Dear friends,

I am writing you to share the inside dope of what we have been doing and planning here at The Shalom Center, as context for why we’re hosting FortyFest on October the 5th.

Now

This October, The Shalom Center becomes 40 years old. This October, I become 90 years old.

Both these age-markers are meaningful. The “40” marker appears over and over in the Hebrew Bible — perhaps, as Rabbi Jeff Roth teaches, because the most accurate timing for human pregnancy is 40 weeks. Forty years in the wilderness, 40 days and nights that Moses learns Torah on Mt. Sinai, many others — the time of pregnant growth to birth a new life imbued with Divine wisdom and the Breath of life.

As for 90 — my grandmother died at 96, the oldest of all my ancestors. At 90 I should be preparing.

In these later years of my life, it is my fervent hope that The Shalom Center outlives me with a new prophetic wisdom grown from 40 years of gorgeous history, to help guide our next 40 years and beyond.  

Below, you will read more about that history, how we’re planning to carry that legacy forward into the next generation, and how you can support us in getting there together.

The Last 40

We have accomplished a lot over the last 40 years, influencing the Jewish and broader world in course-altering ways that prove that Judaism and activism fused together is more powerful than either on their own. Beginning with the original Freedom Seder, we have transformed Passover in the modern Jewish psyche to understand that we can — and must — celebrate the liberation of communities that aren’t Jewish, alongside our own ancient story. 

  • Long before it was fashionable, we spoke out for justice through an end to the Occupation and through a two-state peace between Israel and Palestine.

  • Long before it became acceptable in most of Jewish or American life, we spoke out for full equality in both spheres for women and gay and other queerly gendered people. Indeed, long before the Supreme Court erased Roe, we were warning that the all-male Catholic bishops were planning to impose their narrow doctrine about abortion on all of us.

  • And long before people said “Of course,” we were teaching that Judaism is deeply rooted in Earth. We have taught and will keep teaching that the Name of God — YHWH — is the Interbreathing of all life. An interwoven ecologic unity, not a hierarchical “Lordship” – all too easily converted into white male Christian nationalism.

Those visions that we pursued became seeds of a real future, by now a real present. And yet, that doesn’t mean that the movement for a world of “Chesed u’mishpat ashira, Of love and justice I will sing” as Psalm 101 and Rabbi David Shneyer sing, has already arrived, or that our organization’s history is something merely to be cherished and admired. Far from it! 

Rather, what it means is that a wave of prophetic Jewish and multireligious commitment does now exist, and we need to grow it for the next 40-year generation. 

The Next 40

These two age-marks have had a major effect on how The Shalom Center and I have been acting over the last year. They have spurred and sparked deep conversations, creative energy, and the vital rebirth of a vision for the organization going forward.

Our thinking is laid out in a new draft strategic vision, which we’ve developed over the last year with great love, labor, and feedback. This new guiding vision, which we’re referring to as TSC 2.0, focuses on catalyzing a movement of prophetic Judaism rooted in the Jewish holiday cycle. Through “actifests” — as in “activist festivals” — we are offering a framework for nationwide Jewishly coordinated “sacred justice.” 

For instance:

  • What would it feel like if, on Yom Kippur afternoon, “This is the Fast” gatherings were happening all around the country, living out the prophetic call from the haftarah reading from Isaiah on that day to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and ensure all people have homes to live in? What if the day ended with a vigil — silent except for a shofar blast at the beginning and end, and the reading of Isaiah’s words — of thousands at Federal buildings or Congressional home offices, demanding that the government adopt that standard in real policy?

  • What would it feel like, on Passover and Palm Sunday, if we actually challenged the banks that fund the Corporate Carbon Pharaohs and Caesars that are bringing modern plagues of fire, flood, famine, and disease on all Earth and all Humanity?

  • Or on Hanukkah, turned to the miracle of light and of conserving energy (eight days of light from one day’s supply of olive oil) we began our own miracle of organizing solar co-ops all across the country to ensure our limited resources can last eight generations?

  • Or celebrating a Festival of Trees as we did last year in the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta, in defense of the trees that help Earth breathe, opposing designs to wipe them out to build a gigantic militarized-police training center.

  • Or for Tisha B’Av mourning not only ancient Temples that were intended as sacred microcosms of Earth, but the present endangerment of Temple Earth itself — as The Shalom Center has since the lethal BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

  • In the next incarnation of The Shalom Center 2.0, can we celebrate multireligious Salaam/ Shalom Days? Could we sponsor long-distance conversations where members of the nonviolent Israeli Resistance, nonviolent Palestinian activists, and members of nonviolent activist progressive American groups learn from each other how to resist an anti-democratic government --- whether it oppresses Central American refugees or Palestinian villagers?

As part of our organizational transformation, toward 2.0, we have a new website — more activist, more colorful, more graphic — with the same address as our previous site: theshalomcenter.org. There you can find our new strategic vision, past and upcoming events, new resources and access to programs. 

We are also deeply proud to show off and celebrate our ever-dedicated and expanded Board, as well as our new Advisory Council, with friends of The Shalom Center who include Bill McKibben, Gloria Steinem, Heather Booth, Koach Baruch Frazier, and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, to name just a few. 

Our tech improvements also stretch to our database and digital mailer. Through the hard work of our well-accomplished COO, Linda Carranza, we have transitioned from one back-end CRM system to another, leaving us much more organized and with a greater ability to communicate and connect with you all!

And significantly, we have begun to put into place a generational transition when it comes to our staffing and leadership, which includes a gradual process in which, by the start of 2025, I hope to be turning executive functions over to our present Associate Director, Rabbi Nate DeGroot. I look forward to continuing to write and speak beyond that as “Prophetic Adviser.”  

FortyFest

To celebrate this monumental moment in our organization’s history, we are hosting a virtual “FortyFest” this October the 5th, the special day of Sukkot known as Hoshanah Rabbah. At this fully virtual event (7:00-9:30pm EDT), we will be honoring the last 40 years of The Shalom Center, visioning the next 40, and exploring some collective inspiration and creativity that might help us get there. There will be sharing of Torah old and new, art and music, reaching and teaching toward spiritually rooted activism to meet our crises. 

Through a newly imagined seder, and in partnership with Judaism Unbound, Ayin Press, Beit Toratah, and Tikkun Olam Productions, we will learn, celebrate, reminisce, and vision together. Confirmed teachers, ritualists, and musicians are many, and can all be found on the FortyFest website.

We hope that FortyFest — and our broader organizational transition and transformation —inspires in you a renewed connection to The Shalom Center and a deepened excitement about our work and where we’re headed. We hope that inspiration leads you to enthusiastically give to us.

To accomplish all that we have planned in the years ahead, our budget will need to expand. Our expenses — alongside our impact — will grow. And it’s going to take a dedicated and Spirit-filled collective effort to make it possible. We are inviting all of those that care about The Shalom Center to make a special gift before FortyFest begins on October 5th. We hope you can do that as soon as possible, to help us build the momentum for the celebration. enthusiastically give to us. Please visit the FortyFest website to register for the event and contribute however you feel moved.

As always, please feel free to reach out with any thoughts, questions, or other musings. You can call at (267) 667-5603. And thank you for being on this journey all these years with me and us.

With great warmth, gratitude, aspiration, and anticipation, and with blessings that the shalom you help create in the world suffuses your own self and your beloveds —

-Arthur