The Shalom Center - Interreligious Relations

YOM HASHOAH: MOURNERS' KADDISH IN TIME OF WAR AND VIOLENCE

Thu, 01 May 2008 23:19:33 -0400

May 1, 2008 is Yom HaShoah (the Day of Remembrance of the Nazi Holocaust), observed one day earlier in the Jewish calendar than usual, because of not wanting to observe it on Friday as Shabbat is coming into the world.

It seems especially fitting to use as the Mourners Kaddish for today a rendition in Aramaic, Hebrew, and English of the MOURNERS' KADDISH IN TIME OF WAR AND VIOLENCE that we at The Shalom Center have developed.(See three paragraphs below). Though it is of course a Jewish prayer, we offer the interpretive English translation below, in the hope it may be spiritually helpful for many people of many other traditions as well.

PURIM, GOOD FRIDAY, & 40 YEARS ABIRTHING: FROM DISASTER TO DELIGHT

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:56:51 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Today (March 21, 2008) is a strange day in the dance of sun, moon, and earth that make up the Christian and Jewish calendars.

For Christians, it is Good Friday -- the remembrance of how the Roman Empire tortured to death a great and troublesome Rabbi, and the foreshadowing of how just three days later the Rabbi was reborn into life, and there began the process by which he came to be understood as God's Own Self.

For Jews, it is Purim -- a festival of pun and paradox, in which the central text is a parody of history, telling the story of how a courageous woman and her uncle chose civil disobedience to save their people from a genocide - and won. How a pompous, stupid king is bamboozled by an ambitious, arrogant , and genocidal Prime Minister -- one might almost say, Vice-President. How everything is turned topsy-turvy, so that the gallows where a Jewish leader was to be hanged becomes the death-place of their tormentor. How God never appears in this story that might seem miraculous.

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.)

RAFFLING THE SHALOM QUILT: IN PEACE & BEAUTY I WILL SLEEP

Mon, 12 May 2008 10:53:09 -0400

RAFFLING THE SHALOM QUILT: IN WARMTH & BEAUTY I WILL SLEEP

Friends of peace & beauty –

One of the Psalms begins, "Of love & justice I will sing." Today, in the painful moments of working for peace despite a government determined on war, we need a psalm that goes –

"OF PEACE & BEAUTY I WILL SING!"

And we have one. It is a psalm in cloth – a Shalom Quilt made of dozens of T-shirts that have called out in colorful and quirky words and images for peace, justice, and the healing of our wounded earth. It is 68" x 76".

Obama, Romney, Bigotry, & Slander

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:48:52 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow,
Director of The Shalom Center

The Shalom Center by law may not, and doesn't, choose between candidates in an election. But there is no legal, ethical, or moral bar to our denouncing the use of religious slurs and slanders when they are used against any candidate. Or more than one, as is the case right now in American politics.

Indeed, we are morally REQUIRED to condemn such slanders. And so are all of us. To say it NOW, before slander casts its vote against decency and ALL America loses the Presidential election.

During the present Presidential campaign, slurs against the religious beliefs of at least two candidates -- Barack Obama and Mitt Romney -- became widespread.

Rumors & Slanders about Obama

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:39:39 -0500

DO WE HAVE CLEAN HANDS?
By Dan Shallman

** The Obama slurs and the 'empathy deficit' **

Los Angeles Jewish Journal
February 1, 2008

Last Sunday, to mark the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., Senator
Barack Obama delivered a courageous sermon at King's Ebenezer Baptist
Church in Atlanta.

Notably, after recalling our country's dismal treatment of
African-Americans throughout much of our history, Obama challenged his own
community to acknowledge the intolerance and anti-Semitism in its midst.
In so doing, he has challenged all of us -- Jews included -- to look deep
inside our own hearts and minds to break down the barriers that divide

Boycott or Dialogue? Speaking Out to Christian Ears when Israel is an Issue

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:52:10 -0500

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow*

On Tuesday, October 23, I was called by Old South Church of Boston: where the Boston Tea Party was planned. Now it is a strong, big, wealthy, and widely respected congregation with a young, vigorous head pastor. (More about her and the church later.)

The church called me because a Jewish speaker they had invited and had accepted to speak on the coming Sunday, October 28, had just canceled -- because the official Jewish institutions of Boston were unhappy with the church's decision to host a conference to be held by Sabeel, a Palestinian Christian organization that was bringing Archbishop Tutu of South Africa, Nobel peace laureate, as keynote speaker. The church was inviting me to replace the drop-out speaker. But they explained to me that if I accepted I would probably meet a cauldron of anger and criticism from the Jewish institutional officialdom of Boston.

DANCING OR DENOUNCING IN THE WORLD-WIDE EARTHQUAKE: JEWS & MUSLIMS

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:32:33 -0400

Dear friends,

For a YouTube video about the Muslim-Jewish event described here, see --
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EPdZ3hizUS0

Sometimes the earth on which we stand begins to shake, uncontrollably. We can respond with measured concern, even fear, and reach out for help to each other; or we can respond with panic and rage against anyone we think might be responsible for the earthquake. We can try to grab on to some "immovable" strong point - or we can learn to dance, with each other, in the earthquake.

Recently, some parts of the "official" established American Jewish organizational structure have been feeling they are living in a totally unexpected earthquake (see below for its description), and some have responded with panic, lashing out at some imagined "cause."

Imams, Airplanes, and my Grandmom

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:34:27 -0400

Dear Friends,

On November 20, 2006, six imams on their way home from a conference of imams were forced off a US Airways flight in handcuffs because they had been praying before entering the plane. - Though they had gone through security and in every other way had satisfied every requirement, someone on the plane wrote a note to an attendant: Their presence made him or her uncomfortable.

From left are, Imam Omar Shahin; Ibrahim Ramey, Director of Civil and Human Rights with the Muslim American Society; Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, with the National Black Leadership Roundtable; Mahdi Bray, Director of the Muslim American Society; and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia walk at Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport, Monday, Nov. 27, 2006. Imams, ministers and a rabbi staged a "pray-in" demonstration at the airport and demanded an apology from US Airways for barring six Muslims from a Minneapolis to Phoenix flight last week.(AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)

New Book: "The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope & Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims"

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:38:14 -0400

Dear Friends,

In 2004, as religious animosities worsened around the globe, I joined with Sister Joan Chittister, a world-renowned Benedictine nun, and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chisti (Neil Douglas-Klotz), a Muslim Sufi who has written a remarkable series of books on Aramaic, Gnostic, and Sufi spirituality --

-- to write a book called THE TENT OF ABRAHAM: STORIES OF HOPE AND PEACE FOR JEWS, CHRISTIANS, & MUSLIMS.

We sent the manuscript to Karen Armstrong. She was so excited by the book that she wrote a Preface for it.

It was (June 2006) published by Beacon Press and won an enthusiastic "Starred Review" from the Library Journal. That review and others are below.

Abrahamic Freedom Seder

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:34:37 -0400

New Jersey JewIsh STANDARD
Journeying together
By Elaine Kahn | Published 03/30/2006

A year ago, in Hope, N.J., Rabbi David Senter helped bring together Jews, Christians, and Muslims for a "freedom seder," honoring the historical Exodus tradition he says all three faiths treasure.

Senter then became rabbi of Cong. Beth Shalom in Pompton Lakes and planned to wait another year before introducing the innovative seder to his new congregation, he said in an interview. But during the recent controversy over the now-scuttled sale of American ports to a company in the United Arab Emirates, he heard things that disturbed him — "a fear, a paranoia" about where the purchasers were coming from, rather than "specific security concerns" — and decided not to wait.

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.

Renewal & Tradition in Islam

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:01:27 -0400

Interview with Amina Wadud *

What are the conditions for this worldwide resurgence of Islam that we're seeing today?

I guess I don't see that the resurgence of Islam is as recent as it has been popularized in the context of America. I actually see it as part of a continuum throughout Islamic history, where Islam has contracted and expanded at different times in response to a number of factors internal to Islam and external.

Obviously, this most recent resurgent movement has a strong relationship to the liberation from colonialism. And so that doesn't place it as [a] recent event in history, but somewhere in the last 50 to 70 years. ... So that would mean that, although there have been elements of this resurgence for at least 50 to 70 years, it has become more obvious globally in the last 30 to 40 years.

Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:08:02 -0500

By Robert Pigott
Religious affairs correspondent, BBC News

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion.

The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

Open Letter to Sabeel on Israel, Palestine, & American Jewry

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:13:59 -0500

February 19, 2008
From Claire E. Gorfinkel

Dear Rev. Ateek and Friends of Sabeel,
[ED. NOTE: Sabeel is a Palestinian Christian organization that advocates the use of nonviolent resistance to oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Its supporters have held a number of conferences in American cities, often to the consternation of and strong opposition from some Jewish organlzations.]

I write as a Jew who is committed to the practice of my religion, and a social change activist [who focuses on the war against Iraq and the Israel-Palestine conflict] in Los Angeles. Like Rev. Naim Ateek and my many teachers, both Christian and Jewish, I believe that my faith requires me to act for justice and peace, and the inherent preciousness of every human being informs my activism. I am ‘on record’ as supporting the prerogative of All Saints Church to host the Sabeel Conference this past weekend, even knowing that their decision evoked great anxiety, anger and fear among my fellow congregants.