The Lifeboat News: Re: Best speech I've heard for sometime; Marianne Williamson

excerpts

'New Age Guru Williamson on her Jewishness and the 2020 Presidential Run'

NEW YORK (JTA) — Had she received a better Jewish education, Marianne Williamson says, she might have become a rabbi.

Instead, Williamson has become one of the country’s best-known New Age self-help gurus, reaching millions of people over more than three decades in the public eye. She counts Oprah and Deepak Chopra among her pals.

Now Williamson, the author of a dozen books — four of them New York Times best-sellers — wants to extend her influence to the highest office in the land: She has announced a bid to run for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

She even has ideas about how to move toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Should she win the presidency, Williamson, 66, not only would be the first woman president but the first Jewish one, though few seem to be aware of her Jewishness. Williamson quotes an array of religious thinkers in her popular spiritual — but post-religion — lectures.

She doesn’t seem to think that never having occupied elected office should be an obstacle.

“Seasoned politicians took us into the Vietnam War and Iraq and the greatest income inequality since 1929. Americans need to disenthrall ourselves of the myth of the political expert,” Williamson said during a talk at Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church on Nov. 20, a few days after announcing she was formally exploring a 2020 run.

“If the founders had wanted to say that a qualification for president was that you had been a senator or governor, they would have said that. They wrote you have to be at least 35 and born here. That’s it,” she said, with the barest hint of a Southern twang.

“Can I raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars even needed to start a campaign? We’ll see,” she told the audience.

The next day, in an interview with JTA in her glossy Midtown Manhattan apartment, Williamson said that she had raised two-thirds of her $300,000 goal in the first few days since MarianneForAmerica went live.

In her talks, books and recordings, Williamson blends psychology and spirituality with a focus on self-awareness and forgiveness as the basis of happiness and successful relationships.

[...]

For all of her talk about God and Jesus and Buddha, Williamson is a post-religion spiritual leader.

Many of those filling the pews of Marble Collegiate every other week and the seats of Los Angeles’ Saban Theater for her monthly talks there are young adults. Those who get Williamson’s attention during the Q&A session following her Marble Collegiate talks typically gush, and sometimes break into tears, at the chance to share a personal problem with her. Williamson at times will pray aloud for the young person who has just shared a deeply personal challenge, making the gathering feel a bit like a Christian healer’s tent revival.

Williamson’s fans are part of the growing population of Americans who, according to the Pew Research Center, identify as “spiritual but not religious.”
[...]

On an overcast November day, Williamson has invited a reporter into her home and is dressed in her usual urban-chic uniform of head-to-toe black. There is a mezuzah on her doorpost and a large golden Buddha inside.

Being Jewish is something Williamson references frequently, if fleetingly, in public appearances.

Still, there are times and places that she identifies strongly as a Jew. On Nov. 4, her keynote address to several hundred Muslim and Jewish women at the Sisterhood of Salaam-Shalom conference in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was a departure from her usually controlled style of speaking. Just a few days after the Oct. 27 murder of 11 Jews in their Pittsburgh synagogue, Williamson made an emotional call to political arms.

“I am speaking to you as a Jewish woman.Where fear has been turned into a political force in America, we must turn love into a political force,” she declared to loud applause.

“With the history of Muslims and the history of Jews and of blacks and of immigrants it is time, it is time for something fierce to rise up out of us. To say ‘you did it to my grandparents and you are not going to do it to my kids’!” Williamson shouted to a standing ovation.

Inspired by Herzl

Williamson grew up in Houston attending Congregation Beth Yeshurun, a Conservative synagogue that was hit hard by 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. She went to Hebrew school there while attending local public schools, and recalled joining a Jewish sorority while at Bellaire High.

[...]
At synagogue one Saturday in her mid-teens, Williamson heard Rabbi William Malev preach against the war in Vietnam.

“I was very impressed how relevant he was. It was my first experience of the pulpit used as such a powerful force for social commentary,” she said.
[...]

Williamson was 60 when she made her first trip to Israel, and said she’s been back four or five times in the past six years.

“It is very emotional to be in Israel,” she said.

Williamson said she has visited the usual tourist sites and the West Bank. She’s also spent time at a Hand in Hand School, where Israeli and Palestinian citizens of Israel are educated together from the time they are young children.

Like much of what Williamson says, her perspective on Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation sounds at once inchoate with a ring of hard truth to it.

“I don’t think the ultimate answer will be about settlements or checkpoints,” she said. “The work of the genuine peace builders must be on the level of the heart.” She also said that “until the U.S. returns to where it can be considered an honest broker” by the Palestinians, as well as Israelis, it won’t be able to play a constructive role.

Williamson quoted Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, saying “’It is true that we aspire to our ancient land. But what we want in that ancient land is a new blossoming of the Jewish spirit.’”

Williamson said she admires Herzl.

“He was a whole person thinker, addressing the spiritual as well as the political aspirations of the Jews,” she said. “And that’s what the new Zionism needs to concern itself with” today.

Does Williamson have a real shot at the presidency?

“I can’t really handicap her chances since she is new to politics, but I can say the race right now is wide open,” veteran Democratic pollster and campaign consultant Mark Penn told JTA.

Penn said 10 to 20 people have indicated an intention to run, though only two — John Delaney and Richard Ojeda, both current politicians — have formally declared their candidacies. Pressed about her chances, he said, “becoming president is by its very nature a low probability profession.”

Then again, so is the likelihood of a Jewish girl from Houston becoming one of America’s best-known spiritual leaders.

“I don’t believe in traditional politics,” Williamson said. “They must be overridden. We need a more inspiring and compelling conversation about our democracy and our future. The foundations of our democracy are being eroded. We need a whole-person politics that speaks to emotions and psychology.

“The American people are not the problem. Our broken democracy is the problem,” she said. “The fact that money rather than the will of the people dominates policy, that is the problem.

“The problem is that we have a tyranny by the minority. The policies of this administration do not represent the consciousness of the American people.”

And, Williamson said, “it would be nice to have a new chapter.”

LINK https://www.jta.org/2018/11/28/politics/new-age-guru-marianne-williamson-talks-about-her-jewishness-and-2020-presidential-run