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Home of Tikkun’s Rabbi Lerner vandalized

May 4, 2010

(JTA) -- The northern California home of Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the progressive Tikkun magazine, was vandalized.

Posters attached to his door and the fence around his Berkeley home attack Lerner personally, and liberals and progressives, as being supporters of terrorism and "Islamofascism," according to a news release from the magazine.

The vandalism occurred late Sunday night or early Monday morning, and was discovered Monday morning.

It follows a week in which the magazine and Lerner received hate mail, apparently because Tikkun announced that it will award controversial Judge Richard Goldstone with its prestigious Tikkun Award. Some have pilloried Goldstone, a South African, for his United Nations report that accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the winter 2009 Gaza war.

Lerner also offered to hold the bar mitzvah for Goldstone's grandson in San Francisco following threats of protests outside the synagogue in South Africa.

It was the first time in 24 years of the magazine's operation that Lerner's home was attacked, according to the magazine's statement. 

No one has claimed responsibility, though the statement blamed "right-wing Zionists."

The case is being investigated as an act of vandalism. It reportedly is not a hate crime, according to police, because Lerner was being attacked for his politics, not his religion.
 

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