attitudes and behaviors exhibited by various parties on both sides of the conflict represent specific hurtful responses to the "voices of accumulated pain" within each community, along with options for working to heal the impact of this collective hurt. We aim to identify the historical and current roots of such pain, along with the beliefs, attitudes, and defensive strategies that have emerged in response to this wounding; we will then explore how these responses (exhibited by various polarized "parts" within each community) often serve to recreate and reinforce the perpetuation of such pain for all parties involved (although we certainly acknowledge the asymmetry of power and collective suffering in the current context). We will also elicit from each Israeli, Palestinian, and American project participant a vision of what a higher Selfled response to the Israel/Palestine conflict might look and feel like (one more clearly influenced by the "voice of God" within each party), and what attitudes, behaviors, and structural changes would be needed to support such a vision. Once we synthesize this material, we plan to distribute this relatively accessible, psycho-spiritual perspective to journalists, politicians, educators and leaders on different levels of Israeli, Palestinian, and U.S. society. Participation in an actual IFS group process is an additional component of our Healing project for participants motivated to engage in such an experience.

With respect to the Jewish community--if we can eventually heal enough to be able to make a sustainable and just peace, we may finally be ready to fulfill what you believe the Torah proclaims to be the Jewish mission, and ultimately, the human mission. If so, we will not only be able to "Serve as a witness to the possibility of healing and transformation" we will be an embodiment of the REALITY of healing and transformation. If so, we will have 'wrestled' significantly with the different voices inside ourselves, and finally become able to identify, and better identify with, the voice of God. In this context, perhaps our history of both intense suffering, and perpetration of harm, will not have been in vain. Given that Israel/Palestine is located in a spiritual heart of the Western world and holds a profound significance for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, clearly our healing and transformation will have a very significant impact on the consciousness of the world.

Brief synopsis of IFS (the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy):

IFS theory is psycho-spiritual and posits that each human being (and by extension each ethnic group) has access to an unwoundable essence, or higher Self, characterized by wisdom, compassion, and loving non-attachment. However, current and historic wounding at the personality level, along with defenses that develop to protect and compensate for such psychic injury, frequently obscures this essence. Such unhealed trauma often leaves individuals and groups identified exclusively with "parts" of themselves that carry burdens, including distorted beliefs about themselves and others that emerged in the context of, or in reaction to, their earlier trauma. IFS technique offers a highly practical methodology to help individuals and groups "unblend" from the limited perspectives and painful affect held by their unhealed "parts." They can then access their higher Self's wisdom to witness and heal the wounds their "parts" have carried often for years, or within groups, sometimes for generations.

The ultimate goal of IFS therapy is to allow individuals or groups to become more "Self"-led in their behavior, rather than led around by the emotions, reactivity, and limited perspectives carried by their burdened and wounded parts (for more information you can check out the website, www.Selfleadership.org). As a result, IFS's practical methodology can potentially help parties to the Mideast conflict better embody core tenets of their shared Abrahamic faiths including the dictates to: "Love your neighbor as yourself," "Love the stranger," and "Aid one another in what is good and pious. Do not aid one another in what is sinful and aggressive."

Julie Oxenberg is a clinical psychologist in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a founding member of the Psychology of Peace program at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. Rabbi Lerner, editor of Tikkun, welcomes feedback at RabbiLerner@tikkun.org.