The Shalom Center - What is Jewish Renewal?

The Spirituality of the Future by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Fri, 09 May 2008 04:34:34 -0400

Toward a New and Kerygmatic Credo
Zalman M. Schachter Shalomi

Chair of World Wisdom;
The Naropa Institute
Boulder CO.

This essay is a plea for research into the spirituality of the future and invitation for collaboration to bring this about.

Much of my perspective is based on my devotion to the Ribbono shel Olam, the divine Life-Spirit of Gaia. I come from a deeply spiritual Jewish formation in which the values of Tikkun Olam (Healing the planet) and the biblical command of Bal Tash’hit (not to destroy any natural resources) are an essential and constant feature.

In some ways I am on one foot, one of the last Mohicans of pre-holocaust Jewish mysticism and on the other foot I stand on concern with our future. Not only the future of our Jewish people and the continuity of its tradition and lineage but with the global future, our survival as humans on their way to the Great and divinizing metamorphosis.

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.)

Steroids, Waterboarding, Global Scorching, War: One Root??

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 06:19:26 -0500

Athletes use steroids to pump up their muscles so they can hit harder, throw harder -- beat the "enemy" team and individual record-holders, outdo Babe Ruth. -- Doing this bends your body to your own will, damaging it -- even torturing it -- in order to win, to control.

Waterboarding -- repeated drownings -- and other forms of torture shatter someone's else's body to break his mind and soul to obey your will.

Global scorching tortures the earth, chokes the Divine Breathing Spirit of all life -- our atmosphere, our climate -- in order to satisfy the unsatisfiable thirst for oil, for a dominant economy, for others to obey your will and bow to your wealth.

New Curriculum & Ceremony for Teens on Climate Crisis : ELIJAH'S COVENANT BETWEEN THE GENERATIONS

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:49:53 -0400

The Shalom Center has published a curriculum and ceremony for Bar/ Bat Mitzvah and confirmation-age youth and families, on how the younger and older generations can work together to heal the earth from the dangers of global climate crisis. Below you will find testimonials about it from leaders of Jewish education and action. Below that you will find a coupon for ordering copies of the 60-page "Elijah's Covenant Between The Generations," and below that the Introduction by Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Jeff Sultar.

"Elijah's Covenant" [Brit Eliyahu] looks like an exciting and creative educational venture. Congratulations to the Shalom Center for this positive contribution toward raising environmental awareness among Jewish young people."

What Avraham Burg is Really Saying

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:28:13 -0400

Avraham Burg’s New Zionism
in The Forward
By J.J. Goldberg | Wed. Jun 13, 2007

Zionism has meant many things to many people over the past century. To Theodor Herzl and the founders of the Zionist movement, it meant creating a national home to gather in the Jewish people — to some minds, as a refuge from antisemitism; for others, as a fulfillment of an ancient promise. To Herzl’s great critic, the essayist Asher Ginsberg, better known as Ahad Ha’am, Zionism meant building a cultural and spiritual center in Israel to enrich the lives of Jews wherever they live.

To David Ben-Gurion and generations of Israelis after him, it meant the act of settling in Israel and building it, brick by brick. To millions of Jews around the world, it meant providing material and moral backing for that effort. To Palestinians and other Arabs, it meant assault and dispossession. To much of the outside world, it has come to mean the seed of seemingly endless conflict.

Seasons of Reinterpretation -- Transforming Passover. By J.J. Goldberg

Tue, 01 May 2007 15:27:13 -0400

JEWISH JOURNAL OF LOS ANGELES
APRIL 21, 2000 16 NISAN, 5760

Seasons of Reinterpretation

How a radical demonstration 32 years ago changed the culture of Passover

By J. J. Goldberg

The world has an odd habit, alert readers have noticed, of exploding in springtime, smack in the middle of the Season of our Liberation. Sometimes these explosions disrupt those carefully laid Passover plans in the most annoying way. At other times, Passover just gains new meaning.

It was this time last year, for instance, that Kosovo went up in flames. NATO had begun bombing the Serbian province in early April, to stop Serb outrages against ethnic Albanians. The bombings provoked worse outrages: mass expulsions, tearing at the West's conscience. Yet reactions from Washington were appallingly slow. At the time it seemed a case of blindness or worse. It turned out the problem was partly bad timing: Too many key Washington players had left town for Passover.

EXCOMMUNICATING JEWISH THINKERS, or RENEWING JEWISH CULTURE?

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:00:25 -0500

Dear friends,

One of the tactics that has been used by some elements of the official structures of American Jewish organizations has been to attempt to "excommunicate" some critics of Israel by calling them "self-hating Jews" or "enablers of anti-Semitism."

I will take up the implications of the "self-hating Jew" epithet in another letter. On the other accusation, there was recently a firestorm when the American Jewish Committee attacked a number of progressive Jews as enablers of anti-Semitism. In response there has come a wave of civil-liberties-style criticism of the AJCom for these smears.

The Nazirite in us all: Ego, Anokhi, Samson, & Abuse

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 20:37:54 -0400

When Philadelphia P'nai Or's Shabbat-morning Torah-study group gathered to learn Torah on Shabbat Naso (June 2006), something unexpected happened:

As we studied the teachings in Numbers 6 and in the Haftarah about the consecrated role of Nazirite, we found ourselves addressing what happens when a spiritual teacher turns to sexually abusing students and staff subordinates.

The learning was at two levels – in process and in content.

Process first:

When I lead Torah-study, my usual mode is inter-experiential, in which I "weave" more than I "teach," and wisdom arises from the kahal (grass-roots community) rather than through my imposing my interpretation.

Obviously, this is oceans away from a teacher's literally jumping up and down to drive the kahal "higher," and then using the aura of his "hyper-highness" to – you might say – "jump the bones" of students.

The Judaism of survival no longer works

Sun, 21 May 2006 12:38:40 -0400

By Yair Caspi

[Caspi teaches a course of his own creation called "Psychology in Judaism," and for the past three years has run a program by that name at the Cymbalista Jewish Heritage Center at Tel Aviv University. This is a one-year program for studying Judaism, designed mainly for psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers. He calls his unique concoction "God-centered psychology." This article (which appeared in Haaretz, May 128, 2006) is in a sense a late discovery of what in the US we have for about 30 years been calling "Jewish renewal", and from our perspective it may be surprising that he imagines it will start or should start from Israeli society. That aside, it is a thoughtful exploration of what Judaism needs to become. === AW, editor]

Ecstasy, Frenzy, Domination, and Sexual Abuse in Spirit's Name

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 18:57:33 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Today (May 2006) as on some occasions before, we face the discovery that a respected teacher with great spiritual gifts has turned them to the service of sexual abuse.

We face the rediscovery that a spiritual teacher may think he is deepening a community into ecstasy when he is actually only stimulating it into frenzy, in which his own intensity domineers over the community's self-understanding.

And then he may use the frenzy to press his sexual desires on his students or other subordinates. Or he may create emotional and intellectual dependencies that are not quite physically sexual, but damaging all the same.

A. J. Heschel: Love or Truth?

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 16:57:43 -0500

Abraham Joshua Heschel:
Love or Truth?

By Rabbi Burt Jacobson *

The Besht’s Embrace

In 1998 Edward K. Kaplan and Samuel Dresner published Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, [Footnote: published by Yale University Press, New Haven and London] the first volume of a planned two volume work on Heschel’s life and achievements. Heschel’s life fascinated me; of course I was especially drawn to what the authors had to say about my teacher’s relation with the Ba’al Shem Tov.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was born and grew up in a Hasidic family in Warsaw, Poland. His father, Moshe Mordecai of Pelzovizna, had been a rebbe, a Hasidic spiritual master. During his childhood Reb Moshe Mordecai charmed Avrumele -- as his family called the boy -- with tales that centered around the small town of Mezbizh, where the youngster’s grandfather and namesake, Avraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apt, had served as rebbe.

Are Jewish Meditation & Social Action at Odds?

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 01:00:00 -0400

Rabbi Arthur Waskow *, 6/8/2005

American Jewish efforts to renew Judaism have been exploring new forms of tikkun olam (healing the world toward peace and social justice) and tikkun halev (healing the heart toward calm and equanimity).

In the social

Kashrut in the Industrial Age

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 01:00:00 -0500

Rabbi Adam J Frank, 2/7/2005

Dear Folks, I think this article is far too limited in both its assessment of the problems in traditional kashrut and its proposals for what to do, but I thought within its limits it might nevertheless be instructive.

A new paradigm for Judaism

Sat, 08 Sep 2001 21:46:40 -0400

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

A New Paradigm for Judaism
Bones of a Future Dinosaur

What we are doing is trying to imagine a future shape for Jewish peoplehood and spirituality as a whole. But all that we have in front of us are a few bones of