\
ADAT SHALOM IS FLYING HIGH!
The Adult Study Commission
of
Adat Shalom Synagogue
cordially invites you to a
Fabulous Family Picnic and Concert
On the Grass
Sunday, September 7, 1986
5:30 P.M.
Featuring
The Ron Coden Trio
• Hot dogs, coney burgers, • Due to the rules of
• Dress Casual.
cold drinks, chips, and
Kashrut, only food
• Bring blankets, lawn
purchased from
brownies will be sold by
chairs, and sports
Rosenberg Caterers.
Rosenberg Caterers
equipment.
may
be eaten on the
• Program will be held
premises.
Rain or Shine.
Your $5.00 registration fee per family includes entertainment,
popcorn, balloons and favors.
For more information and reservations
contact 851-5100
it
SPECIAL!!!
PURCHASE SERIES of 6 VISITS
GET the 7th VISIT FREE!
come in & see our incredible selection of
sheets • comforters • towels • accessories
from
5
0
to
70%
off
4:1 toke & 14 Mile
34 Friday, August 29, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
BACKGROUND
All The Rest
Is 'Commentary'
`Tikkun,' a liberal Jewish magazine,
Takes on Norman Podhoretz and
the neo-Conservatives.
MARSHALL KRANTZ
Special to the Jewish News
A
liberal challenger to the
conservative Jewish
magazine, Commentary,
has apparently tapped a well of
dissatisfaction among many
Jewish intellectuals, who believe
that no Jewish journal of na-
tional stature has existed to
Publish their work since Com-
mentary went conservative in
the early 1970s.
The name of the new magazine
is Tikkun (pronounced tee-koon,
accent on the second syllable),
which means in Hebrew to mend
or repair, and in its largest sense,
to transform the world.
Like Commentary, Tikkun is
intended as an intellectual foray
— with a predominantly Jewish
perspective — into the politics,
religion and culture of the
Jewish and secular worlds. The
similarities pretty much end
there, however.
In the magazine's founding
editorial statement, and in re-
cent half-page ads in the New
York Times and New York
Review of Books, Tikkun's
founders, Jewish psychothera-
pists Michael Lerner and Nan
Fink, have clearly thrown down
the gauntlet before Commentary
editor Norman Podhoretz.
"With boring predictability,"
writes Lerner, the editor, in the
founding statement, "Norman
Podhoretz leads the monthly
charge of Jewish intellectuals
clamoring for respectability by
endorsing every move the
Reagan Administration can
dream up."
Lerner claims that Jewish
conservatives have embraced
contemporary American society,
with its renewed emphasis on
competition and material wealth
as the measurement of success,
"as though it were the embodi-
ment of the messianic age."
He says this view is contrary
to the Jewish tradition, best ex-
emplified by the prophets, which
urges Jews to bring greater
peace and justice to the world
through social change.
Tikkun, he writes, "hopes to
provide a voice ... for those Jews
and non-Jews alike who are still
moved by the radical spirit of
the Prophets."
Those so moved in,. _ade
writers Eli Wiesel and Herbert
Gold; Rabbis Wolfe Kelman, ex-
ecutive director of the Rab-
binical Assembly of America
(Conservative), and Alexander
Schindler, president of the Union
of American Hebrew Congrega-
tions (Reform); and editors Mar-
tin Peretz of The New Republic,
and David r1Wersky of Spectrum
Magazine.
They are six of the 48 people
Fink and Lerner have gathered
from the literary, religious,
academic, and political and civic
worlds to serve on the maga-
zine's editorial board. The list in-
cludes 16 rabbis. All but one of
the board members are Jewish.
Rabbi David Sapperstein,
director of the Reform move-
ment's Religous Action Center
in Washington, D.C., and an
editorial board member, said of
Tikkun, "It provides a long over-
due politically liberal, religously
innovative intellectual presence
in the Jewish community, and
the general community."
He said the group of thinkers
and writers Tikkun's founders
have assembled "shows a lot of
the frustration people have had
that Commentary, with its nar-
row focus, does not represent
mainstream America or the
mainstream of Jewish intellec-
tual thinking."
Once itself a voice for liberal-
ism, Commentary, published by
the American Jewish Commit-
tee, has become a leading voice
of the neo-conservative move-
ment under Podhoretz's leader-
ship.
"If we could just get a list of
all the people who use to sub-
scribe to Commentary," Lerner
said, in a recent interview at the
magazine's offices in Oakland,
California, "we would be an ins-
tant success."
Lerner and publisher Fink are
just now beginning a subscrip-
tion drive. Charter subscriptions
cost $16 annually, and can be ob-
tained by writing Tikkun at
5100 Leona St., Oakland, Ca.
94619. The magazine will appear
quarterly initially, but Lerner
and Fink plan to take it bi-
monthly in a year.
Tikkun is published by the
non-profit Institute for Labor
and Mental Health in Oakland,
which focuses, through research
and clinical treatment, on the
stresses that workers face both
on the job and at home.
Lerner founded the institute
in 1977 and currently serves as
its director. The institute also
recently published Lerner's
book, Surplus Powerlessness,
which explores the psychological
and social factors that con-
tribute to people's feelings of
powerlessness.
Private donations from
friends, family and supporters
provide the financial backing for
Tikkun, according to Fink and
Lerner, who declined to reveal
the extent of their funding.
Advertising is limited to an-
nouncements of books and other
publications, events in the
Jewish world, and organizations,
they said.
Lerner and Fink consider
themselves "'Thrall observant"
and eschew the typical move-
Continued on Page 36