Jobs & Internships   

Tikkun/NSP is looking for students, recent college graduates, and retirees who would like to work on healing and repairing the world now (tikkun olam). Also welcome: mid-career professionals who want to take a year off to consider their options and may find an internship here of value. Most internships last a minimum of three months (preferably longer), and we prefer applicants who can work at least twenty hours a week. We are currently accepting applications for  Spring/Summer 2010 and September 2010 through June 2011.

Although our internships are unpaid, many interns have eventually been hired into paying jobs at Tikkun in the past, and others have used their experience here either to get into elite graduate schools (Tikkun is one of the most respected intellectual journals in the United States) or to get jobs in publishing, nonprofit organizations, and political organizations.

We are also in need of volunteers who can offer even a regular couple of hours a week from home, online, to help us rebuild our web archive, which was destroyed early this year and which will take us many volunteer hours to recreate. The work involves cutting and pasting text into our web templates, and needs both ability to learn the basics of the technology and a good eye for proofing. We are also seeking people who can write very brief "teaser" summaries of past Tikkun articles to accompany them on the web archive: that requires the ability to explain simply and intelligently to the general reader what's significant about the article in question. Please email us at magazine@tikkun.org if you would like to help out on this project.

Most internships take place at our office in Berkeley, California. However, for the Spring of 2010 we are also looking for interns and/or volunteers who can help us in Washington, D.C. to build interest and support for the Strategy Conference of Liberals and Progressives (which will address the development of a constitutional amendment to challenge corporate power and the recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporations unlimited donations to candidates for office, the Afghanistan War, the environment, our Campaign for a Global Marshall Plan, and our strategy to Support Obama to BE the Obama Americans Thought We Elected in 2008). Much of this work will be done from our Berkeley office, but if you want to work for us in DC, you have to work from your own apartment, house or office--we don't have office space in D.C.

• Internships with the Network of Spiritual Progressives
• Internships with Tikkun Magazine
• Internships in Nonprofit Operations and Development 
• Internships with Rabbi Lerner's Writing Projects and Jewish Renewal Projects

POLITICAL ORGANIZING for the Global and Domestic Marshall Plan
Mobilize support for the Global and Domestic Marshall Plan (seeking the United States to lead the G-8 countries in dedicating 1–2 percent of their GDP each year for the next twenty to once and for all end global and domestic poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, and inadequate health care, as well as repair the global environment. Educate and seek endorsements of public officials, seek signatures of endorsement from the public, and seek potential donors or supporters to increase public awareness and institutional mobilization behind the GMP. HR 1078, endorsing our plan, was introduced in the spring of 2008 by Congressmen Keith Ellison, Emanuel Cleaver, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, and Jim Moran. Part of your work will be in building public understanding of that resolution.

CONFERENCE PLANNING: Support Obama to BE the Obama Progressives Voted For
We will be running a national campaign plus organize national conferences in Washington, D.C., to help counter the pressures on our  president to stay within the boundaries of "political reality" as defined by the inside-the-Beltway politicians. Interns can work at our office in Berkeley, or at a place of their own arranging in Washington, D.C., and represent us there in pressing for Obama to be Obama, namely the visionary candidate who won the Democratic nomination for president. This involves outreach to media and to community organizations, phone calling, letter writing, organizing public events, etc.  We also seek to mobilize those who have come to realize that the entire economic and political system needs fundamental change--and hope to present to them ideas about how to address the yearning of all people for a world of love, kindness and geneorsity, elements that are too often ignored by social change activists who focus more narrowly on measurable material outcomes without understanding the need to address the heart and soul of Americans and our shared needs for community of meaning and higher purpose to our lives.

LIMMUD
Interns will work on preparing a weeklong study session of spiritual progressive ideas and texts and a national celebration of a politics based on love, generosity, kindness, awe, and wonder at the grandeur of the universe.

NETWORK OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESSIVES (NSP)
An interfaith organization that is also welcoming to "spiritual but NOT religious" atheists or agnostics. Interns work on trainings, Web development, and network outreach supporting spiritual activism intended to effect tikkun olam (healing of the world) at the local and regional level. Interns will help us build a network community of dedicated spiritual activism practitioners and to construct the electronic home for that community as it grows. Read our Core Vision at www.spiritualprogressives.org or Rabbi Michael Lerner's book The Left Hand of God.

*Reseach and development of the Global Marshall Plan to spell out details of how it would work (download the current version of our thinking at www.spiritualprogressives.org 

* Research and development of the Social Responsibility Amendment to the US Constitution as defined in the Spiritual Covenant with America (see www.spriitualprogressives.org)

* Plan and implement the celebration of Tikkun/NSP's 25th Anniversary celebration in 2011.

Interns work both on the substance of these kinds of projects and promoting them in the media and in relevant political, intellectual, cultural, and/or religious communities..

TO APPLY FOR INTERNSHIPS WITH THE NSP & TIKKUN COMMUNITY:

Write a self-revealing letter to RabbiLerner@Tikkun.org telling about yourself, your passions, what part of the NSP and Tikkun vision you share and what part seems problematic to you, what are your special talents, what is your time availability (starting when?), and what is your own passion in life, goals for yourself, and why do you want to work with us? When are you available to start and for how long? We need a minimum commitment of twenty hours per week.

For such an internationally well-known magazine, with such high production values, Tikkun has a surprisingly small paid staff. This means that there are excellent opportunities for interns to get significant experience in print and online magazine production and business. We are now improving our internship program, so that roles and expectations are clarified. The following internships have been identified and may or may not be available at any given time. Please note that interns may be periodically pulled away from the jobs outlined below to help with more urgent NSP- or magazine-related special projects initiated by Michael Lerner.

PRINT EDITORIAL
Print editorial interns at Tikkun gain hands-on experience in magazine editing. At Tikkun—unlike at many other national magazines, where interns often find themselves fetching coffee and making photocopies—editorial interns play a central role in evaluating submissions and proofing each issue of the magazine. Editorial interns review every submission that comes in, bringing promising articles to the attention of the editorial staff. They also read articles from past issues of Tikkun and summarize these pieces in short “teasers” that are published as part of the magazine’s online archive. This internship is very selective and has the potential to launch students into careers in magazine journalism. Editorial interns may have the opportunity to publish an article in the magazine, but we make no guarantees—interns’ submissions are subjected to the same strict standards as any other submissions to the magazine. Editorial interns with strong writing skills and professionalism will be asked to write monthly profiles of artists for our multimedia blog site, Tikkun Daily. Candidates for this position must be hawk-eyed proofreaders with an obsessive attention to detail, a professional work ethic, and a willingness to study the Chicago Manual of Style and Tikkun’s in-house style guide.

WEB EDITORIAL
Web editorial interns at Tikkun scour the blogosphere for posts to which they think Tikkun's blog site should respond. They play a central role in finding, managing, and proofing content for the magazine's new multimedia blog site, Tikkun Daily (www.tikkun.org/daily). Web editorial interns become intimately familiar with the world of spiritual and political journalists, academics, and bloggers. They spend hours searching the Web for articles and videos about tikkun-ish topics to which our site should link. Web editorial interns with strong writing skills and professionalism will be asked to write monthly profiles of artists for our multimedia blog site, Tikkun Daily. Those Web interns who are familiar enough with the magazine to have fully grasped its worldview and who demonstrate outstanding reporting and writing skills may eventually be invited to blog regularly, as well.

PUBLISHING (ADVERTISING, SUBSCRIPTIONS, AND SALES)
Publishing interns draw on their creativity and resourcefulness as they play a leading role in efforts to improve the magazine’s circulation and sales. They work with the magazine’s editorial and business staff to analyze the magazine’s subscriptions, newsstand sales, and sale of ads. They also help craft and execute new business plans for the magazine. This internship is an opportunity for students interested in publishing, marketing, business, and sales to gain invaluable experience in project management and creative problem solving.

GENERAL MAGAZINE OUTREACH/PUBLICITY
Tikkun’s magazine outreach internships are an ideal fit for intellectually engaged wordsmiths who are energized by the visions of social change and spiritually inspired politics published in Tikkun magazine. Are you an extrovert with great communication skills and an interest in working with people? Or are you an aspiring journalist wanting to get a taste of the publishing world but don’t yet have journalistic expertise? If so, this is the perfect job for you. Outreach interns spread awareness about Tikkun and its unique offerings by engaging in substantive conversations with print/radio/television journalists, bloggers, professors, and members of the general public who may not yet be aware of the magazine. They write letters to the editor, send professional outreach emails, and make phone calls to public intellectuals. They also attend lectures, political events, cultural events, and media conferences to hand out back issues of the magazine and solicit subscribers.

ONLINE MAGAZINE OUTREACH/PUBLICITY
Online outreach interns at Tikkun engage in many of the same activities as general outreach interns (see above), but they are also in charge of updating content about the magazine on numerous social networking sites and bookmarking articles by Tikkun’s authors and editors using Delicious. Candidates for this position must be hooked into the blogosphere and comfortable using Web applications. Online outreach interns actively monitor blogs about politics and spirituality and help Tikkun expand its reach in cyberspace.

ART AND IMAGE RESEARCH
Art interns at Tikkun engage deeply with the question of how to illustrate articles about politics, social change, and spirituality. They work on our national magazine and on our website, generating illustration ideas and conducting image research. They play a central role in finding imagery for use on our new multimedia blog site, Tikkun Daily, which features regular photo essays and art galleries.

In the art world these days, it is quite difficult to find images that are not only artistically strong but also have social content. We need images that critique the pretensions and cruelties of our materialistic and self-centered culture. We also need artwork about peace, spirituality, hope, and social transformation that is NOT sappy, corny, or part of a New Age aesthetic. Interns are encouraged to scour museums, galleries, artists’ websites, and online image libraries to find these sorts of images.

On the print side, the design process at Tikkun is a dynamic collaboration between the magazine’s editors in Berkeley and the Design Action collective in Oakland. Art interns work on a part-time unpaid basis with the editors in Berkeley, where they develop relationships with freelance artists, obtain permission to reprint images, and brainstorm ways to illustrate the complex concepts often explored by articles in the magazine and on the magazine’s website. Interns with strong art skills may also be encouraged to try their hand at creating original illustrations to be considered for publication in the magazine.
 

TO APPLY FOR MAGAZINE-RELATED INTERNSHIPS:

Email a self-revealing cover letter, resume, and two writing samples to internships.tikkun@gmail.com. In your cover letter, please indicate which type of magazine internship is your top choice and explain why you are capable of doing first-rate work in this capacity. Also indicate which magazine internships would be your second and third choices and tell us about your qualifications for them. If we are interested in your application, we will contact you and ask you to complete an additional assignment related to the type of internship for which we are considering you. No phone calls, please.

TO APPLY FOR OPERATIONS INTERNSHIPS:

Feel free to call if you have initial questions. Submit a resume and cover letter to pete@tikkun.org (Pete Cattrell, Operations Manager). In your letter, let us know if you have prior experience with advocacy, fulfillment, or fundraising databases, or advocacy or fundraising campaigns and why you are interested in interning at Tikkun. Experience is helpful but not required.

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Internship with Rabbi Lerner's Writing and Jewish Renewal Projects

SUPPORTING RABBI LERNER’S WORK AS A PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL
Interns work directly with Michael Lerner on projects including Israel-Palestine, events and concerns relevant to the Tikkun Community and outreach to the Jewish community, intellectual research for Lerner’s writing and support for his travel and speaking. Current projects include:

•    Tikkun’s forum on How the Spiritual and Religious Wisdom of the World Can Contribute to a Vision of Rebuilding the Global Economy.

*    Updating Rabbi Lerner's book Healing Israel/Palestine

*    Publishing a Tikkun Anthology for Tikkun's 25th Anniversary

•    Tikkun’s project to encourage an International Conference to Resolve the Israel/Palestine Struggle.

Interns work both on the substance of these kinds of projects and promoting them in the media and in relevant political, intellectual, cultural, and/or religious communities.

BEYT TIKKUN AND THE SPIRITUAL TORAH COMMENTARY
Interns work with Rabbi Lerner to help create a spiritually based and politically progressive synagogue in San Francisco and in Berkeley, and on researching spiritual commentaries on each week's Torah portions.
 

TO APPLY FOR INTERNSHIPS Working with Rabbi Lerner and Beyt Tikkun Synagogue: