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Prisoner 151 reporting from the White House & Washington Antiwar Protest

Peace | War, Peace, & the Jewish Community

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 9/27/2005

Dear friends,
Prisoner # 151 reporting out of the 370+ arrested in the White House protest Monday by the US Park Police.

According to the US Park Police who arrested us, this was the LARGEST number EVER arrested by the Park Police. More than 3 times what they had expected.

Sept. 26 D.C. Antiwar Protest
In the accompanying photo, you see the protest march approaching the White House. just behind the Buddhist prtests who are drumming and ringing a bell, among the front line of clergy are Rev. Dr. Cornel West of Princeton; Rev. Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock of Faith Voices for the Common Good; Imam Talib Rashid of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem; Rev Walter Wink, world-renowned Christian theologian; Marie Dennis of Maryknoll and Pax Christi; Rabbi Arthur Waskow of The Shalom Center; and Rev. Osagyefu Sekou , coordinator of Cergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq (CALCI).

Cornel West was among those arrested _— I had a warm and interesting conversation with him as we marched toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — and Cindy Sheehan — and Marie Dennis of the Maryknolls — and many other clergy and religious leaders, Unitarians, Quakers, Protestants, Buddhists, Catholics.

Since the police were not ready for so many of us, we were in custody from about 1 pm (still on the streets) till about 4 pm (then they handcuffed us, arms behind backs, and stored us on buses the Park Police had to requisition from DC Metro; then ultimately we were driven to the lock-up in far Anacostia. Releases, beginning about 11 p.m, went on far far into the night.

The whole weekend was extraordinary for us all. And for me, though I have lived an intense life, this weekend capped perhaps the most intense two weeks I have ever shaped a life in.
Friday afternoon, I keynoted a gathering-for-reflection of religious leaders and teachers who had been working on issues of international finance & globalization suggesting how to integrate the war and the danger of global scorching and the lightning-flash of Katrina into their work.

That evening, Rabbi David Shneyer led a strong, sweet, engaging service to welcome Shabbat. When he asked me to lead Kiddush, I retold the story of how the Prophet Natan confronted King David about his cruelty in sending the soldier Uriah to his death in battle for no "noble purpose," only in order to cover up his own arrogant lust affair with Uriah's wife Bathsheva and how what made David, despite this disgusting deed, worthy of being the ancestor of Messiah for both Jewish & Christian tradition, is that he did not refuse to see Natan but heard him out and then repented.

Compared to what? You know!

Our own Shalom Center Shabbat service on Saturday morning on the theme of "Seek Peace & Pursue It," deeply moved about 250 people, including a number of Christians who chose our service rather than ANSWER'S diatribes.

Spiritually, through chant, prayer, and music (much of it led by Rabbi Leila Berner and a number of the resident staff of Elat Chayyim Jewish Retreat Center, led especially by Mia Cohen and Rabbi David Ingber), we drew on the deepest roots of Jewish passion for peace.
The service also surfaced our concern both about demonization of Israel in parts of the Left and about the profound abandonment of Jewish values by the large Jewish organizations that have refused to speak out against the Iraq War.

Two aliyot, readings of the Torah one welcoming up into the reading those who seek to come through constriction into rebirth, turning the Tight & Narrow Place (MItzrayyim, Egypt) into a birth canal; and one about sharing our fullness (material, emotional, intellectual, spiritual) with those who have been cut off from it.

Rabbi Sidney Schwarz's powerful words of Torah about dealing with efforts to demonize Israel, yet not silencing our opposition to the war or cutting our selves off from the more decent impulses of the antiwar movement.

The march on Saturday afternoon — both deeply serious and deeply humorous, wonderfully varied and good-humored.

The gathering on Sunday of folk of many religious traditions to hear Walter Wink, a world-renowned Christian theologian, & me speak on the traditions of nonviolence in Jewish and Christian thought and practice, with many rich responses in discussion.

Then the Tent REVIVAL MEETING — a multireligious version of the classic evangelical Protestant revivals — was WONDERFUL. The different traditions and teachings meshed brilliantly, and people were indeed moved by the Spirit. I was asked to give the "invocation" — so I invoked the One God Who unfolds and is unfolded by all our traditions and who is present in all the life-forms of this planet. The God Who erupts like a volcano, like a lightning-flash of truth, when we dare to demand that a king, a ruler, meet with us face-to-face.

There were singers galore — including gospel singers, a Buddhist monk who sang Go Down Moses in such a way as to channel Harriet Tubman, the Elat Chayyim Jewish renewal staff who had sung at our Shabbat service, and many more; an amazing sermon by Rita Nakashima Brock — a scholar who brilliantly brought the crowd into roars of passion with her litany: "Mr. President, if you learned in Sunday school as I did that God is love — WHERE IS THE LOVE in your war? WHERE IS THE LOVE in your hostility to gay marriage? WHERE IS THE LOVE in your contempt for the poor?" —

And Cornel West, and Imam Talib Rashid of Harlem, and Rabbi Michael Lerner (who challenged people to look at the past failings of both the religious community and the Left), and Cindy Sheehan, and Celeste Zappala, and — and — and —

Rev Sekou deserves ENORMOUS applause for pulling it together. And for his own impassioned sermon. And for his leading people again and again in singing "This little light of mine."

And then — Sunday. The "White House 370," led by Clergy & Laity Concerned About Iraq (again, Sekou's organizing) and at least a thousand people backing us up with songs, chants, bottles of water, as we crossed the line from dissent to resistance. The brilliantly creative and down-to-earth practical work of the Pledge of Resistance and the Nonviolent Civil Resistance Committee bearing fruit.

Radical amazement. Love. Unity.

This must not be the culmination, but only the next step, in our journey to peace, to healing of the earth, to empowering the poor, to broadening social justice.

What next? Another day for that.
Today, just for a moment, dayenu! — To celebrate a spiritual victory.
Today that joy is enough for us.

Today — and then, and then, there will be tomorrow ------
Shalom, Arthur

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Radical amazement; resurgent hope -- deep thanks

Submitted by Elizabeth Gonzalez (not verified) on Wed, 10/12/2005 - 14:56.

Thank you, R. Arthur Waskow and R. David Shneyer (the two Washington participants with whom I am personally acquainted) for continuing this brave and necessary work.

I have no doubt that Arthur's remarks to the assembled congregations (his invocation, kiddush, etc.) were deeply moving, as always. And I know from David's visits to Chicago that mix of substantive strength and genuine sweetness he emanates -- like a kind of Jewish bodhissatva, or perhaps (with Arthur, with other crafters of that mighty wind, the post-Rabbinic-Age Renewal movement)one of this generation's genuine tzaddikim: heavenbent on social justice and tikkun olam; illumined from within -- which Arthur describes so lyrically here.

No one who has sung with David, to his exceptional accompaniment -- ancient liturgies of our Fathers, soft Breslover nigunim, contemporary Jewish-folk-eclectic compositions so powerful as to fill a compact contemporary living room or a rambling old family house with the harmonies and cadences of Hope (each tentative, perhaps even shy individual emboldened to sing out by the warm proximity of other voices, amidst a group of transported fellow chaverim/chaverot) will soon forget David's gifts, or his special quality of "soul."

If Arthur, too, makes "literal" music these days, I have not been privileged to hear him play or sing; but there is always such music, a sort of flowing poetic subtext, even to his prose -- his prolific essays, lectures, outcries, journalistic and analytic accounts such as this one -- online or offline, in *New Menorah* or *Tikkun* or his series of thoughtful books (as solo Godwrestling author, as a kind of memoirist-duo with his brother, and, more recently, with Phyllis Ocean Waskow, as co-author of a delightful guide to making and marking our most crucial life-passages), and even in a succinct yet powerful one-line email reminding a friend to have hope -- to take heart.

I trust that both of you -- and all of you -- are well, in the aftermath of the arrests and other rigors described here. That you are still, as always, "alive and kicking" -- in this week during which we confront (1) in the secular realm: a radically reconstructed Supreme Court, the imminence of possible indictments involving the highest centers of U.S. federal power, and the enormity of natural disasters far and wide (as if in counterpoint to the unnatural disasters of Iraq . . . of obscenely growing socioeconomic disparities . . . of the wholesale discarding of young children, among others, through inadequate shelter and nutrition and day care and health care. . . of the chronic fiscal terror of their parents, working two or more minimum-wage jobs simply to make the next rent payment . . . of the continuing massive destruction of this very earth with which each of us is entrusted for only a few short years, charged with nurturing and tending, with caring for and conserving, this rich planet which could and should support with its bounty, inspire with its beauty, untold generations to come . . .); (2) in the realm of the spirit, this annual sober self-delving, Erev Yom Kippur, interwoven with our cyclical Jewish autumnal yearning and striving toward every variety of redemption and renewal.

For those of us who, by virtue of physical disability and chronic pain or other interruptions and preoccupations, are only just beginning to find our feet again -- are taking that first gingerly, tentative step of the return to community involvement, to havurah or synagogue, to regular chevrusa, to marching and dancing -- who are turning again, and yet again, in the ever-ongoing process of a fervently sought teshuvah -- I thank you from my depths. I thank Arthur and David, as well as the diverse activist visionaries and luminaries depicted in this account: for being our feet . . . and our song . . . and our shofar.

G'mar Tov. May this year bring even more "intensity" to our lives. Going soon to light the candles for Yom Tov, to give my son the lovely new bracha for the children that I learned from Marcia Falk's *Book of Blessings,* I turn also to Arthur's poem "Nishmat," appearing on pp. 153-154 of the anthology *Traditions* (New York: Hyperion, Copyright 1998, The Book Laboratory, Inc.). I will remember always that it was Arthur who first taught me a way through "Melech ha'Olam" to the liberating "Ruach ha'Olam." His poem reads, in part: "You are the breathing that gives life to all the worlds./And we do the breathing that gives life to all the worlds./As we breathe out what the trees breathe in,/And the trees breathe out what we breathe in,/So we breathe each other into life,/We and You./YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh."

Yes. This too. A year of more marching, and more dancing, and also much more breathing-into-life of each other, as we are breathed reciprocally, interdependently: as the Ruach breathes us (as your report from Washington has breathed me today) . . .A year of good breathing, healthy breathing, mindful breathing . . . A year of breathing some pure, refreshing, pristine air, even now; even here . . . A year of breathing sweetly, robustly, hopefully together, giving ever more life to all the worlds . . . .

Elizabeth Rasche Gonzalez
(Chicago)

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