Arthur Waskow

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Arthur Ocean Waskow, born Arthur I. Waskow, (born 1933, Baltimore) is an American author, political activist, and rabbi associated with the Jewish Renewal movement.

1 Education and early career
2 Religious initiatives
3 Controversial positions
4 Bibliography
5 External links
6 References

[edit] Education and early career

Waskow received a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University (1954) and an M. A. and Ph.D. in US history. He worked from 1959 to 1961 as legislative assistant to Congressman Robert Kastenmeier of Wisconsin^[1]. He was a senior staff member at the Peace Research Institute from 1961 until 1963 when he helped merge it into the Institute For Policy Studies. He joined Richard Barnet and Marcus G. Raskin the founders of the self described "radical think-tank" the Institute For Policy Studies, and rose to prominence as one of its most active leaders ^[2].

In 1967 Waskow was co-author with Marcus Raskin of the anti-draft " Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority."

In 1968 he was elected an alternate delegate from the District of Columbia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. His delegation was pledged to support Robert Kennedy, and when Kennedy was killed, Waskow proposed and the delegation agreed to nominate Rev. Channing Phillips, chair of the delegation, for President -- the first Black person ever so nominated at a major party convention.

He was a contributing editor to the leftist periodical Ramparts Magazine, which published his Freedom (Passover) Seder in 1969. He was active in the establishment of the National Conference for New Politics. He was arrested a number of times from 1963 on for sit-ins or protests against racial segregation, investment in South African apartheid, the Vietnam war, and the Soviet Union's oppression of Jews, and later in protests against the Iraq war.

[edit] Religious initiatives

In 1969, Waskow wrote what he described as a Freedom Seder, and since then has taken a leadership role in the Jewish Renewal movement. He wrote Godwrestling(1978) and Seasons of Our Joy (1982). He founded (1978) and edited the journal Menorah (later New Menorah). From 1985 till 2005 he was a leader of B'nai Or/ P'nai Or/ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. He was ordained a rabbi in 1995.

He founded (1983) and directs The Shalom Center, a network that "voices a new prophetic agenda in Jewish, multireligious, and American life in order to seek peace, pursue justice, and heal the earth in ways grounded in Jewish thought and practice."

Waskow taught in the religion departments at Swarthmore, Vassar, Drew, and Temple and from 1982 to 1989 at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Since 1992 he has taught at Elat Chayyim, the transdenominational Jewish retreat center in the Catskills.

Waskow is author or editor of nineteen books, and founded and from 1978 to 2002 edited the journal New Menorah. He is an occasional contributor to the Jerusalem Report, Philadelphia inquirer, Tikkun magazine, and Philadelphia Jewish Voice.

[edit] Controversial positions

Some of Waskow's positions on religious and political issues, and his interpretations of Jewish traditions, have provoked controversy and drawn elements from more conservative quarters of the Jewish community ^[3]

Pointing to the implications of the Jubilee year for the peaceful and meditative redistribution of land, Waskow has argued that prophetic Judaism contains elements of social vision that have reappeared in some aspects of Marxism and some aspects of Buddhism^[4].

Waskow has been a strong critic of Israeli policies in the West Banks and Gaza. He is opposed to the Second Iraq War, citing what he describes as Jewish religious grounds. He has supported the positions of Cindy Sheehan. Waskow has said he has found no evidence of Sheehan making anti-Israel statements attributed to her ^[5].

Though a critic of the environmental policies of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Waskow has disagreed with claims that Chávez is anti-Semitic, pointing out that his critical comments on ". . .some minorities, descendants of those who crucified Christ, descendants of those who threw Bolívar out of here . . .took the world's riches for themselves. . ." were referring not to the Jews but to the heirs of the Roman Empire that crucified Jesus and of the Spanish empire that attacked Bolivar -- that is, to the US empire of today ^[6].

In 1996, Waskow was named by the United Nations a “Wisdom Keeper” among forty religious and intellectual leaders who met in connection with the Habitat II conference in Istanbul. He was presented the Abraham Joshua Heschel Award by the Jewish Peace Fellowship and in 2005 was named by the Forward newspaper one of the "Forward Fifty" leaders of American Jewry.

Waskow has taught as a Visiting Professor in the religion departments of Swarthmore College (1982-83, on the thought of Martin Buber and on the Book of Genesis and its rabbinic and modern interpretations); Temple University (1975-76 on contemporary Jewish theology and 1985-86, on liberation theologies in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam); Drew University (1997-1998, on the ecological outlooks of ancient, rabbinic, and contemporary Judaism and on the synthesis of mysticism, feminism, and social action in the theology and practice of Jewish renewal); Vassar College (1999 on Jewish Renewal and Feminist Judaism); and from 1982 to 1989 on the faculty of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (contemporary theology and practical rabbinics).

[edit] Bibliography

The Limits of Defense (Doubleday, 1962).
The Worried Man's Guide to World Peace: A Peace Research Institute Handbook (Doubleday Anchor, 1963).
America in Hiding: The Fallout Shelter Mania (Ballantine, 1963)
The Debate Over Thermonuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath and Company, 1966).
From Race Riot to Sit-in, 1919 and the 1960's: A Study in the Connections Between Conflict and Violence (Doubleday, 1966; Doubleday Anchor, 1967).
The Freedom Seder: A New Haggadah for Passover (Micah Press, 1969; Holt-Rinehart-Winston and Micah Press, 2d edition, 1970).
Running Riot: A Journey Through Official Disasters and Creative Disorders
in American Society (Herder and Herder, 1970).
The Bush Is Burning (Macmillan, 1971).
Godwrestling (Schocken, 1978).
Seasons of Our Joy (Bantam, 1982; 2d ed., Summit, 1985, Beacon, 1990; 3d ed., Beacon, 1991).
These Holy Sparks: The Rebirth of the Jewish People (Harper and Row, 1983).
David Waskow, and Shoshana Waskow, Before There Was A Before (Adama Books, 1984).
"Preface" and "The Rainbow Seder," in The Shalom Seders, gathered by New Jewish Agenda (Adama Books, 1984).
Becoming Brothers (with Howard Waskow; Free Press, 1993).
Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life (William Morrow, 1995).
Godwrestling Round 2 : Ancient Wisdom, Future Paths (Jewish Lights, 1996)
Tales of Tikkun: New Jewish Stories to Heal the Wounded World (with Rabbi Phyllis Berman; Jason Aronson, 1996)
Trees, Earth, and Torah: A Tu B'Shvat Anthology (Jewish Publication Society, 1999).
Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought (Jewish Lights, 2000).
A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Journey (with Rabbi Phyllis Berman; Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002).
The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, & Muslims (co-authored with Sister Joan Chittister OSB and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chisti (Neil Douglas-Klotz; Beacon 2006)