CiviMail

Grow the Vote! -- In Numbers and in Wisdom

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Grow the Vote!

Why vote? Why try to encourage other folks to vote? With permission from the comedian Nato Green, here are his answers.  Always good to engage in laughter about subjects that make us morose! Please take 20 seconds to watch and listen:

“Hi there,” said Nato, ---

“My label put up this video of one of my jokes about politics and voting from my new standup album.  Hopefully this will afford you twenty seconds of laughter in a sea of unrelenting horror. People seem to find it useful.”

“WHAT DO POLITICS HAVE TO DO WITH ME?”

https://www.facebook.com/NatoGreenComedy/posts/1944132528987999


As this graphic makes clear, the next generation is always peering over your shoulder or under your voting-booth curtain as you vote. Are you voting in their best interests – for a world of justice and compassion, for food, air, and water that are pure, for an Earth that is livable and joyful? Are you voting at all?

I would add (this is Arthur again, not Nato, and I am not pretending this is comedy) that the election on November 6 is the most important, the most consequential, in American history since the Civil War. This election will be a referendum between two profoundly different choices for the future of America and Planet Earth.  The choice is now much clearer than it was in 2016.

So I would urge all our organizations and individuals committed to faith or ethics to pause for just a moment from other praiseworthy campaigns, protests, and creative work to heal the world, and to focus for just the next 18 days on Growing the Vote.

What do I mean when I say, “Grow the Vote”? I mean two things:  Growing Numbers of voters, and Growing Understanding and Wisdom about the issues:

  1. Growing Numbers: Not only be absolutely sure to vote yourself, but also urge and help people to actually vote on November 6. Especially people who may tend not to vote in so-called “off-year” elections: College students. Millennials. Black folks. Latinx folks. Not only individuals but congregations, colleges, and all sorts of other groups are totally free to do GOTV work.

One way to Grow the Vote requires just a computer, a phone, and your time. You simply make phone calls to a computerized list of registered voters, reminding them to vote and asking them to urge their friends to vote.

Phyllis and I and other members of our congregations did this last night for two hours and will again on more evenings before the election. We reached dozens of households from a list of registered voters compiled by “POWER,” a network of Philadelphia-area churches, synagogues, and mosques committed to social justice. And we enjoyed the conversations!

In addition to the “Vote!” encouragement, we mentioned two issues: the need for more state-government money for impoverished local school systems in Pennsylvania, and the need to expand Medicaid for low-income workers and their families.

There may very well be similar Grow the Vote operations in your own community. The Philadelphia “POWER” organization is one member of a national network called “Faith in Action.” Check at https://faithinaction.org/ for your own local affiliate. If your own congregation is not a member, you might urge them to join.

One Jewish activist organization, Bend the Arc, has developed an easy, helpful program to help people from all around the country to Grow the Vote in two specific Congressional election campaigns where polls show the campaigns are neck-and-neck. (If you consider doing this, take into account that Bend the Arc's action affiliate has an explicit partisan stance.) You can check this out here: https://www.bendthearc.us/action

 

and a Bend the Arc staff member will support you. (You just need a computer and a phone).

2. Growing Understanding and Wisdom. Connecting the deep wisdom of the great religious traditions to the issues we face in this election. From my own perspective, these are Torah passages that point me in a direction about one or another of the issues we face: 

  • For behavior toward people fleeing oppressive violence and seeking asylum in the US, see Deut. 23:15-16, the most pointed passage in the entire Torah about refugees from oppression.  And read the whole Book of Ruth. It’s not long, and it’s fun to read.
  • For how to deal with the children of an “immigrant” people who follow a minority religion, see Exod. 1: 15-22; 2: 5-10.
  • For a teaching on the relationship between the Earth (adamah) and human earthlings (adam) , see Gen. 2: 4-7.
  • For how human communities should act to enhance and heal that relationship, see Lev. 25: 1-7 and 17-24. For the dangerous consequences that follow if we fail to carry out that practice, see Lev.  26: 3-6, 14-20, 34-35, and 43.
  • For the way a “king” or any other powerful official should act, see Deut.17: 14-20.

It’s perfectly legal for your congregation or other tax-exempt organization to do this, so long as the organization as a whole or its official leadership in their role as leaders don’t support or oppose any candidate or any political party.

Individual members can say what they like.  You can post your thoughts in congregational bulletins and listserves, write letters to the communal or metropolitan newspaper, send emails and post FaceBook pages and Instagrams and Tweets from, to, and in an organizational milieu.

Since you are probably hoping to persuade people, be polite. Use language like “It seems to me …” not “It’s obvious …” And keep repeating, “I welcome  dialogue on these questions; what do you think?” and “Whether you agree with me or not, please be sure to vote.”

I want to practice what I preach. So I invite you to share your responses to this Shalom Report letter.

Antidotes to the Poison of Political Despair

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

"Democracy is Coming to  the USA.”

We will transform and heal America! Despite and even Because Of what happened this past Saturday, scarring the Shabbat of Beginning, of Creation --  

Two antidotes to the Poison of Despair: Prophecy to warm our hearts and souls, Action to strengthen our arms and legs.  Each is empty without the other. 

As our Prophet Leonard Cohen cries out --

    "Democracy is Coming to  the USA.”  IS COMING, God knows, not here yet. In the White House, Congress, & Supreme Court  -- all monuments to the past -- Democracy is even further off than it was the week before. But in the streets and kitchens and elevators that are shaping the future of America, Democracy is coming even closer than before.  

Before you read Leonard Cohen’s words (below), please click here to hear him sing the words while you can see them below at the same time :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-RuR-qO4Y

"Democracy is Coming to  the USA.” 

It's coming through a hole in the air, 
from those nights in Tiananmen Square. 
It's coming from thefeel 
that this ain't exactly real, 
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there. 
From the wars against disorder, 
from the sirens night and day, 
from the fires of the homeless, 
from the ashes of the gay: 
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. 

It's coming through a crack in the wall; 
on a visionary flood of alcohol; 
from the staggering account 
of the Sermon on the Mount 
which I don't pretend to understand at all. 
It's coming from the silence 
on the dock of the bay, 
from the brave, the bold, the battered 
heart of Chevrolet: 
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. 

It's coming from the sorrow in the street, 
the holy places where the races meet; 
from the homicidal bitchin' 
that goes down in every kitchen 
to determine who will serve and who will eat. 
From the wells of disappointment 
where the women kneel to pray 
for the grace of God in the desert here 
and the desert far away: 
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. 

Sail on, sail on 
O mighty Ship of State! 
To the Shores of Need 
Past the Reefs of Greed 
Through the Squalls of Hate 
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on. 

It's coming to America first, 
the cradle of the best and of the worst. 
It's here they got therange 
and the machinery for change 
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst. 
It's here the family's broken 
and it's here the lonely say 
that the heart has got to open 
in a fundamental way: 
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. 

It's coming from the women and the men. 
O baby, we'll be making love again. 
We'll be going down sodeep 
the river's going to weep, 
and the mountain's going to shout Amen! 
It's coming like the tidal flood 
beneath the lunar sway, 
imperial, mysterious, 
inamorous array: 
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.!

Sail on, sail on ... 

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean 
I love the country but I can't stand the scene. 
And I'm neither left or right 
I'm just staying home tonight, 
getting lost in that hopeless little screen. 
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags 
that Time cannot decay, 
I'm junk but I'm still holding up 
this little wild bouquet: 
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.!

 And then click to

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wRYjtvIYK0 

to hear another prophetic song --   “Anthem”:

“I can’t run no more with that lawless crowd –
While the killers in high places say their prayers out loud;  
But they’ve summoned up a thunder cloud,
And they’re going to hear from me! [from Me!]”

As the Voice spoke to --  or within --  Moses at the Burning Bush, "Ehyeh asher Ehyeh.  I Wil Be Who I Will Be, I Am Becoming Who I Am Becoming. " And by growing into that Name of the universe, Moses and Aaron and Miriam were able to lead a movement to resist and overthrow Pharaoh and to shape a new kind of community: flawed then, flawed now, but always open to Becoming. 

There were many setbacks -- and at each one, the human community and the Earth itself took a deep breath and went forward.

Today, we in the USA are facing not just "conservative" but  neofascist control of the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court.  It is not only Americans who are in danger  but humans and other life forms throughout the world that is burning because our government cares more for Corporate Carbon Pharaohs than for our grandchildren. It is a government that seeks to subjugate women, Blacks, Muslims, Latinx, GLBTQ folks, the poor, the hardworking middle class, dissenters and the independent press, Mother Earth herself. 

 How do I distinguish between "conservative" and "neofascist"? The markers are these items: Deliberately destroying families of one ethnic group and imprisoning their children in tent cities with contaminated water, to deter legitimate requests to be assessed for refugee asylum. Supreme Court nominee charging legitimate questions put by US Senators to him to be the result of a left-wing conspiracy.  President and Congressional leaders calling hundreds of women and men visiting and talking with Senators  and then doing nonviolent sit-downs as "mob action" carried out by actors hired by George Soros (using his name as an antti-Semitic dog-whistle). President tweeting: "You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob. Democrats have become too EXTREME and TOO DANGEROUS to govern."  

Lifting up such "outlandish" thoughts makes them thinkable, and then it becomes do-able to enforce them. (Like ripping young children away from their mothers and fathers.) . Yet the power to speak and act in neofascist ways is held by only bare majorities. There is a Resistance, and we can see ourselves growing in numbers and in awareness of what we share with each other and in commitment to the ONE whose Name is "I Am Becoming."

Turning this into action: Every house of prayer in America should be reaching out these next four weeks to Grow the Vote. To Grow in numbers the voters -- often the Millennials, the Blacks, the Latinx --  who historically have tended to vote less in "mid-term" elections. To Grow in awareness that our religious traditions themselves keep growing to empower the previously excluded.  To oppose subjugation. To light up the Spark of God in every human being and every life-form. 

 One helpful on-line resource on how non-profits like synagogues or Truah can Grow the Vote for a broad constituency (e.g. college students of all backgrounds) is at https://www.nonprofitvote.org/ 

Another, created by the JCPA and aimed at specifically Jewish audiences, is at 

http://www.jewishpublicaffairs.org/jcpa-publishes-2018-candidate-and-voter-engagement-guide/

This year, Voting is a sacred act. As sacred as a wedding, a baptism, a Ramadan fast, a Yom Kippur confessional, a Mourners' Kaddish, a silent Meditation.  

Our legs must pray by marching, marching for Bread and Roses, too. Our hands must pray by marking, marking the ballots of Empowerment.   Our voices must pray by lifting up new prayers: "The heart has got to open in a fundamental way."

Sail on, sail on 
O mighty Ship of State! 
To the Shores of Need 
Past the Reefs of Greed 
Through the Squalls of Hate 
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on! 

Please share this Prophetic outcry and action steps with your friends, colleagues, congregants.

And ---  --  we need your help to keep undertaking action, prayer, prophetic outcry, even arrest  as we have in these last weeks. Not just "want" your help but need it. Please click on the maroon “Contribute” button in the left margin on this page, and then please make as much of a contribution as you can. 

Blessings to you and yours of Shalom, salaam, sohl, paz – not only “Peace” but the struggle, the justice, and the healing that are enwrapped in peace--  Arthur

3,000 Years => Kavanagh. Time’s Up!

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Carrying the Spirit  from Prayer Houses into Public Space

For the past 3,000 years, all the Abrahamic religious communities have celebrated Biblical and Quranic, rabbinic and “church father” traditions that have treated as normal the subordination of women.

Even when the traditional texts (e.g. the Song of Songs) have pointed in a different direction as the goal of a grown-up human race that has yet to emerge, the day-to-day behaviors of most of those communities have treated that subordination as normal life.

And then, beginning little more than a century ago, wave after wave of women’s energy, with support from some men, has moved toward equality. But the assumption of inequality was and is so deeply ingrained that a backlash was and is inevitable.

And right now, in American society, we are seeing the backlash in all its entitled and affronted fury. Talk about “the personal is political!” We face a nominee for the Supreme Court who would be well positioned to control its 5-4 votes and carry into deeply engraved public policy his own deeply ingrained assumptions about sex and gender.

And we have seen that, faced with the possibility of a No from the Senate, he reacted with verbal violence, wild charges of conspiracy --   an attempt to shut the mouths of his critics and accusers  (especially those who were women).  A verbal analog of the physical violence he is accused of using in an attempt at rape.

He is not alone in this, and the liberation of women is not the only uprising that is facing attempts at subjugation.  Today the New York Times reports in deep detail how Donald Trump and his father Fred cheated on billions of dollars of taxes they owed the federal government.  Just as Kavanaugh resorted to rape when he wanted sex, so the Trump family resorted to fraud and theft when they wanted Money and more Money and couldn't get "enough" honestly. How many poverty-stricken women died of breast cancer because their govenment was starved of the money to provide medical care by Trump family thievery? How many children drank leaded water that ruined their brains because no government agency could or would do the tests?  How many men were maimed or killed by an unsafe worksite because the "enforcers" of health and safety regulations had not enough agents to check? How many Americans were sickened by food poisoning because of the Trumps' theft of taxes they owed? (And now, holding the White House, they destroy whatever remaining regulations survive their tax frauds.)

As the women’s labor-union song “Bread and Roses” said a century ago,

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses
For the people hear us singing, bread and roses, bread and roses.

As we come marching, marching, we battle too, for men,
For they are in the struggle and together we shall win.
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes,
Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses.

As we come marching, marching, un-numbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread,
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew
Yes, it is bread we. fight for, but we fight for roses, too.

As we go marching, marching, we're standing proud and tall.
The rising of the women means the rising of us all.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories, bread and roses, bread and roses.

To hear Joan Baez sing it, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWkVcaAGCi0

Five years ago this very month, Gloria Steinem said to a Shalom Center assemblage celebrating her 80th birthday, that American society as a whole was at the moment when an abused wife walks out of the house. It is the most promising and the most dangerous moment. If she is welcomed by a community of love and safety, she may be freed. If not, her infuriated husband may kill her.

 Gloria thought she was teaching metaphor. But the metaphor itself has come to life with the bared teeth of an insulted, infuriated male tiger.

More even than when she spoke, abused Blacks, Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants, women, union workers, Jews, Arab-Americans, GLBTQ folk, the tormented, choking, trembling, quaking, burning Earth itself, have walked out of the abusive households where they had lived for centuries or decades.

And the abusive, ultra-wealthy, self-entitled,  powerful men, faced with challenges to their prestige, their wealth, and above all their power – even the power  to have sex whenever they want with whomever they want --  are brandishing at these rebels the threat of rape or disemployment when  it’s sex, death when it’s hurricanes,  prison when it’s a critical press and whistleblowers, fraud and theft with impunity when it's money, torture when it’s a war --

But in the airports, in the Capitol corridors and elevators, in the voting booths, in the “detention camps” of refugee children, in the frigid offices of ICE, in a million homes and offices and dormitory rooms, in the jails where they take us if we refuse to leave, they can be stopped.

If we build the communities to welcome and to shelter the resisters of abuse.

If we “spread over all of us the shelter of shalom.”

Right now, the most urgent task is to keep Trump and a gaggle of self-entitled arrogant Senators from poisoning the Supreme Court for the next thirty years for the sake of  increasing their own wealth and power.

Today and tomorrow, this Wednesday and Thursday, we belong in our bodies or our phone calls in every Senatorial office, in Washington or in their home states. After 3,000 years, Time’s Up: Stop Kavanaugh!

If you can get to Washington DC tomorrow (Thursday) — that is THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY to be in DC to #CancelKavanaugh. Sign up here, now: bit.ly/WECANWIN

If you are too far away and prefer to  take part in a vigil near you --

Go on-line HERE and NOW to find an event near you today, this evening! – among the dozens that MoveOn has listed on its website:    https://act.moveon.org/event/stop_kavanaugh_vigils/search/

If you don’t find one nearby and are moved to create one, click here and ask for MoveOn’s help to plan it and recruit people to join with you::

https://act.moveon.org/event/stop_kavanaugh_vigils/create/?ak_proof=1&akid=.31241616.Eb2jJx&rd=1&s=&source=&t=15

And whatever the Senate does on Friday, the next step is the November election. At every house of worship in America, we should be working these next five weeks to “Grow the Vote.” Grow it in numbers, grow it in awareness of the issues and the values. And we should be calling together congregational meetings, community meetings—to talk about the religious values of according dignity, justice, healing --  accord and community itself --  to everyone.  Every one.

If millions of new voters do vote, the next Congress can investigate perjuries by even a Supreme Court Justice. The next Congress can investtogate the hidden tax returns and frauds of even a President.  IF we vote and also stay in the streets.

At https://theshalomcenter.org/ShareSukkotResources  are links to several handbooks for growing the vote. Registering new voters, helping them to vote ahead of time where state laws make that possible, helping them get to the polls on Election Day.

And it won’t stop there. This is a 400-year crisis when it comes to racism in America. It is a 3,000-year crisis when it comes to the subjugation of women in Abrahamic communities. It is a 200,000-year crisis when it comes to the relationship between human beings and the Earth. Crises that deep don’t get solved in one election.

We are the heirs of those ancient traditions -- the heirs of their glories and their failings. It rests on us to transform them. In each of the American religious communities, some of us have struggled valiantly to transform them -- to end racism, sexism, militarism, greedy Earth-destroying materialism. As we look around at the changes we have wrought in some churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, shall we congratulate ourselves and sing our victories? Or shall we look at the convulsions of this past week’s America and carry our prophetic voices beyond our prayer halls into public spaces?

Now’s the time and now’s the hour!

See approach proud Greedy Power;

Shall we merely whimper, cower –

Or act to set us free?

Please help The Shalom Center continue its work to speak Truth to the powerful AND to the disempowered, by clicking on the maroon "Contribute” button on the left-hand margin on this age.

NO Bully on the Supreme Court!

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

In yesterday’s hearings at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Kavanaugh reacted at the political level exactly as Dr. Blasey Ford describes his behavior at the physical level.

He wants a seat on the Supreme Court; at the possibility of being denied it he responded with fury and verbal violence. Just so, when he wanted sex and was refused it, he responded with physical violence. He is a bully, and everything we know about his judicial behavior and what we now know from three distinct women about his physical behavior jibe. They fit together.

The American people do not deserve a bully on the Supreme Court. Please call your own Senators and Senators Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski to urge them to vote No on confirming Kavanaugh, because he has shown himself to be not unqualified but DISqualified to sit as a judge, let alone on the Supreme Court.

This decision will affect the next 30 years of American history. It is not only women he will bully, though it was notable that he expressed his bullying even more toward the women Senators than toward the critical male Senators. Those of us who are men have a sacred responsibility toward our own honor, to the decency of our male children and grandchildren, and to all Americans to teach that being male does not mean being a bully and a rapist.

Torah teaches that we celebrate Sukkot because the first sukkot were places of protection for refugees – the vulnerable runaway slaves of the Exodus.   (Lev 23: 43).  This Sukkot, it is a Jewish obligation to help build American  society as a sukkah, a place of shalom for all the vulnerable. A place to shelter all of us from bullies.

To do that we must act now by calling, visiting, imploring, sitting-in --   insisting that our Senators vote against empowering a bully;  help Grow the Vote  by working to register new voters (especially from millennials and others who have a history of low voter turn-out in “off-year” elections) and follow through by voting ourselves and helping others vote in November.

Ufros alenu sukkat shlomecha-  Spread over all of us the Sukkah of Shalom!

A Prayer for This Morning as Our Country Faces Sexual Assault by Men in Power

Submitted by Anonymous on

A Prayer for This Morning

(Written by Rabbi Tamara Cohen)

Dear God Who opened Hagar’s eyes to the desert wellspring that saved her life, 

Dear God Who was with Hannah as she cried out her heart to the priest Eli, deafened by his position and authority and judgment, 

Be with Christine Blasey Ford today as she opens her lips to share her painful truths in a seat of patriarchal power.

May those who seek her harm be stilled!

May those who quake with their own memories find support and comfort.

May those who go to parties tonight and any night seeking joy, acceptance, release, adventure, never be pinned down, ridiculed, forced to yield the basic freedom to their bodies’ autonomy, to their souls’ intactness, to their future’s possibilities. 

May You be also with Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick and all brave women who speak out and risk their safety for the sake of the safety of others.

And may those who seek to limit the freedom of women in the name of their own freedom or in the name of their faith, come to see that the way to protect the sanctity of life is right before them every day --- in the workplace, in their families, on the streets and in their schools, 

Because each chance to treat a human being as a human being is an opportunity to honor the sanctity of life.

     And let us say, Ameyn!

 (Written by Rabbi Tamara Cohen, September 27, 2018)

Arrested! -- Berman, Waskow, Lulav, Etrog

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Phyllis and I and about a dozen others whom we met on the scene took part in honoring the Sukkot festival Monday by bensching lulav at the Hart Senate Office Building as part of a demonstration against confirming Mr. Trump’s nomination of Mr. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. 

“Bensching” [blessing] lulav means waving four species of plants -- a branch of palm, myrtle, and willow, plus the lemon-like etrog or citron -- in the seven directions of the world, to connect with the multi-species ecosystem that keeps humans and all life alive.

 “Seven directions”? Surely only six: East, West, North, South, Up, Down!  But the traditional pattern of waving is that we reach out in the different directions and then each time bring the Four Species close to our heart. As Rabbi Shefa Gold teaches, the seventh direction is inward.

Before we did the waving, I explained that Sukkot honors the fragile hut that was the first refuge of the runaway slaves of the Exodus. That hut becomes the symbol of protection for all those in our society who are vulnerable to attack – and that is the deepest root of the campaign to prevent Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. His stance in the world is subjugation of refugees, the poor, minority religions and races, and the concentration of power in the hands of the wealthy and mighty, beginning with his attempting rape and humiliating women when he was 17 and continuing into his adult politics.

The demonstration then moved to Sen. Collins’ office and chanted outside her office for about 30 minutes (e.g., over and over, “We believe Dr. Ford, we believe Deborah Ramirez, we believe Anita Hill”)  before police arrested about 50 of us (Phyllis and me included).

See very brief CNN video in the hallway outside Collins’ office. You can see Phyllis and me come walking across the scene as we look for a place to sit down. Our taleisim are light-colored enough to look as if we are wearing white clothing. 

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/09/24/protest-senator-collins-office-kavanaugh-vote-baldwin-cillizza-nr-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/newsroom-video/

 

Another 100 or more demonstrators moved when ordered by police, continuing to chant but not risking arrest.  Other sit-downs at other Senatorial  spaces happened later in the day. Demonstrators were spirited, committed, about 85% women. 

 The Capitol Police were focused, calm, professional, kind to some in difficulties (including me; I need a cane to walk and without it have some balance difficulty).  Just before the arrest, I spoke directly to officers, reminding them that though we understood they needed to enforce the law as they understood it, it was a far worse crime to attempt to rape a 15-year-old girl and to order breast-feeding babies yanked away from their mothers at the border. 

We were bused to a holding building about 15 minutes away, held for about three hours for processing, submitted IDs and $50 collateral which we forfeited in lieu of standing trial.  

 As we move toward the climactic testimony by Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey Ford on Thursday, what standards am I following in urging his rejection? Kavanaugh is not on trial for a felony, where conviction properly requires an assessment of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Rather, he is being examined about whether he merits appointment to one of the most powerful positions in the world, in which treatment of many vulnerable people and our vulnerable Earth are at stake.

 For that job, the level of judgment should be more like “Has he exhibited the highest ethical concerns for justice and compassion, including care for the reputations and bodies of women?”  Besides the accusations from Dr. Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, we already know he sleazily pissed on the reputation of a teen-age girl named “Renate” in his prep-school yearbook page, and boasted of being a big drinker and often drunk.  His classmates remember him as often “stumbling drunk,” and as aggressive when he was drunk.

And as a grown-up judge, he tried to prevent a 17-year-old applicant for asylum in the US who was fleeing family sexual abuse from having an abortion when she discovered at the US border that she was pregnant, probably from incestuous rape. His attitude toward that 17-year-old – trying to take control of her body, raping her in a different way -- echoed his attitude toward Christine Ford when she was 15.

 His bent toward subjugation of the weak does not apply only to women. As a Department of Justice lawyer during the War Against Iraq and since, he never objected to the Bush Administration’s policy of using torture. He has shown strong biases in favor of corporate profits for the Carbon Pharaohs, over healing the Earth and human communities from climate-crisis droughts, wildfires, and floods.

Is that the guy we want deciding our futures? Our daughters’ futures? The fate of Roe v. Wade? The fate of the Earth?

The Senate’s decision may rest in the hands of two undecided women Senators. Please call 202-224-3121 and ask for Senators Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska. Talk with their staff or leave recorded messages.

 Whatever the outcome of this confirmation fight, the November election will make decisions that affect the fate and future of American democracy. Even though we are already in Sukkot, it is still possible to act on The Shalom Center ‘s campaign to “ Share Sukkot  --  Grow the Vote.We have gathered three sets of resources for this work:  (a) Posters of ushpizin, sacred guests we invite into the sukkah as heroes of the struggle to broaden the right to vote;  (b) Brief essays that look at the values of Sukkot to inform people’s decisions as they choose whom to vote for; and (c) Handbooks for registering voters and making sure they can get to the polls. 

To draw on these resources, please click to  https://theshalomcenter.org/ShareSukkotResources

May you and all of us be blessed with the three pillars that the ancient Rabbis taught were necessary to uphold the world:  Truth, Justice, and Shalom

The Day after Yom Kippur: Facing Mr. Kavanaugh

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

This coming Thursday, September 20, is scheduled to be the final day of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Mr. Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to a life-time seat on the Supreme Court.

Thursday  is also the day after Yom Kippur.

There is a traditional Jewish practice that on the evening after the break-fast meal at the end of Yom Kippur, the community drives the first nail in building its sukkah. This practice embodies our commitment that –

  • after prayers for compassion from the Breath of Life to us and from ourselves to others,
  • after prayers that we turn ourselves to affirm our deepest inner truth through action,
  • after hearing the outcry of the Prophet Isaiah on behalf of the poor and the prisoners,
  • we actually take action to begin the building of the sukkah.

To build the house that trembles in the wind, the house where refugees were welcome 3000 years ago as we fled slavery in Egypt, the house that is open to the earthiness of wind and sun and rain, the house that welcomes and celebrates the seventy nations of the world.

I think that on Thursday, a strong opposition to Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation would help build the sukkah of an America that is suffering the suffocation of compassion and justice by its government  -- a suffocation that would become worse if Mr. Kavanaugh takes a seat in the Supreme Court.   

So I urge that it is at all possible for you, please come at 9 a.m. on Thursday to the Hart Senate Office Building  at Constitution Ave NE & 2nd St NE, Washington, DC 20002. There will be powerful options for both people who want and people who don’t want to risk arrest in  an act of nonviolent civil disobedience --while in either mode they oppose confirmation of Mr. Kavanaugh..

You can register at bit.ly/nokavanaugh but do not need to. If you are coming from a distance, registration may help the organizers try to provide travel subsidies.

Whether or not you can come to DC on Thursday, please start NOW, today, calling two Republican women senators whose votes could tip the balance. Call 202-224-3121 and ask for Senator Collins of Maine. Talk with her staff or leave a recorded message.  Then call again and ask for Sen. Murkowski of Alaska.

Why do I suggest taking these extraordinary steps?

All the evidence we have suggests that Mr Kavanaugh is a smooth and polite Donald Trump.  

For example:

He has refused to say outright that the Roe v. Wade decision that women have a Constitutional right to choose an abortion is settled law, and he has explicitly said the Supreme Court could reverse its decision.  

He was himself directly responsible for trying to prevent a 17-year-old girl who had applied for asylum as a refugee from having an abortion she desperately wanted and needed, and was reversed by a higher official only after delaying so long that the choice was much more complicated.

Just yesterday afternoon, California professor Christine Blasey Ford told the Washington  Post that Kavanaugh and a male friend of his corralled her in a bedroom during a gathering at a house in Maryland in the early 1980s. She says that both boys were "stumbling drunk" and that the friend watched as Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed and clumsily tried to pull off her clothes.

She said she tried to scream and Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand.

Ford says she escaped when Kavanaugh's friend jumped on top of them and they tumbled.

The now-53-year-old Kavanaugh denies the allegation.

Ford says she didn't reveal what happened until 2012 during couples therapy with her husband. The Post’s article included an interview with Ms. Ford’s husband and her lawyer, Debra Katz, and described a therapist’s notes from 2012 in which Ms. Ford told of the attack.

Meanwhile, evidence has emerged that strongly suggests Kavanaugh lied under oath during his confirmation hearings for his present judgeship. The issue is whether he knew of the theft of important correspondence of a Democratic Senator by a Republican Party operative. Kavanaugh denied knowing. Newly found emails suggest he did.

His views about the “previous conditions” provision of the Affordable Care Act and about strong regulations to control CO2 and methane emissions suggest he would probably throw them out.

The Trump Administration has refused to release records about his views on US use of torture when he worked for the Bush Administration during the Iraq War. There is no public evidence he objected, and it is very likely he supported the use of torture.

And his statements about Presidential power suggest he would oppose even subpoenaing the President who has appointed him, let alone indicting him, though he supported such actions against President Bill Clinton.  He refused to commit to recuse himself, even on grounds of personal conflict of interest, if such an issue arose before the Court.  

 All this suggests to me that he holds views directly opposite to those of the Prophet Isaiah whose prophetic words we continue to hear every Yom Kippur, 2500 years after he said them.

I urge us to stand with Isaiah.

Shalom, salaam, paz, peace --  Arthur

Yom Kippur: Take Isaiah into the Streets for 18 Minutes!

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

On Yom Kippur, about 2500 years ago, the Prophet Isaiah broke the conventional pattern of prayer and fasting. What he said then has been lifted into sacred immortality as the Prophetic reading for Yom Kippur.

Today, a group of Jewish teachers,  rabbis, and leaders call us to emulate Isaiah in a new way: Let us walk for 18 minutes beyond our congregational walls. Let us carry Isaiah into our towns and neighborhoods and cities.

“From California to the New York Island” have come together rabbis and teachers to urge our congregations to undertake this effort: Among them are (all affiliations are for identification only):

Dr. Barbara Eve Breitman (Spiritual Direction at RRC & HUC);  Rabbi Sharon Brous (Ikar); Aryae Coopersmith (co-founder, House of Love and Prayer & Coastside Torah Circle); Rabbi Laura Geller (emerita, Temple Israel of Hollywood);  Arlene Goldbard (president,  The Shalom Center);  Abigail Grafton (Shomeret, Aquarian Minyan); Dr.  Susannah  Heschel (Dartmouth University);  Rabbi Burt Jacobson (emeritus, Kehillah); Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie (Storahtelling & Labshul); Rabbi Michael Lerner (Tikkun); Rabbi Mordechai Liebling (RRC); Rabbi Moshe Levin (emeritus, Ner Tamid, San Francisco); Ruth Messinger (founder, American  Jewish World Service) Rabbi Marcia Prager (P’nai Or Philadelphia & dean, ALEPH Ordination Program); Rabbi David Seidenberg (Neo-Hasid, Ecology and Kabbalah);  Rabbi Susan Talve (Central Reform Congr, St Louis); Rabbi Arthur Waskow (founder, The Shalom Center); Rabbi Sheila Weinberg (Inst for Jewish Spirituality); Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz (founder, Uri L'Tzedek: Orthodox Social Justice). 

On that walk, each congregation can choose the stance that feels fitting for itself. We encourage awareness that we are not abandoning prayer but carrying prayer and/or the Isaiah Haftarah into public space:

 For instance, perhaps we walk in prayerful silent vigil, wearing the tallitot whose fringes reach out as threads of connection with the world.

 Perhaps we prayerfully sing: “Olam chesed yibaneh! If we build a world with love, then God will build the world with love!”

Perhaps we carry signs quoting from Isaiah or from Rabbi Heschel: ”Some are guilty; All are responsible!” “My legs are praying!” And from Dr. King: “The fierce urgency of Now!”

Perhaps the congregation commissions some of its members to walk forth while others continue in the building, in both physical spaces continuing a Yom Kippur appeal to America’s conscience.

Perhaps (as one congregation in Santa Cruz has already decided), congregants join with those of other religious communities for a public gathering before the Yom Kippur prayer service begins. 

(One year ago, P'nai Or of Philadelphia did carry Isaiah into the streets. Here are a photo of that effort and a close-up of one of the signs they carried.)

 

 On Yom Kippur, we reawaken the ancient outcry of Isaiah: “What is the fast that God requires of us? Not only to remember by fasting what it feels like to go hungry, but beyond that to feed the hungry, house the homeless, break off the handcuffs and leg-irons fastened on prisoners by wicked power!” 

 Isaiah went beyond the conventional gatherings for prayer and fasting, to demand this commitment of compassion. 

This year we face a plague of governmental contempt for conscience and hatred for the poor; subjugation of refugees and women and prisoners, of minority racial groups and religions, and many other human beings; poisoning of our air and food and water, even of Mother Earth. To our celebration of the God of Truth, we hear the power-obsessed jeer: “Truth is not truth!”

 Already American consciences are reawakening. Let us add our voices.  

Let us do today what Isaiah did: Go beyond our comfortable discomfort as we fast for Yom Kippur.

This is a Time for Transformation. If you are ready to add your name to call forth the American conscience that is already reawakening, please click to Sign Up https://www.ykwalkout.net/?page_id=31 

Blessings of Truth and Turning, individual Tshuvah that becomes Tikkun Olam!

What does Torah teach about Judge Kavanaugh?

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

 Are you surprised to hear that President Trump and Judge Kavanaugh, his nominee for a lifetime post on the Supreme Court, might appear in a text that is about 2500 years old?

Read Deuteronomy Chapter 17: 14-20 --  a section often called Perek HaMelekh, “Passage on the King.”

The passage is worried about the possibility that an Israelite king might turn himself into a tyrant, like Pharaoh.

So it  starts out by setting limits on the power and behavior of a king, and then it tries to create a way of enforcing these limits. .

The king must not act haughtily toward the people – that is, with contempt.

The king may not multiply gold and silver for himself.

The king may not multiply wives/ women for himself.

The king may not multiply horses. (Horse chariots were the jet bombers of the day, weapons for an aggressive imperial army like that of Egypt’s Pharaoh). 

What’s more, the king may not send the people back into Mitzrayyim (the Tight and Narrow Place, which in Hebrew is the name of Egypt) to buy horses for himself. (That is, he may not oppress the people by imposing taxes or forced service so he can pay for an oppressive army).  

And the king must every day of his life read --  under supervision by the levitical priests --  the Torah passages that restricted his powers and protected the poor. 

 Under priestly supervision – ahhh, that is what the Torah hoped would keep him under control. For the Kohanim, the priests, members of the Tribe of Levi, were utterly independent of the king. They had religious power to come close to God, YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh -- the Interbreathing Spirit of the world. The Breath of Life.

They were not appointed by the king. They were not members of the king’s family. Not even of his tribe, since they were descendants of Levi, like Moses and Aaron and Miriam, and the kings were descendants of David, of the tribe of Benjamin.

 When the heirs of the Maccabees, the Hasmonean kings, broke this ancient Constitution by merging the priesthood and the kingship, they turned out to be terrible kings. Among other things, they sold out Israelite independence to a foreign power --  Rome.

Why does all this matter? So Torah seeks to limit the power of a king, as do the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Why does this matter to us today?

Because it embodies wisdom that speaks through centuries and millennia  --  not just about a single generation’s crises, fears, desires. It is a wisdom that our culture today often, though not always, seeks to learn from  -- precisely because it embodies what has lasted.

Surely that wisdom, like the US Declaration and Constitution, was flawed. The Bible, for example,  assumes and often seems to endorse the subjugation of women. (In how the furthest reaches of the Bible see the great arc of the human future, not so; but that is another exploration.)  So did the original US framing documents, as well as the subjugation of Blacks.

Yet some wisdom even deeper has kept moving the adherents of both sets of framing Teachings to keep trying to move beyond those subjugations to a fuller sense of human dignity. What we call the “spirituality” of the Bible is a distillation of a wise relationship of a small tribe to all that is greater than itself – to the great round Earth, to the other cultures (“strangers”), to its own future, its great-grandchildren, to the over-arching Mystery of how we came into physical, biological, and cultural existence in the first place.

So it behooves us in our perilous present moment to recall that the Bible was and is worried about the concentration of power in a single human’s hands.

All right. Let us look with eyes wide open at our present.

We have an elected king who speaks of his own people – Blacks, Latinos,  the free and independent-minded press, Muslims, women with contempt (“haughtiness above his kinfolk”).  

Who speaks and sometimes acts toward women as mere objects of his own pleasure (“multiplying wives”).

Who has used his own power before and since becoming “king” to cheat workers and contractors, to make secret deals,  to hide his finances from the public (“multiplying gold and silver for himself”).

Who threatens other nations with ”fire and fury” and who seeks a trillion dollars to “modernize” a nuclear arsenal that can already destroy all life on Earth several times over, and who is planning to erase the bright line between nuclear and other weapons by producing “small” nuclear weapons for battlefield use (“multiplying horses for his army”).

And who now seeks to appoint to the Supreme Court – our nearest effort at inventing the independent check of the Levitical priesthood --  a man whose previous record indicates willingness to support the “king’s” hostility to women’s rights, to workers’ rights, to efforts to heal the Earth.

Whose previous record suggests support for such egregious misuses of kingly powers as the use of torture. A man who is opposed to even the limited possibility of subpoenaing the “king” to testify under oath.

All this while the “king” himself is already under very serious clouds of possible violations of the Constitution and the laws. And when his appointee, if confirmed, would probably be a crucial weigh-in for how this sacred body of the Court would vote.

So for all these reasons, I urge you, all members and readers of The Shalom Center, and all your friends, to call 1202-224-3121. To ask for your Senators and Congressmember.

What could they do? They could oppose with every nonviolent means the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh. They could, for example, use legitimate parliamentary rules to hold all Congressional decision-making in suspense  until the Senate Judiciary Committee tables the nomination. They could demand roll-call votes on “ordinary” business instead of giving unanimous consent. The future of our Constitution and our freedom is at stake; this is no time for “ordinary” measures.  

Demanding this kind of action is not just “politics.” It upholds what the Bible itself taught was and is a crucial part of the spiritual health of a community committed to human dignity.

Call 1202-224-3121.

With blessings of joyful action in this coming new year, this Time of Transformation,  for the sake of human dignity – Arthur

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