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Embracing Israel/Palestine: A Strategy to Heal and Transform the Middle East Paperback – November 22, 2011
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Lerner emphasizes that this new approach to the issue requires giving primacy to love, kindness, and generosity. It calls for challenging the master narratives in both Israel and Palestine as well as the false idea that “homeland security” can be achieved through military, political, economic, or media domination. Lerner makes the case that a lasting peace must prioritize helping people on all sides (including Europe and the U.S.) and that real security is best achieved through an ethos of caring and generosity toward “the other.” As many spiritual leaders have taught, problems like these cannot be solved at the same level at which they originated—one must seek higher ground, and that becomes a central task for anyone who wants a sustainable peace. Embracing Israel/Palestine is written for those looking for positive, practical solutions to this ongoing dilemma.
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherNorth Atlantic Books
- Publication dateNovember 22, 2011
- Dimensions5.99 x 1.07 x 8.97 inches
- ISBN-101583943072
- ISBN-13978-1583943076
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States of America and recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize
“Here is a terrific book by a pioneer of global transformation. Out of love for people—both Israelis and Palestinians as equal creations of God—Rabbi Michael Lerner offers us the deepest way out of the bloody conflict. Not just a political agreement, not a simple “real estate” and power sharing transaction, but an approach that draws from a deep psychological and political understanding of the dynamics of the Middle East and integrates into this a profound way of replacing the current profane and shallow political discourse with a deeper spiritual wisdom that would, if adopted, lead to precisely the consciousness expansion so badly needed. Lerner’s book, like all of his past prophesies, is coming out of a loving heart and a powerful analytic mind. He offers us a strategy of trust that could heal and repair the mentalities of fear and traumas that limit the current perspectives that dominate our politics. This book is a must-read for world and regional leaders as well as every one of us. It is the concept most needed in our time, the voice expressing our universal need, the sound of so many hearts.”
—Avrum Burg, Israeli author, former Chairman of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization, Speaker of the Knesset, and interim President of the State of Israel
“Rabbi Michael Lerner is one of the very few Jewish leaders in the Diaspora who has consistently challenged slavish Jewish pandering to right-wing Israeli chauvinism and messianism, opposed the occupation of the West Bank and the crimes of many Israeli settlers, supported Palestinian rights and justice for the Palestinian people, called for an end to religious coercion and separation of state and synagogue in Israel, but has simultaneously retained a strong commitment to the safety and well-being of Israel and the Jewish people. He has been a fierce critic of those who move from legitimate criticism of Israeli policies to an illegitimate anti-Semitism or attempts to destroy Israel. His voice needs to be heard by Israelis, Palestinians, and all those who seek peace for the Middle East.”
—Uri Avnery, chair of the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom
“Michael Lerner has been a national leader of the social change movements in the U.S. for the past forty-five years, and the practical wisdom derived from that experience plus his analytic skills honed as a psychotherapist, philosopher, and theologian combine in this book to give Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians a brilliant path to heal the Middle East. This book is at once a major intellectual achievement, a practical guide for peacemakers, and a perspective on politics and social change that everyone needs to read. Share it with your most partisan friends on every side of this issue, and on every side of America’s political divisions, and watch how they begin to broaden and mellow their understanding of the world.”
—Michael Nagler, founder of Peace Studies at UC Berkeley and chair of the Metta Center for Nonviolence
“This is Rabbi Michael Lerner’s magnum opus, but also beyond a doubt a chef d’oeuvre among myriads of studies dedicated to the alas so numerous human catastrophes of our times. It seems to be our un-asked-for Jewish destiny to suffer inanities and absurdities of all historical eras in their most radicalized and brutalized form. The particular inanity behind the Israeli-Palestinian dance macabre is the trademark product of modernity: the unholy trinity and explosive mixture of state-power, nation, and territory. No matter how many books you’ve read on this subject, Embracing Israel/Palestine will give you a new and powerfully insightful perspective that could empower you to play a significant and hopefully effective role in healing this conflict—and in doing so begin to heal the world.”
—Zygmunt Bauman, author of Modernity and the Holocaust, Modernity and Ambivalence, and Postmodernity and its Discontents
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Product details
- Publisher : North Atlantic Books; Illustrated edition (November 22, 2011)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1583943072
- ISBN-13 : 978-1583943076
- Item Weight : 1.54 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.99 x 1.07 x 8.97 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,693,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #101 in International Political Treaties
- #675 in War & Peace (Books)
- #1,383 in African Politics
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Review by Mimi Kennedy:
Early in "Embracing Israel/Palestine" author Rabbi Michael Lerner gives the reader permission to skip the first two-thirds of the book and go to Chapter Seven.
I was sorely tempted. The first two-thirds is history, whereas Chapter Seven begins the psychology and sociology: "Healing the Traumas of Both Peoples." I find history dry. I don't trust it. The facts of conquest and conflict too often seem one-sided. Did I really have to read again about all that suffering and injustice, massacre, robbery, hatred and oppression?
I did. Lerner's history, maps, and documents give not merely a blow-by-blow of mutual injustice and failed legal solutions, they accumulate, almost like a diagnosis of a fatal disease. His reporting had huge emotional weight, and by the end of those seven chapters, it was vividly clear that no legal solution could successfully withstand the flow of bitter memory from all sides. Like the flawed levees that crumbled in Katrina, any legal solution that didn't more fully understand the force of all this bitterness would surely fail.
Rabbi Lerner, who has a doctorate in psychology, theorizes that no stable solution can be built in conditions of post-traumatic stress. He asserts that PTSD is the condition of the entire region, its people, and supporters on all sides today. I didn't doubt it, because his history induced, in me, temporarily, that very condition. Revisiting the horrors suffered by Jews in Europe through history, most particularly in Nazi Germany, then reading about the violence in Palestine created by Zionists seeking a safer place, was heartwrenching. It reminded me, too, that the religion my Irish-American people hold dear also in what they call "the Holy Land" - and under conditions of violent, cruel occupation
I highlighted, underlined, boxed, and made comments beside text that was salient and thrilling. But any single quote might undermine Lerner's tremendous achievement: he presented history that resonated with the ring of truth - "Yes! There's the crux of it! That's at the root of the thing and just how I feel about it!" on all sides. When I read back, I had affirmed every side of the multi-faceted argument. Lerner spares no-one his complete empathy. He justifies us all.
But here's one: "We get mired in our righteousness and avoid the more difficult question: how are we going to change things?"
Lerner offers autobiography so we can consider the source. As an anti-war activist, he was also a Zionist whose support for the 67 War horrified his friends. He is pointed on the difficulties of social movement organizing, noting that activists who work selflessly to diminish suffering often derive their empathy from their own traumas of being misunderstood, mistrusted, or considered wrong by a group,or losing too much. He offers solutions - based on his treatment of PTSD - that I know are effective in groups. When he extrapolates this approach to global peace-making, he's convincing. As he is when he reminds us that domination is often the short-term solution preferred when fear strikes. There has been little institutional or political support for the culture of caring and generosity, which he says alone can heal trauma.
Little cultural support either. Elvis Costello asked "What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?" But the Bush years brought bullying and mockery of those values to the fore.
Lerner's book is brave. It's history for those who don't like history. Even if we're tired of trying to think about this, we must. American thought deeply affects the future of Israel/Palestine and - as Lerner points out - the integrity of the world's great religions. Read his book and try again.
Top reviews from other countries
Palestinian Refugee Camp in Beirut.I now intend to invite a Jewish audience to one of the Palestinian theatre performances
on Tyneside. Everyone with any concern for the region's future must read it!




