Jewish New Age guru stakes her claim for 2020 presidential run
Self-help author Marianne Williamson says she wants to help a wounded nation heal itself; quotes Herzl urging a new ‘blossoming of the Jewish spirit’
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.
Unlike most of her colleagues in the self-help space, Williamson has been politically oriented — a stance sharpened since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. She ran for a California House seat in 2014, coming in a respectable fourth place though she ran as an independent without party backing. Her book “Healing the Soul of America” has just been reissued in an updated 20th anniversary version. In it she distills her vision of spiritually aware politics, covering topics from the Constitution to economics to racial reconciliation.
A commitment to social justice causes goes back even longer.
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 November 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.
Still, there are times and places that she identifies strongly as a Jew. On November 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 October 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.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-new-age-guru-stakes-her-claim-for-2020-presidential-run/
