Personal Reflections

Understanding the World Skype

Submitted by Viv Hawkins on

In this Skype interview, Reb Arthur Waskow responds in an interview by Rabbi David Jay Kaufman of Des Moines, Iowa, and others; they discuss various aspects of the movement for  jewish renewal and the work of The Shalom Center,  from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi's practice of "rebbetude" to global scorching.  (Interview begins at 1:43.)  MP3 audio file is also available here for li

VIDEO: Radicals, Radishes, and the Spiritual Root of Social Action

Submitted by Viv Hawkins on

Reb Arthur talks with Rev. Joan Brown Campbell at the Chautauqua Institition about personal, political, and spiritual radicalism --  demonstrating the connection between them in our lives, in Torah, midrash, and more.  "Radishes" and "radicals" are from the Latin root for "root." What are our roots today? Are they again in spiritual traditions? On colorful video, 1 hour 11 minutes of joyful and prophetic conversation.

From Hospital Bed to DC Street Protest -- Facing the "Health Unsurance" Corporations & their dangerous behavior

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Photo of Rabbis Lerner & Waskow at DC Demo, March 11, 2010, confronting "health

Dear chevra,

This past Tuesday (March 9, 2010), I joined about 5,000 other people to fill an entire city block of Washington DC to protest at a gathering of "health unsurance" executives and lobbyists at a hotel there. The intention was to make a citizen's arrest of those executives for policies that kill people.

Religion as a Source of Peace?

Submitted by Editor on

by Rabbi Amy Eilberg, February 24, 2010
[Eilberg is a member of the Board of The Shalom Center. She was the first woman ordained as a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She directs interfaith dialog programs in the Twin Cities, including at the Jay Phillips Center for Jewish-Christian Learning and the St. Paul Interfaith Network.]

Life in Rehab: What Dies & What's Reborn

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

After seven weeks since the car crash of longing for my home, I'm finally there--starting a new phase of Rehab.

Saturday was my birthday in the Jewish calendar, and yesterday (Monday, October 12) my birthday in the Western one. Both -- the same day when I was born--are festive days, almost it seems contradictory. In Jewish time, it was the wintry festival of Shmini Atzeret, a time of inwardness when we turn from the showy fruitfulness of harvest to the secret life of the seed gone underground. In American time, it was Columbus Day, memorial of a time when a great outward burst of curiosity and exploration soured into conquest and genocide.

I have been trying to learn to hold these two impulses, inward and outward, not in balance but in a single path: "Explorer Who Can Go Home Again." Since the crash, I have been walking this path in unexpected, unplanned ways: exploring not outward but inward, exploring "new" worlds within my own body and my own heart. My weeks at Moss Rehab brought me into those new worlds. I explore them in this letter to you-all.

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