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Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph. D., founded (in 1983) and directs The Shalom Center , a prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, and American life that brings Jewish and other spiritual thought and practice to bear on seeking peace, pursuing justice, healing the earth, and celebrating community. He edits and writes for its weekly on-line Shalom Report.
In 1996, Waskow was named by the United Nations a “Wisdom Keeper” among forty religious and intellectual leaders who met in connection with the Habitat II conference in Istanbul. In 2001, he was presented with the Abraham Joshua Heschel Award by the Jewish Peace Fellowship. In 2005, he was named by the Forward, the leading Jewish weekly in America, one of the "Forward Fifty" as a leader of the Jewish community. In 2007, he was named by Newsweek one of the fifty moist influential American rabbis, and was presented with awards and honors by groups as diverse as the Neighborhood Interfaith Movement of Philadelphia and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.
Monday, January 9, 2012 My Brother is Dying
Grief that the world we have known is dying. We are living through earthquakes of a dying society, racked by violent "hiccups" as Howard is by his own. The economies, the ecologies, the sexualities, the families, the communities and traditions we have known, are all gasping, coughing, shaking. It is appropriate, it is necessary, to grieve.
Thursday, December 15, 2011 CONVICTED in Court -- and PRAISED by the Judge! (1 comments)
Yesterday I stood trial in Washington DC Superior Court for the pray-in last July in which I joined with ten other religious folk in the Capitol Rotunda, seeking to focus Congress on the need to pass a budget responsive to needs of the poor, the disemployed, the homeless.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 Behind the Tony Kushner story: The deeper reasons for CUNY's rejection & reversal (4 comments)
Last night, the executive committee of the CUNY Board of Trustees reversed the Board's refusal of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner.
Behind the Board's original decision and its reversal are three stories.
The first: There has been a concerted attack against the best traditions of open debate and exploration of opinion in academia and in Jewish life, when it comes to criticism of the Israeli government. The 2nd story:
Monday, May 2, 2011 Let Us Rejoice Over Peace, Not Death (2 comments)
I myself would have been a lot happier to see Bin Laden arrested to stand trial, but assuming the report that he violently assisted arrest is true, I have no objection to his having been killed. Yet I was dismayed by the quasi-sports-victory tone of the celebrations that arose around the country -- chanting "U-S-A, U-S-A," for instance.
Sunday, January 30, 2011 Egypt's Pharaohs-- Ancient & Today: Mubarak's Military Mindset & His Allies Here & Elsewhere (1 comments)
Every year at Passover, Jews recall the story of an ancient Egyptian ruler who oppressed his people and was overthrown by God, the People, and the Earth itself. This story is not just an antiquarian tale. It's an archetypal vision of what happens, again and again, when top-down tyranny becomes addicted to its own power, at first unwilling and then unable to change.
We saw again these past weeks how profound the story is
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 Five Steps to Burning Books (33 comments)
From a small right-wing church in Florida, there has gone out a call to burn copies of the Quran on September 11. Instead of being ignored as clearly cuckoo, this call won national media coverage.
As the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine wrote almost two centuries ago, "Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people."
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 Grief, Horror, Commitment to Act: Responding to Israeli Navy killings of civilians in ships on the high seas (6 comments)
This morning (Monday, Memorial Day, May 31, 2010), I awoke to news reports that the Israeli Navy had boarded and fired on six unarmed small ships, bearing civilians from many countries, in international waters approaching the coast of Gaza, carrying humanitarian supplies for Palestinians who have been suffering an Israeli blockade of many (not all) civilian goods.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Refuting The "White Savior" Attacks on Avatar Movie (11 comments)
Some knee-jerk leftists have criticized the heroism of Jake Sully as merely another racist case of a "white male Marine" becoming savior of the exploited community. Indeed, some conservatives have stolen that rhetoric to discredit a widely celebrated film that clearly threatens to undermine the corporate-military-NeoCon alliance. But there are two mistakes in this rhetoric:
Monday, January 4, 2010 The "AVATAR" film & the Trees' ReBirthDay: Celebrating Forest and the Lungs of Earth (3 comments)
I urge that in many communities across our continent, multireligious groups together see the new film AVATAR this month; learn with me by teleconference seminar on January 14 the connections between this film and the meaning of the festival of Tu B'Shvat that celebrates the ReBirthDay of the Tree of Life
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 URGENT Jewish Letter to Sen. Lieberman
In pursuit of justice, no autonomous Jewish community has ever allowed the poor to go without healing. It is clear that the present health insurance system based on private insurance companies is broken in every aspect except assuring enormous profits to itself.
Thursday, June 11, 2009 Murders in the "Cathedral": Wichita & Washington (1 comments)
A theological look at the commonalities between the Holocaust Museum murder and the Dr. Tiller murder shows several commonalities. Is interdenominational understanding possible?
Sunday, January 4, 2009 Shalom, Shabbat, & Shibboleth (22 comments)
It gets harder, Shabbat by Shabbat, to say without weeping the words "Shabbat shalom" - a sabbath of peace -- when the present government of Israel has used last week's Shabbat and yesterday's to massively increase the level of its violence as a response to the violence of Hamas.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008 Gaza & beyond: What's the alternative? (7 comments)
Beyond anguish, what can we say about Gaza that points toward an alternative? Not just in pretty theory, but in political practicality?
Only the biggest response can meet the need. Half-measures, the normal response of governments facing complex conflict, will not work.
Sunday, November 30, 2008 Mumbai & Beyond: Turning Horror toward Healing (10 comments)
Over the years, I have noticed a pattern like this: When some terrorist group claiming roots in Islam commits a mass murder, Muslim organizations denounce those actions. The "mainstream" US media ignore such denunciations. Then some people denounce the Muslim world for the absence of condemnations against terrorism, and grow new fury against Islam.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008 Calling Us ALL to the Path Ahead, Toward Our Truest Selves
The Torah portion that Jews read this coming Shabbat begins: "YHWH [Yahh, the Breath of Life] said to Abram [and his wife Sarai], "Go forth, go forward, into your best and deepest self - to a place that I will let you see, that you do not yet know."
Thursday, September 25, 2008 The Election: Dancing in God's Earthquake
How come the real energy-centers on our present national tickets are two passionate Christians ""-- one oriented to renewal and one to restoration?
