2d Bar Mitzvah? What's that? Who's that?

Anonymous | 6/2/2016

The Shalom Center Board invites you to celebrate Reb Arthur’s 2nd Bar Mitzvah on October 29, shortly after his 83rd birthday.

Why 83? Reb Arthur and The Shalom Center are invoking an old tradition of Eastern European Jewry. Given that 70 was the officially expected life span, when you turned 83 you were a 13-year-old once again. Time for a second Bar Mitzvah!

Here's Arthur at the first one, with his younger brother Howard, of blessed memory.



And here's Arthur now, with his beloved bashert Reb Phyllis, as his second Coming-of-Age appoaches. A lot hairier, funnier, and even more vigorous than he was at 13.



The first time, he says, he learned to chant by rote, but nothing more  -- a terrible waste of creative possibility and a turn-off for him from exploring Judaism. This time he intends to speak a true Dvar Torah -- a new way of thinking about what the Torah is teaching.

The event will be a fundraiser for The Shalom Center, supporting its work and inspiring Arthur to keep going — as we always hope, biz hundert und tzvantzig, gezunt und shtark — till 120 in good health and strong spirit!

You can take part by attending the Bar Mitzvah and the celebratory supper party to follow; OR by contributing in Reb Arthur’s honor even if you cannot attend; AND (either physically present or not) by underwriting a page in the Bar Mitzvah Bukher's Booklet featuring your story about Reb Arthur or your own Bat/Bar Mitzvah.

Join us – and Rabbi Shawn Zevit, Rabbi Marcia Prager, Cantor Jack Kessler, Rabbi Shefa Gold, and other notables, friends, and family --  at this twice-in-a-lifetime celebration: Shabbat (Saturday) Mincha, October 29, at 5 pm at Congregation Mishkan Shalom, 4101 Freeland Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19128 (Roxborough neighborhood).

You need not attend to honor Reb Arthur and contribute to The Shalom Center.  To make a contribution, click here  and complete the form.


To reserve your seat for supper and support the Bar Mitzvah event and The Shalom Center, click REGISTER NOW  and sign up for Reb Arthur’s 2nd Bar Mitzvah Celebration before it fills up. Sorry – no walk-ins!

Among our reasons to honor Arthur is his constant and creative weaving wisdom and activism together. A perfect illustration:

Our Summer of Eco-Social Justice

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 6/2/2016

This coming summer, I will at a number of venues be teaching, speaking, marching, and/or leading prayerful activist ritual in the modes of "My legs were praying" (Rabbi Heschel after the Selma March) and "Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive" (Rabbi Heschel in a lyrical, mystical essay on prayer). Here are the details:

June 16-19,  Pendle Hill, Quaker retreat center near Philadelphia.

<http://www.pendlehill.org/learn/powerful-faith-based-organizing-for-climate-justice/#.V0pwq9fXYSd>

 3-day multifaith conference to enhance our ability to meet with spiritual depth the challenge of climate disruption. Three skill areas:

  • constructive community-resilience building;
  • formulating and carrying out strategic nonviolent direct action campaigns; and
  • lobbying and moral advocacy in the public sphere.

Reb Arthur and Rabbi Phyllis Berman will join others in leading prayer services, and Reb Arthur will lead a workshop on fusing festival celebration with direct action.

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July 4-8, Chautauqua Inst , upstate NY near Erie PA & Buffalo NY. Week Two: Money and Power through a Spiritual and Ethical Lens

<http://ciweb.org/calendar/monthcalendar/2016/7>

<http://ciweb.org/calendar/eventdetail/214/week-two-theme-money-and-power-interfaith-lecture-theme-money-and-power-through-a-spiritual-and-ethical-lens>

Religious communities and individuals of conscience take seriously their stewardship over money and relationships to the material world and power, and are especially cautious about the corrosive and corrupting effects of wealth on virtue and the tendency to greed and absence of caring for the good of all. In this week we will take a closer look at money and power from ethical and spiritual perspectives.

Reb Arthur, Lecture Title: “Whose Image IS on the Coin? Money, Power, and God”

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July 11-17.  ALEPH Kallah, Ft Collins, CO.

<https://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1787597>

Reb Arthur & Rabbis Michael Lerner & Jill Hammer speak on aan evening panel, “Toward a World-Transforming Judaism.“ Together with Reb Phyllis, Reb Arthur leads class AM101 on “Transforming Ritual to Meet New Needs -- Our Own.”

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July & August: Community of Living Traditions, Stony Point Retreat Center, 2 hours north of NYC.

<http://stonypointcenter.org/multifaith-community/summer-institute>

 The Stony Point Center Summer Institute (2 sessions during summer) is seeking Jewish, Christian, and Muslim young adults, ages 19-29, who are grounded in their religious tradition, serious about spirituality and the state of the planet, and excited by social activism in a multireligious context.

Reb Arthur & Reb Phyllis will teach, July 19-23.

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July 24, March for a Clean Energy Policy, eve of Dem National Convention, Philadelphia. 1 pm City Hall. Multireligious action ritual will lead the March. The Shalom Center is taking part in planning & embodying the action ritual.

July 25, Revival service led by Revs. Williiam Barber & James Forbes, Friends Center, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia. The Shalom Center is helping plan the event.

Rabbinic Letter on Climate -Torah, Pope, & Crisis Inspire 425+ Rabbis to Call for Vigorous Climate Action

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/29/2015

Encouraged by plans for and release of the papal Encyclical,  they call for Eco-Social Justice

As of Noon on October 29, 2015,  425 rabbis have signed a Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis, calling for vigorous action to prevent worsening climate disruption and to seek eco-social justice. The text of the Rabbinic Letter and its signers are below.

 The Rabbinic Letter was initiated by seven leading rabbis from a broad spectrum of American Jewish life: Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of the American Jewish University; 
Rabbi Arthur Green, rector of the Hebrew College rabbinical school; Rabbi Peter Knobel, former president, Central Conference of American Rabbis; Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, director of the Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbininical College; Rabbi Susan Talve, spiritual leader of Central Reform Congregation, St. Louis; Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center; and Rabbi Deborah Waxman, president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. They were joined by Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, a leader of the Orthodox community.

 The full text and list of signers follows.

___________________________________________________

 To the Jewish People, to all Communities of Spirit,

and to the World:

 A Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis

We come as Jews and rabbis with great respect for what scientists teach us – for as we understand their teaching, it is about the unfolding mystery of God’s Presence in the unfolding universe, and especially in the history and future of our planet.  Although we accept scientific accounts of earth’s history, we continue to see it as God’s creation, and we celebrate the presence of the divine hand in every earthly creature.

 Yet in our generation, this wonder and this beauty have been desecrated -- not in one land alone but ‘round all the Earth. So in this crisis, even as we join all Earth in celebrating the Breath of Life that interweaves us all -- –

 --  You sea-monsters and all deeps, Hallelu-Yah.

Fire, hail, snow, and steam, Hallelu-Yah.


Stormy wind to do God's word, Hallelu-Yah.

Mountains high and tiny hills, Hallelu-Yah (Psalm 148)

 We know all Earth needs not only the joyful human voice but also the healing human hand.

 We are especially moved when the deepest, most ancient insights of Torah about healing the relationships of Earth and human earthlings, adamah and adam, are echoed in the findings of modern science.

 The texts of Torah that perhaps most directly address our present crisis ar Leviticus 25-26 and Deuteronomy 15.  They call for one year of every seven to be Shabbat Shabbaton – a Sabbatical Year – and Shmittah – a Year of restful Release for the Earth and its workers from being made to work, and of Release for debtors from their debts.

In Leviticus 26, the Torah warns us that if we refuse to let the Earth rest, it will “rest” anyway, despite us and upon us – through drought and famine and exile that turn an entire people into refugees.

This ancient warning heard by one indigenous people in one slender land has now become a crisis of our planet as a whole and of the entire human species. Human behavior that overworks the Earth – especially the overburning of fossil fuels   --- crests in a systemic planetary response that endangers human communities and many other life-forms as well.

Already we see unprecedented floods, droughts, ice-melts, snowstorms, heat waves, typhoons,

The Binding of Isaac & Black Lives Matter: Bodies in Fear

Rabbi Tamara Cohen | 10/8/2015

Transcript of Eric Garne's last words as he died in a poice chokehold

[This remarkable Dvar Torah was given by Rabbi Tamara Cohen on the second day of Rosh Hashanah 5776 (2015) in the Dorshei Derech Minyan of the Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia. The Torah reading for that day is on the Binding and near-death of Isaac. Rabbi Cohen connected that story with the deaths of unarmed Blacks at the hands of police –-  deaths that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. In  doing so, she helps us deepen our understanding of action for eco-social justice as a profound spiritual journey.

[Rabbi Cohen is Director of Innovation for Moving Traditions. She has been a liturgist for Ma'yan in shaping its feminist Passover Seder, and five years ago was the Barbara Bick Memorial Fellow of The Shalom Center. She wrote "Eicha for the Earth," an English-language Lament for the Earth modeled on the Book of Lamentations and occasioned by the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

[The graphic above is a transcript of Eric Garner's last words as he died in a police chokehold. There are other graphics as attachments. You can see the one above and those attached in full size by clicking on the title of this essay. The attachments  are “The Binding of Isaac” and “The Choking of Eric,” the first by Caravaggio and the second from a videocamera; and a baby held aloft in the midst of Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Ferguson, MO. --  AW, editor]

By Rabbi Tamara Cohen

This Dvar Torah was born a few times over this year.

I think the first place it was born was in the powerful experience of giving birth to a beautiful baby --  who among many other things is a white Jewish boy with blond hair and blue eyes --   in a moment when the Black Lives Matter movement was reaching a new level, in a moment when the stories of parents mourning the deaths of their children of color due to police violence were all around me.

We took our son Kliel to a Hanukkah Black Lives Matter protest for his first outing. He was barely a month old. Why? In part because I wanted to be there and in part because I was struggling with how to allow myself the joy of this new baby knowing that all around America and Philadelphia and even Mt Airy, other parents were also celebrating new babies, babies with all different colors of eyes and skin and hair, and that all of us lovestruck parents, wanting to do everything for our children, feeling acutely aware of their vulnerability, also had different relationships to the vulnerability of our kids because of the systemic racism in the America in which these babies were being born.

 I remember waking up in the middle of the night to nurse and realizing

Applying the Clean Power Plan to Pennsylvania

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/1/2015

[This statement was my presentation --  at hearings held by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection -- of The Shalom Center's view on how Pennsylvania should respond to the Federal EPA's call on all states to devise their own plans for major reductions in CO2 and similar planet-destroying emissions.  About 30 groups submitted statements. All but two vigorously supported the Clean Power Plan and proposed specific conteent for it. One opposed the whole idea of the Clean Power Plan. That was the Pennsylvania Association of Manufacturers, which called the whole plan unconstitutional. The Pennsylvania coal industry explained that coal is so crucual to the eonomy of the state that well-meaning efforts at controlling emissions are mistaken in their goals and their results. --  AW.]

September 30, 2015;  17 Tishri, 5676 To the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection:

Shalom, and thanks for your and Governor Wolf’s  swift response to the request  from the President and the federal Environmental Protection Agency for Pennsylvania and other states to develop plans to carry out the Clean Power Plan.

I am Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center, a national network (with headquarters in Philadelphia) that seeks to be a prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, and American life. The Shalom Center initiated a Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis  that has been signed by 412 rabbis of every stream of Jewish life. Thirty-four of these Rabbis live and lead in Pennsylvania. My remarks today are grounded in the views of those Rabbis as expressed in their Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis and of thousands of other Jews who agree with them   -- though in the midst of the High Holy Days it has not been possible to consult them about these specific words.

 Though the criminal behavior of Volkswagen had not yet been revealed when the Rabbinic Letter was written and published, the Rabbinic Letter is very clear about the danger of Carbon Corporation irresponsibility. Point 1 follows the Letter’s teaching on this danger:

To meet the requirements of the Clean Power Plan, we call on the Governor -- :

 1.  To order the mandatory recall within one month of every Volkswagen diesel automobile manufactured and sold in the last two years, each of which is fraudulently and murderously pouring lethal chemicals into our air by virtue of deliberately tricking and violating emission tests; to bring a lawsuit against the Volkswagen Company for the full sale price of each such auto now being driven in the State of Pennsylvania,  the full sale value then to be paid by the state to each owner; to include in the suit as well, additional massive damages due our State for the hurt done to our air and our people; and to bring criminal charges against any Volkswagen executives and staff who conspired to commit these crimes.

2.  2. To announce an immediate and permanent end to all fracking on public lands in Pennsylvania and on all new permits

Sharing Texts on Climate: "Laudato Si" & Jewish Sages

Editor | 8/26/2015

 [Rabbi Daniel Swartz, chair of the board of the Pennsylvania chapter of Interfaith Power & Light, has brought together, in parallel,  passages from Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si with texts pf Jewish teachers across the millennia.  The attachment actually shows the passages  side-by-side. Below, the first passage in each category is from Laudato Si; the second is a Jewish teaching. We join in commending this as a fruitful text for study on Yom Kippur, or the festival days or Shabbat of Sukkot  --  AW, ed.]

 

Discussion Guide for Encyclical Text Study -–

“Laudato Si and the Jewish Sages: Reflections on Climate Justice”

 

Overview: The texts in “Laudato Si and the Sages: Reflections on Climate Justice” are designed to spark reflection and action global climate change.  We hope it will help people take a new look at the connections between climate and justice, human responsibility, our role in the world, and what this means to us as people of faith.  While it is especially intended for use on Yom Kippur afternoon study session, it can easily be adapted for many other occasions in synagogues, elsewhere within the Jewish community or in interfaith settings. 

The texts are presented in two formats:  Below, you can find a more complete four page selection, designed for in-depth or multi-session discussions; it can be studied in a larger group setting or in hevruta or small groups. I’ve included some questions here on each topic highlighted by the texts, as well as some summary questions.  It’s a lot of material, so obviously everyone should feel free to pick and choose which texts to cover.  There is also a single page below, which is accompanied by its own questions. It is meant to serve as a ready-made one-hour program, to be led by a professional or lay leader, or even for people to reflect on individually.

The texts in the left column are drawn from passages in Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home, the recent encyclical letter by Pope Francis.  An encyclical letter is a high level written pronouncement

6 Months to Go: Pointing toward Paris, Assembling on Sukkot, Healing Mother Earth

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 6/1/2015

Six months from right now, the official governmental representatives of the entire human race will hold a crucial international conference in Paris (from November 30 to December 11) to address the climate crisis.

 The success or failure of that conference can make an enormous difference to the future of the human race and the whole web of life upon our planet.

Can we prevent world-wide climate-spawned disasters? Can we turn our science and our moral wisdom toward walking, step by step, into shaping a world of shared, sustainable abundance -- eco-social justice?

If past governmental behavior is any indication, the  governments will probably get stuck in Paris – unless we, the Peoples, insist on action.

What we do during the next six months will decide what happens in Paris.

Take Action

URGENT: Call Pres Obama: Shell Oil, Arctic, & Mother Earth

Kol Nidre, Yom Kippur at the Lincoln Memorial, Sept 22-23

Invite Speaker/ Teacher on Eco-Judaism
more

Muhammad Ali & Breaking the Rules

Editor | 6/7/2016

[Jacob Bender, the author of the following celebration of Muhammad Ali, is an affirmatively identified Jew. He and the Philadelphia chapter of CAIR, the Council of American-Islamic Relations, both "broke the rules" (unofficial but strong) of their respective communities when Philadelphia CAIR hired Bender to be its executive director. Both he and they have thrived in their relationship.

[Bender had created an extraordinary film, "Out of Cordoba," that celebrated the period in  Al-Andalus -- now called Spain -- during the Middle Ages, when Jews, Christians, and Muslims  enjoyed philosophy, politics, poetry, religious conversation, and life with each other.

[The film focuses on two great philosophers pictured below -- the Jewish Moshe ben Maimon or Rambam (Maimonides) and the Muslim Ibn Rushd (Averroes) -- who both lived in the Andalusian city of Cordoba.

 

[You can see a trailer of the film at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkmCm3aqkXE&spfreload=10>

[Now, just after the death of Muhammad Ali and just before the New Moon that began the simultaneous sacred months of Ramadan and of Sivan -- the months of the Revelation of Torah and Quran -- Bender wrote this memory of "Muhammad Ali and Me." With his permission, we are sharing it with you. It lifts up for us how Muhammad Ali "broke the rules" of conventional America, and how a young American Jew responded. I will add a few other comments of my own after his essay. --  AW, editor]

"Muhammad Ali and Me"

By Jacob Bender
CAIR-Philadelphia Executive Director
 
I saw him in person once. It was during his exile from the ring, after his championship title had been stripped from him by the white establishment that controlled the sport. But to the African American community,

Only Hearts can Trump Trumpery

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 5/31/2016

"Trumpery" is a real word.

Says the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

"Trumpery derives from the Middle English trompery and ultimately from the Middle French tromper, meaning "to deceive." (You can see the meaning of this root reflected in the French phrase trompe-l'oeil-literally, "deceives the eye"  -- which in English refers to a style of painting with photographically realistic detail.) Trumpery first appeared in English in the mid-15th century with the meanings "deceit or "fraud'  and 'worthless nonsense.' "

How prophetic!

Diamonds (that is, money) cannot trump Trump or his Trumpery.  Clubs (that is, coercion  -- violent or nonviolent) cannot trump Trump or his Trumpery. Even spades (hard work and the labor movement) cannot trump Trump or his Trumpery. Only hearts can trump Trump and his Trumpery.

That is, only turning our hearts to what is moving and enraging Trump’s supporters can trump Trump and the trumpery he spews into the body politic. And that is the real issue facing America -- far deeper than one presidential election.

Neighborhood Solar-Energy Co-ops: Seeds for a livable future

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 5/26/2016

 

Neighborhood Solar-Energy Co-ops: Seeds for a livable future  

Dear friends,

If we are to succeed in our effort to heal our wounded Mother Earth from the effects of global scorching, there are two complementary things we need to do:

We need to dissolve the top-down pyramidal power of the Carbon Pharaohs, and we need to bring into full being a new economy, a  new society --  based on renewable energy, loving care for the web of life, and joyful celebration of YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh – the Interbreathing Spirit of the world.

I have written recently about strong challenges to the Carbon Pharaohs, including the March for a Clean Energy Revolution that will take place in Philadelphia on July 24, the day before the Democratic National Convention. We at The Shalom Center have been actively engaged in organizing for the Faith Contingent of that March.

Today I want to share with you the work The Shalom Center has been doing to create the alternative --  to embody the future we imagine in the actual present. And we welcome you into that work as well – both by assisting our efforts and by undertaking your own, in your own communities.

We are pursuing the creation of neighborhood solar-energy co-ops.   

We decided to pursue this work for several reasons:

1. What made the sit-in and Freedom Ride movements such a powerful form of social action is that they did not begin with seeking new laws or by attacking  desegregated businesses. They began by direct nonviolent action: “We want public places to be  racially integrated. So here we are, integrating these places. You will have to decide what to do with us: arrest us, beat us and kill us, or change your ways.” 

That way of embodying the future in the present created great waves of social change.

What, we asked, would it mean to do that in the face of the climate crisis? If we want a world of renewable energy, then we must actually create the pieces of that world.  As the sit-ins began with specific places, and with clusters of people, not only lonely individuals, so must we.

2. That meant neighborhoods. Neighbors could work together to create

"Israel" is the Name of a People Also

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 5/11/2016

Today  is "Yom Ha'Atzma'ut": Accurately & Profoundly Translated, A Day to Stand on Our Own Feet, Affirm Our Own Essence

"Yom Ha'Atzma’ut” is usually translated as "Israeli Independence Day." But the word “Atzma’ut” has as its root Etzem = “bone, skeleton, internal essential structure.”  So it would be more accurate – and raise more profound questions -- to call it "Day for Standing on One's Own Feet, Day of Affirming One's Own Essence."

Have we actually gotten to stand on our own feet?  Who is the “we”? A nation-state? A transnational people? What is our “essence”?

These are profound spiritual questions. I would like to look at this day from the standpoint of Torah and the Holy One Who is the Breath of Life  -- not from the conventional categories of political analysis.

I. "Yisra'el" Means "Godwrestler"

Not only is the word “Atzma’ut” deeper than its usual translation – so is the name “Yisra’el.” First of all, there is an "Israel" broader than the State. "Israel" is the name of a People also. And the name itself bears a meaning , a commitment, a covenant.

From Solar Neighborhood Coops to a Sustainable Planet

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 2/26/2016

Why was the movement of Sit-ins and Freedom Rides half a century ago so effective as a spark for great social change?  What would it mean to do this today, in facing the climate crisis and its threat to the web of life on Planet Earth?

Those challenges to hardened racism  took imagined futures and embodied them in the present. The activists imagined a future of racially integrated restaurants and buses. So they simply integrated the businesses –-- appearing in them despite the rules of the owners or the laws passed by those in power. They said, “Here we are.  You will have to decide what to do with us. You can kill us, you can jail us, you can integrate your businesses.”

Those activists did not begin by asking those in power to pass new laws. They did not throw rocks at the glass windows of segregated businesses.  They simply showed up, bearing the future on their shoulders, walking the future in their legs.

And they set off a great wave of social change that did in fact get new laws passed, and not only in the arena of  the struggle to end American racism. The movements for women’s liberation, for gay rights, for ending the Vietnam War all sprouted from the seeds of those actions.

Even efforts to transform education into full engagement of body and heart along with mind began with similar efforts to embody the future in the present ----  with “freedom schools” and “teach-ins.” Even efforts to renew religious life began that way – the Freedom Seder and the Aquarian Minyan as the seeds of Jewish renewal, the Sojourner living-collective-with-a-magazine as the seed of a broader Christian renewal.

Notice that all these “alternatives” took shape not as utopian communities isolated from the old social system – but as direct challenges to it.

What would it mean to do this today in the urgent struggle to heal Mother Earth from the arson campaign of the Carbon Pharaohs that burn her for their profit: Big Coal, Big Oil, Big Unnatural Gas?

The future we imagine is a world economy rooted in renewable energy, in wind and solar power. How do we embody that imagined future in the actual present?

I suggest that we do this by organizing neighborhood-based solar –energy coops that would bring households and organizations out of using and supporting fossil-fuel suppliers of electricity,  into neighborhood and community–generated solar energy.

Do We Need to ReName God?

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 12/28/2015

The Name of God inscribed as the Image of God on a human body, courtesy of Rabbi Marcia Prager
 Early in the Book of “Exodus,” God goes through a change of Name.  Indeed,  in Jewish tradition the Book is not known as “Exodus” but as “Sefer Shemot –- the Book of Names.”
 
For the Eternal Holy One Who suffuses all the universe to change The Name is seismic. Cosmic.
 
It happens twice — first at the Burning Bush, then again in Egypt. And the difference is important.
The first time, as Moses faces the unquenchably fiery Voice Who is sending him

Exxon Lied, People Died -- WE decide!

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 11/8/2015

Moving toward the Hanukkah of Light

Despite the Darkness

 For years, The Shalom Center has talked about “Corporate Carbon Pharaohs” that make huge profits out of deeply wounding – scorching -- Mother Earth and the web of life that sustains us all.

 Their greed has been killing human beings in floods and famines, droughts and the spread of tropical diseases.  And these Corporate Carbon Pharaohs have devoted a small proportion of their profits to buying elections --  making sure that democracy cannot halt their business plan for burning Earth.

 In the last few weeks, we have learned both how vile the behavior of these Carbon Pharaohs has actually become,  and how dogged, creative organizing can stop them.

 On the one hand, now we know that beginning in 1977, Exxon, one of the biggest of the Corporate Carbon Pharaohs, knew from its own scientists that the massive burning of oil was overheating the planet and would lead to deep destruction, many deaths. And they lied about their knowledge in order to continue and cover up this crime. If Exxon were an ordinary person, its behavior might be called conspiracy to murder.

 And on the other hand, after seven years of organizing in many forms – rallies, prayer services, huge marches, nonviolent arrests, persistent lobbying – President Obama has just “buried” the XL Tar Sands Pipeline before the Pipeline could literally bury cowboys, Indians, farmers, prairies, ice fields, and human communities.

 So now we know –- even though Exxon lied, even though people died, it is still true that we can decide – if we choose to.

 Now  that we know about Exxon’s criminal cover-up, what should we do? 

World Muslim Leaders Speak Out on Climate Crisis

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 8/19/2015

[Below you will find a wise and powerful statement by Muslim leaders from all around the world, calling for vigorous action to prevent climate chaos.

[On July 18, 2015, I received a draft Islamic Statement on the Climate Crisis , with a request to comment and advise. The Shalom Center was invited to do this because of our initiation of the Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis. (Others were similarly invited.)

[At that point, the draft Preamble was totally drawn from science, with passages from the Quran coming later in the statement. I responded with warm and joyful support for the Statement as a whole, suggesting mainly that the Preamble  begin with a sense of the Quran's religious commitment to healing the Earth,  within which the science is crucial information. In fact, the final statement does begin with a foundational religious affirmation. (I'm not suggesting that change was brought about by my comment; I am sure many of the drafters saw the need as I did.) 

[This Statement stands alongside the Papal Encyclical Laudato Si and the Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis as a remarkable and wonder-filled expression of the concern and commitment of a community of more than a billion human beings. Al-Hamdulillah!  -- God be praised, Baruch Hashem! --  Shalom, salaam, peace, Earth!  -- Rabbi Arthur Waskow]

Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change

In the name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate

PREAMBLE

  • God – Whom we know as Allah – has created the universe in all its diversity, richness and vitality: the stars, the sun and moon, the earth and all its communities of living beings. All these reflect and manifest the boundless glory and mercy of their Creator. All created beings by nature serve and glorify their Maker, all bow to their Lord’s will. We human beings are created to serve the Lord of all beings, to work the greatest good we can for all the species, individuals, and generations of God’s creatures.

 

  • Our planet has existed for billions of years and climate change

Pope Francis & St Francis: "Laudato Si [Praised be the ONE]"

Anonymous | 7/13/2015

"Concerning Care for Our Common Home"

[This is the full and final text of the encyclical by Pope Francis, issued at Noon Rome time (6 a.m.  EDT) on June 18, 2015. The encyclical addresses the climate crisis from a powerfully universal spiritual outlook,  biblically rooted, and sets that crisis in the broader context of several increasingly powerful technologies used in increasingly destructive ways so as to endanger our Mother Earth -- and then in the even broader context of a systemic spiritual crisis afflicting the world culture, economy, and politics.

[Laudato Si, beginning with its title, evokes the life-work of St. Francis of Assisi in his love for the poor and of all Creation.

[It is notable that this day marks the renewal of what/who  St. Francis called "Sister Moon,"  and thereby is the first day of the Jewish lunar "moonth" of Tammuz and the Muslim lunar "moonth" of Ramadan.  Ramadan very clearly and Tammuz to some extent call forth renewed self-examination by individuals and societies of their relationship to the Spirit; to greed and top-down exploitation by the powerful; and to the Earth. The choice of 1 Ramadan as the day to prclaim Laudato Si may reflect Pope Francis' desire for a world-wide flowering of Earth-loving responses from all religions and possibly his admiration for St Francis' unusual attempts during the Crusades to seek peace and wisdom in dialogue with Islam. Emphases of the first three paragraphs, paragraph 139, and the universal prayer near the end are mine.--  AW, editor]

The encyclical letter of the Holy Father Francis -- Laudato Si: Concerning Care for Our Common Home

 1. “Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.

2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made upof her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

Nothing in this world is indifferent to us.

 3. More than fifty years ago, with the world teetering on the brink of nuclear crisis, Pope Saint John XXIII wrote an Encyclical which not only rejected war but offered a proposal for peace. He addressed his message Pacem in Terris to the entire “Catholic world” and indeed “to all men and women of good will”. Now, faced as we are with global environmental deterioration, I wish to address every person living on this planet. In my Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I wrote to all the members of the Church with the aim of encouraging ongoing missionary renewal. In this Encyclical, I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.

Gather this Sukkot to Address Climate Crisis?

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 5/26/2015

"We Have the Whole World in Our Hands"

Torah Calls Us to "Assemble!" in Sukkot after Sabbatical/ Shmita Year

Has the time come for Jewish communities to hold public gatherings to discuss and plan responses to the climate crisis?  In Boston, such a conference was held on May 17 by the Jewish Climate Action Network. (The Shalom Center was a co-sponsor, and I spoke there.) In Philadelphia, the Jewish Federation and its Jewish Community Relations Council is planning toward  such a gathering on October 4.

I encourage all of us to be thinking about organizing such an event in our own cities. These could be Jewish or interfaith gatherings.

An  auspicious time to do this might be the Sunday of Sukkot, the harvest festival -- this coming fall, October 4. Why then? Partly because Sukkot is one of the most Earth-conscious of our festivals. And especially because this coming Sukkot is special.

The Torah  (Deut 31:10-12) calls on us in the Sukkot after a Sabbatical Shmita/ Year of Release to Assemble (in Hebrew, "Hak'heyl") the whole people to learn together the heart of Torah. This very year is a Sabbatical Year -- so that means we could create Hak'heyl this coming Sukkot.

In our generation, this means learning the Torah of eco-social justice,healing the Earth and human earthlings from the lethal climate crisis we are in, and birthing a new Earth-wide community of shared and sustainable abundance.

If you are interested in organizing a Hak'heyl gathering in your city this fall, please write us at Outreach@theshalomcenter.org

Invocation of Universal Unity

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/7/2014

[As we move into the Year of Shmita/Release, Shabbat Shabbaton, we offer this “Invocation of the Universal Unity” as one way to focus our attention on healing the Earth and the relationships between Earth and human earthlings — the interwoven lives of the human species and all the other life-forms of our planet. 

Hush’sh’sh’sh and Listen, all peoples –
Pause from your busy-ness
and hush’sh’sh
To hear — Yahhhhhh,
The One Breath of Life –

T'ruah 2014 singing

Viv Hawkins | 4/2/2014

As Reb Arthur Waskow received the first Lifetime Achievement Award offered by T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, he invited those present in New York on Mar 25, 2014 to join him in this song. It’s a fragment of Psalm 150, “Hallelu-YAH” — “Let us praise the Breath of Life.” The psalm recites

Great Danger, Great Hope, Great Spirit: Earth, Action, God

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 2/1/2013

"Weve got the Whole World in our Hands": James Hansen at Cimate Pray-in at the White House, Feb 15, 2013

Theology & Practice of Climate Action

During the year ahead, our strongest efforts will continue to address the climate crisis. Let me share our reasons:

We try to focus our work on the basis of three factors:
§  What are great dangers to the human race and the planetary web of life?  
§  What are resources of wisdom in Torah that might address these dangers?
§  What best invokes and embodies the Presence of the Spirit?

Applying these three measures:

Photos at the top of this Page

Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/31/2012

Each photo in the “merry-go-round” above is from a sacred moment in Shalom Center history. Let your cursor hover over any one of the photos: a brief description of the moment will appear.  Click on the title to add a comment.

VIDEO: Reb Arthur's "We can change America" speech at his high school alma mater

Viv Hawkins | 7/20/2012

Click on this title to see the video of what Reb Arthur calls the best speech of his life, only six minutes long: to the student body  of his high school alma mater, “Baltimore City College” (the third oldest public high school in the US) in fall 2011, upon receiving a distinguished alumnus award.

The Shalom Center's Work

The Shalom Center draws on Jewish and other spiritual wisdom to work with varied communities to seek peace, pursue justice, renew community, and heal the earth. We provide such resources as –-

  • Free biweekly email "Shalom Reports" of news and ideas on how to make visionary hope into practical change. To subscribe, click here;

  • New forms for festival, life-cycle, Shabbat celebration, & moments of prayer; new interpretations of Torah; new approaches to eco-kosher daily practice;

  • Opportunities to write Members of Congress and letters-to-the-editor about urgent public issues;

  • Public action (vigils, rallies, conferences) in coalitions seeking peace, justice, healing of earth.

  • Gatherings of small groups of leaders and thinkers for "seedbed conversations" on emerging issues;

  • "Tent of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah" multireligious retreats looking toward interfaith dialogue and shared action;

  • Training institutes for a new generation of eco-Jewish activists to address public policy;

  • Telephone seminars, books, CD's, DVD's. art for religious & spiritual growth Click here:

  • Speakers/ teachers for congregations, interfaith gatherings, campuses, etc.;

  • Celebratory gatherings to honor Prophetic Voices of our generation.

For more information write Office@theshalomcenter.org, explore this Website, and subscribe here to the Shalom Report

Click here to learn more about global scorching and what you can do about it!.