Rabbi Dr. Arthur Waskow founded and directs The Shalom Center, a prophetic voice in the Jewish, multi-religious and American worlds for justice, peace, and healing of the Earth.
Arthur Waskow
By Arthur Waskow
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Opinion The Torah of Max Ticktin Will Not Be Forgotten
Forty years ago, I was still living in Washington DC and was still a member of Fabrangen — one of the earliest havurah-style minyanim –– when I noticed something odd that one of our members was doing when the Torah scroll was joyfully carried around the community on Shabbat morning. The member was Rabbi Max…
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Opinion Rabbis Against Climate Change
Three months ago, authoritative sources at the Vatican started saying that in June, Pope Francis would be issuing one of Catholicism’s most important statements — an Encyclical — on the climate crisis, and that in September, during his trip to the United States, he would speak to the United Nations General Assembly and to the…
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Opinion ‘Shvartze’ and Why We Should Know Better
One day, as I was writing at my desk, the phone rang. From Washington, it was the leader of a Muslim civil-rights organization on the line. “Rabbi, one of the big airlines just threw a number of imams off the plane because some passengers thought they looked suspicious,” he told me. “We would like to…
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Opinion Sandy Sends Biblical Message About Climate
Suppose we were applying biblical theology to the events of today: We might say that God listened to the two major candidates for president of the most powerful nation in the world refusing to say the words “climate change” or “global warming” in a single one of their major speeches and debates. And then God,…
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Opinion The Wrong Answer to the Iraq War
If you are a Jew who believes that the American government’s invasion and occupation of Iraq has been a terrible ethical and practical misdeed, you now find yourself walking amid landmines. There is a broad spectrum of organizations that opposed the invasion of Iraq and is working to end the American military presence there. Many…
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News Brickner Maintained Commitment to Social Justice
I am deeply saddened by the death last week of Rabbi Balfour Brickner. For two generations — as a pulpit rabbi in Washington, founding the staunchly liberal/progressive Temple Sinai, then on the national staff of the Reform movement, then as a pulpit rabbi again for New York City’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, and since his…
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Opinion What If the Biblical Ruth Came to America?
If the biblical Ruth came to America today, what would happen? In the biblical story, Ruth was welcomed onto the fields of Boaz, where she gleaned what the regular harvesters had left behind. Boaz made sure that even this despised foreigner had a decent job at decent pay. When she went one night to the…
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Opinion Thou Shalt Not Revile the Judges
Several politicians have spent the past month insulting my religious beliefs and the religious beliefs of millions of Americans. What’s far worse, they are trying to impose their own religion on us by imposing it on lifetime federal judges. No, they didn’t call for the outlawing of Judaism or Unitarianism or Methodism. But they are…
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