Rabbi Michael Lerner: Revolutionary Love
Rabbi Michael Lerner: Yes, exactly. In fact, in the organization we created and called the network of spiritual, progressives…network of spiritual progressives, we teach a thing we call prophetic empathy.
Empathy is critical. Knowing and trying to find out what moves other people and speaking to their hunger is very, very important in life. But we say prophetic empathy because we also want to introduce that vision of our prophets to build a different kind of world, to build the world in which the swords have been beaten into plowshares so that there is no more violence and not just in the physical manifestation, but also in our discourse with each other, learning how to transform harmful speech into positive speech affirmation of each other and also looking through that progressive, that prophetic empathy towards what institutions need to be changed.
And in my view, the central institution that needs to be changed is capitalism. We need to have an economic system that rewards people with a new bottom line.
The old bottom line says we judge every institution, our corporations, our economy, our government policies, our judicial system, our legal, our education system, our cultural systems as efficient and rational, and productive to the extent that they maximize money and power. We need a new bottom line that maximizes people’s capacities to be loving and caring, kind and generous, ethically and environmentally sensitive, capable of pursuing social and economic justice and treating other human beings. Every other human being should be seen as an embodiment of the sacred rather than looking at other people primarily through the framework of what we can get from them. That’s the capitalist mentality, the old bottom line. The new bottom line says no, looking at awe and wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur in and mystery of this universe. So let that be the new bottom line taught in schools and rewarded in the work world and everywhere else, and you will have a transformed society very quickly.
Victor Fuhrman: We’re talking about his new book, Revolutionary Love A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World. So, Rabbi, what is revolutionary love, and how may we embrace and spread it?
Rabbi Michael Lerner: Well, revolutionary love means love. That is not just the romantic type. I’m all for romantic love, and I’m in love with myself, with my wife, but we need a different form as well. I mean, a form of love that is commanded in the Torah. The Torah’s most frequently repeated command is this: Thou shalt love the stranger, the other. Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Variants of that, the command to love the stranger, the other. Just take care of the stranger or the other. That’s what I mean by revolutionary love. It means a love that is not bound by your face-to-face interaction with somebody. It also extends to everybody on the planet.
Now we’ve seen this manifested in our own lives, except we haven’t called it that, but when thousands of people hearing about the burning of the towers in Manhattan, went down there, and I try trying to see how they could help. And hundreds of people lost their lives not as people inside the towers by going, but by going into those towers to see if they could save other people. Well, that’s revolutionary love. It is the willingness to put your life on the line to help other people in danger or who need help. It doesn’t have to be in the extremes of a wreck, a building burning, or risking your safety, but it has to be a sense of commitment to the well-being of everyone else on the planet. That is revolutionary love. It means that I can’t be okay when Israel is oppressing Palestinians. I’m all for that Jewish state of Israel. I think Israel is excellent, outstanding. But it’s also atrocious in what it’s doing to Palestinians.
I have to care about them. They’re not my people, but they are part of my world, and I care about everyone. I care about the Muslims being put into concentration camps, but they’re getting there in China and the terrible treatment. Care about wherever people are suffering.
Revolutionary love is about giving equal value to all human beings on the planet. Every one of us spends all of our life doing that for everyone. So, we certainly should vote for candidates who use our government and our funds to help as much as we can the people of the world and not just the people who are making America great again.
Victor Fuhrman: I remember having a debate with a friend of mine when I was in the interfaith seminary in the 1990s. And I said to this person, what was the greatest sin in Sodom and Gomorrah? Why were Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed? And they said, well, sexual perversity. I said, no, no. The greatest sin in Sodom and Gomorrah was turning away the stranger in need, refusing entrance and support of someone who needed a place to stay, food in their mouth was the greatest sin. So that’s what it’s about, and we’re doing it today.
Rabbi Michael Lerner: We’re doing it today, and unfortunately, we were doing it under the Obama regime and the Trump regime. And I have great fear about going back to an Obama-like presidency that it may end up doing little more than creating the circumstances that led to the triumph of a Trump in 2016. So I’m fearful that 2024 may bring us yet another Trump or 2028 get us either the original Trump or another Trump who can build on the disappointment that is generated by people who had high hopes for a transformation but then had as the vehicle of that transformation, Joe Biden, who has all his life been identified with the most conservative part of the Democratic party.
Victor Fuhrman: If we could have one transformational miracle tomorrow, just one, what would it be?
Rabbi Michael Lerner: You mean if I were God or if I were me?
Victor Fuhrman: If we could ask God to give us one miracle tomorrow, what would it be?
Rabbi Michael Lerner: It would be to let love permeate the consciousness of every other human being on this planet so that nothing but love manifested in their behavior and their political life and their cultural life. That love became the nature of reality in every person’s consciousness.
Victor Fuhrman: What would you like readers to take away from Revolutionary Love?
Rabbi Michael Lerner: Well, let’s say number one, don’t be realistic. Don’t be realistic because practical means accepting the message from the powerful, the people who run the televisions and all forms of media.
The people who run the governments, both parties, all those we’re telling you that a kind of world based on love, kindness, and generosity a new bottom line of awe and wonder at the universe and seeing other human beings as embodiments of the sacred, all that is sweet, but unrealistic.
Base your life on how it is now and then a compromise with what you want in terms of what people have told you, including the people who are good guys, like Bernie Sanders or others who tell you, well, we can’t go their cause that’s unrealistic. So instead, I was hoping you could take away from this interview one message: Don’t be realistic. Spend your energy, your remaining energy on this planet whether you’re a teenager or whether you’re in your seventies or eighties, wherever you are, spend your energy fighting for economically supporting those who—for the world you want.
The world you really can believe in. I think you’ll find a description of what that world could look like in my book, Revolutionary Love, but you don’t have to accept my version. If my version doesn’t speak to you, create your own, but then don’t settle for a world that is so far from the world you want to live in. Instead, don’t be realistic and go for the highest good that you desire.
You can go to tikkun.org. Read about my book, and get my book Revolutionary Love, an important step. Then, join our training for prophetic empathy on the website spiritualprogressives.org or join the organization of spiritual progressives and be part of it.
With Revolutionary Love. I promise that you will have an understanding, a deeper understanding, even though I assure you that the people who are already listening to this are people who already have much of your spiritual consciousness at a high level. This one will show you how to take that spiritual consciousness and use it as a vehicle for the transformation of the world.
