Tikkun editor will speak on ethics

Lerner coined the phrase "the politics of meaning" for the idea that human beings need to be part of loving relationships rooted in ethically and spiritually sensitive communities. According to Lerner, such communities have had to struggle to thrive in the world of the competitive marketplace, and this has left people frustrated and searching for meaning.

He will talk about ways of dealing with this frustration in his Aims of Religion address, titled "The Hunger for Meaning in American Politics: How Do We Transcend the Manipulation of God by the Right and the Invisibility of an Ethical and Spiritual Reality to the Left?"

Patterned after the University's annual Aims of Education address, the Aims of Religion address provides an opportunity for a prominent speaker to consider the roles and purposes of religion, especially within the academic context and in an individual's life experience. The first two Aims of Religion speakers were Cornel West and Andrew Young.

At 4 p.m. Friday, March 1, Lerner will present a lecture in the Law School auditorium titled "Communitarian Values vs. Legal Individualism: Could Lawyers Survive an Ethical Society? .. and Other Paradoxes for a Program of Politics and Meaning." This lecture is sponsored by the Jewish Law Students Association.

At 8:30 p.m. Friday, March 1, Lerner will speak at the Newberger Hillel Center. His topic will be "Jewish Renewal: Saving Judaism From the Materialism, Conformity and Spiritual Deadness of the Organized Jewish Community."

In addition to editing Tikkun, Lerner is the author of a book on Jewish theology, Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation (1994), and co-author, with Cornel West, of Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin (1995).

For more information, call 753-1191.