Arthur Waskow

Arthur Ocean Waskow, born Arthur Irwin Waskow, (born 1933) is an American author, political activist, and rabbi associated with the Jewish Renewal movement.

Education and early career

Waskow received a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University (1954) and an M. A. (1956) and Ph.D. (1963) in US history from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, studying chiefly under Profs. Howard K. Beale, Merle Curti, and Hans Gerth. His doctoral dissertation was on "The 1919 Race Riots." It was incorporated into one of his early books, "From Race Riot to Sit-in," favorably reviewed by the American Historical Review.

He worked from 1959 to 1961 as legislative assistant to Congressman Robert Kastenmeier of Wisconsin. [1] He was a senior staff member at the Peace Research Institute from 1961 until 1963 when he helped merge it into theInstitute For Policy Studies. He joined Richard Barnet and Marcus G. Raskin the founders of the self described "radical think-tank" the Institute For Policy Studies.[2]. From 1963 to 1977, he wrote a number of books and hundreds of monographs and articles on military strategy, race relations, conflict resolution, and political change. In 1977 he left IPS and helped create the Public Resource Center, where he worked for a policy of community-based conservation of energy and generation of renewable energy policy, under a grant from the US Department of Energy.

From 1963 till 1975, Waskow was among the leaders of opposition to the US War in Vietnam. In 1965 he spoke against the war at the first Teach-in, at the Unversity of Michigan. In 1967 he was co-author with Marcus Raskin of the anti-draft " Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority." In 1968 he was elected an alternate delegate from the District of Columbia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. His antiwar delegation was pledged to support Robert Kennedy, and when Kennedy was killed, Waskow proposed and the delegation agreed to nominate Rev. Channing Phillips, chair of the delegation, for President -- the first Black person ever so nominated at a major party convention. In 1969-70, he was a member of the steering committee of the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Indo-China.

He was a contributing editor to the leftist periodical Ramparts Magazine. He was active in the establishment of the National Conference for New Politics, though he resigned in August 1967 after it adopted an anti-Israel resolution. He was arrested a number of times from 1963 on for sit-ins or protests against racial segregation, investment in South African apartheid, the Vietnam war, and the Soviet Union's oppression of Jews, and later in protests against the Iraq war.

Religious initiatives

Waskow wrote the "Freedom Seder" (published by Micah Press in 1969 and Holt Rinehart Winston in 1970). It seeded a generation of Passover Seder texts that incorporated contemporary searches for liberation into the traditional text about the liberation of ancient Israelites from Egypt. Since then, he has taken a leadership role in the Jewish Renewal movement. He wrote " Godwrestling (1978) and Seasons of Our Joy (1982). He founded (1978) and edited the journal Menorah (later New Menorah). From 1985 till 2005 he was a leader of B'nai Or/ P'nai Or/ ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. He was ordained a rabbi in 1995 by a transdeominatiional rabbinic court made up of one Hassidic, one Conservative, and one Reform rabbi, and one feminist theologian.

He founded (1983) and directs The Shalom Center, a network that "voices a new prophetic agenda in Jewish, multireligious, and American life in order to seek peace, pursue justice, and heal the earth in ways grounded in Jewish thought and practice." The Shalom Center pioneered in shaping Jewish responses to the nuclear arms race and the danger of nuclear holocaust; to global environmental dangers including the climate crisis of global scorching; to the emergence of a theology and practice of Eco-Judaism; to encouraging emergence of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel; to new forms and language of prayer that ses God metaphorically as Breathing-spirit (rather than King) of the universe; to organizing the Jewish community to help heal America's addiction to oil and go beyond oil as a dominant source of energy; and to weaving shared celebrations and observances of some festivals in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities.

Waskow taught in the religion departments at Swarthmore, Vassar, Drew, and Temple and from 1982 to 1989 at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Since 1992 he has taught at Elat Chayyim, the transdenominational Jewish retreat center in the Catskills.

Waskow is author or editor of nineteen books, and founded and from 1978 to 2002 edited the journal New Menorah. He is an occasional contributor to the Jerusalem Report, Philadelphia inquirer, Tikkun magazine, and Philadelphia Jewish Voice. he writes frequently for the on-line journal called The Shalom Report, published by The shalom center

Controversial positions

Some of Waskow's positions on religious and political issues, and his interpretations of Jewish traditions, have provoked controversy and drawn disagreement from more conservative quarters of the Jewish community and some parts of the Left in America. [http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12856

Pointing to the implications of the Jubilee year for the peaceful and meditative redistribution of land, Waskow has argued that prophetic Judaism contains elements of social vision that have reappeared in some aspects of Marxism and some aspects of Buddhism. [3]

Waskow has been a strong critic of Israeli policies in the West Banks and Gaza and a strong critic of the use of terrorism by Palestinian groups. He is opposed to the Second Iraq War, citing international law, the Constitition and other American law, and Jewish religious teachings. He has supported the demand of Cindy Sheehan that President Bush explain what "noble cause" required the death of her son and 2500 other American soldiers. Waskow has said he has found no evidence of Sheehan making anti-Israel statements that have been attributed to her and that she has denied making. [4].

Though a critic of the environmental policies of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Waskow has supported Chavez' efforts toward social, economic, and political transformation of Venezuela in favor of the poor. He has disagreed with claims that Chávez is anti-Semitic, pointing out that this claim is based on Chavez' critical comments on ". . .some minorities, descendants of those who crucified Christ, descendants of those who threw Bolívar out of here . . .took the world's riches for themselves. . ." Waskow explains that the references to Bolivar show that Chavez was referring not to the Jews but to the heirs of the Roman Empire that crucified Jesus and of the Spanish empire that attacked Bolivar -- that is, to the US empire of today. [5]

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. He was presented the Abraham Joshua Heschel Award by the Jewish Peace Fellowship and in 2005 was named by the Forward newspaper one of the "Forward Fifty" leaders of American Jewry.

Waskow has taught as a Visiting Professor in the religion departments of Swarthmore College (1982-83, on the thought of Martin Buber and on the Book of Genesis and its rabbinic and modern interpretations); Temple University (1975-76 on contemporary Jewish theology and 1985-86, on liberation theologies in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam); Drew University (1997-1998, on the ecological outlooks of ancient, rabbinic, and contemporary Judaism and on the synthesis of mysticism, feminism, and social action in the theology and practice of Jewish renewal); and from 1982 to 1989 on the faculty of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (contemporary theology and practical rabbinics).

Bibliography

• The Limits of Defense (Doubleday, 1962).
• The Worried Man's Guide to World Peace: A Peace Research Institute Handbook (Doubleday Anchor, 1963).
• America in Hiding: The Fallout Shelter Mania (Ballantine, 1963)
• The Debate Over Thermonuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath, 1966).
• From Race Riot to Sit-in, 1919 and the 1960's: A Study in the Connections Between Conflict and Violence (Doubleday, 1966; Doubleday Anchor, 1967).
• The Freedom Seder: A New Haggadah for Passover (Micah Press, 1969; Holt-Rinehart-Winston and Micah Press, 2d edition, 1970).
• Running Riot: A Journey Through Official Disasters and Creative Disorders
• in American Society (Herder and Herder, 1970).
• The Bush Is Burning (Macmillan, 1971).
• Godwrestling (Schocken, 1978).
• Seasons of Our Joy (Bantam, 1982; 2d ed., Summit, 1985, Beacon, 1990; 3d ed., Beacon, 1991).
• These Holy Sparks: The Rebirth of the Jewish People (Harper and Row, 1983).
• David Waskow, and Shoshana Waskow, Before There Was A Before (Adama Books, 1984).
• "Preface" and "The Rainbow Seder," in The Shalom Seders, gathered by New Jewish Agenda (Adama Books, 1984).
• Becoming Brothers (with Howard Waskow; Free Press, 1993).
• Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life (William Morrow, 1995).
• Godwrestling Round 2 : Ancient Wisdom, Future Paths (Jewish Lights, 1996)
• Tales of Tikkun: New Jewish Stories to Heal the Wounded World (with Rabbi Phyllis Berman; Jason Aronson, 1996)
• Trees, Earth, and Torah: A Tu B'Shvat Anthology (Jewish Publication Society, 1999).
• Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought (Jewish Lights, 2000).
• A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Journey (with Rabbi Phyllis Berman; Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002).
• The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, & Muslims (co-authored with Sister Joan Chittister OSB and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chisti (Neil Douglas-Klotz; Beacon 2006)

External links

• Aleph.org
• Philadelphia Jewish Voice
• Shalom Center