Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb of the Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence spoke at J Street’s 2011 conference on a panel titled “Tikkun Presents: After the Egyptian Uprising: Psychodynamic, Spiritual and Religious Strategies for Mideast Peace.” Rabbi Michael Lerner moderated. These were her opening remarks:

First I would like to thank J Street for providing an alternative to AIPAC and perhaps just as important, a respectful forum for discussing a great variety of views about Israeli and American policies toward the Palestinian people which does not demonize dissenters, such as those of us who support the call by the Palestinian community in 2005 for boycott, divestment and sanctions. I understand Judaism as a multivocal community committed to a diversity of views and J street is striving to uphold this central value. I would also personally like to thank my friend Michael Lerner for his decades long willingness to host many controversial conversations such as the BDS Roundtable discussion in which I participated in the pages of Tikkun Magazine in a climate where claims of ‘delegitimization’, anti-semitism, Israel bashing and the like, along with physical assaults, job firing, withholding of funds, banning groups like Jewish Voice for Peace from Jewish campus life are all too commonplace.
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