CiviMail

Marc Raskin: Mentor to me and to the World

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Marc Raskin died this past weekend.  He was one of the great progressive universalist-Jewish thinker-activists of the 20th & early 21st centuries in the United States, co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies where I was one of the original Resident Fellows from 1963 till 1977.

 I am deeply saddened by his death.  Since 1959, Marc had been my friend, my teacher, one of my heroes, even when we disagreed. When my wife Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I visited him in October, the weekend of the 50th anniversary of the Siege of the Pentagon, he was gaunt of body and gaunt of words and thought. Truly the lion in winter. Even so, losing  him altogether leaves me shaken.

He could not take part in the 50th-anniversary commemoration, and I spoke in his name as well as my own when I spoke about the challenge to the Dept of Justice during that action, when we sat side by side,  with Benjamin Spock & Bill Coffin,  to turn in a thousand draft cards to protest the draft and the Vietnam War. Marc and I were there because we had co-authored the Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority, in support of draft resistance.

2018: Is the Spirit Rising? -- Part 2

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Dear friends,

Today we face a concerted effort to overturn American democracy and to substitute an oligarchy of the Hyper-Wealthy.

This New American Oligarchy even tries to choke to death our Mother Earth –- the home that makes possible all human life -- by strangling the renewable-energy business while subsidizing Big Oil and Big Coal and removing the anti-pollution regulations that protect the purity of our water, food, and breathable air.  All for its own enormous profit.

You would expect the people who will suffer from this Oligarchy of the Hyper-Wealthy to rise up and throw these murderous rascals out of office. How do those who attack democracy make themselves electable? By calling forth the latent fears and bigotries that, once given new energy and visibility, begin to deny the human rights of Black folk, of immigrants and refugees, of Muslims and perhaps of Jews, of independent-minded women who are no longer cowed by sexual harassment and violence.

Denying human rights is the goal of Oligarchy. And it also becomes the means by which to achieve that goal. 

What do we do?

Already we have seen the emergence of a movement that calls itself Resistance. To tell the truth, so far it is more Remonstrance than Resistance. When civil-rights organizations begged Congress to pass a law, that was Remonstrance. When four college kids sat down at a lunch counter, that was Resistance. It took both to change America.

One of the most astonishing and important aspects of this movement is that the largest demonstration in US history, three million people scattered all across the country on last January 21, was imagined by women, led by women, and made up mostly, by far, of women.  And they didn’t just march and go home. Thousands of them decided to run for political office for the first time.

That is a systemic breakthrough. It has already had an effect on our culture – on the ubiquitous, iniquitous  sexual harassment, violation, and rape that more and more women are coming out of the closet of shame and impotence to challenge.

What is the role of the Spirit and of religious and spiritual communities in this struggle? The attacks on racial and religious minorities, on women and the GLBTQ community, on immigrants, on the Earth, are all attacks on different limbs and organs of the ONE. These attacks deny the interwoven interbreathing that suffuses all life. These attacks wound and threaten to kill the life that scientists call an ecosystem, in which every species is crucial to all the others. 

This is what Jesus meant when he said, “If you harm  even the least of these, you are harming me.” It is what the Sh’ma says: “Hush’sh’sh and listen, you Godwrestlers who live amongst all peoples, hush’sh’sh and listen to the Breath of Life, the still small voice that is our sacred truth: That Voice is One!” It is what the Holy Quran is saying: “God created us from a single pair of human beings in order to evolve into varied tribes and nations, not to despise each other but to know and love each other, bringing our diversities into our single family.”

It is democracy, not Oligarchy, that carries that truth into the world of action. And if our religious and spiritual communities can revive that message, can turn it into liturgies of light and passion, can make festivals like Hanukkah and Advent and Eid into moments when our legs are[raying as we nonviolently confront the Oligarchy, then it will fall and the Spirit will arise.

There will be an election in November that may serve as a referendum on Trumpery –-- not just an “advisory” referendum but more -- either a reconfirmation or a serious reduction in its power. But there is a long way to walk before anyone runs in November, and  I want to lift up what may be the two most dangerous moments we may face this coming year.

One is that Mr. Trump may decide he is in such legal and political danger from the investigation headed by Robert Mueller that he fires Mueller and/or pardons his own family and close advisers. That would be a break in the rule of law in America and a threat to all our spiritual truths. 

If this usurpation of ultimate power were left unchallenged, few of our human rights and little of our democracy would survive.

On the other hand, our traditions teach that when the tyrannies of Pharaoh and Caesar and the power elite of Mecca became unbearable, the Spirit broke through and new communities were born.

The second possible moment of great danger is perhaps a month or two before the November elections, if polls show the Democrats are about to carry the Congress and Mr. Trump decides to pull out of the hat the oldest trick of a politician in trouble: He goes to war and invokes war powers to control the political situation at home.

In regard to the second possibility, I know of no planning or even brainstorming  -- yet. In regard to the first possibility, the on-line progressive stalwart Move On and dozens of other strong progressive groups have joined to set up a Rapid Response network to go into action if Mr. Trump tries to fire Special Counsel Mueller. Within hours, that network intends to mobilize millions of Americans into public demonstrations.

You can access the plans at  <https://act.moveon.org/event/mueller-firing-rapid-response-events/search/>

What would be the demand of such demonstrations?

One proposal I have seen on line is that in such a crucial moment, we demand new general elections in November. For President and Vice-President and for the whole Senate as well as the whole House of Representatives. 

That would be Resistance, not only Remonstrance. It would break the conventional rules, but in a way that affirms the rules.

[Last Sunday, when I raised this possibility at a Human Rights Day gathering in South Jersey sponsored by Amnesty International, the gathering startled me by breaking into applause and cheers. That moment was noted by two local newspapers that covered the event.]

Now a harder question: How could such a demand be carried out, with or without acquiescence by the election apparatus in most states?

To begin with, by insisting, by refusing to leave public squares and streets and even Federal office buildings until the election apparatus agrees.

And where it does not, by holding our own elections in or near the regular precincts, in churches and synagogues and mosques, in schools and community centers. And then sending our own newly elected representatives to Washington –- the White House, the Senate –-  to challenge the credentials and occupy the seats  of those who were voted out.

This is what the Black and white pro-civil-rights community of Mississippi did in 1964, when Black folk couldn’t vote anywhere in the state. They organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and voted in churches and community centers for an independent-minded delegation to the Democratic National Convention that summer.

The delegation, led by Fannie Lou Hamer, demanded that the Convention seat them instead of the all-white pro-segregation, and racist delegation that had long held those Mississippi seats

This suggestion of new elections next November goes even deeper into what we think the rules are, and broader across the whole country. Would it be easy now? Of course not. But if the time were ever ripe for a deep reexamination of our political system, now is when.

What about later in the year?  Say it is September, polls show the Democrats poised for a big win in Congress, and Mr. Trump decides to change the conversation by bombing Iran or North Korea. No declaration of war or authorization by Congress.  

What do we do?

What could our spiritual and religious communities do in such a crisis? 

Let me end by inviting you-all to do three things:

1)  Either click to <https://www.facebook.com/events/881082792061621/> and register to head to Washington DC early tomorrow to join another wave of sit-ins on Capitol Hill to stop the Tax Deform bill, or call 1202-244-3121, ask for Senator Collins and then Senator McCain, and urge them both to announce now they will vote No on final passage of the bill..

2) Click to <https://act.moveon.org/event/mueller-firing-rapid-response-events/search/> and check out the plans for Rapid Response if Speciaal Counsel Mueller is fired.

3)  Join in the brainstorming about what to do if Mr. Trump tries to fire Special Counsel Mueller, or if he goes to war later in 2018.  Write me your thoughts, for publication with your name unless you say not.

Celebrate the festivals of Light in times of Darkness! Kindle the candles of Hanukkah (beginning tonght) and Advent.

2018: Is the Spirit Rising?

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Last night I began to write a review of where the Spirit has led us in American culture, politics, and society this year, and what we may face next year. But right now, an urgent outcry:

 As I write, the Tax Deform hovers on the edge of passage, but the wave of resistance and remonstrance  is rising. More sit-ins are on the way, like the one Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I took part in last week, warning Congressmembers they would get a “pink slip” in November if they vote for the bill on final passage.

One Senator who voted to Deform our country ---  Susan Collins of Maine –--  is so shaken by her constituents’ anger and by her party leadership’s betrayal of its promises to her about the bill, that she has said she might reverse her vote.

There is still time to act: Call her, Senator McCain, and Pennsylvania Congressmen Meehan and Costello,  at 1202-224-3121. Come to Capitol Hill if you can on Wednesday morning December 13, to honor the first day of Hanukkah as a nonviolent Maccabee resisting Oligarchy. For more information and to register, click to --  

<https://www.facebook.com/events/881082792061621/> 

And in the Philadelphia region, plans are under way for a faith-based action (both risking & not risking arrest) at the home offices of three Members of the House. Call -- Melissa Byrne at 609.364.4267 if you would like to take part.

 Why do all this? Because the Tax Deform bill  strangles Obamacare and deeply wounds Medicare and Medicaid and even cancels tax deductions for medical expenses; it heavily burdens the lives of college students and grad students with higher taxes; it tries to choke to death the renewable-energy business while subsidizing Big Oil and Big Coal, thus burning our planet and ourselves.

And while impoverishing the middle class, the Tax Deform bill cuts a trillion dollars from the taxes of the Hyper-wealthy, setting the scene for an Oligarchy to replace American democracy and preparing the way to slash Social Security and Medicare to make up for the staggering deficit created by its radical reduction of money  the Federal government can spend for human needs --  because it has delvered all this extra money to the Hyper-wealthy.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles is burning, Puerto Ricans are still dying because they have been deprived of electric power, and the arsonists who caused both disasters are sitting in cushy Corporate offices, Capitol Hill, and the White House.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 This past Sunday was Human Rights Day, commemorating the original adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948.  I was invited to speak to the Amnesty International chapter of South Jersey. 

The “Press of Ocean City” covered the event, and its report is at –--

<http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/rabbi-social-activist-discusses-politics-and-resistance-in-ocean-city/article_8ddbddb9-b391-5672-8c0d-82ed54c83371.html>.  

In this letter to you I will divide what I said in two parts: Naming the truth of where we Americans are as 2017 ends, and then looking forward into 2018. This is the first part of what I said; the second, I will send to you tomorrow. 

When we talk about attacks on human rights, usually we have in mind a specific arena: attacks on racial equality, or religious freedom, or freedom of the press, or the rights of women and the GLBTQ community, or the right to vote. 

 When such attacks come in American society, usually they seem like a bad case of the flu or a broken arm in the body of a basically healthy person –--  a momentary break in the over-all context of a healthy functioning democratic society.  Attacks on racial equality are different: They began at the beginning and continue to this day, sometimes more virulent, sometimes less. Right now,  a lot more, with a white-supremacist in the White House.

Most other attacks on human rights in America arise in moments of economic crisis or foreign war, and then they subside. We end up being ashamed of them, and to make sure that we can keep upholding human rights, we support organizations like Amnesty.

But all that is in the context of a healthy functioning democracy (again, except for racism), only occasionally wounded as a healthy person might be.

Today we face something different. We face a concerted effort to overturn American democracy and to substitute  an oligarchy of the Hyper-Wealthy. At the core of this effort are attacks on every human right, all the human rights, that together make democracy possible – – in fact, are democracy.

Who would have thought that a "tax reform" bill could embody attacks on basic human rights? But the whole point of the bill we now see before Congress is to shift enormous wealth and power into the hands of those who are already enormously wealthy and powerful, and simultaneously to weaken at every turn the ability of 99% of our society to meet our own needs or to bring about public policy that meets our needs. (That ability is what we call "democracy.")

I call the bill not “tax reform” but “Tax Deform.” It twists and deforms America -- our shared religious and ethical values, our future, our hopes and plans for our children and grandchildren.

It tries to choke to death the renewable-energy business while subsidizing Big Oil and Big Coal, it strangles Obamacare and deeply wounds Medicare and Medicaid and even cancels tax deductions for medical expenses, it heavily burdens the lives of college students and grad students with higher taxes.

Details tomorrow! 

Sacred Activism in Dark Time: Fireflies of Light before Dawn's Transformation

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

We are living in the midst of the Christian season of Advent, four weeks of candle-lighting, welcome, hope, and expectation before Christmas. And we are looking toward the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, lighting a growing glow of light in the teeth of darkness.

I want to share some new approaches to those festivals. One for Advent has been shaped by Rev. Nancy Taylor, the Senior Minister of Old South Church In Boston (the Church that birthed the Boston Tea Party of resistance to the British Empire and its unjust taxes).  The other comes from The Shalom Center for the candles of Hanukkah and Shabbat and for any festival when candles are kindled –- among them, Advent.

These liturgies recognize the rhythms of natural and political change. They recognize that in the Northern Hemisphere we are living in a season of Earth’s darkness when underground, in the dark, seeds of new life, new light, are  preparing to burst forth. And we are living in a season of our country’s and our planet’s moral darkness, when those in power are cruelly wounding children, our elders, the poor, working families, women, Muslims, Blacks, immigrants, refugees, the sick, even Mother Earth herself – all to make possible the transfer of enormous wealth to those who are already Hyper-Wealthy.

By passing a Deformed tax bill, bare majorities in both houses of Congress have responded to the demands of their Big Donors, not to the two-thirds of the American public who oppose this bill.

This is the politics that our sacred traditions know as Pharaoh and Caesar. And our traditions not only side with the Resistance to Pharaoh and Caesar, they grow directly out of the Resistance. 

Who were this Resistance? The runaway slaves who left slavery in the Tight and Narrow Land while Pharaoh’s army drowned in the Reed Sea.  The band of Jews who on the eve of Passover that recalled the fall of Pharaoh followed Jesus in the protest march of Palm Sunday against the Roman Empire, and stood with him when the Empire tortured him and killed him. The Rabbis who  despite the Roman edicts against teaching or doing Torah persisted, and who even in  their own deaths inspired a resilient Jewish community  to live in exile and weave a new kind of community that yearned for but did not need a Land.

So our sacred communities have learned to  become fireflies of light in the darkness just before the dawn.  Flickering, glimmering, growing, glowing.  Both  in liturgy and in activism are these lights lifted up.

Resistance becomes Transformation. New forms of sacred Community emerge from challenging these Empires.

Even now, at the very last moment when House and Senate have not yet worked out an agreed version of the Tax Deform, efforts are under way today and tomorrow for nonviolent direct action to challenge those Members of Congress who might possibly change their minds. Clergyfolk, including myself and my life=partner Rabbi Phyllis Berman, will join in that challenge.

And meanwhile, we offer you two approaches to kindling liturgies of light in a season of dark:

Between the Fires:

A Prayer for lighting Candles of Commitment

 

We are the generation that stands 

between the fires:

Behind us the flame and smoke

that rose from Auschwitz and from Hiroshima;

From the burning forests of the Amazon,

From the hottest years of human history

 that bring upon us

Melted ice fields, Flooded cities, Scorching droughts.

Before us the nightmare of a Flood of Fire,

The heat and smoke that could consume all Earth.

 

"Here! The day is coming

That will flame like a furnace, “

Says the Infinite YHWH / Yahhhh,

The Breath of Life --

when all the arrogant, all evil-doers,

root and branch,

will like straw be burnt to ashes.

Yet for all who revere My Interbreathing Name,

a sun of justice will arise

with healing in its wings, its rays, its winds. . .

.

“Here! Before the coming

of the great and awesome day

 of YHWH/ the Breath of Life,

 I will send you the Prophet Elijah

 to turn the hearts of parents to their children

and the hearts of children to their parents,

 lest I come and smite the Earth with utter destruction."

                       (Malachi 3: 20-21, 23-24.)

Here! we ourselves are coming

Before the great and terrible day

of  smiting Earth —

For we ourselves shall turn the hearts

Of parents to their children

And the hearts of children to their parents

So that this day of smiting

Does not fall upon us.

                                      

It is our task to make from fire not an all-consuming blaze

But the light in which we see each other fully.

All of us different, All of us bearing

One Spark.

We light these fires to see more clearly

That the Earth and all who live as part of it

Are not for burning.              

We light these fires to see more clearly

The rainbow in our many-colored faces.

Blessed is the ONE within the many.

Blessed are the many who make ONE.

[Optional:  Baruch attah [Adonai] [Yahhh] elohenu [melekh] [ruakh] ha’olam  asher kidshanu b’mitzvot[av], vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel brit Eliyahu. Blessed is the Breath of Life Whu unifies all forces of creation, teaching us to become holy by connecting, breathing, with each other and as one practice of connection calls us to kindle the candles of Elijah’s covenant.]

[Brachot for Hanukkah.]

[Light candles of commitment]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ADVENT: ALL EARTH IS WAITING


Rev. Nancy Taylorhas developed a liturgy for Advent that focuses on Earth.  She writes --

We will use this for the four weeks of Advent at Old South Church in Boston (December 3-24). The opening Carol sandwiches the Call to Worship and Advent Candle Lighting. (To hear the carol, click to  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baAS2Tfad2s >

 

The clergy will preach and teach into our Advent theme, taken from the Carol’s title, ALL EARTH IS WAITING.  In the Carol (written by Spanish priest, Alberto Taule, 1932-2007), the Earth and the creatures of the Earth participate in the joyful celebration and welcome of the Christ child to the Earth. 

 

In our preaching and teaching we will focus on the ways the Earth and the creatures of the Earth are fully part of God’s delight and revelation; that they participate in, support, and relish God’s gift of the special child…that the Earth, and all its fullness thereof, are every bit a part of God’s redeeming work, and, indeed, kith and kin to humankind.

As a consequence, the Earth merits urgent attention, that it need be protected and defended by the very people who profess to love God and who delight in receiving the gift of Emmanuel: God with us, God with the Earth. That the Earth, no less than the (biblical) widow or orphan, the prisoner or the lame, is in need of rescue, shelter, healing, nourishment, protection and befriending.

Much of our teaching will be toward the UNLEARNING of the worst of Western Christianity which has separated the realm of Nature from the realm of History … assigning the realm of History as God’s realm (higher, more sublime than the realm of Nature, which is more or less disposable). We will challenge and attempt to unteach this. 

Light & Delight for Hanukkah and Other Festivals

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

“It is the worst of times, it is the best of times … it is the season of Light, it is the season of Darkness,” to carry into our own generation a famous novel of the French Revolution.

This morning, as we face the danger that the “Tax Deform” may pass despite its cruelty, the world is growing darker than it was. Yet we can also see the growing glow of Light, like fireflies in the night,  in many hearts, minds, hands that are kindling the candles of commitment.

And many festivals of Light dispelling darkness are soon to come upon us.

The roots of Hanukkah are in a Tree.  A Tree of Light in a time of Dark. A Tree of Growth in a time that threatens death. 

 


Hanukkah begins the evening of December 12 with the lighting of one candle and continues till the evening of  December 20 -- including the lighting of one more candle each night till eight candles are lit on the evening of December 19. 

The festival begins on the 25th of the lunar “moonth” closest to the winter solstice, and watches over the disappearance  of the moon and its reappearance. It thus celebrates with light the darkest time of the moon and the sun in the Northern Hemisphere.

This pattern suggests that almost certainly its true origin was an earth-time festival. It has been overlaid in Jewish tradition as the celebration of the victory of a Jewish revolt against an oppressive and idolatrous empire –- ruled by a king known as Antiochus the Mad. Thus it translated the earthy and spiritual victory of light and hope over a time of darkness and despair into a political and religious level, as the victory of a ragtag guerrilla uprising against a powerful Empire. 

And the rabbinic tradition also defined Hanukkah as the celebration of a miraculous “conservation of energy” when oil capable of lighting the seven-branched Temple Menorah for just one day lasted for eight full days.

On the Shabbat of Hanukkah we will read the Prophetic and ecstatic envisioning by Zechariah of the rebuilding of that Temple after its destruction by another empire -- Babylonia. Zechariah proclaims that in the rebuilt Temple the Menorah will be lit up by two olive trees that will secrete their oil directly –--  without human intervention -- into the Menorah. (The Menorah itself was fashioned in imitation of a tree, with branches and buds and flowers.)

Thus what is made by human hands and what is earthy are intertwined,  just as  the Earth (adamah) and the human “earthling”  (adam) are in Hebrew intertwined, and as they are intertwined in the life-giving ecosystems of our planet.

So Hanukkah can be celebrated at many levels: 

  • As a time to renew active and activist hope and Light in a time –-- like the present! –-- when many of us feel darkness and near despair about the future of democracy, the future of human civilization, and the future of our planet’s web of life;
  • As a festival to celebrate and act on the conservation of energy and the reduction of our use of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels;
  • As a time of resistance to our modern Empires, both corporate and governmental, including one ruled by a Mad self-worshipping Emperor devoid of empathy and honor;
  • And as a time for celebrating the interwoven, interbreathing life we share with all living beings as part of Mother Earth.

Meanwhile, we are on the verge of other festivals  that also celebrate the emergence of Light in a time of darkness:

The Christian festival of Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas (December 2) and ends on Christmas Eve, December 24.

The Muslim festival of Mawlid un Nabi, Birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, began last night for Sunni Muslims and continues till this coming evening, and for Shia Muslims will begin the evening of December 5.  

Bodhi Day, the Buddhist festival recalling the enlightenment of Siddhartha Gautama, occurs on December 8.

For those who want to celebrate any of these festivals not with tchotchkes but with gifts that bring Light  into our lives, two books and a CD  from The Shalom Center might meet your needs and fulfill your desires.

In one of these books, Godwrestling – Round 2: Ancient Wisdom, Future Paths, I share the new Torah that emerged from Torah as I read and reimagined it in the context of my own life in the midst of new Jewish communities (feminist, Earth-centered, peace-pursuing, Spirit-called).

In the second book, Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness across Millennia, Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I draw on our lives together to look at the bold, mournful, hilarious, heartbreaking stories of breaking free from slavery and seeking to birth a new society.

In the spirit of the Freedom Journey itself, we invited a radically spiritual white Christian American, a feminist Muslim scholar, and an activist  Black American teacher who worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King each to write a chapter on the role of the  Exodus/ Wilderness stories in their own traditions and communities.


You can read these books, a chapter at a time,  to yourself, a teen-age child, a companion, a lover, a spouse. Taste the chapter, talk about it, savor the sparks of Light that rise when you strike the Rock of Torah with the Hammer of our own lives.  And have your companion read the next chapter to you. They will bring sparks of renewed Light into your conversations and your lives.

 

As for the CD named Sing Shalom!, it begins with an improvised jazz duet on flute and shofar by Paul Horn and Reb Zalman. It includes Pete Seeger singing for the first time in public his song Rainbow Race; Peter  Yarrow singing his poignant Hanukkah song Don’t Let the Light Go Out;  Debbie Freedman with  Not by Might, Not by Power;  Shefa Gold with Roni v'simchi;  Kim and Reggie Harris with Go Tell It on the Mountain and stories of the civil-rights movement; Margot Stein, David Shneyer, Linda Hirschhorn, Leila Gal Berner, Jack Kessler, Miraj, Juliet Spitzer, and a dozen others.

There is no other CD like it, weaving together  Jewish and other Songs of the Spirit Rising as our lives need to do.To order these or other Gifts of the Spirit Rising for the Festivals of Light, please click to <https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=10>


Our lives have been, still are, a Time of Darkness; we are the glimmering fireflies that can gather to make ourselves a Menorah  of new Light. More light!

The Spirit Rises! -- for Activist Prayer & Learning, & for "Giving Tuesday"

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

The Spirit Rises! Through New Activist Prayer & Commitment, And "Giving Tuesday” Helps to Lift It

 Today, the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, has become “Giving Tuesday” to invest our money in American non-profit tax-exempt organizations doing high-value work. At The Shalom Center,  we work  to heal our society and Mother Earth from the wounds and plagues inflicted by our modern Pharaohs..

There couldn’t be a better time than right now to support the work we do! Earlier this month, elections all across our country gave many of us the joyful taste of active hope and strong determination.


Even though – or because! --we are facing the worst, The Spirit is Rising !

We face the Pharaohs of our time. Like the ancient Pharaoh, the new Carbon Pharaohs  are bringing Plagues of floods and wildfires upon our land and are trying to subjugate our people.

AND -- as in the ancient Resistance to Pharaoh ---  The Spirit is Rising !

There are three crucial factors in creating change: Ideas, personal and communal covenant / commitment, and money.

Money is the frozen form of human energy that makes change possible if the other two factors are present.  If they are, the money can be unfrozen into active change. But without the money, even creative ideas and committed covenant are helpless.

That is why this is the perfect moment for us on the staff and Board of The Shalom Center, to especially thank those of our readers who have become supporters through their giving money as well as emotional, intellectual, and spiritual support, .

So we are writing you now to ask you to unfreeze the money that can empower you and The Shalom Center to heal our climate.

When we unfreeze our money in this way, The Spirit Rises!

 For years The Shalom Center has been exploring the riches of Torah –- the life-experience of shepherds and farmers who took the Earth most seriously --to learn how we today could resonate with the Earth of which we are always a part.  We know that the faithful in every religious community can change America and the world, if they are inspired to take vigorous action to heal our wounded Mother.

Our job is to supply the inspiration by drawing on old wisdom and new courage.

When we inspire each other in this way, The Spirit Rises!

We’ve sown the seeds of Eco-Judaism and they’ve begun to sprout.  But still The Shalom Center  is the only national Jewish organization that makes the healing of the Earth and the survival of human civilization its first priority.

What will we pursue this coming year?

With your help, we intend to strengthen our work in three dimensions.

Dimension 1: Deepening our work.

Much of the religious community’s climate activism has been joining in secular marches and lobbying. The Shalom Center keeps looking deepeer into the human spirit: creating and sharing “Prayer that Makes Sure the Earth Matters.”

Facing  modern Pharaohs, our protests could lift up Passover’s matzah – the edible symbol of what Dr. King called the “fierce urgency of Now”– -- and Palm Sunday’s palm branches -– green new life in springtime. We could learn to ask the trees what they are praying.  We could make our lobbying into activist pilgrimages. with a deep spiritual message and tone.

When we pray together in this way, The Spirit Rises!

Dimension 2: Time. Reaching out to the livable past, to help us shape a livable future.

It is time to reawaken the very last words of the last of the ancient Hebrew prophets: "I will send you Elijah the Prophet to turn the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of the children to the parents, lest YHWH the Breath of Life become a destructive wind, a Hyper-Hurricane, to utterly destroy the Earth."  (Malachi 3:23-24.)

Today we must become Elijah. We must refocus our response to global scorching not only with a No to burning fossil fuels, but also with new Yeses.   

That means restoring for our children and grandchildren the life-giving climate that sustained our parents and grandparents. It means going beyond even zero emissions of CO2 to get rid of huge poisonous overdoses of CO@ that are already stored up in our air.

 

[Just one among possible approaches to removing CO2 from the atmosphere would be a massive effort to revitalize ecosystems that have been ruined, restoring life-forms that capture CO2 from the air and keep it on the ground or in the oceans.]

 At The Shalom Center, we are talking with scientists about what are the  swiftest, most effective and also safest ways to restore a healthy climate.  We will supply the information so you can speak about it among your family and friends, your colleagues at work, your fellow-congregants.

When we learn together in this way, The Spirit Rises!

Dimension 3. Broadening our work.

To heal Mother Earth, we must heal our country,  too. We must regrow grass-roots economic and energy democracy, as well as political democracy.

This coming April 4 is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.  Exactly one year before his death, Dr. King spoke at Riversode Church in New York City of “deadly triplets” that threatened American society: Racism, Militarism, and Materialism.

The Carbon Pharaohs impose on us all three when for the sake of their own Hyper-profits they insist on burning our common home, our Mother Earth:  bringing on the Plagues of floods of water and of desperate refugees, firestorms in forests and the fires of communal violence.

Dr. King spoke of our need to birth the “Beloved Community.” The anniversary of his death falls a few days after Easter, and in the midst of Passover. We need to make that period a time of Truth and Transformation.  Confront and Create. Confront poisonous oil pipelines and Create neighborhood solar-energy co-ops. Meet immediate needs of those who suffer from climate-caused unnatural disasters, and resettle climate refugees.

 

[Carbon burning that poisons the Earth also poisons neighborhoods ---- with coal dust and oil-refinery fumes that multiply asthma and cancer.]

When we take action together in this way, The Spirit Rises!

Only with your help – your tax-deductible gifts of the money to empower creative ideas and activist commitment --- can we reach out to create new prayers, new sermons, and new activist pilgrimages to Congress and your City Council.

Every year, inflation increases our costs. Please click to 

<https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1>

and if you can, decide on a gift that’s larger than what you gave before.

When we share our frozen energy this way, unfreezing it, The Spirit Rises!

Thanks!  and blessings of shalom, salaam, paz, peace, to all of us, to our children and the children of our children, and to our Mother Earth.

This Thanksgiving: FLOOD THE E.P.A. with Thanks to the Holy One for Mother Earth and Sacred Calls to Heal Her

Submitted by Anonymous on

On Thanksgiving, many Americans of many cultures and traditions join in celebrating the abundance of the Earth that feeds and nurtures us all.

Yet we have just in the last few months suffered from Hyper-Hurricanes and dreadful wildfires that are flooding our communities — and all of Earth — with Floods of Fire and of Water.  They  have been caused or worsened by global scorching — by the climate crisis brought on by burning fossil fuels. 

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