Obituaries

I have read a number of obituaries for Michael Lerner, and they bring up memories of my friendship with him from the time he moved to Berkeley in 1964. He and I were graduate students in the philosophy department of UC Berkeley, and radical activism brought us closer together. The leader of the Free Speech Movement in the fall of that year, Mario Savio, was a student of philosophy too, as was his future wife Suzanne Goldberg, and we all viewed the political world through a sharply critical lens. We remained politically engaged when the FSM was over and the anti-war movement and other liberation movements (e.g. anti-war, black liberation, the women’s movement) got underway.  

Joining us also was a brilliant young professor in the philosophy department, Richard Lichtman. Many of us would gather in Moses Hall, home of the philosophy department, and at demonstrations in Sproul Plaza, and ponder political matters as well as what we took to be the philosophical foundations of our own lives, under the assumption that “The personal is political.” 

Michael and I, like many young radicals in those days, were drawn to the study of Marxism, and we targeted not only “the ruling class” but also “liberalism.” Michael and I attended the Democratic Party Convention in 1969. Together with many other young people in those days, we not only were appalled by Hubert Humphrey’s support for U.S. participation in the war in Indochina but also disdained the Democratic Party altogether. (In subsequent years, I would tease Michael that his expansive philosophy of generosity and reconciliation was somewhat at odds with his scorn for liberals and liberalism.) 

Michael didn’t only entertain radical philosophical/religious ideas, but sought heart and soul to realize them. He was immensely and endlessly creative. Most people adapt to the environments they meet in life, even if they seek to reform them: you attend a school, you don’t invent a school to attend; you join a community (e.g. a Jewish congregation or a political movement), you don’t create a community to join. Not Michael. Instead of fitting into institutions he encountered, he sought to build alternative, revolutionary ones. 

Hence he founded any number of organizations: Tikkun Magazine, the Institute of Labor and Mental Health, the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and so on. Along with his writings (his book on Palestine-Israel, for example, remains one of the most fair-minded and illuminating accounts that I’ve read), these initiatives were all pioneering and humane. They came up against the Marxist principle, however, that the flourishing of lofty ideas requires a material base. His projects were perennially in want of funding and publicity, and Lerner had constantly to advocate for them to keep them afloat. That largely accounts, I believe, for the campaigns of self-promotion that Michael was sometimes faulted for. 

Although Michael’s turn toward religious Judaism was one that I didn’t share, and our philosophical/political lives took different paths, we remained on friendly terms across the decades. I last spent an afternoon with him about four months ago. Although physically diminished, the same spirit and kindness remained clearly intact 

Raymond Barglow