Globalization and Economic Justice

What follows is a service for Birkat HaChamah, the traditional Jewish ceremony for Blessing of the Sun, which comes in a cycle of 28 years -- next on April 8, 2009.

Though rooted in Jewish tradition, the service invites participation by all. Its universal calling is especially apt in a generation when the world is threatened by the overuse of fossil fuels, and needs to turn toward the sun for the sources of energy to heal and sustain our lives.

This version of the service integrates support for solar energy in the Asiyah ("Actuality") world with the other three of the Four Worlds of Kabbalistic thought: the spiritual, emotional, and intellectual aspects of the ceremony.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

My life-partner Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I spent a week in Sweden at the Interfaith Summit on the Climate Crisis.

Watch the live 5-minute video of my "words of hope" for the thousand people who filled the Uppsala Cathedral, intertwining a vision of empowering ourselves and drawing on the Spirit. Then read the message just below about the FREEDOM SEDER FOR THE EARTH that the Shalom Center is organizing, and how you yourself can face the Pharaohs of today.

[I gave this talk at the opening session of the "Jews Uniting to End the War & Heal America" gathwring in New York City on November 23, 2008.-- Arthur Waskow]

Shalom, salaam, peace. For the last two years, I’ve been making it a spiritual and political practice to use all three of those words when speaking to an audience — whether all or practically all Jewish, or all or practically all Christian, or all or practically all Muslim. Our three different Abrahamic traditions have, for most of our history, acted as if we were in separate rooms. But our planet is too small and too endangered for that to continue, for us to think that only Jews, or only Christians, or only Muslims, are in any room in which we gather.

ASHES, STONES, & FLOWERS:
A LITANY ON MILITARISM, RACISM, & MATERIALISM
IN HONOR OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING

Militarism

For each vibrant life and hopeful dream that is annihilated by war and written off as necessary collateral damage,
We lift up the ashes of our pain, O God.

For the millions who go hungry or suffer sickness because bombs are more lucrative than bread and missiles are deemed more important than medicine,
We lift up the ashes of our remorse, O God.

For each mind that is forever haunted and each body that is left broken by war,

VOTING OUR VALUES
Judaism & American Life
“To be is to stand for.”
—Abraham Joshua Heschel
RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION:
A JEWISH CALL FOR JUSTICE

Judaism & American Life
Elections offer us the opportunity to reflect upon, and
to recommit ourselves to, our core values. This Jewish
non-partisan election guide is intended as catalyst for
thought and action during the 2008 election season.

The guide includes seven topics that the Righteous
Indignation staff has identified as key election issues
based on our research and in consultation with religious
and political leaders across the country. In addition, the

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Elections always seem to be about the narrowest here and now -- fluctuating polls, personalities, and policies. And indeed they are. But some elections are about something bigger, weirder, wilder. Like this one. Suppose we try looking at this election from the perspective of God and Empire -- the great rhythms of religion and power in millennia of history.

Let us begin with just a century ago. How come the real energy-centers on our present national tickets are two passionate Christians –-- one oriented to renewal and one to restoration? Not since William Jennings Bryan ("You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!") and William McKinley ("I knelt to pray for guidance on what to do about the Philippines, and heard a voice: Annex them, educate them, Christianize them!") have we had such a choice.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Hard-headed Bankers or Masters of Disaster?
Sacred Economics -- Is it Silly?
Hard-headed Economics -- Is it Breaking our Heads?

If you listen to the hard-headed people who presumably keep us prosperous, Biblical and Quranic economics are, of course, quaint and unrealistic. They're based on romantic ideas about benefiting the poor, the landless, the outcast. Good for motivating open-hearted charity; bad for making hard-headed decisions necessary to run a successful economy.

Right. Which is why the hard-headed folks have created a crazy economic yo-yo skidding on the edge of massive disaster, in which the worst-hit will of course not be the Wall Street / Washington power-houses but the rest of us.

On Sunday, November 23, at Central Synagogue in New York City, The Shalom Center, Jewish Currents, and Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring invite YOU to take part in a one-day action gathering: Jews Uniting to End the War & Heal America: Organizing for Action.

And please send this invitation to your friends.

Speakers and workshop leaders will include Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center in Washington, Rabbi Peter Knobel, president of the Reform rabbinical association, former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, Sammie Moshenberg of the National Council of Jewish Women, Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice, Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street --- - and many other luminaries of the newest and oldest generations of activist Jews. (See the day's schedule, below.)

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Most of the time, as a society we walk in darkness, wounded by walking blindly into an economic barbed-wire fence here, an environmental open manhole there. Once a generation - if we are lucky, once a decade -- there is a flash of lightning in the dark that lights up the truth of our country's politics.

For some of us, Katrina was such a flash of lightning. And now, for some of us, an allegedly kosher meatpacking plant oddly located, far from Jews, in Postville, Iowa.

Even in the dark, there is usually some prophetic voice warning of oncoming damage.

In this case, prophetic calls to apply "eco-kosher" and "ethical kosher" standards not only to food but also to such consumables as coal, oil, plastics went back to the work of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in the mid-'70s and my own book Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex and the Rest of Life in the mid-'90s.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

[This essay is a chapter in Rabbi Waskow's book Godwrestling -- Round 2 (Jewish Lights, 1996). The book is available as a free gift from The Shalom Center, personally inscribed by Rabbi Waskow as you choose, if you use the Donate Now button on the right to make a tax-deductible contribution of $180 or more.

[At the end of this essay you will find citations on teachings from the Hebrew Bible & related materials toward a Jubilee Economics and Ecologics.]::

One lesson that we have discerned from studying the story of the Flood [see a previous chapter from Godwrestling -- Round 2] is that it is profoundly necessary for us to affirm and celebrate the cycles of life if we wish to preserve the cycles of life. Are those cycles now in danger? And if so, how can we affirm them?