Monday, August 24 2009 @ 08:36 AM (View web-friendly version here)

Welcome to the September/October 2009 issue of Tikkun Magazine! We've made this issue available to all web visitors because we think that when you discover the incredible writing and art in this issue you'll want to rush right out and subscribe.... Actually, you can just click right here to subscribe now so that you get the very next issue!

Members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives get a free one year subscription to Tikkun Magazine? Click here to join now!

Webmaster's Note: Rabbi Michael Lerner included the following in the print magazine's table of contents, answering some important questions about Tikkun and the NSP.

**What is Tikkun?**

Tikkun is a Hebrew word that means "healing and transformation."

Tikkun magazine (and our education/action arm, the Network of Spiritual Progressives) seeks to repair and transform our world while also supporting our own inner psycho-spiritual growth and transformation. Tikkun is the most frequently quoted voice of liberal and progressive Jews (both secular and religious), but in recent years it has evolved to also be the voice of spiritual progressives of all religions and none (i.e. you don't have to believe in God or be part of some religion to be "a spiritual progressive").

What's a spiritual progressive?

Well, the full answer can be found in our "Core Vision" at www.tikkun.org, and this vision is made concrete in our "Spiritual Covenant with America" and our "Campaign for a Global Marshall Plan" essays, which you can read at spiritualprogressives.org. But the short definition is this: anyone who shares our call for a "New Bottom Line." Institutions; corporations; government; legislation; our educational, legal, and medical systems; our media; and even our personal behavior should be judged "efficient," "rational," or "productive" not only to the extent that they maximize money or power (the Old Bottom Line) but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, and ethically and ecologically sensitive behavior, as well as enhance our capacities to respond to other human beings as embodiments of the sacred and to the universe with awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of all that is.

Tikkun is the magazine where people who support this prophetic vision of a New Bottom Line connect, and the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) offers an organizational mechanism through which people can work to achieve a world that corresponds to these ideals. Most people on the planet want to live in that kind of a world, but most believe it to be impossible. We are the voice of those who have not given up, and who testify to the incredible changes that can happen (not the least of which is the election of an African American president of the United States) when people decide to make real what others dismissed as impossible. Please help us build this kind of world by joining the NSP (Tikkun comes free to all who have joined at spiritualprogressives.org) or at least by subscribing to the magazine. Together, we can actually make the kinds of changes that the cynical realists and pragmatists dismiss as utopian. Join the tens of thousands of people who have already become part of this movement!

-Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor