The Shalom Center is stewarding and seeding an emergent Jewish sacred justice.

We understand the various crises of our day as symptoms of a root spiritual crisis. As a hub, think-tank, and laboratory for experiments in Jewish post-activism, we develop creative Jewish sacred justice offerings and curate innovative and embodied Jewish ritual to transform that spiritual root towards more wholeness, dignity, and collective thriving. 

Founded by Reb Arthur Waskow z”l in 1983, our current work includes leading-edge cohorts in the overlap of activism, art, and spirit-work, robust and timely digital learning and thought leadership at the intersection of spirituality and social change, and ecosystem-wide tending and catalyzing.

“What happens if the response to the crisis is part of the crisis?”

This is the question at the heart of post-activism, a philosophical provocation and inquiry brought by Yoruba philosopher and posthumanist, Báyò Akómoláfé. It is also one of the key questions we are wrestling with at the heart of The Shalom Center’s cohort model.

If you would like to apply for Cohort ב, or if you are simply interested in learning more about post-activism, please read below.

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Is it possible that our raised fists and angry voices - or even our joyous marches and historic legislative wins - unintentionally reinforce the very structures that produce the injustices in the first place? Might our righteous “fights” for justice actually sustain the adversarial logic that the system not only allows for, but depends upon? Can we entertain that the activism we’re doing isn’t quite working the way we want?

The “post” of “post-activism” is the “post” of “compost,” inviting us to consider:

What strange new life forms might grow from the breaking down of old activist models and protest structures? What new shoots and buds might want to emerge from the blessedly rich, nutrient-dense, life-giving soil from the past? What might be called forth in this moment - in this generation - before we ourselves become compost again?

Post-activism acknowledges that activism is necessary to stave off the worst violence against those most marginalized and to ensure that our collective dissatisfaction with the status quo is felt publicly. And thank Goddexx for generations of activists who have paved the way for us and for the many contemporary movement people taking to the streets today - including many of you, many of us, and our dear founder, Reb Arthur. Yahhhh knows we need all pathways to wholeness!

And yet, post-activism gestures from a different register.

It senses that the world is exhausted, that activists and even activism itself is exhausted, and invites us to explore what supplementary kinds of interwoven cultural creation, ancient wisdom, and creative expression might support the emergence of a different kind of world, stretching awkwardly to be born at the edge of Empire.

Post-activism is an inquiry that foregrounds curiosity over certainty. The mysterious within the political. Fugitivity before flag-waving. More trickster than warrior.

It is an invitation into a kind of sacred justice that intuits the world, and us humans in it, are too complex and multiple for linearity and algorithmic logic alone. Instead, post-activism leads with a wink and a spiral, focused less on analytical solutions than jumping the track. Less on letting the light in, and more on making sanctuary in the crack. 

This cohort is an opportunity for those who are interested, to put post-activism and Jewish wisdom in dialogue. To meaningfully wrestle with the many and multiple layers in committed community. To play with post-activism and Jewish ritual and Jewish time and more. To experiment with imagining otherwise and to see what emerges.

If this is an inquiry that engenders enthusiasm in you, perhaps you will want to continue reading this page and consider applying.

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For more on post-activism, check out:

• This 2023 conversation between Báyò and The Shalom Center’s Director, Rabbi Nate DeGroot‍, weaving post-activism and Jewish wisdom.

• Selah: A Báyò Akómoláfé Reader (Ayin Press, 2025), Báyò’s most recent book.

• This Wisdom Daily essay by Rabbi Nate DeGroot, on the origins of The Shalom Center’s interest in sacred justice and post-activism.

• This 2024 Judaism Unbound podcast episode featuring Rabbi Nate DeGroot, exploring ideas of prophetic Judaism, actifests, and The Shalom Center’s generational transition from Arthur to Nate.

Just as our inaugural Cohort א was rooted in the wisdom of the primordial aleph, so too Cohort ב will be rooted in the wisdom of the bet. If you are interested in applying to this cohort - or simply interested in learning more about the multilayered teachings of the Hebrew alphabet’s second letter - please read below.

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"Arose bet (ב) and said: 'Master of Time-Space (רִבּוֹן עָלְמָא), may it please You to put me first in the creation of the world, since I represent the blessings to You above and below.' The Holy and Blessed One said to ב: 'Assuredly, with you I will create the world, and you shall become beginning in the creation of the world.'"

Zohar, Introduction 6:37

In the words of Stan Tenen (A Letter Portrait, 1996): "There is a traditional teaching that all of the Torah is contained in the first letter...So, in principle, if we understand the first letter, that should tell us a great deal about what follows."

ב is radically incomplete. Enclosed on three sides, with the fourth utterly and always open to the unknown. Here, the open edge becomes a site of possibility, disruption, exposure. Modeling a proud and stubborn resistance to arrival, solutions, and settlement, the ב revels in indeterminacy.

The ב - where duality begins, the beginning of beginning - belongs to the domains of the intellect, boundaries, and bifurcations.

With ב, we must stay attentive, trained on what's ahead. Like looking out the corridor of a cave, ב calls us to face our present reality, clear-eyed about what is - and isn't - happening, resolved and honest.

And yet, for a ב to fulfill its blessing, it must embrace its own incompleteness as holy fool, its unfinished forward-facing axis as playful. To be a blessing, ב must root down into the primordially ineffable א that precedes it. Acknowledging its opening as both vulnerability and portal, invitation and danger.

By doing this, by embracing that ancient crack of pre-creation א as a place of fugitivity, where the door swings both in and out, that's when the bet becomes a home (bayit)- for Yahhhh. A place for the Always Incomplete Interbreathing of Life to dwell within and amongst us. A sanctuary for Shechinah / Divine Presence.

When does our activism bless? Does activism need to bless? Should it? What might it look like to approach our activism with the driven focus of the big ב at the beginning of Torah’s creation / בראשית, while simultaneously embracing the mischievousness of the agential א? 

In the words again of Tenen, "Considered thus, the first letter of the Torah indicates not only the beginning of the Torah, and not even the beginning of this created universe (the Big-Bang of scientific cosmology), but the original principle of the emergence of any world whatsoever, material or spiritual, actual or potential, concrete or conceptual. In this sense, the Torah may indeed have been intended to be the revelation of the template for the very possibility of the emergence of a created or emanated cosmos."

As one more fractal in the primordial hologram of ב, this cohort will offer participants the opportunity to engage these themes and questions in collaborative space, explore questions of strategy, spirituality, and intellect, and offer to the world that which emerges from the generative space at the open edge of ב.

If this interests you, we’d love for you to apply to join us for this journey.

Cohort א was our inaugural sacred justice cohort, with 20 creative thinkers, unconventional activists, and ritual artists weaving relationship, exploring Jewish post-activism, and crafting public offerings.

From June 2025 through May 2026 we met together monthly on Zoom, gathered for an in-person convening, and developed creative projects all rooted in the intellectual, spiritual, and strategic contours of Jewish sacred justice and post-activism.

You can view the Cohort א page here or view just the Cohort א Project Report here.

New relationships led to new collaborations and unfurling momentum. New ideas led to new fields of study, areas of exploration, and strategic wrestling. And members’ projects, astounding in their richness, diversity, and substance, are an incredible testament first and foremost to the cohort members themselves, as well as the unique cohort model we’re developing in the generative and sacred overlap of activism, art, and spirit-work.

With many thanks to Lippmann Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah for helping us to launch Cohort א, we see the layers of impact that these individuals are having in the world, and the ripples and webs they’re weaving through relationships and their projects, as the core of our impact.