Growing a New Prophetic Diaspora Judaism

Dear companions,

Today I enter on a new role provided by The Shalom Center – “Prophetic Envoy.”

In it I will be speaking as and for my self, as close as I can get to my soul.

”Envoy” means I will be reaching out in and beyond the Jewish community. I thought to begin by sharing what has come to me from meditating and imagining from Yom Kippur till the Torah of Moses’ last days.

I am trying to sense his struggles of how to live his last days, to fill my own Eldering with life.

I have adopted two new mottos for myself:

Moses’ own teaching at Sinai that everyone must be present for this profound event, even babies, and that even those who are not physically present are really present.

This means Sinai will affect the world far into the future. We stand in our generation in the same time-space: a crisis so deep that how we act can transform the future for a new world of sharing, love. and joy – or into a country and a planet of Greed, Selfishness, chaos and death.

My second motto comes from an old man being quoted by the Talmud: “I can’t complete the work that needs doing, but that doesn’t mean I can quit.”

So here’s the beginning of not quitting:

For months this past Jewish year I suffered through a depression of the soul – not only of the mind and heart. I felt the Holy Spirit that imbues the values and the actions of both Islam and Judaism falling deep into trauma as the regimes that governed Gaza and the State of Israel massacred human beings of the “Other” of Abraham’s people.

For me, staying both sane and Jewish has meant recognizing that the regime that governs Israel is made of Jews who are not Jewish. They have rejected Jewish values of Justice and Compassion. So long as they or their like are in power, there is a State where Jews are in the majority, but there is no Jewish State.

I hope a growing number of Diaspora Jews will behave that way. They and other Americans should work to get that State to live not like the US in Vietnam, Iraq, or Chile; Russia in Ukraine; China in Tibet.

But denying that Israel is a Jewish State is not enough. How do we protect and renew the Judaism we prayed to be or want to be these Holy Days just past?

Inspiration came for me partly from reading two new books, rekindling sparks of true Judaism in a world of darkness.

The Necessity of Exile, by Rabbi Shaul Magid of Dartmouth College. He argued that state-centered Zionism had fulfilled its purpose of providing a refuge for endangered Jews and a platform for Jewish culture.

But with its purpose fulfilled, the State had puffed up its balloon until the balloon exploded into repression and massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and lethal repression in the West Bank and Lebanon.

He pointed to a new task: Creating new Prophetic Diaspora institutions that affirm living always in spiritual and political Exile, winning more justice in Society and Earth not to solidify it in repressive institutions but to sow the seeds toward the next sprouts of love, justice, and peace.

The other new book, For Such Times as These, is infused with a politics aimed at helping Jews work with fellow outsiders in the USA to win equal standing in an inclusive Democracy. It was written by two Reconstructionist rabbis, Rabbi Ariana Katz and Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg.

In that configuration, the Prophetic Diaspora communities would embody a Jewish culture of Love for all life, especially for human groups working to broaden Love, Justice, and Compassion, to help resist Subjugation by the powerful, and to support communities to express their own cultures in a context of justice and compassion.

That would probably require a deep rethinking and redoing of –

• Liturgy that should start from an ecological world view, not a hierarchical one; Breath or Wellspring in referring to God, not Lord or King;

• Reimagination of Jewish festivals so that “actifests” transform the future, not only celebrate or mourn the past;

• Selection of Prophets to be read in haftarot from outside the official list, our own generation and before – M.L. King, A.J. Heschel, Gloria Steinem, Judith Plaskow, Martin Buber, R.B. Ginsburg?

• Creation of tzedakah collectives in which members give about 2% of their income to a pool of money to support Jewish and other campaigns for justice and shalom. These collectives and their tzedakah contributions would be governed by “one person, one vote“ (not one dollar, one vote, as is the practice in present Federations);

• Reexamination of kashrut to include issues of human health, ethical treatment of animals and plants, ethical practices toward farm and restaurant workers, and support for regenerative agriculture;

• Reexamination of the roles of rabbis, cantors, and of other streams of Jewish knowledge, like the kohenet movement;

• Action and alliances toward a new economy more akin to the biblical cycle of pulsating shmita and yovel than to modern corporate industrialism.

Indeed, a new form of Judaism that struggles toward and fits into a just, democratic, and compassionate planetary society. This I want to explore in another letter – which looks at the deep meaning of the present planetary crisis.

All these welcome the Presence of the Holy Spirit in guiding Jewish (and perhaps other) decisions toward these ends. For me, the very discussion of pointing toward such a new paradigm of Judaism is a sign of the Spirit and an urgent invitation to meet Her / Them / Him.

Blessings to each of you and all of us as we approach the onrushing election – blessings of Emet, Tzedek, v‘Shalom – Truth, Justice, and Peaceful Harmony – the three pillars of the world in decent leadership

— Arthur


P.S. – If you got this letter from a friend and would like to see more from The Shalom Center, you can subscribe to our newsletters – free! by clicking here: theshalomcenter.org/newsletter