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"Once & for All?" -- The Israel-Gaza War

Submitted by Editor on

By Uri Avnery, Head of Gush Shalom, former member of the Israeli Knesset, veteran peace activist committed to a two-state peace.

THE MANTRA of this round was "Once And For All."

“We must put an end to this (the rockets, Hamas, the Palestinians, the Arabs?) Once and For All!” – this cry from the heart was heard dozens of times daily on TV from the harassed inhabitants of Israel’s battered towns and villages in the South.

It has displaced the slogan which dominated several decades: “Bang And Finish!”

It did not quite work.

 THE BIG winner emerging from the cloud is Hamas.

What if we Suspect a Stolen Election?

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

 In my email yesterday (two days before the election), I found an article by Jonathan Klate, sent out by Tikkun magazine, Tikkun magazine, urging readers to urge President Obama to call out the US Army all across the country to patrol voting locations, to make sure that local politicians or vigilantes  do not steal the election by preventing some voters from voting.

Tikkun encourages its “readers who agree with this note” to call their local media.

The likely targets of voter suppression, the article suggested, are African-Americans, the poor, students, and the elderly – all, it suggests, more likely to vote for Mr. Obama.

I usually agree with Tikkun’s general outlook on the world, but in this case I do not – and I have a quite different suggestion to our readers.

My answer is us: The people, Yes.

But before exploring that: first of all, why not call out the Army?

Let the TV of this proposed event roll past your inner eyeballs. All across the country, the Army under the control of one candidate, the sitting President, in an extremely close election begins to march at thousands of polling places to assure – if the political analysis is correct of who might be prevented from voting – the reelection of that same President.

Does this imaginary video you have just been watching with your eyes closed remind you of Ukraine, of Guatemala, of Burma (until six months ago)?

I can imagine no action more calculated to bring a wave of public revulsion

Beyond the Grave: My brother's gift to life

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Howard (L) and Arthur Waskow

Today (Nov 1, 2012) would have been my brother Howard’s 76th birthday. Here is a photograph that embodies what we meant when we wrote together a book called Becoming Brothers. If you click on the photo, it will expand and you can see especially our hands: He is teaching me, I am teaching him. We are learning from each other. Loving each other.

The story I am about to tell has a "bottom line": If you donate to The Shalom Center a gift of $49, we will send you as a thank-you gift two books -- one by Howard and me, one by him about the healing of families. To donate, please click on the "Donate" banner to your left. More information below.

Last year, Phyllis and I gathered in Portland with others of Howard’s far-flung family and many of his friends to celebrate his 75th birthday.

I had been slowly recovering from the ruination of my mouth by radiation treatment for a throat cancer, and using a stomach feeding tube to substitute for normal eating. As we headed for Portland, I had just begun to eat a little, still using the tube for most of my nutrition. The birthday weekend was full of love and joy. Howard and his wife Grey, both extraordinary cooks, cooked for all of us – so deliciously that for the first time I ate three meals a day and stopped using the tube. For me, a triumph of life restored, life renewed.

Howard seemed healthy. On the day we flew back home, he casually mentioned that his dentist had told him a lump in his mouth was not a dental problem: He should see a doctor.

By the time he did, and scheduled tests, and had a biopsy, on December 23 he called me in the middle of the night to say , “Otts, I’m very sick. The doctors say I have a widely spread cancer.”

He died on January 23.

As Howard lay dying, he worked feverishly to finish a book   -- Homeward Bound: Seeking Satisfaction in the Family -- about family, drawing on

Photos at the top of this Page

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Each photo in the “merry-go-round” above is from a sacred moment in Shalom Center history. Let your cursor hover over any one of the photos: a brief description of the moment will appear.  Click on the title to add a comment.

Green Festival, Green Hevra, Green Earth

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Green is the color of today.

 Our own Green Hevra, the green of trees and grasses, and the green of Islam in one of its great festivals.

Today, as many of us who are involved in the Green Hevra (there's a description below) are both taking joy in and mulling over the excellent work we did in an intensive two-day retreat this week,  we might also pause to take note of today’s beginning of the four-day Muslim Festival of Eid-al-Idha.

 The festival remembers and honors a moment that Jews remember as well. Abraham / Ibrahim / Avraham prepared to obey God’s command to offer up his son as a sacrifice – and then at the last moment heard God calling on him to save his son and offer instead a ram caught by its horns in a nearby thicket.  And obeyed.

Muslims honor his willingness to obey God, and they translate this honor into feeding the poor and the outcast.  Drawing on Ibrahim’s offering of the ram, Muslims will take the meat of a ritually slaughtered lamb to share with their extended families and with the poor.

The Shalom Center says to the Muslim world --  Eid Mubarak! May your festival be blessed!

May it help us all to make real the teaching of these days: “Do not kill your children; Feed the poor!”

May we deeply learn that our present mode of life is lifting the deadly "knife" of overburning fossil fuels -- the knife that will kill our children and grandchildren. May we turn away, to make an offering of life, instead.

 I’ve just returned from a two-day intensive retreat of the year-old Green Hevra, a network of about 15 Eco-Jewish organizations, ranging from Jewish organic farms and an eco-focused summer camp to an educational center for kids in Jewish schools for learning Torah of the Earth to groups focused  on the hands-on physical greening of Jewish buildings to several organizations (including The Shalom Center) that fuse Jewish wisdom and practice with eco-policy activism.

The gathering was deeply joyful for me, both collectively and personally --  because the Hevra took several important decisions to address the climate crisis, and because the Hevra honored me as a teacher in a circle of blessing.

The GREEN HEVRA decided to adopt  “Growing a Sustainable Climate” as a focus for the work of the Hevra as a whole and as an important theme in much (not all) of the work of the member organizations.

We identified two special times for lifting up this work

God's Image, Caesar's Image, & the Jigsaw Puzzle of Humanity

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

 

Four years ago this weekend  -- the weekend when Jews read the story of the Creation --  I was visiting my daughter Shoshana and her family in Illinois.

My granddaughter Yonit Slater was then eight years old. I said to Yonit,

“You know, according to the Torah this week, God created human beings in God’s Image. What do you think that means?”

Yonit: “What’s an image?

Arthur: “Ummmm, Like a photograph.”

Yonit: “That’s strange. God is invisible. How could there be a photograph of God?”

Silence.

Y: “There could be photographs of human beings So maybe it’s more like God is in the image of human beings.”

Silence.

Y: “Only it couldn’t be just one human being, it would have to be lots.”

Silence.

Y: “But we are all different. Each one of us is different. And God couldn't be in the image of just one of us. So ---

Long silence.

 

Y:  Maybe we're different from each other like the pieces in my jigsaw puzzle!  So you would have to fit all the pieces together.”

Silence.

Y: “And if you fit us all together, we would be a community, and a community is more like God!”

 

Arthur: (Silently): [Wow! Maybe I should resign from the midrash business!]

 

For me, this teaching is worthy of standing alongside two ancient midrashim about the Image.

One was from the ancient rabbis, living under the Roman Empire, who said: "When Caesar puts his image on a coin, all the coins come out identical. When the Holy One Who is beyond all rulers puts the Divine Image on the 'coins' of human beings – each of the coins come out unique." {Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38a (Soncino transl., p. 240]

ROMNEY INAUGURAL ADDRESS: “WAR & FULL EMPLOYMENT”

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Dissociated Press logo, photo of its reporter

Washington, DC – January 20, 2013: BREAKING NEWS from the Dissociated Press –-

By the Special Roving Reporter for the Dissociated Press

Newly inaugurated President Mitt Romney stunned Washington with his Inaugural Address at noon today, just after taking the oath of office, by announcing his intentions to declare war against Russia, Iran, and Syria, and to end all unemployment in the US as part of the war effort. The full text of his address follows. It was the shortest on record:

“My fellow Americans:  The two most urgent problems facing our nation today are the scarcity of jobs for Americans who want them and need them, and the increasing extreme danger and hostility of Russia, Syria, and Iran to the United State and our allies.

“I will deal with both these disasters in one stroke, as did my revered predecessor Franklin Roosevelt after he was reelected in 1940.

Praying with Our Legs -- Against Big & Oppressive Banks

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Rabbis Waskow & Lerner & others in Occupy Rosh Hashanah prayerful picket & shofar-blowing to urge Move Our Money from oppressive banks to credit unions & community banks, 9/17/12

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, last week, I was picketing a bank in Berkeley, California --  “praying with my legs” in a way that reminded me of one modern prophet and one ancient prophet.

 The modern one was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who coined that phrase after marching alongside Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 to win the vote for African-Americans.

 The ancient prophet was, of course, Isaiah. On Yom Kippur about 2500 years ago, Isaiah  walked into a crowd that felt good because (having fasted for about 18 hours already) it felt bad. He called out that refraining from food and drink was not the point. God, he said,  intended the Yom Kippur fast to involve feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, and – intensely political, not reducible to “charity”  -- striking off the handcuffs put upon prisoners by those in power.

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