The Year Ahead: Actifest Experiments & Honoring Legacy
by Rabbi Nate DeGroot
Dear friends,
Now on the other side of Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish new year for the trees, and with the secular new year still visible in the rearview mirror, we want to take this opportunity to share with you what we’re excited about for The Shalom Center in the year ahead. And though the subject line says it all — actifest experimentation and honoring legacy, we do hope you’ll read through to the end, so you know what we’re up to in a bit more detail, and so you can get involved and grow with us!
Then next week, be on the lookout as we highlight our newly constituted and perpetually incredible Board of Directors and Advisory Council, who are each in their own way helping us accomplish what we lay out below!
As always, if you have any thoughts, questions, or reflections about what you read below, we’d be eager to hear from you!
Actifests
As many of you know, the strategic vision we launched last year places “actifests,” or “activist festivals,” at the center of our work. In 2024, we are full steam ahead pursuing this vision.
By offering deep Jewish holiday learning and unique actifest training to individuals and groups across the country, we have our sights set on steadily building a national movement of coordinated sacred justice rooted in the Jewish calendar cycle. The meeting point of ancient wisdom, collective imagination, and holistic ritual, actifests understand Jewish holidays as portals and a framework for public prophetic action in a time when we are being called to radically reimagine both what it means to be Jewish and what it means to engage in activism.
To get a better feel for actifests and the history out of which they have grown, take 4 minutes and 26 seconds to watch this powerful short video:
Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah Grant
Our ability to boldly experiment with the “how” and “what” of acitfests in 2024 is thanks in large part to a meaningful grant from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Their belief in actifests as a transformational feature of 21st century American Judaism and their generous financial support of The Shalom Center is allowing us to prototype multiple actifests for multiple holidays in multiple cities in 2024, all while collecting feedback and data to continue to grow and refine our offerings. We are deeply grateful for their support of us and we are thrilled to be in such great company when it comes to their other grantee partners.
Purim Actifests
Our first actifest of 2024 will be in the Bay Area on March 21, which is Ta’anit Esther / The Fast of Esther. On this pre-Purim day of spiritual preparation and ritualized mourning, we will be setting up a public Tent of Mourning to grieve the tragic violence unfolding in Israel and Gaza. We are building this Tent of Mourning for all who are holding grief for the tens of thousands of lives lost since and beyond 10/7. The tent will be open for individuals to engage in a variety of trusted and creative mourning practices. With this actifest, we are opening to the possibility that, through our shared grief, new paths forward might shake loose for us as individuals and more broadly. As a key part of the actifest model, we are launching a Bay Area cohort comprised of people who will engage in deeply connected learning and join the core actifest organizing team to thoughtfully curate and steward the Tent of Mourning.
Take a look at the Tent of Mourning webpage below, which has lots more information about the actifest and the organizing cohort. And please pass along the link to family, friends, and colleagues in the Bay Area! Applications for the cohort are now open!
Then for Purim itself, we are thinking deeply about how to correct the distorted meaning of the Scroll of Esther that led to the bloody pointers-to-the future of Baruch/Aror Goldstein's murder of 29 Muslims prostrate in prayer at the Tomb of Abraham, our common Forebear, on Purim Day in 1994 — and the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in 1995 — and the explosive result of Purim Misunderstood in the revenge killings of thousands of Palestinian civilians in the months after the atrocious murders of Israelis on October 7. Riffing on these themes, we are developing a special speculative fiction Purim project, which we’ll be excited to share with you when the time is right. Until then, keep your eyes peeled and your spirits open!!
Legacy
Our other primary focus for 2024 is giving Reb Arthur his flowers, as he embarks on his final year as Director of The Shalom Center. The Founder of this organization, a revered elder, a legend of the Jewish Left, a torch bearer for many radical re-understandings of Judaism, a steward of multiple generations of progressive Jews, and an inspiration to so many, Arthur is planning to step back from full-time work at the end of calendar year 2024. We pray for his good health and deep reserves of his unmatched vim and vigor as he prepares to transition into the role of Prophetic Advisor beginning in 2025.
To mark this momentous transition for Arthur, and to honor his indelible legacy, we will be orienting throughout the year towards reverence, respect, memory, and blessings for him.
91st Birthday Actifest — Fall 2024
And because he wouldn’t have it any other way — and neither would we — we will be anchoring the celebration of Arthur’s 91st birthday this fall with an epic actifest in his home city of Philadelphia. Why 91? Because 7 x 13 = 91
Slated to take place towards the end of Sukkot — and perhaps on Arthur’s Jewish calendar birthday, which is Hoshanah Rabbah — this actifest will fall just days before the one-year Jewish calendar anniversary of 10/7 and roughly two weeks before the highest-of-stakes US Presidential Election, an auspicious time indeed. Given the gravity of the moment on personal, professional, communal, and global levels, we will be inviting all who have been impacted and influenced by Arthur over the years to descend upon Philly for twenty-four hours to celebrate our rabbi and publicly embody his greatest passion: the fusion of Judaism and justice for good in the world, insisting — based on the teachings of Sukkot — on the shared prosperity of all the “70 nations” of the world and all their life-forms.
R' Arthur, Philadelphia, 2019
More details to come, but please begin to make plans to be present for this once-in-a-lifetime celebration and action send-off this coming October.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow Legacy Fund
Now 90 years old, Arthur’s greatest wish is for The Shalom Center to continue to grow in the years to come, building on his decades-long legacy while evolving to serve future generations. In order for that to happen, we are going to need your support.
Out of reverence for Arthur and so that his dream can become a reality, we will be launching a major, long-term fundraising effort in the coming months: the Rabbi Arthur Waskow Legacy Fund. Designed to help support Arthur and his family, while also creating a foundational support system for The Shalom Center, this Fund will be the primary mechanism for individual contributors to help launch The Shalom Center into its next chapter of prophetic Jewish wisdom and action this year. As details for how best to engage with this campaign are clarified, we will make sure you know about them. We anticipate that alongside financial contributions, there will be opportunities to contribute memories, photographs, anecdotes, blessings, and more. We thank you in advance for investing deeply in Arthur, his vision, and the direction of The Shalom Center going forward.
To each of you, we’re so excited to be on this journey with you, we’re so deeply appreciative of your support in 2023, and we’re sincerely eager to partner together in 2024, building the world we know is possible!
Here’s to 2024!
Rabbi Nate DeGroot & The Shalom Center team