 Rabbi Michael Lerner
 2010 Champion of Forgiveness,
Reconciliation and Peace at the
14th Annual International Forgiveness Day
Michael Lerner is a political activist, and the editor of Tikkun, a prominent progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California.
Lerner received a B.A. from Columbia University, studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary and became a protégé of Abraham Joshua Heschel. In 1964, he started his graduate studies in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, eventually earning in 1972 a Ph.D. in philosophy. He served as teaching assistant to professors Richard Lichtman, Thomas Nagel, Hubert Dreyfus, and (visiting from UCSD) Herbert Marcuse, and studied with Michael Scriven, Sheldon Wolin, Philip Selznick, Benson Mates, John Searle, and others. His dissertation argued for an objective foundation to ethics and against various forms of ethical relativism.
After completing his Ph.D. Lerner moved to Hartford, Connecticut where he served as professor of philosophy at Trinity College until 1975, when he moved back to Berkeley, joined the faculty at the University of California in the Field Studies program and taught law and economics until 1976 when he accepted a position at Sonoma State University for one year in sociology, teaching courses in social psychology. Meanwhile, he completed a second Ph.D. in 1977, this one is social/clinical psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley.
In 1976 Lerner founded the Institute for Labor and Mental Health to work with the labor movement and do research on the psychodynamics of American society. In 1979 he received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to train union shop stewards as agents of prevention for mental health disorders, and he simultaneously extended his previous study of the psychodynamics of American society. With a subsequent grant from the NIMH he studied American politics and reported that "a spiritual crisis" was at the heart of the political transformation of American society as well as at the heart of much of the psychic pain that was being treated in individual therapy.
In 2010, he was honored as a Champion of Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Peace at the 14th Annual International Forgiveness Day. You can watch a video of Michael Lerner at IFD by going to http://vimeo.com/17017450
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| Rabbi Michael Lerner at the 2010 International Forgiveness Day Event |
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Chris Loukas and Steve Backman
2007 Heroes of Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Peace at the
11th Annual International Forgiveness Day
In 1994, 39-year-old Steve Backman was depressed, suicidal, and drinking to excess every day. On a rainy night on January 28, 1994, Backman drank heavily and then drove recklessly on Hwy 116 across the double yellow line to strike a car driven by Chris Loukas. The impact caused Loukas's lungs to be punctured and broke almost every bone in his body. For six weeks Loukas hovered between life and death in a coma.
Backman was arrested and charged with felony drunk driving. During that six weeks, Backman read that Loukas's medical bills ran to over $500,000. Backman was so tortured that against all advice, he went to the hospital and approached the Loukas family, asking to talk to Loukas. When Backman was escorted by Loukas's wife into the Loukas hospital room, Loukas saw him and immediately said, "Open up your arms and come here."
The two men hugged - both crying for 10-12 minutes. "The love and forgiveness they showed me," Backman said, "was a miracle. Something I never knew existed. When I walked out of that hospital room I weighed 500 pounds less. I saw everything in brilliant color when it had been black and white before."
Each year on February 28th, Backman and Loukas meet to celebrate the event that drove them together. They were both honored as Heroes of Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Peace at the 11th Annual International Forgiveness Day. Watch Chris Loukas and Steve Backman at IFD. |
