Dear companions in the work to turn tears of grief into wellsprings of transformation, we suggest setting aside a time at your Thanksgiving table for prayer — perhaps this last paragraph of Mourners Kaddish, especially appropriate in these days in memory of the dead of both Abrahamic peoples, Perhaps follow the prayer with a heart-talk about what you can do, however small, to bring one step closer the time when the guns stop speaking and the people start.

An effort to look forward to a transformed future between Israel and Gaza.

The letter below asks for contributions to “Academia for Equality.” Among small non-profits like The Shalom Center, it is extremely unusual to encourage donors to other non-profits. But we think protecting the right to speak Truth is so important — the Talmud teaches that Truth, Justice, and Shalom are the three pillars that uphold the world — that we do encourage you to do just that.

Keep Our Light Shining Bright: A Pre-Hanukkah Workshop on Staying Resilient and Hopeful in Painful, Challenging Times

Facilitated by Cherie Brown, this pre-Hanukkah experiential workshop will offer an opportunity to learn and practice skills to stay hopeful and resilient in the face of excruciatingly hard times.

The last several days and for many, this whole week, has been treated by many Jews and others as shloshim — thirty days to mourn both the Israeli and Palestinian war dead.

We think it time to begin turning our tears of grief for the Israel-Gaza War into a wellspring of creativity for peace. We must explore what the War poses for the future, including the dangers — physical and spiritual — it poses to American Arab and Muslim and American-Jewish communities.

A statement and video by rabbis and rabbinical students calling for ceasefire.

Two midrashic responses to two different parts of the Torah portion of Vayera, the Torah portion for next Shabbat.

Statement of Tikkun magazine and Beyt Tikkun: A Synagogue without Walls

Statement on Behalf of Israel-Based Progressives and Peace Activists Regarding Debates Over Recent Events in Our Region

R’ Arthur: “My first response last Monday to the horrendous attack by Hamas on Israel held serious errors as well as profound truths.”

In a world beset by catastrophes, including a swift walk to the edge of a planetary precipice, why pay attention to a 3,000-year-old text of a world-wide Flood that we know is fiction, even if its authors thought it was factual history?

Now it was, when Yehoshua was at Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and saw: now here, a man standing opposite him, with his sword drawn in his hand! Yehoshua went toward him and said to him: Are you for us or for our enemies? He said: No! Rather, I am the commander of YHWH's infinities-of-energy.

As we reflect on our own lives during these 10 days of teshuvah (return and recentering), we are thrilled to share with you a seminal interview of Rabbi Arthur Waskow, conducted by renowned scholar and rabbi, Shaul Magid, and published in Ayin Press.

R’ Arthur writes: “We need to deal with what ‘we’ have done by acting and planning together, deliberately or unconsciously. That is not really addressed in our Rosh Hashanah liturgies or practices, not about past social misdeeds nor even about those collective systemic misdeeds we are misdoing right now.“

A Bat Mitzvah Dvar Torah as a kind of Tale of the Spirit Rising — an affirmation that a spiritual wakening suffused in the “teaching” of a child can in fact help her/ him/ them into what Jewish tradition says they can and should become through the B’Mitzvah process: a self-caring, other-caring grown-up.

We will live out the last words of Malachi, the last of the ancient Hebrew prophets, “that we prevent Earth’s utter destruction by turning the hearts of elders to the youth and the hearts of youth to elders.”

The Shalom Center, founded by Rabbi Arthur Waskow in 1983, turns 40 this year. To celebrate, we are hosting “FortyFest” on October 5, 2023. This first-of-its-kind virtual Hoshanah Rabbah seder will be brimming with joyous learning and soaring spirits to honor The Shalom Center’s first 40 years and vision the next 40.

How empire, capitalism, and elite power led to disaster — and how historical mutual aid responds.

A statement concerning the troubling developments in Israel, which calls upon leaders of North American Jewry to take action and make their voices heard, not only on the current erosion of democracy in Israel, but also regarding what they believe is the often-ignored root cause of this process, namely the ongoing occupation and oppression of millions of Palestinians.

A Montana judge applies the “secular Torah” of a state Constitution to require policy change to heal Earth-Human relations.