Mission
Photo credit: Rachael Warriner
The Shalom Center is reimagining Jewish holidays as portals for public prophetic action. We are building a national movement of sacred justice rooted in the Jewish calendar cycle.
For 40 years, The Shalom Center served as a prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, and American life. We are honoring that legacy and the legacy of our Founder, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, by embracing our next chapter, guided by a new strategic vision.
Through “actifests,” or “activist festivals,” The Shalom Center seeks to transform the way American Jews celebrate Jewish holidays, embracing our festival cycle as a framework for national, coordinated prophetic action. These actifests are - definitionally - experiments in post-activism, as we seek to embody the world we wish to see and open to emergent possibilities beyond even our wildest dreams.
Our work is grounded in an understanding that the various crises of our day - such as climate, white supremacy, and economic exploitation - are symptoms of a root spiritual crisis. Until or unless we address that root spiritual crisis, we suspect the “symptom-crises” will continue to evolve and transmute. Through actifests, we see our unique role in the broader ecosystem as creatively transforming the collective spirit towards wholeness and peace.
