The Shalom Center - Justice and Gender

The Oven that Coiled Like a Snake

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:44:14 -0500

By Rabbi Phyllis Berman & Rabbi Arthur Waskow

[This story is from their book TALES OF TIKKUN: NEW JEWISH STORIES TO HEAL THE WOUNDED WORLD. It is available from Rowman & Littlefield or from The Shalom Center, 6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia PA; Send a check for $13.95.]

On a warm spring evening in the town of Yavneh, dinner had just begun in the home of Imma Shalom and her husband Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. Now Imma Shalom was, as her name said, “Mother Peace.” When people came to her with arguments to settle, she would often say, “In my parents’ house I learned the Torah that ‘Both these words and those words are words of the Living God.’ But this is not enough. For if God is One, these words must somehow mean one thing. Let us learn the wisdom of this Unity.” So she would gently show how two different ways of understanding Torah could be brought into harmony.

Emerging Torah of Same-Sex Marriage

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:46:07 -0400

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Twice in the Torah portion of "Acharei mot" we are told, "You shall not lie with a man as in lying with a woman." (Lev. 18: 22 and 20: 13). Today this has become perhaps the world's most contentious Torah teaching, far beyond the Jewish people.

Some have argued it prohibits all male-male sexuality. Others have argued that the verse must mean something else, for this "lying with" seems anatomically impossible. Is it only about casual or ritual homosexuality, not committed relationships? How did some of the greatest rabbis of the "Golden Age" in Spain write glowing erotic poems about male-male sex?

Trafficking in Women & Sexual Enslavement: A Letter to the U.S. Senate

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:10:22 -0500

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center, has (along with many other religious, activist, and other leaders), signed the following letter to Senators, initiated by the National Black Leadership Roundtable

February XX, 2008
Senator ______________
___________ Senate Office Building
Washington D.C. 20510

Dear Senator ________,
The United States is on the verge of a momentous breakthrough in redressing the slavery and, in many respects, the woman’s issue of our time. This is so because HR 3887, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007, adopted by the House on December 4 by overwhelming vote and now referred to your Committee, is an instrument that will protect millions of vulnerable and enslaved girls, women and children within our borders and throughout the world.

Hajj, Saudi Arabia, Rape, & Prayer: A Muslim Feminist Outcry

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:12:11 -0500

A Long Request For a Special Prayer During Special Days

by Khalilah Sabra of Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation *

As the Day of Arafat approaches, many of us will fast and pray that we be released from the punishment of our sins. This is a good thing. I will be doing a lot of this myself. I’ve certainly done my share of things I’d rather forget.

But this year, I will do something different and I hope you all will do the same. I hope that we will pray for even those things that seem beyond our condition to change and ask Allah to forgive us for accepting terrible things as a way of life just because it is easier and perhaps we are not experiencing them directly. Pray to Allah to help us recognize that no matter how many goals we frame and how much analysis we give to unfair structures, they will not change unless we take it upon ourselves to get up out of our chairs and do something about.

The Pope, the War, Modernity, & Sex

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 01:00:00 -0400

Rabbi Arthur Waskow *, 4/7/2005

What did John Paul II intend, and what did he accomplish, in his long reign?

First, a personal vignette of my own. During the pre-war crisis of early 2002, some American activists who opposed the war knew that the Po

NEEDED: Clergy support, legal brief on same-sex marriage

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 12:20:47 -0500

Chris Cormier & Ted Jacobs, Esq., 3/24/2005

Dear Rabbinic Chevra,

I am enclosing here an invitation for us as individual rabbis to join in an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief favoring the legitimacy of civil-governmental same-sex marriages, and if we wish, to encourage our congregations to join as a body in the brief.

The Conservative Movement's Double Standard

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 01:00:00 -0500

Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, 2/11/2005

The Forward
February 11, 2005

For more than a decade, the Conservative movement has proclaimed its welcoming attitudes toward gay and lesbian Jews. As evidence, Conservative leaders have often cited the movements 1992

The Conservative Movement's Double Standard

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 01:00:00 -0500

Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, 2/11/2005

The Forward
February 11, 2005

For more than a decade, the Conservative movement has proclaimed its welcoming attitudes toward gay and lesbian Jews. As evidence, Conservative leaders have often cited the movements 1992