The Shalom Center - Spirituality of Justice

MLK Day Litany of Ashes, Stones, & Flowers: Militarism, Racism, & Materialism

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:22:01 -0500

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

By Rev. Patricia Pearce, Tabernacle United Church, Philadelphia

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,

Order of Service & Teach-in, MLK Day, Jan 19, 2008

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:19:50 -0500

LITURGICAL SCENARIO FOR MLK BIRTHDAY OBSERVANCE,
EVE OF INAUGURATION DAY, 2009

(From Rabia Harris, Muslim Peace Fellowship, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center)

: Remember we awant people to stay interested, be moved, get motivated, have fun, and draw closer together. We are assuming that programs, including the text of the pledge, will be distributed at the door.)

Introduction Coming Together Summoning of the People According to the Traditions Blowing of the Shofar Ringing of Church Bells Muslim Call to Prayer Buddhist bells, etc.

Elections, Kings, Wars, & Justice

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:38:59 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

As the American people faces up to the challenges of the extraordinary Presidential and Congressional election of 2008, this week's Torah portion (Shoftim) offers some profound and precise standards for deciding what to do.

This election is only slightly extraordinary because a woman and a Black person are on the national tickets. Much more extraordinary are the profound issues of centralized power and democratic process that we face.

First off, the Torah portion asserts (Deut.16: 20), "Justice, justice shall you pursue. " Why "justice" twice? To remind us that "Just results can only be achieved by just means." Even the pursuit by any political party or candidate of goals they fervently affirm are "just" cannot be done by suppressing voter turnout or by assassinating the characters of their opponents.

Flashes of Light from the unkosher dark of Postville, Iowa

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:02:29 -0400

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.

Toward a Jubilee Economy & Ecology in the Modern World

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:38:58 -0400

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?

Jeremiahs Old & New: Wright & "wrong"

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:16:57 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

When you live in a country that for a week has been transfixed by the furious denunciations of America by Pastor Jeremiah Wright and furious denunciations of Pastor Jeremiah by much of America --

-- it is startling to read the original Jeremiah -- especially when his own furious denunciations of his own country are emblazoned for the special sacred Prophetic reading the same week.

(In Jewish tradition, on each Shabbat is read a portion of the Torah [the "Five Books of Moses"] and a Prophetic passage chosen long ago by the rabbis to underline or sometimes confront the message of the Torah portion.)

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.

MLK, LBJ, & GRASS-ROOTS CHANGE: PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS THROUGH SPIRITUAL EYES

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:48:58 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

In the present Presidential campaign, suddenly the question has arisen whether Martin Luther King or Lyndon Baines Johnson was more responsible for passage of the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s.

I was there, folks: working on Capitol Hill and then in the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive research/action center. And the answer is – both MLK and LBJ were responsible – AND one might add with some exaggeration, NEITHER. .

The "NEITHER" part -- even though I'm overstating it -- is the most important. The people MOST responsible were, in the beginning, dozens, then hundreds, finally thousands and hundreds of thousands – of grass-roots activists.

40TH ANNIVERSARY INTERFAITH FREEDOM SEDER, MARCH 29, 2009: A SEDER FOR THE EARTH

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:06:56 -0500

By Arlene Goldbard & Rabbi Arthur Waskow
[Goldbard is a writer and expert on cultural change and is chair of the Board of the Shalom Center; Waskow is its Executive Director.]

In every generation, Pharaoh;
In every generation, Freedom

INTRODUCTION

The Shalom Center will hold a Fortieth Anniversary Interfaith Freedom Seder on March 29, 2009, ten days before Passover, two weeks before Easter, and less than a week before the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's death, infusing each of these events with new energy and depth.

A flagship Seder in Washington, DC, will draw national attention to the project, highlighting the many local Fortieth Anniversary Freedom Seders held simultaneously in communities around the U.S., uniting people of all faiths and races who love justice in a common dedication to equality, to a fair and humane economy and to peace.

Can Agriprocessors Do T'shuvah?"

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:07:36 -0400

Rabbi David Seidenberg

Following on the heels of the recent Forward article(1) about
conditions for Agriprocessors' Brooklyn workers, the Times reports
that Agriprocessors is asking the Supreme Court to deny workers in
their Brooklyn distribution center the right to unionize because they
are "not documented workers and not allowed to work." According to the
Times, Agriprocessors claimed "to have just discovered that…the
workers were illegal immigrants," just a few days after the 2005 union
vote.(2) An image comes immediately to my mind: Captain Renault in
Casablanca declaring, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is

Meta-ethical questions in the Agriprocessors debate

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:33:47 -0400

BY RABBI HYIM SHAFNER

The current uproar in the Jewish community regarding Agriprocessors
(Rubashkin kosher meat products) is disturbing. I do not profess inside knowledge of
the company and its management. I do not know the extent to which they are
guilty or innocent of the violations of which they have been widely accused,
violation of labor and immigration laws and of environmental protection regulations,
as well as disregard for human dignity and issues regarding animal pain.

I would like to pose several questions. What instruction does Judaism offer
when the welfare of laborers is in conflict with the welfare and monetary risk

In Memory: Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian National Poet

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:59:19 -0400

Mahmoud Darwish, known as the great national poet of Palestine, died on August 10, 2008. Great outpourings of people came to bury him in Ramallah, Palestine, and in the Israeli region of Galilee, where many Israelis of Palestinian culture live. This memorial essay was written by Uri Avnery, one of the most persistent of Israeli peace activists, one of the wisest and most revered, a former Member of Knesset, editor and publisher for many years of the newsweekly Ha'Olam Hazeh, now leader of Gush Shalom.

The Anger, the Longing, the Hope

[See the end of this essay for a few poems by Darwish and then a comment by Rabbi Arthur Waskow.]

Be comforted, My people!

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:06:31 -0400

After mourning the disastrous destructions of two ancient Temples in Jerusalem, Jewish tradition calls us to recite the words of Isaiah:

"Be comforted, be comforted, My people." ("Nachamu, nachamu, ami")

Today, as an American with both my own personal roots in learning and living our American history, and my own roots in Jewish spiritual wisdom, I feel like chanting that passage.

For the last seven years, our Holy Temple -- the Declaration of Independence , the Constitution, and our unsteady progress toward a real democracy -- has been deeply damaged (not yet destroyed) by the present government of the United States. Our unsteady progress has been not merely paralyzed, but reversed. I have had to ask myself the dreadful question, can it be renewed, rebirthed?

Revered New Jersey Imam, Facing Deportation, Has Interfaith Support

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:30:18 -0400

Revered New Jersey Imam, Facing Deportation, Has Interfaith Support
By TINA KELLEY and ELIZABETH DWOSKIN

NY Times April 24, 2008

PATERSON, N.J. — For a dozen years, Mohammad Qatanani has supported the members of the Islamic Center of Passaic County by speaking at funerals, hashing out ethical dilemmas and sometimes opening his home to domestic-violence victims at a moment’s notice.

But now Dr. Qatanani, 44, the imam of the mosque here, requires the support of the members: he has been barred by federal immigration authorities from renewing his driver’s license, and must call on friends to ferry him to hospitals for visits with the sick among his flock. There are fund-raisers for him at the mosque. And after Friday prayers, the hugs the men give him seem to last extra long.

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.