Michael Lerner (rabbi)

Michael Lerner
Rabbi Lerner at Occupy Oakland, November 2011
Born	1943 Newark, New Jersey
Nationality	American
Education	Ph.D.
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley, Wright Institute
Occupation	rabbi, editor
Employer	Beyt Tikkun Synagogue, Tikkun magazine
Spouse(s)	Nan Fink (d. 1991) Deborah Kohn-Lerner (m. 1998) divorced 2014. Married Cat Zavis 2015
Children	Akiva Jeremiah Lerner
Website	tikkun.org/article.php/rml_bio

Nan Fink (d. 1991)
Deborah Kohn-Lerner (m. 1998) divorced 2014.

Michael Lerner (born 1943) is an American political activist, the editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California, and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in Berkeley.

Michael Lerner was born in 1943 and grew up in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey. In his youth, he attended Far Brook Country Day School, a private school which he characterized as having "a rich commitment to interdenominational Christianity". While he has written that he appreciated "the immense beauty and wisdom of the Christianity to which [he] was being exposed", he also felt religiously isolated, as the child of passionate Zionists who attended Hebrew school three times a week, while at the same time being heavily exposed to Christian-oriented cultural activities in school. At his own request, in the 7th grade he switched to a public school in the Weequahic neighborhood of Newark, where his peers were, in his estimation, 80% Jewish. He graduated from Weequahic High School in 1960. Lerner received a B.A. from Columbia University. In 1972 he earned a PhD in philosophy from University of California, Berkeley. In 1977 he received a PhD in Clinical/Social Psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. Lerner was married to Nan Fink until 1991, and married Debora Kohn in July 1998, divorced in 2014 and then remarried to Cat Zavis in 2015.

While at Berkeley, Lerner became a leader in the Berkeley student movement and the Free Speech Movement, chair of the Free Student Union, and chair from 1966-1968 of the Berkeley chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society. After teaching philosophy of law at San Francisco State University, he took a job as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington and taught ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of literature and culture, and introduction to philosophy. Distressed over the disintegration of SDS in 1969, Lerner sought to re-organize New Left cadres formerly associated with SDS in a new organization called the Seattle Liberation Front on January 19, 1970. While SLF did not publicly endorse violence as a political tactic, SLF members including Roger Lippman, Michael Justesen, and Susan Stern were also members of the Weather Underground, which had bombing attacks as a central part of its political strategy. After the "The Day After" demonstration SLF had called on February 17, 1970 in protest of the January 15 verdict in the Chicago Seven trial turned violent, he and others were arrested for inciting a riot. The subsequent trial was the second nationally known federal trial, following that of the Chicago Seven, against anti-war activists. Lerner's group became known as the "Seattle Seven."