The Shalom Center - About

Contact us!

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:35:14 -0400

The Shalom Center's street address is 6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia PA 19119. Phone: 215/844-8494
For most general inquiries, please write Office@shalomctr.org
For the Green Menorah Covenant campaign, write Greenmenorah@shalomctr.org
If you need to get in touch directly with Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center, write Awaskow@shalomctr.org

The Shalom Center: A Brief History, 1983 to 2006

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 06:07:00 -0400

The Shalom Center was founded in 1983 as a division of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, then a member of the RRC faculty, who became its director, and Ira Silverman, alav hashalom, then president of RRC.

Its original mission was to address the raging nuclear arms race from a Jewish perspective. It addressed this question as the danger of a planetary ecological disaster (the "Flood of Fire," in Jewish tradition) rather than an ordinary war-peace question.

Beginning in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the diminution of the nuclear arms race, The Shalom Center refocused on other planetary ecological dangers. Waskow developed both a theology and practice of eco-Judaism and wrote several books on those questions, while The Shalom Center went forward with these issues.

Waskow: Full Bio & Selected Bibliography

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:01:01 -0500

CURRICULUM VITAE AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF ARTHUR WASKOW

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph. D., founded (in 1983) and directs The Shalom Center , a prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, and American life that brings Jewish and other spiritual thought and practice to bear on seeking peace, pursuing justice, healing the earth, and celebrating community. He edits and writes for its weekly on-line Shalom Report.

In 1996, Waskow was named by the United Nations a “Wisdom Keeper” among forty religious and intellectual leaders who met in connection with the Habitat II conference in Istanbul. In 2001, he was presented with the Abraham Joshua Heschel Award by the Jewish Peace Fellowship. In 2005, he was named by the Forward, the leading Jewish weekly in America, one of the "Forward Fifty" as a leader of the Jewish community. In 2007, he was named by Newsweek one of the fifty moist influential American rabbis, and was presented with awards and honors by groups as diverse as the Neighborhood Interfaith Movement of Philadelphia and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.

Forty Years Later: MLK, Death & Resurrection

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:48:09 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

Death and Resurrection? Christian theology, of course, centers on that rhythm. Traditional Jewish prayerbooks also praise the God Who "gives life to the dead," but most modern Jews have either deleted or bowdlerized or ignored that passage. Forty years ago, I was the kind of activist secular Jew who not only ignored that passage, but ignored the prayerbook altogether.

Yet precisely forty years ago I experienced a profound – and profoundly unexpected –- death-and-rebirth of my own self, deeply intertwined with the American agonies of that spring, that year.

Members of the Board of THE SHALOM CENTER

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:35:35 -0400

SHALOM CENTER Board, October 1, 2008

Arlene Goldbard, President and Chair
34 Seagull Drive, Richmond, CA 94804-7404
San Francisco Bay Area; organizational consultant;
Expert & author on cultural development
Former member, ALEPH board

Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, Chair Emeritus
1016 W Upsal St., Philadelphia, PA 19119
long-time former director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation;
now executive vice-president, Jewish Funds for Justice.
Wk: 215/843-4004; Hm: 215/843-4933.

Jeffrey Dekro,
Jewish Funds for Justice, 8459 Ridge Ave., 2d Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19128; Wk: (215) 483-4004,

Arthur Waskow: biography

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:33:05 -0400

Arthur Ocean Waskow was born in Baltimore on October 12, 1933 -- the real Columbus Day, a delight when he was young and much more problematic now. (He wasn’t named “Ocean” then; he and Phyllis Berman both took it as their middle name when they were married. And to his eighth-day Hebrew birth name, Avraham Yitzchak — Abraham Isaac — he added Yishmael, Ishmael, when he was 41.)

He grew up in a neighborhood that vibrated with an earthy Jewish culture, but religiously was bound by rote and boilerplate. His father's father had been an active “Shoshalist,” campaigning for Debs for President; his mother's mother's Torah was the daily reading of the Yiddish Forvaerts. His father joined in founding the Baltimore Teachers Union — then an unheard-of radical act for “professionals” to do — and both his parents were liberal activists in Americans for Democratic Action. He had a younger brother, Howard – and for much of his life, that bare statement would have been the end of the story. Not any longer.

Waskow named to "Forward 50"

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:45:11 -0500

Dear Friends,

I am tickled and pleased to report that the Forward (the nearest there is to a national Jewish weekly in the US) this past week (November 11, 2005) listed me as one of the "Forward 50" (50 American Jews who are moving the community and the world forward, I guess; at least I hope).

Their summary of my life (close enough, but not wholly accurate; I did not co-found SDS) is as follows:

Shalom, Arthur

FORWARD
Forward 50
November 11, 2005

THE PUBLIC SQUARE

Arthur Waskow

Most major national Jewish organizations came out in support of the Iraq war three years ago, and have been keeping their heads down ever since. Their silence amplified the voice of veteran anti-war activist Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a leader of the Jewish Renewal movement and a long-time icon of the American left.

The (Re) New Shalom Center, 2005

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:31:51 -0400

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 8/04/2005

Dear Kallahniks,
It was a joy to share with you the wonderful Kallah. I am writing to pick up on the announcements you heard of the new independent status of The Shalom Center and to ask for your help in getting started.
(Also in the P.S. I want to let you know how remarkable an unplanned miracle was Imam Fuad El-Bailey's blessing of us in the service just before the smikha ceremony Wednesday evening. More a miracle that most of us knew!)
As announced at the closing ceremony, Reb Zalman will chair the Council of Sages from several religious and spiritual traditions and communities that will help to guide our Shalom Center work.