Tikkun (Magazine)

Tikkun sought to be “the voice of Jewish liberals and progressives,” combining progressive Jewish political activism with an emphasis on spirituality.[1] It was described as “A quarterly Jewish critique of politics, culture & society,” identifying the breadth of its editorial interests.[5] The magazine traced its politics to the civil rights, peace, feminist, environmental, and labor movements, while arguing that social protest needed greater attention to spiritual life.[1]

Its editorial project extended beyond political reporting to poetry, literature, the arts, and religious reflection.[1] The magazine’s stated early interests included social theory, philosophy, cultural criticism, Israel and the Palestinians, fiction, and reviews of books and films.[6] It sought to connect religious and secular progressives through an interfaith vision emphasizing love, generosity, nonviolence, social justice, care for nature, and a sense of awe and wonder.[6]

Tikkun also attempted to define a specifically Jewish and Zionist left that supported Palestinian rights while challenging anti-religious and anti-spiritual attitudes within secular progressive politics.[1] Its public role therefore included both participation in left-wing political debate and an effort to renew Jewish communal life through a spiritually grounded understanding of social responsibility.[1]

Michael Lerner and Nan Fink co-founded Tikkun, whose first issue appeared in fall 1986.[2] In a letter published that July, Lerner described it as a “liberal-progressive alternative to Commentary” and said the magazine would tolerate antisemitism from neither the left nor the hard right.[3] The magazine began in the San Francisco Bay Area, moved briefly to New York City, and subsequently returned to Northern California.[1]

The founders believed that the Jewish establishment had become disconnected from its prophetic roots and was insufficiently willing to press Israel to seek peace with the Palestinians.[4] Lerner argued that liberal voices were increasingly marginalized within Jewish life and lacked an intellectually serious magazine through which to express themselves.[4] Tikkun’s own statement of purpose connected its beginnings to a perceived hunger for love and meaning, alongside opposition to neoconservatism in Jewish and American politics.[6] A scholarly review notes, however, that Lerner’s original editorial did not invoke or express interest in the Kabbalistic tradition associated with the term tikkun.[7]

The premiere issue was volume 1, number 1, and its publisher was the Institute for Labor and Mental Health in Escondido, California.[5] The early digital archive includes Lerner’s founding editorial, the symposium “What Kind of Tikkun Does the World Need?,” and Stephen Mitchell’s “The Book of Job.”[8] Later bibliographic records identify Norman Stillman’s “Myth, Countermyth, and Distortion” in volume 6, number 3, published in 1991, with a citation to page 64.[9]

Publication records describe Tikkun at different points as bimonthly and quarterly.[1][5] Its account of its print operation identified a quarterly published by Duke University Press and distinguished that publication from online-only material on the website.[6] Some issues appeared in combined form.[5]

Regular print publication ended with a spring 2020 issue devoted to “re-envisioning socialism.”[4] Online pieces and annual highlights issues continued afterward.[4] In 2024, Lerner said that funding had dried up and that he had been unable to find a successor, and the magazine announced plans for its final issue.[4]

Lerner’s founding vision linked progressive politics to Jewish values and the aspiration to keep “the Prophetic tradition alive.”[10] He described Judaism as committed to the oppressed and interpreted the biblical narratives of Creation and Exodus as teaching that the world could be transformed and history directed toward liberation.[2] The founding editorial opened by arguing that belief in a different and better world had fallen out of fashion.[2]

Lerner deliberately chose a Jewish magazine rather than a secular progressive periodical such as Mother Jones or The Nation.[2] He hoped to demonstrate what Judaism and Jewish history could offer progressive readers, counter hostility to religion, and engage alienated Jews through a Jewish ethic of social justice.[2] He also presented repair within Jewish communal life as an important response to assimilation.[2]

The first issue’s discussion of repair included rabbis, community leaders, and scholars addressing the meaning of a broken world.[2] Rabbis Laura Geller and T. Drorah Setel were among the contributors advocating Jewish feminist transformation.[2] Geller described tikkun as a messianic movement toward wholeness and proposed rituals for women’s lifecycle milestones, including menarche, childbirth, and weaning.[2]

The magazine’s wider editorial program sought to join economic and political concerns with needs for love, respect, meaning, and purpose.[6] Its stated approach arose partly from research into American society and the conviction that the political left often neglected these needs.[6] Its vision included political and economic democratization as well as institutional change grounded in care and social justice.[6]

Tikkun’s stated editorial policy distinguished contributors’ arguments from the magazine’s official positions: recruited and edited articles could express a range of perspectives, while editorials articulated the publication’s own viewpoint.[6] Its quarterly and website were also presented as distinct editorial outlets, with the website carrying material not published in print.[6]

Michael Lerner and Cornel West created the Tikkun Community in 2002 to connect progressive politics with an interfaith spiritual revival.[11] The organization welcomed atheists and agnostics as well as religious participants, seeking to cultivate spiritual consciousness within a broader movement for social change.[1] Its central approach linked injustice and ecological harm not only to political and economic arrangements but also to alienation between people.[1]

The community held regional conferences and organized college students, with support from figures including Susanna Heschel and Cornel West.[1] Tikkun pursued a post-denominational approach to American Jewish life, bringing progressive voices from Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal movements into its pages and editorial board.[1] Many participants in Jewish Renewal wrote for the magazine, which served as a political outlet for that movement’s use of Jewish spiritual resources to address humanitarian and public concerns.[12]

The publication’s stated constituency included progressive Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, secular-humanist, agnostic, and atheist voices.[6] Its spiritual-progressive ideas were also advanced through the Network of Spiritual Progressives, its interfaith educational and social-action organization.[6] This work combined an explicitly Jewish foundation with an effort to connect people across religious and secular boundaries.[6]

Lerner’s participation in the 2008 World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid illustrated his interest in interfaith encounters.[13] He wrote positively about the opening and its potential to improve understandings of Americans, Jews, and Israelis while sustaining further dialogue.[13] Referring to about twenty Jewish participants speaking with hundreds of Muslims and Christians, he said he believed the conversations had fostered more positive perceptions of Americans, Jews, and Israelis.[13]

Tikkun was a prominent channel through which tikkun olam entered contemporary usage as a rubric for spiritually charged social-justice work, although its editorial orientation remained assertively left-wing.[14] The magazine became a leading American Jewish leftist publication, giving sustained expression to an approach that combined political activism with spirituality.[1] Its name and founding language placed Jewish concepts of repair within contemporary discussion of collective responsibility.[1][2]

The magazine’s public reach extended into national politics through Lerner’s “politics of meaning.”[2] In the early 1990s, Bill and Hillary Clinton were reputed to be avid readers, and Hillary Clinton briefly adopted the phrase.[2] The magazine also had a notable impact on Jewish communal discussion of social justice.[2]

Tikkun’s archive separates magazine material from 1986 through February 2011, articles posted on the website beginning in March 2011, and the Tikkun Daily blog, which began in July 2009.[15] The archive guide described an ongoing effort to migrate earlier print material online and identified material from 1989–92 as still needing scanning when the guide was prepared.[15] A preserved web record for the magazine’s current-issue page carries subject headings including Judaism and politics, peace movements, and religious aspects of war.[16]

A 2024 special issue honored the work and legacy of Tikkun and Rabbi Michael Lerner, with special recognition of Peter Gabel.[17] Bringing together longtime and newer contributors, the issue invited critical engagement with ideas published during the magazine’s history of almost forty years.[17]

Tikkun’s approach to Israel drew criticism from different political directions: it advocated a two-state solution, an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Gaza Strip, and a return to pre-1967 borders, while urging Palestinians to renounce terrorism and build trust with Israelis.[1] Criticism of right-wing Israeli government policies brought opposition within the Jewish community, while the magazine’s Zionism led some anti-Zionist and non-Zionist leftist groups to reject it.[1] Lerner’s founding position also criticized the left’s “false universalism,” neglect of antisemitism, and double standards toward Israel.[2]

Editorial conduct became an issue in 1997, when Lerner admitted writing letters to Tikkun under pseudonyms and defended them as written versions of things people had told him in conversation.[4] In a 2006 opinion piece, Alan Dershowitz accused the magazine of “quickly becoming the most virulently anti-Israel screed ever published under Jewish auspices.”[4] A separate account reports criticism that discussion of Israel and the Middle East sometimes overshadowed other subjects and says the Clintons later distanced themselves from Lerner because of his controversial standing within the Jewish community.[2]