Michael Lerner in the Sydney Morning Herald. Interesting picture: Australian excitement at finding a radical American rabbi?

“From jail to the White House, rabbi gets his message across” reads the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald.

RABBI Michael Lerner sports a small lapel pin. It is the paired flags of Israel and Palestine, with the words ”Justice Peace Life” emblazoned beneath: heavy political baggage for a little ornament.

It says a lot about its wearer, a controversial Jewish intellectual and prolific author who is also the spiritual leader at a San Francisco synagogue.

And here he is being interviewed on the Late Night Live national radio show. Listen here. He covers a lot of ground about Obama, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, and more.

Michael has gone as a speaker at the Parliament of the World Religions. He is on various panels and platforms, and presenting this seminar:

Spiritual Progressives: Networking Towards a New Bottom Line

Spiritual progressives are all those (including ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ people) who seek a New Bottom Line. Institutions, corporations, laws and government policies, educational, legal and health systems, and even our personal lives should be defined as ‘productive’, ‘efficient’ or ‘rational’ not only to the extent that they maximize money or power (the Old Bottom Line), but also to the extent that they maximize the human capacity to be loving, caring, kind, generous, ethically and ecologically sensitive, aware of the sacred in other sentient beings, and capable of responding with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of Creation. Rabbi Michael Lerner invites participants to a meeting to discuss how to build a network of spiritual progressives within their own denominations, religious communities, academic communities or local places of worship or work.