Liberal rabbi’s Berkeley home vandalized

Rabbi Michael Lerner’s residence in the Berkeley hills was vandalized just days after he announced his support for South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, has often been criticized for his progressive views and in the past has even received death threats at his office. But he said that his home had never before been a target.

“It’s made our family very concerned about whether our family members are safe here and what may come next,” said Lerner.

According to the Berkeley Police Department, four 5-by-7-inch posters were glued to the fence of the rabbi’s home sometime between the afternoon of May 2 and the morning of May 3.

Lerner said the vandals also left at the foot of his front door a copy of Tikkun magazine, its cover plastered with a flier that said, “Gruesome Twosome: Leftist and Islamo-Fascist love to hate Western civilization,” presumably in reference to Lerner and Goldstone.

The glue caused damage to the fence’s paint and wood, police said. Berkeley police are investigating the incident as vandalism, not as a hate crime. They have no suspects in the case.

“The Berkeley Police Department takes this very seriously,” said officer Jamie Perkins, a Berkeley police spokesperson. “We’ve asked for extra patrols in the area” near Lerner’s home on Cragmont Avenue in Berkeley.

The vandalism occurred just days after Lerner announced that Tikkun magazine would give its annual ethics award next year to Goldstone, who has been criticized for his authorship of a 2009 U.N. report accusing the Israel Defense Forces of human rights abuses during the Gaza war.

Lerner said the award, which will be the magazine’s 15th annual event, stemmed from Goldstone’s record on human rights and is a “reflection on his contribution to the Jewish people in affirming the independence of loyalty to the policies of the State of Israel.”

Lerner also offered to hold Goldstone’s grandson’s bar mitzvah at his Berkeley synagogue, Beyt Tikkun, if Goldstone was barred from attending the South African bar mitzvah due to Jewish groups threatening to protest outside. Goldstone since worked out a deal with South African Zionists, which allowed him to attend the May 1 bar mitzvah without the threat of protests.

Those announcements prompted his detractors to send hate mail to Tikkun’s offices, Lerner said.

The rabbi surmised that a blog entry written by law professor and author Alan Dershowitz and posted on his website (also posted April 29 on the Jerusalem Post’s website), may have added fuel to the fire. The essay singles out Lerner as being “the worst” offender among “bigoted and ignorant” rabbis with a history of anti-Israel activism.

“It’s a terrible, terrible error to feel that the way to defend the Jewish people is to silence those who have a different strategy about the best way to defend the Jewish people,” Lerner said. “And that’s been happening increasingly in the Jewish world.”

Vandals hung up fliers that said “Fight Terror, Support Israel” and also a caricature of Lerner and Goldstone conversing, with a speech bubble over Lerner’s head saying, in part, “Any enemy of Israel is a friend of mine.”

“That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Lerner said. “There’s an unfortunate belief that anybody who’s critical of the right-wing government of Israel is also anti-Israel — which I’m decidedly not.”

After the posters appeared, Tikkun issued a press release May 3 headlined: “Rabbi Lerner’s Home Attacked by Right-Wing Zionists.”

“It’s not some wild guess,” Lerner said about the perpetrators. “It obviously wasn’t coming from some Muslim group.”

As of May 4, Lerner said the only local Jewish communal official he’d heard from was Israel Consul General Akiva Tor, who called to express his concern.

But while they may not have called, four Jewish groups — Jewish Community Relations Council, the Anti-Defamation League, the Northern California Board of Rabbis and the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay — issued a joint statement condemning the attack.

“Our communities are especially disturbed that this crime targeted Rabbi Lerner at his home, thereby conveying to him the message that he may not be safe there,” the statement read. “… The entire community must send a message to the perpetrators that we reject violence and criminality as a means to express our political opinions.

StandWithUs/San Francisco Voice for Israel also denounced the attack. Dr. Michael Harris addressed the group's supporters in an email.

“Our disagreements must be presented in accord with the law and with common decency,” Harris wrote. “Acts such as these will only harm our cause and create sympathy for those who are targeted. We urge those who have committed this act to come forward and make a full apology and restitution.”

Lerner sees the vandalism as not only a personal attack, but also a First Amendment issue.

“This seems to me to be a fundamentalist assault on freedom of the press, which is disturbing, and should disturb even people who strongly disagree with my particular position on Goldstone,” Lerner said. “The Jewish community should be saying to those kinds of extremists within them that this is not acceptable.”