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NEW YORK — Amid sing-alongs to "We Shall Overcome," "Imagine," and Jewish peace songs, Rabbi Michael Lerner launched a new movement here this weekend aimed at promoting ecological and social responsibility and ending the Israeli "occupation" of Palestinian areas.

Long involved in trying to organize Jews who combine spirituality and left-wing politics, Lerner, of San Francisco Renewal congregation Beyt Tikkun, said he has decided to launch his own organization because of "the absence of any critical voice" after Sept. 11.

His Tikkun movement, short for tikkun olam — repair of the world — is a Zionist group that defies and transcends a liberal categorization, Lerner said.

The group, which carries the same name as the magazine he founded 15 years ago, hopes to become "one of the mainstream organizations for progressive Jews."

The central lesson of Sept. 11, according to Lerner, is to not protect one's own interest– whether that be on American or Israeli soil — at the expense of the rest of the world.

The philosophy of living in "rich Manhattan" while dropping "poisons in the Third World," he said, is one that, quite literally, "exploded in our faces."

Applying the same logic to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lerner said Israel's security will be achieved after the Jewish state tends to the security and welfare of the Palestinians.

But that's a tall order and puts the cart before the horse for many in the Jewish world, who have become increasingly skeptical about the chances for peace in the wake of almost-daily terror attacks in Israel.

Even Americans for Peace Now, which calls for a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians based on the pre-1967 borders, has not called for the unilateral withdrawal Lerner is proposing.

The voices of the U.S. Jewish organized world mostly echo that of the Israeli government, which demands an end to Palestinian violence before bearing any concessions — not vice versa, as Lerner sees the cycle.

The latest rounds of violence against Israel only strengthen his conviction that Israel must get out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Although he condemned Palestinian terrorism, Lerner said basing the treatment of all on the misbehavior of some is racist.

Indeed, Lerner's outspoken views have earned him a number of death threats in the last year. And Tikkun magazine often draws condemnation from liberal and mainstream Jews for its radical content. Still, it reaches 15,000 subscribers, and the month-old Tikkun community boasts 2,500 members, Lerner said.

Tsvi Blanchard, an Orthodox rabbi at CLAL: National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a progressive Jewish think-tank, believes the new Tikkun community is strengthening its present niche by appealing to a group of people who, in the wake of Sept. 11, are concerned about "justice, solidarity, fairness and love rather than profit and competition."

Blanchard, who spoke at the event, said Sept. 11 offers both a benefit and a challenge to the Tikkun community.

"Right now the United States understands solidarity," he said; people are no longer "trying to get ahead of each other when we're at our best."

At the same time, defensiveness about the Middle East has made people "nervous" to criticize Israel, he said.

Though Lerner admits it's a "difficult time to do politics," he says many people have greeted him with an "outpouring" of support.

More than 700 registrants paid to attend his gathering, which was "explicitly billed as in support of ending the occupation," said Lerner.

They came, young and old, ready to revive nostalgic days of protest or begin them for the first time.

And unlike many on the Israeli left who have become increasingly disillusioned with Yasser Arafat and the chances for peace, the conference attendees were adamant about Israel's need to pull back.

Zoe Fraade, a 21-year-old student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said the conference was refreshing.

When Fraade visited Tikkun's Web site, she said she did a "double take" after reading a headline called "The Arrogance of Occupation."

"What occupation?" she asked herself, because she'd never before heard Jews speak out against Israel. Uncomfortable expressing such an opinion herself for fear of being seen as a "bad Jew," she said that at the conference, she would have been "surprised if anyone would disagree."

Attendee Shira Birnbaum, a mother of two, said the question of whether the Palestinians are a partner for peace is irrelevant.

Nobody disagrees, she said, that "Israel is surrounded by people who want to annihilate it and have hijacked the Palestinian's just and legitimate cause to wage a proxy war against the Jews.

"But those facts," she said, "still do not justify the occupation."

Finding meaning in community and a sense of belonging is another mission of the movement. Lerner called it being "enmeshed in a network of love and caring and social justice."

One of his strategies to encourage such a network is his proposal of a "social responsibility amendment" to the U.S. Constitution.

At the close of the conference Monday evening, Lerner, weary from dancing, singing and cheering, called the few days "fantastic," "energizing" and "wildly beyond my dreams of what was possible."

Despite this "dreadful hour" of the Jewish people, reeling from the loss of Israelis in terror attacks, Lerner said he was proud of the roomful of participants who had the "courage to stand up and say that Israel's security will best be achieved by ending the occupation."

And they are only the "tip of the iceberg," he said.