We are approaching Rosh Hashanah, when we ourselves blow the Shofar  -- puffing a small breath of air into the small end of the ram’s horn to come out the other end as an outcry of four distinct notes: alarm, broken-heart, grief, and awe-filled transformation.

Close to the end of this  Shalom Report, we will suggest five actions that will turn the symbolic Shofar into our active reality.

Why must we do this? Because in just the past four weeks, the world itself has cried out four far more powerful separate soundings of the Shofar.

All four soundings of alarm share the same danger: that those whom we exclude from “our” society can in despair become a danger to the society that excludes them, and that responding to that danger with still more exclusion brings on more violence to contain the danger.

There is only one response that in the long run works: inclusion, connection, or to use the short and embarrassing word – – love.

The first Shofar blast was sounded at Charlottesville, and became even more shrill when the White House commented on what happened there. It called on us, "Awake!" to the resurgence of violent white supremacism, white nationalism, Neo-Nazi-ism no longer at the margins of American society but now with sympathizers and defenders and believers at the very peak of American power in the White House and the presidency itself.

More deeply, it called out the pain and despair of some “old Americans” who feel severed economically, culturally, and spiritually from a new transnational, multicultural world.

A second Shofar blast was sounded by the hurricane that shattered many parts of Texas. Far fewer  Americans could also hear the same Shofar crying out from Asia, in the floods that killed thousands in Nepal, India, and Bangla Desh.  These storms called on us, "Awake!" to the truth of global scorching caused by the corporate greed  of Big Coal, Big Oil, Big Unnatural Gas,  now vigorously made the “Law of Greed is God” by the White House.

Here it is the Earth itself that those who rule our society try to exclude and subjugate -- pretending that all the Earth is not an ecosystem and that what we do to rip and tear its interwovenness does not come back to harm us.

Third, the Shofar blast of a Hydrogen Bomb and long-distance missiles tested successfully by the government of North Korea, echoed by war-like threats of “fire and fury” from the US government  -- together with the announcement that the White House will seek Congressional authorization of a trillion-dollar budget to ”upgrade” and “strengthen” the US arsenal of thousands of H-Bombs. This is the Shofar blast of The Bomb reawakened, after almost thirty years of comfortable neglect as we thought the genocidal danger had been parked in a musty barn, unvisited.

The trillion dollars proposed for  making fancier H-Bombs could instead be spent on removing a trillion tons of CO2 from our planet’s atmosphere, Then our children and grandchildren could take joy and sustenance from a climate as life-giving as that which sustained our parents and grandparents, with a level of eco-social justice that many of our forebears did not experience.

Fourth: The Shofar blast of efforts to wreck the lives of Dreamers and other immigrants, documented or not. We hear the wailing of heartbreak and sorrow in worsening deportation sweeps of these last few months, and in the cancelation of the DACA exemptions from deportation of the Dreamers who came as little children to the United States. These actions not only cruelty shatter immigrant families, but are also inexorably moving toward wounding  the civil liberties and freedoms of many others.

In all four of these Traumas, there is the possibility of Transformation.

• We could bring together the different segments of working-class and lower-middle-class Americans of every race and gender and ethnicity in a joyful amalgam, a New New Deal of sharing.
• We could affirm our interconnectedness with all of our planet’s life-forms, and take action to heal and restore a livable climate.
• We could move swiftly to carry out the Treaty to abolish all nuclear weapons that was recently adopted by the United Nations, freeing us all from the threat of nuclear holocaust. And we could take legal, political, and economic steps to welcome North Korea into the comity of nations, even though we do not like its government.
• We could rework our entire approach to immigration. We could not only welcome into citizenship all migrants in our midst, but with a new “Marshall Plan” we could revitalize the economies and polities of Mexico and Central America.  Then their citizens would not feel flight from poverty, violence, and despair is their only choice.

In short, in each dimension of these echoing Shofar-outcries we could respond not with more repression but with Transformative inclusion -- Love.

Jewish tradition teaches that God' s own self will blow the Great Shofar to herald the coming of Messiah and the days of healing, peace, and justice. As one ancient rabbi said, "May Messiah come, indeed, indeed .-- And may I not live to suffer through the turmoil that will accompany the Coming!” 

We are hearing the Breath of Life, YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh, blowing the still small Voice into the small end of our planet’s Great Shofar, sending a flood of sound into our ears and hearts.

On Rosh Hashanah we can only emulate the Great Shofar, to show that we are joining in the great outcry of Transformation.

While The Shalom Center has responded with action-suggestions to all four of these Shofar-soundings of alarm and transformation, we have chosen to focus most of our work on the existential threat to human civilization and to many other life-forms that arises from the climate crisis, from global scorching.

We have chosen that for three reasons: (a) The danger is greatest; (b) The organized Jewish community has been much slower to respond to that danger than to other important issues like hostility to immigrants and refugees, religious bigotry,  racism, and gender bigotry; (c) The Hebrew Scriptures are the spiritual expression of an earth-based people, and have a rich treasury of wisdom for shaping a loving relationship between human earthlings and the Earth --  but that wisdom has mostly been ignored, and could now be drawn upon to inspire strong religious action for the earth.

We suggest five actions you could take immediately, to begin the year with Transformative Action:

(1)  Click here to donate to TEJAS --  Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services.  (<http://tejasbarrios.org/a-just-harvey-recovery-fund/>

They are front-line folks in the Latino community who have had poisonous Big Oil thrust down their throats for years, who have suffered even more than most Texans from the hurricane,  and who have already been conscious and active about the dangers of the Corporate Carbon Pharaohs to their own lives. So a donation supports both immediate relief and longer-range organizing against the real danger.

(2) Prepare for Rosh Hashanah by clicking to

<https://theshalomcenter.org/content/rosh-hashanah-we-turn-heal-earth>  (Many of these prayers express the visions and commitments not only of Judaism but also of other spiritual and religious communities So those of other communities should feel free to draw on them.)

(3) As part of a Rosh Hashanah or another gathering, invite congregants or neighbors  to discuss organizing a solar-energy co-op as an act of healing, a Birthday present for the Earth, .  To begin the discussion, print out and share the explanation at

<http://nwphillysolarcoop.com/about/>

(4) Invite congregants to a study group –-  perhaps the same people who create the solar co-op --  focused on the following vision: Taking action not only to end new CO2 and methane emissions, but also for a public policy to withdraw a trillion tons of carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere. 

The goal of this policy is that our children and grandchildren can take joy and sustenance from a climate as life-giving as that which sustained our parents and grandparents, with a level of eco-social justice that many of our forebears did not experience. Invite scientists,  leaders of religious and ethical thought, and political activists to explore this vision with you.

(5) Gather your friends and congregants into a “sustainers covenant” to help The Shalom Center keep doing this work. There are many ways we could sustain these efforts with Transformation Tool-kits, but only if you sustain us with the money it takes to prepare them.

With blessings for shalom, salaam, paz, peace for Earth and all of us --  Arthur

Brief Comments on a Long Crisis

Tonight and tomorrow, the Muslim world through Eid al-Adha, the Festival of the Offering, is celebrating an event that will become salient for the Jewish community on Rosh Hashanah, almost a month from now.

That event is the readiness of our shared forebear Abraham to make an offering-up of his son at God's command, and his willingness to change direction on a moment’s notice – – again at God's command – – to refrain from killing his child, and instead to make an offering of a ram with horns that were caught in a nearby thicket.

For Muslims, the Festival is celebrated in part by sharing roasted lamb or mutton in memory of that ram.  The sharing extends to making sure that the poor receive the food.

One could interpret the whole teaching in these words:

"Do not kill your children; feed the poor!"

For Jews, the story comes with all its torment in the traditional Torah reading for the second day of Rosh Hashanah. It follows on the teaching of the first day, when Abraham sends his other son out into the wilderness.

Islam and Judaism traditionally disagree about which son was bound up on the mountaintop – – Ishmael or Isaac. As with many family stories, we can take these different versions of the past as hostile,

or as different threads in a sacred fabric woven of different sacred teachings.

In the one-story, we learn from a family broken. In the other story, we learn from the family never broken, always joyful. Both are part of human experience, and we need to learn from both instead of rejecting either one.

 You could say that for millennia, many human communities have faced the dilemma: Does God demand of us that we kill our children by going to war against some Other with a different story, or does God demand of us that we feed the hungry of all communities?

In the Torah’s teaching of the story, after God has sent Abraham up the mountain, when the Voice says not to harm the child, the Voice must call out twice for Abraham to pay attention and to change the future.

Today we face the dreadful danger of killing our children not only through war, but by slowly choking our Mother Earth herself, and all her life-forms, by global scorching. So perhaps this year we need to draw on another deeply valid teaching about Rosh Hashanah: Yom harat olam, today is the birthing of the world!

At the end of this letter, you will find a brief preface to the candle-lighting on the evenings of Rosh Hashanah --  or on any sacred occasion in which we seek to turn fire into a way to light up the path ahead of us.

Will we turn our ears, our hearts, to hearing that we need to change the future? To hear that pursuing "business as usual" – – and I do mean "business" – – will ruin us all? How many times must the Voice cry out, "Abraham… Abraham! – – ABRAHAM!" for us to hearken?

“Katrina! –--  Sandy! –--  Houston! – – Bangladesh! – – Drought and famine in central Africa! – –  Drought and famine in Syria!…"

What if the Voice had spoken into deaf ears, deaf years?

"Sleepers, awake!" cries out the sound of the ram's horn as we walk toward Rosh Hashanah.

Tradition teaches that at Sinai one horn of that same ram that saved our children blew Truth into the world, and that the other horn of that same ram will signal the world's readiness to bring the messianic days of peace and justice.

Time now, these days of Turning, Transformation, for Homo Sapiens to make the Great Turning that every life-form yearns for.

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.

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

Not fire and fury,

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.

Baruch attah YHWH --  Yahhh --  elohenu ruakh ha’olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvot vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel yomtov, Yom Harat Olam.

Blessed are You, Interbreathing Spirit of the world, Source of all creation, Who calls us into holiness through making connections with each other, and Who calls on us to connect by kindling the lights of this festival, the Day of the Birthing of the World.

{Light candles of commitment and joy]

Since Charlottesville, some progressives have questioned whether continuing our commitment to acting nonviolently and to affirming Freedom of Assembly even for neo-Nazis is worthwhile.

Before we look more deeply into the ethical issues involved, let me first share some unconventional imaginings of what nonviolence and free assembly could be like. (1) How might we more imaginatively and even hilariously challenge racists and neo-Nazis when they assemble? (2) And how might we create new forms of Free Assembly of our own?

(1) How might we challenge public gatherings of neo-Nazis and racists without ourselves resorting to violence and glorifying it?  Let’s be clear: ”Nonviolence” is not “passive” resistance. Nonviolence can be active, assertive, colorful, even hilarious. Decades ago, when the ACLU supported the legal right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, the home of hundreds of Holocaust survivors, I suggested that any counter-demonstration draw on the tradition of the Jewish festival of Purim --  satire, parody, ridicule, caricature.

Like this:

That photo comes from a recent New York Times article about a town in Germany that has responded to recent Neo-Nazi  marches in that way. See

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/how-to-make-fun-of-nazis.html?mcubz=1&_r=0

The photo, however, is not German: it shows an American action years ago  of the same flavor, aimed against the Klan.

The white-supremacist movement depends on two emotions: resentment at being marginalized, and (to jump across those feelings of impotence), dramatic pretend-performances of superior power and subjugation of others. 

So these might be far better chanted challenges than shouting “Nazi scum!” ---

“Our enemy is Wall Street --

Not each other!”

and  --

“Hitler was a loser goon

Brought his country down to ruin.

Trump is another loser loon

Don't let him bring America to ruin”

The first directly invites the “Other” out of marginalization into the dignity of alliance in a struggle against the HyperWealthy who oppress us all, and the second also invites a truly patriotic love of country while warning that an isolated right wing become losers, not victors.

And further -- what if each counter-protester in Charlottesville and Boston and Phoenix had promised to contribute $1 to  the Resistance for every racist, every Nazi who showed up praising Trump? That would turn every neo-fascist “victory” upside down, into a simultaneous defeat.  

These approaches turn real and potential conflict into a topsy-turvy invitation. Topsy-turvy always has an element of the clown, the joke, hilarity. Just below the surface of hilarity there lies a deeper wisdom.

Meanwhile, let’s reframe our own Freedom of Assembly as pilgrimages to the sacred sites of Democracy. Pilgrimages for peace and justice that treat the offices of Members of Congress or City Councilmembers as sacred places – tiny Temples -- where We The People are entitled to visit and bring Offerings, not to be forced away.

• Offerings of fair-trade chocolate bars.
• Offerings of murky water from a frack-infested stream, alongside bottles of pure water protected by the regulations that POTUS Trump is abolishing.
• Offerings of green and flowering plants endangered by the global scorching that Trump is abetting for the sake of Big Oil and Big Coal hyper-profits.
• And of course,  Offerings of truthful words – clear, calm, prayerful as befits a sacred Offering.

Now let us turn to the underlying ethics. Although the new pro-counter-violence responses from progressives are understandable because they arise out of shock and fear,  I think they are short-sighted and likely to be self-destructive.

First of all, affirming violence as a political tool poisons the deep assertion at the root of progressive politics and prophetic religion: the assertion that all human beings are sacred, equal not in their abilities or even in their ethics but in their worth and dignity.

Poisoning that truth is not only a spiritual or ethical failure; it invites political disaster. It is no accident that Trump was able to appeal to some large part of his political base by pointing to the fact that “antifa” (antifascist) activists could be seen on video acting violently in Charlottesville.

Thank God, the overwhelming majority of American society was able to see that the Nazi glorification

Joining with Chabon & Waldman to Challenge What this Shocking Photo Means

That  photograph from Charlottesville and, even more,  the  Trump press conference that pretended to explain it away,  traumatized many chunks of American society  – – and perhaps most sharply, the American Jewish community.

For the first time in three generations, many American Jews suddenly felt unsafe in what they had come to feel was truly the Promised  Land.

There have been two different efforts to respond to this sudden onslaught of fear.

One has been to encourage a pastoral calm and comfort,  in which politically differing members  of a given congregation could  smooth over their differences through their concern to keep on good and loving terms with each other.

The other has been to encourage what might be called  not "pastoral comfort" but  "prophetic comfort”: the comfort of a prophetic community,  united in song and spirit and determination to challenge  the emergence of neo-Nazism and rabid anti-Semitism in places of great power and in violent eruptions at the grass roots.

In the midst of this unplanned exploration of new intellectual, emotional, and spiritual territory, the community found itself addressed by an "Open Letter to Our FelJow Jews.”

It  came from Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman (authors, respectively, of several brilliant novels including The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and of seven mystery novels in the series The Mommy-Track Mysteries).  What they wrote is clearly in the prophetic,  not the pastoral, mode.

Now and again below the text of their letter, we are inviting you to join in it.  To  join in speaking truth to white supremacist,  racist, anti-Semitic power.

We believe that during a great crisis, the fullest pastoral joy and calm come not instead of prophetic action, but as the result of well-aimed prophetic action.

You can join in signing the letter by clicking here:

<https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=21&reset=1>

"AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR FELLOW JEWS

"To our fellow Jews, in the United States, in Israel, and around the world:

"We know that, up to now, some of you have made an effort to reserve judgment on the question of whether or not President Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, and to give him the benefit of the doubt. Some of you voted for him last November. Some of you have found employment in his service, or have involved yourself with him in private business deals, or in diplomatic ties.

“You have counted carefully as each appointment to his administration of a white supremacist, anti-Semite, neo-Nazi or crypto-fascist appeared to be counterbalanced by the appointment of a fellow Jew, and reassured yourself that the most troubling of those hires would be cumulatively outweighed by the presence, in his own family and circle of closest advisors, of a Jewish son-in-law and daughter.

"You have given your support to the President’s long and appalling record of racist statements, at worst assenting to them, at best dismissing them as the empty blandishments of a huckster at work, and have chosen to see the warm reception that his rhetoric found among the hood-wearers, weekend stormtroopers, and militias of hate as proof of the gullibility of a bunch of patsies, however distasteful.

“"You have viewed him as a potential friend to Israel, or a reliable enemy of Israel’s enemies.

"You have tried to allay or dismiss your fears with the knowledge that most of the President’s hateful words and actions, along with those of his appointees, have targeted other people — immigrants, Black people, and Muslims — taking hollow consolation in how open and shameless his hate has been, as if that openness and shamelessness guaranteed the absence, in his heart and in his administration, of any hidden hatred for us.

"The President has no filter, no self-control, you have told yourself. If he were an anti-Semite — a Nazi sympathizer, a friend of the Jew-hating Klan — we would know about it, by now. By now, he would surely have told us.

"Yesterday, in a long and ragged off-the-cuff address to the press corps, President Trump told us. During a moment that white supremacist godfather Steve Bannon has apparently described as a “defining” one for this Administration, the President expressed admiration and sympathy for a group of white supremacist demonstrators who marched through the streets of Charlottesville, flaunting Swastikas and openly chanting, along with vile racist slogans, 'Jews will not replace us!' Among those demonstrators, according to Trump, were 'a lot' of ‘innocent' and 'very fine people.'

"So, now you know. First he went after immigrants, the poor, Muslims, trans people and people of color, and you did nothing. You contributed to his campaign, you voted for him. You accepted positions on his staff and his councils. 

"You entered into negotiations, cut deals, made contracts with him and his government.

"Now he’s coming after you. The question is: what are you going to do about it? If you don’t feel, or can’t show, any concern, pain or understanding for the persecution and demonization of others, at least show a little self-interest. At least show a little sechel. At the very least, show a little self-respect.

"To Steven Mnuchin [Secretary of the Treasury], Gary Cohn [chief economic advisor to the  President], and our other fellow Jews currently serving under this odious regime: We call upon you to resign; and to the President’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen: Fire your client.

"To Sheldon Adelson and our other fellow Jews still engaged in making the repugnant calculation that a hater of Arabs must be a lover of Jews, or that money trumps hate, or that a million dollars’ worth of access can protect you from one boot heel at the door: Wise up.

“To the government of Israel, and our fellow Jews living there: Wise up.

"To Jared Kushner: You have one minute to do whatever it takes to keep the history of your people from looking back on you as among its greatest traitors, and greatest fools; that minute is nearly past. To Ivanka Trump: Allow us to teach you an ancient and venerable phrase, long employed by Jewish parents and children to one another at such moments of family crisis: I’ll sit shiva for you. Try it out on your father; see how it goes.

"Among all the bleak and violent truths that found confirmation or came slouching into view amid the torchlight of Charlottesville is this: Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism; any Jew who does not condemn the President, directly and by name, for his racism, white supremacism, intolerance and Jew hatred, condones all of those things.

"To our fellow Jews, in North America, in Israel, and around the world: What side are you on?

"Sincerely,

Michael Chabon

Ayelet Waldman

Berkeley, California, 8/16/17"

####   ####  ####  ####  #### 

Most of us usually think of the ancient Prophets as individuals – – though we see evidence that around Jeremiah, for example, there was a religio-political cluster.

Today,  must we leave the prophetic voice only to individuals like Chabon and Waldman? Can the prophetic voice  be spoken by a broad movement of Jews committed to the revitalization of Judaism in both prayer and politics and in the fusion of the two?

  Can we call upon all rabbis to read the Chabon-Waldman letter in their congregations on Shabbat,  and add a two-word sermon:   “I agree!” --  ??

The Shalom Center intends to try.  We invite you – – any and all of you --  to affirm that we agree with Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. 

We invite you to direct a petitionary demand to the six Jews whom they have named as continuing, despite all Jewish values,  to serve as close advisers to a racist, hate-filled, Earth-poisoning,  and anti-Semitic President.

At The Shalom Center,  we will make sure this demand reaches Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, Michael D. Cohen, Sheldon Adelson, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump.

 You can join in signing the Open Letter by clicking here:

<https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=21&reset=1>

Six prophetic challenges can bring us to the Seventh Time and Place – a joyful calm, a Shabbat of community renewed.