To huge applause (and reluctant clapping from Bill Clinton), Rabbi Michael Lerner told thousands of mourners gathered at Muhammad Ali’s memorial service, that “We know what is like to be demeaned and to have a few people who act against the highest visions of our tradition to then be identified as the value of the entire tradition which is why we… liberal and progressive Jews have called upon the United States to stand up to the part of the Israeli government that is oppressing Palestinians, that we as Jews recognise… that everyone is equally precious and that means Palestinians as well as all the other people on the planet.” He also condemned the mass incarceration of African Americans by “racist police and racist judges.”
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine, chair of the interfaith and secular-humanist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives, www.spiritualprogressives.org and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without Walls in San Francisco and Berkeley, California. Lerner was a leader in the Free Speech Movement and was arrested as part of the “Seattle Seven” in 1970 for allegedly inciting a riot. Lerner and Muhammad Ali met as part of the anti-war movement.
Hope yet.