The Shalom Center - Festival Spiral

The Sukkah & the World Trade Center

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:11:19 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow*
(Written on Sept.12, 2001).

When the Jewish community celebrates the harvest festival, we build "sukkot."

What is a "sukkah"? Just a fragile hut with a leafy roof, the most vulnerable of houses. Vulnerable in time, where it lasts for only a week each year. Vulnerable in space, where its roof must be not only leafy but leaky -- letting in the starlight, and gusts of wind and rain.

In the evening prayers, we plead with God -- "Ufros alenu sukkat shlomekha" -- "Spread over all of us Your sukkah of shalom."

Why a sukkah?-- Why does the prayer plead to God for a "sukkah of shalom" rather than God's "tent" or "house" or "palace" of peace?

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

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:16:41 -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.

Conjoining MLK & Inauguration Day: Relearning Heschel, Rebirthing King, Re-Inaugurating America, Jan. 14, 19, 20, 2009

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:41:19 -0500

(Rabbi Arthur Waskow for The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah)

Relearning Heschel, Rebirthing King, Re-Inaugurating America:
Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Day
As a new government takes office,
January 19-20, 2009>

As Barack Obama becomes President and a new Congress takes office in January 2009, there is a remarkable opportunity to bring together large sections of American society to reflect on our history and our future. The opportunity is strengthened by the fact that the day before Inauguration day (Tuesday, January 20) is Martin Luther King's Birthday. And January 14 is the yohrzeit (death-anniversary) of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dr. King's close friend and ally.

Burning and Yearning: Hiroshima & the Ancient Holy Temples

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:55:09 -0400

Each hot mid-summer, we see again how Jewish theology and practice is one (not the only) microcosm for universal experience.

In this case, it is our sorrow for our burning earth, for our own hearts burning with acts of personal and social self-destruction -- and our yearning for new hope and transformation. (See two litanies of sorrow and yearning, below.)

In mid-summer, when scorching winds heated by the Arabian desert sweep across what today are Jordan, Palestine, and Israel, Jewish tradition observes a day of sorrow for the Destruction –- the burning -- of both ancient Holy Temples in Jerusalem, first by the Babylonian and then by the Roman Empire.

"Certain Unalienable Rights": the Torah of July 4

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:08:44 -0400

Dear friends,

From July 4, 1974 on, in creative Jewish circles there has been a tradition of honoring the Fourth of July as a sacred festival, and the Declaration of Independence as a sacred text.

This practice does not treat the day narrowly as a US national holiday but as a step beyond national affirmation toward a universal consciousness, and treats the Declaration as a great step forward in the efforts of the human race as a whole to make real one strand of biblical tradition. That is the teaching that commands us to limit the power of rulers and encourage the holy work of an enlightened people making enlightened decisions.

Blessing the Sun: Looking Forward: April 8, 2009

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:27:43 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Early in the morning of April 8, 2009, Jewish communities will have a teaching opportunity that comes only once every 28 years: the festival of Birchat HaChamah, the Blessing of the Sun.

In ancient rabbinic tradition, it commemorates the moment when God created the sun in the first place. In modern practice, it fits well into today's crisis of global "scorching" and the search for sun-based sources of sustainable and renewable energy. So spiritual communities other than Judaism might well join in blessing the sun on that day -- and during the months before and after.

Blessing the sun: looking backward: April 8, 1981

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:39:27 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

Early in the morning of April 8, 1981, I gathered with several hundred other people at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC, to watch the sun rise and to bless it in what is surely the rarest and perhaps the oddest of all Jewish ceremonies -- Birchat HaChamah, the Blessing of the Sun, that comes only once every 28 years. It commemorates, according to ancient tradition, the moment when God created the sun in the first place.

And the moment will come again less than a year from now, on April 8, 2009. (The morning of the day before the first night of Passover.)

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.

Passover of the Nations: Haggadot to Heal the World

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:44:03 -0400

The Exodus from Pharaoh's tyranny, the Passover Seder that recalls it, and the Haggadah ("Telling") that guides the Seder are at the heart of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood. So it is not surprising that efforts to renew Judaism have, beginning in 1969, created a number of new Passover Seder rituals that are deliberately focused on healing some aspect of the wounded world.

Some remain available for those who are seeking to shape their own Haggadot and want to draw on them. (This not only includes Jews with a creative outlook on their own tradition, but increasing numbers of people from other spiritual paths who find some wisdom and empowerment in the Seder.)

Dancing Freedom in the Passover Seder

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:44:41 -0400

Please feel free ("feeling free" is what Pesach is all about!) to forward this post as you please. If you like any of these suggestions, please also note our request for your support and use the coupon at the end of the post to help out. And we'd welcome you to our Website. Thanks!!

We are sending seven different moments or practices for you to considering adding to your Pesach celebration.

Blessings for a sweet and liberating Pesach for you and for the world --
Arthur
*******************************

A. The Freedom Plate

Several years ago, Martha Hausman proposed that a special plate be set aside next to the traditional Seder plate, on which could be placed physical objects brought by every participant in the Seder as a symbol of her/ his liberation THIS YEAR from Mitzraiim.

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.

Passover, Earth Day, & the Global Climate Crisis: Seder Supplement

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:45:24 -0400

Dear Chevra,

It is the third day of the moonth of Nisan. We have just opened our eyes to the glimmer of the new moon, birthing the
moonth when -- in two weeks, at the full moon -- we not only remember and
reenact the ancient liberation from the top-down, unaccountable power of
Pharaoh, but take responsibility to free ourselves as well. All of us, all
earth and all humanity.

As the Passover Haggadah says, "In every generation, every human being must
go forth to freedom."

This year, Passover begins the night of April 19 and includes Earth Day on
April 22. And today, the greatest danger of destructive plagues comes from

Rebirthing Trees, Sharing God's Abundance, Healing the Earth

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:02:28 -0500

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

[This essay includes some action steps you could choose to undertake as part of your Tu B'Shvat/ Birthday of the Trees celebration, or could undertake independently. Two sample letters on public policy are at the end of this essay.]

Wouldn't it seem strange if you heard that mystics had transformed April 15, Income Tax Day, into a festival for celebration of God's reemergence?

Yet that is what the Kabbalists of Safed did in the sixteenth century when they recreated Tu B’Shvat. Tu B’Shvat, the full moon of mid-winter, had been important only in Holy Temple days, in the calendar of tithing. It was the end of the “fiscal year” for trees. Fruit that appeared before that date was taxed for the previous year; fruit that appeared later, for the following year.

Martin Luther King, Trees, & the EPA

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:03:10 -0500

Last week I suggested that we plan actions on Tu B'Shvat, the Jewish midwinter festival of the rebirth of trees (and of the earth in general) , to address the recent destructive actions by the director of the Environmental Protection Agency.

He stopped efforts by the states to curb CO2 emissions from autos and thus reduce the danger we are facing from the global climate crisis.

A number of letters have come to us, supporting the idea. This letter suggests ways of carrying the message to EPA offices in eleven cities across America.

Religious Background: Monday, January 21, is the official day for celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday. At about 4:30 that afternoon begins the celebration of Tu B'Shvat. (The day before is exactly one year before the inauguration of the next President of the United States.)

Tu B’Shvat, the Climate Crisis and the Tree of Light; A Green Menorah Supplement for Your Tu B’Shvat Seder

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:04:02 -0500

Prepared by Rabbi Jeff Sultar
Director, Green Menorah Covenant campaign of The Shalom Center
http://www.shalomctr.org greenmenorah@shalomctr.org 215/ 438-2983

Tu B'Shvat is coming -- the evening of January 21. It celebrates the rebirthing of trees in the midst of winter, and in the mystical tradition of Kabbalah, also the reawakening of Divine energy with God seen metaphorically as the Tree of Life, with Its roots in Heaven and Its fruit, ourselves -- the universe.

Below you will find the text of a pamphlet that you can download as a supplement for you to use in holding a Tu B'Shvat Seder or giving a sermon on the Birthday of the Trees. Cut, paste, and click here for a PDF version that you can download and print as a four-page pamphlet: