Peace not 'right' vs. 'left', but 'right' vs. 'wrong'

Rabbi Michael Lerner Responds to Cindy Sheehan's Resignation

Peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left," but "right and wrong." — Cindy Sheehan

Wednesday, May 30 2007

I've contacted Cindy Sheehan to ask her to reconsider her decision, but I certainly understand much of what she is talking about in her note describing her decision to leave activism.

When I invited Cindy Sheehan to speak at my synagogue, I was deluged by people telling me that she was an anti-Semite. When I invited her to speak at our Network of Spiritual Progressives conference in D.C., again I was deluged by communications from people telling me that her motives were impure, that she was just wanting to get publicity, that she was an opportunist, and that I was hurting our own credibility by having her speak.

I didn't give credence to any of that because the same and worse has been said about me, so I always suspect that anyone receiving that amount of personal negativity is either really bad, or, as I found out in personal contact with Sheehan, someone who has so much goodness and decency and idealism pouring out of her, mixed with righteous indignation, that s/he elicits fear, anger, competitiveness and a desire to eliminate her from public life even by people who agree with her.

The rest is here. Rabbi Michael Lerner is the editor of TIKKUN magazine, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley and San Francisco, CA, and the author of eleven books, including most recently "The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right". Below is a paragraph from Cindy Sheehan's note that follows Rabbi Lerner's piece:

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.