CiviMail

Healing our Country -- in 3 Concentric Circles

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Giving Thanks, Healing America:

Resist Trump, Reach-out to his Voters.

3 Concentric Circles for Passion & Compassion

What do we do now, still mourning and nevertheless needing to organize to prevent deep damage to our democracy? And even more, seeking to break through as we have in crises past,  to a new and far more just and compassionate America?

 What would it mean to approach this Thanksgiving in such a mood as to give real Thanks?

The Truth of our Trouble: Two halves of our country –- the “Old America” (mostly white men and women in communities where dignified blue-collar work —now vanished—and stable extended family was once a way of life) and the “New America”  (mostly Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Asians, Natives, immigrants, LGBTQ folk, feminist women and men, debt-burdened college graduates)) -- both feel themselves left out --- and have turned to attacking each other, rather than transforming the system that keeps them both under debilitating pressure.

"Attacking each other" is probably too simple a description. It is probably more accurate to say the New America has been ignoring  Old America until this election   -- but to Old America, having its wounds and fears ignored has certainly felt like being attacked, being left to suffer from destruction of its jobs and from contempt for its values. Old America has been simmering with discontent; once Trump addressed that discontent and added burning-peppery racist, xenophobic, and misogynist spices to the stew, his incitement either encouraged the discontent to become racist and xenophobic  or surfaced such dormant feelings to explode.

Around the Thanksgiving tables of our beloved friends and families, we can begin the healing by joining love to thought.  In another letter I will share more of my thinking about the underlying spiritual and cultural crisis that has exploded into the political sphere. But today I want to begin sharing some next healing steps we could decide to take.

I have been thinking of these healing acts in three concentric circles:

First, the innerness of our own hearts, minds, souls –-the “I” of each of us.  But there is no real I without a Thou. It takes a village of vitality, a neighborly neighborhood, a compassionate community,  to raise a clear-headed and compassionate adult.

The Thanksgiving table is one version of that "village." We might gently tell our beloved friends and family that we need to share some ideas and ask some advice about meeting needs in a neighborly way. If we can approach them with openness and hearing instead of rage at our differences, we can also take the first steps to heal our country.

I suggest as a goal for our responses: Resist Trump, Reach-out to his Voters.

If we need to feel rage, let it be aimed at the mis-leaders who have drawn us into fear of each other, not at the other half of our country, or even of our table,  who may have voted differently from us.

At the table, we need to express the grief and fear we feel, facing others who can feel our feelings even if they disagree with us -- who can cry with us, embrace us.

But tears are not enough. Just as Rabbi Abraham  Joshua Heschel said prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, so tears are useless unless they water a wellspring of change.  

At the table, we could say that out of the shock and trauma of the last few weeks, you'd like to raise some thoughts about actions we could take as friends and neighbors: Truly neighborly neighbors in this moment will act to meet each others’ needs:

  • If the new national healthcare system is destroyed and clinics like Planned Parenthood are defunded, should we create neighborhood health clinics supported by each other?
  • If the newly enacted regulations on banks to prevent fraud and a cesspool of corruption are repealed, do we need to create credit unions and free-loan societies rooted in our religious congregations?
  • If our system for safeguarding the health and safety of our food is wrecked by budget cuts, can we greatly multiply the numbers of our neighborhood grocery co-ops?
  • If a new national pro-carbon policy shatters our efforts to heal the Earth from global scorching, do we need to birth neighborhood  solar-energy co-ops?

Notice that these proposals are up-beat, practical visions of a reasonable future. They are not freighted with hostility.

The next suggestion, however, may raise the hackles

A RABBINIC STATEMENT SUPPORTING THE LAKOTA NATION IN ITS OPPOSITION TO THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

JEWS SAY YES TO THE LAKOTA NATION

 And NO TO THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE

In late October, The Shalom Center began organizing a Rabbinic Statement to respond to the crisis in North Dakota over a dangerous oil pipe-line and the efforts of several Native Nations to stop it. By the morning of November 28, more than 300 Rabbis and about 80 other Jewish spiritual leaders had signed the statement.

Why did we decide to do this? Because Torah speaks to the crucial importance of protecting the Earth and seeking eco-social justice. And -- even more urgently  -- life and death are now  at stake, as prayerful Native gatherings are violently attacked. You can see this clearly in these two photos -- one of the peaceful, prayerful march of the Water-Protectors; the other, of the police response.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, a Jewish protest against a Philadelphia bank that has invested in the Dakota Oil Pipe Line resulted Wednesday in nine arrests. About fifteen rabbis and rabbinical students, with sixty other Jewish activists, held a "Water is Life" ceremony at the bank to celebrate the New Moon  that began the month of Cheshvan. The protest forced the bank to close its doors, after nine protesters had been able to get inside and then were arrested. (See photo.)

 

And one Rabbi, Linda Holtzman of Philadelphia, has been arrested at Standing Rock, North Dakota, as part of a multireligious demonstration of support for the Native Water-Protectors. 

 

Why is this happening? The Torah in many ways embodies the spiritual experience of an indigenous people ---  shepherds and farmers in the ancient Land of Israel -- with a sense that the Earth itself is sacred. So it is no surprise that today, in the midst of a global crisis endangering the Earth, some Jews respond with special caring to an indigenous People -- the Native American Nations -- who are struggling to protect our Earth, our water, against rapacious Corporate Carbon Pharaohs that are bringing modern plagues upon the Earth.

If you are a Rabbi, Cantor, Rabbinic Pastor, Chaplain, Kohenet, or Rabbinic or Cantorial student, Jewish musician, artist, writer, professor, or other form of spiritual leader and wish to join in signing the Rabbinic  Statement, you can click to

<https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=19&reset=1>

 

THE  RABBINIC  STATEMENT AND ITS SIGNERS FOLLOW:

 We are living in the midst of a profound spiritual crisis in American society, expressed in the current election campaign and in many other forms as well.

 One of the most poignant is the nonviolent protest in North Dakota, led by people of the First Nations, against the imposition of the oil-bearing Dakota Access Pipeline upon the sacred ancestral lands of the Sioux Nation. The pipeline is desecrating their graves, threatening to poison the water of the Missouri River, and endangering the entire web of life of Mother Earth by increasing the burning of fossil fuels.

 Already hundreds of representatives from many of the First Nations living in the United States, gathered for the first time in history beyond all previous divisions and alliances, together with growing numbers of other Americans and of indigenous peoples from other countries, have gathered to face this onslaught with prayerful nonviolent resistance. 

 Yet as they pray, police with rifles loaded and lifted threaten to use deadly force to impose this destructive pipeline on the region, on the nation, and on the Earth.

As spiritual leaders and teachers of the Jewish people, we affirm Torah’s commitment to protect the Earth from which the human race was born (Gen 2: 7) and which we are commanded to allow to rest in rhythmic celebration of the Creator (Lev. 25: 1-12, 23).

Indeed, Torah adds that if we block this rhythmic rest, the exhausted earth will erupt against us (Lev 26:  34-35, 43). These commands and warnings were rooted in our ancestors’ deep experience of the sacred unity of all life; they are confirmed by scientists today.

And already in higher rates of asthma and cancer where coal, oil, and fracked unnatural gas are extracted, refined, and burned; in unprecedented floods and droughts and superstorms all around the planet – we are seeing these ancient prophecies and modern scientific predictions come to life.

On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel stood together in Riverside Church in New York City. Dr. King spoke out not only against the Vietnam War but even more deeply against what he called the deadly triplets afflicting America --  racism, militarism, and materialism.  And he called for a commitment to nonviolent activism to bring about a “revolution in values” for America.

In the Dakota confrontation, all three of those triplets have borne monstrous offspring in one clarifying moment:

Corporate greed has in this case taken the “materialism” triplet to its extreme; the armed police have brought militarism home; the trampling on Native rights and needs echoes the earliest racism of our past.

For all these reasons, we urgently call on President Obama as Commander-in-Chief of the Army Corps of Engineers to firmly and clearly prohibit the Dakota Access Pipeline from encroaching on the Missouri River, and we urge all state and federal agencies to affirm and respect the role of the Native communities in defending the weave of life upon the continent we know as North America, and they have for centuries called Turtle Island.

And we call on Jewish communities and their leaders throughout our country to speak out in congregations and publicly, to gather in prayerful vigils in our own communities, and to assist the Lakota protest as it moves into a stern Dakota winter by sending money to buy clothing, food, and other supplies for a lengthy steadfast stay.  Please send your gifts by clicking here: < http://www.ocetisakowincamp.org/>

We encourage our communities to call North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple at 701-328-2200 to leave a message stating your opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline; to call the White House at (202) 456-1111 or (202) 456-1414 to tell President Obama to rescind the Army Corps of Engineers’ permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline.; and to call the Army Corps of Engineers (202) 761-5903 -- and demand that they rescind the permit.

In his Riverside speech, Dr. King lifted up “the fierce urgency  of Now.” And in our lives today, facing both a spiritual crisis in America and a world-wide spiritual crisis in the relationship between adam and adamah, humanity and Earth, the urgency of Now is far more fierce.

Initiating Signers [All affiliations are noted for identification only; all signers are signing as individuals]: 

Rabbi Ellen Bernstein  (Founder, Shomrei Adamah)

Rabbi Denise L. Eger (President, Central Conference of American Rabbis)

Rabbi Everett Gendler (Emeritus, Phillips Academy, Andover)

 Rabbi Arthur Green (Rector, Rabbinical School of Hebrew College)

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg (Founder & President Emeritus, CLAL)

Rabbi Jill Hammer (Co-founder, Kohenet)

Rabbi Jill Jacobs (Executive Director, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights)

Rabbi Raachel Jurovics (President, Ohalah: Rabbinic Association for Jewish Renewal)

Rabbi Peter Knobel  (Past President , Central Conference of American Rabbis)

 Rabbi Mordechai Liebling (Director, Social Justice Organizing Program, ,Reconstructionist Rabbinical College)

Rabbi Ellen Lippmann (Kolot Chayeinu, Brooklyn)

Rabbi Julie Schonfeld (Executive Vice President , Rabbinical Assembly)

Rabbi Lawrence Troster (Kesher Israel Congregation, West Chester, PA)

Rabbi Arthur Waskow (Director, The Shalom Center) Rabbi Deborah Waxman (President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College)

Rabbi Elyse Wechterman (Executive Director, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association)

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz  (President & Dean of Valley Beit Midrash)

As of the morning of November 28,  381 more signers have joined these 17 Initiating Signers, and the numbers are growing.

 

If you are a Rabbi, Cantor, Rabbinic Pastor, Chaplain, Kohenet, or Rabbinic or Cantorial student, Jewish musician, artist, writer, professor, or other form of spiritual leader and wish to join in signing the Rabbinic  Statement, you can click to

 

<https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=19&reset=1>

 The names of the additonal 291 Rabbis and 42 other spiritual leaders of the Jewish people  ae signed below  -- click on "Read more" to see them.

Facing President Trump with Martin Luther King + 50

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Creating a Year of Truth & Transformation

The election of Donald Trump arose from a profound spiritual, cultural, and political crisis in American society. Two halves of the country both feel themselves left out – and have turned to attacking each other, rather than transforming the system that keeps them both under debilitating pressure

The election brought an unexpected outpouring  of  the “Old American left-outs” – blue-collar  white men – into a moment’s triumph. We have already seen a first response from the “New American left-outs” in the spontaneous demonstrations that erupted all over America within 24 hours of the election.

We need to crystallize this outburst into a broadly embracing movement of movements that can pursue acts of nonviolent, loving, empowering creativity. Acts that reach across the present barricades to make sense to both the “Old” and “New” Americas, to nurture the seeds of a new society and to challenge institutions that are domineering and destructive.

At this crucial moment, there is great potential value in the fact that the fiftieth anniversary of the last year in the life of Martin Luther King is fast approaching.

This year will stretch from the 50th anniversary of April 4, 1967  -- when he gave the “Riverside speech” at Riverside Church in New York City  --  to the 50th anniversary of April 4, 1968, when he was murdered.

The Shalom Center has already begun the work to shape this year -- the year of "MLK + 50" -- into a Year of Truth and Transformation.

We need your help in this time of emergency, to grow the seeds we have already planted and that have begun to sprout, into the Year of Truth and Transformation.

Dr. King’s Riverside speech, entitled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,” startled and shook the nation by opposing the Vietnam War – a stance that in itself broke new and difficult ground for Dr. King and for Rabbi Heschel, sitting beside him in full agreement.

Dr. King's words went indeed “beyond” Vietnam to name racism, militarism, and materialism as deadly triplets afflicting America, and to call for an American “revolution in values.”


 And the entire speech was rooted in Dr. King’s profound commitment to active nonviolence. To seeking what of human need and Godly value could be addressed even in “enemies” and could be turned toward the creation of the Beloved Community.

Dr. King understood strategic nonviolence to require shaping a politics beyond race, to include as allies not only communities of color but also in the “Poor People’s Campaign” and “Resurrection City”  the poverty-ridden whites of Appalachia, and to lift up a vision of “Beloved Community.” 

That vision could become an important aspect of uniting all the “left-out” Americas, even some of those white blue-collar men who now see themselves as marginalized by the “new America” of Blacks, immigrants, Muslims, feminists, GLBTQ folks  -- and who have out of fear, despair, and anger turned to Trump. 

Devising a language and a politics that addresses not only their economic squeeze but their cultural and spiritual despair must be part of the task of a Kingly Transformation.

Fifty years after Dr. King spoke, the triplets he named have produced some monstrous offspring:

  •  Materialism run amok has created new billionaires who can flood elections with their money, while leaving the poor and the middle class to lose any hope of prosperity for themselves and their children, their sense of dignity, and even their expectation of lengthening lives– as the life-spans of some lower-middle-class Americans begin to decline for the first time in American history.   
  • Materialism and racism have coupled to birth corporate greed so extreme as to be prepared to burn our planet for the sake of profit, and to wound most deeply the communities of color and poverty in the US and the world. 
  • Militarism has come home and has coupled with racism to birth mass incarceration, police violence, and ever-present gun homicides.

What could all of us be doing to bring Dr. King’s wisdom and the symbolic power of his life and memory to bear on our present crisis?

1)       Gather on Dr. King’s official Birthday -- Monday, January 16  -- to begin planning for the MLK + 50 Year. The Inauguration of President Trump will come on Friday, January 20.

Already the Stony Point retreat center 45 miles north of New York City has set aside January 16-19 as a workshop week on “Beyond ‘Beyond Vietnam’:  Reclaiming King’s Courage for Movement-Building.”

 I will be one of the teacher/guides.

To register, see <http://stonypointcenter.org/book-a-room/upcoming-events/event/58-winter-institute-2017-beyond-beyond-vietnam-reclaiming-king-s-courage-for-movement-building-today>

At Stony Point or elsewhere on MLK Birthday, we could set our plans for MLK + 50 — A Jubilee Year of Truth and Transformation, with the deliberate intention of shaping the America that our next President must address.

3)        We can set as a goal that on or about April 4, 2017, people will gather in our own congregations, our own campuses, our own neighborhoods, even our own homes, to read the Riverside speech, discuss how to apply it today, and plan how to act to heal America from the triplets of racism, militarism, and materialism.

4) Beginning right now, we can spread the word. Ask your local MLK Day of Service Committee to add an April 4 Read-the-Speech observance to their plans.  Ask your congregation, your PTA, your college, to announce an April 4 gathering and schedule readers of the Riverside speech, responding commentators, inspiring .  

5) During the year that follows, all of us can plan specific times and places to challenge the “triplets” in two ways:  Truth and Transformation   --  Truth about the past and present, Transformation toward what Dr. King called the “Beloved Community”:

  a) For example, choose an Exxon-related place to hold a weekly vigil on the theme “Exxon lied, & people died”; (b) At the same time, organize a neighborhood solar-energy co-op.

Or (a) Join the fight for a decent budget for the public schools in your own city, while (b) also organizing Sunday “freedom schools” to connect the dots between personal troubles and structural disempowerment, and teach how to work for profound social change.

What is the goal of the Year of Truth and Transformation? To create a multiracial, multireligious, multicultural network of activist organizations, co-ops, schools, religious communities, neighborhoods, & grass-roots political parties able to bring people into the streets and the polling booths with five commitments:

Elections for All: Full democratization of election campaigns, free from Hyper-Money and free of restrictions on voting rights;

Human Rights for All: people of all races, ethnic groups, economic positions, genders, sexualities, and migrant status;

Abundance for All: Major steps toward full employment, higher minimum wages, and social support at the bottom; higher taxes at the top; 

Health and Education for All;

Mother Earth for All: Swift transition from the destructive fossil-fuel economy to renewable energy.

  Each of these can have an aspect of creating our own alternative communities and an  aspect of changing public policy.

6)  After a year of grass-roots work of Truth and Transformation, we look toward April 4, 2018, as a Day of Action, Atonement, and At-ONE-ment. The day might include vigils or dawn-to-dusk fasting called by religious communities, teach-ins called by students and faculty at colleges, work stoppages called by labor unions or businesses, acts of nonviolent civil disobedience called by various social-activist groups, etc.

In the Riverside speech, Dr. King spoke of  “the fierce urgency of Now.”  Fifty years later, the urgency is even fiercer.

It takes organizers and an expert on websites and social media and a website  filled with resources-for-action and reports-from-the-field, to grow these words I’m writing, these seeds of change, into sturdy oaks of Transformation.

And therefore, it takes money.

We ask you to treat this emergency as truly urgent, and to make a strong contribution to The Shalom Center. Mark the "In honor of" box for "MLK + 50,"  and we will use it solely to work for A Jubilee Year of Truth and Transformation.

If it's possible for you, we ask you to give at least $180; and for many of us, $360, $720, or $1,000 may be possible.

Please click on the maroon "Contribute"  button on the left side of this page.

Heartbreak and beyond

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

First, mourn.   Then organize.

First, heartbreak & mourning.

For the America we thought where at least a majority was too menshlich,
too compassionate, to turn its own real pain and fear into imposing
nightmare on “the Other.”

For Mother Earth, who now without a vigorous defense from the USA is more
likely to fall irredeemably into climate disaster;

For the poor, for immigrants, for Muslims, for Blacks and Latinos, for
many women, for GLBTQ folks, and even for the white blue-collar workers who voted for Trump but
will not in fact be redeemed by huge tax cuts for the hyper-wealthy and by
canceling broader health insurance;

For our children & grandchildren.

And then, organize.

I think we need two things:

A Platform for America that is shaped by progressive/ prophetic activists
& is lifted up by Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabth Warren,  Kamala
Harris, Catherine Cortez Masto, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

A  focus on alternative communities, bubbles of decency and empowerment:
How do we support them, how do we expand them?  For example:

1. It’s very likely that Planned Parenthood will quickly be defunded.  It
will take a little longer,  but a right-wing Supreme Court may reverse Roe
v. Wade. That will probably leave some states  where abortion will still
be legal — at least NY & CA. How do we create an effective network of
health support for women, including abortion? How do we mobilize MD’s who
now have a moral/ ethical stance very different from what most MD’s had in
1955?

2. No hope now for a carbon tax or even the Clean Energy Plan that Obama
tried to institute. We will need to organize neighborhood solar co-ops
that will save householders money (though the Federal subsidies will
probably disappear), reduce  CO2 emissions, and provide a democratic base
for further struggle. Can we win support from city & some state govts for
doing that? Can the environmentalist organizations shift their agendas to
focus on that?

3. If/ when deportation campaigns begin, can churches, synagogues,
mosques, become Houses of Refuge for the undocumented?

4. Major effort to shift money from big banks to credit unions (much
better than even neighborhood banks because there is at minimum the
possibility of democratic involvement and control). Can existing food
co-ops become bases for strong credit unions? Can religious congregations
become centers for “free-loan societies,” like those that emerged in
immigrant generations?

5. Should we press Obama to issue “Christmas pardons” for tens of
thousands of Federal prisoners who have been convicted of nonviolent drug
offenses, and bring them into neighborhood support groups?

6. How do we deal with a triumphant right-wing FBI, NSA, CIA, with
rejuvenated local-police “Red Squads”? Will Trump really have his Atty-Gen
(?Giuliani?) bring charges against Hillary?  What do we do then? What if
armed “Brown Shirts” appear?

7. I think it is even clearer than before that it will be valuable to draw
on the symbolism & legacy of Martin Luther King as we move into the 50th
anniversary of his last year of life and the need to address the
“triplets” of racism, militarism, & materialism that he named in his
Riverside speech, April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was killed. The Shalom Center has already begun working on that. More to come.

Election Issues & a Torah Yardstick

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

As we take a Momentous Step into the Voting Booth

Dear friends, I assume that practically all of you have already decided how you will vote for President and Congress. The issues that have stirred our country during this campaign will not go away on November 9, and I thought you might be interested to recall how Torah addresses some of the major issues before us.

Indeed, when we on the staff and Board of The Shalom Center looked into this, we were often surprised to realize that the ancient teachings address issues that might seem 21st-century questions.  So we are sharing these teachings not only out of concern for the American future, but also out of respect and admiration for the Biblical and Rabbinic past

Yet of course the future matters. This election, perhaps more than any since the election of 1860, forces us to choose between two radically different visions of the American future and the future of Mother Earth. To choose the world our children will live in. They are watching, listening, wondering. Peering, as it were, into our voting booths.

 


 ISSUE: What policies should we adopt to deal with the increasing distance between the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor in the U.S.? Here we present several different biblical texts.  They all see extreme economic inequality as troublesome, but they propose several different approaches. 

Toward Eden: The Earth gives birth to the Human Race

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Can WE turn the barren place to Eden?

In a generation when human intervention is deeply wounding the web of life on Earth and with it the patterns of human community and prosperity, we may see a new facet of the story of Eden, the Garden of Delight.

The story begins by pointing us toward the close relationship between the human race and the Earth:

"And YHWH [the Name of God that can only be pronounced by breathing with no vowels, thus "Yahhh, Breath of Life"] formed the adam [human earthling] from the adamah [humus-earth] and blew into her/his nostrils the breath of life; and the human-earthling became a living being." (Genesis 2: 7)

I have inserted these odd translations of adam and adamah in order to heighten in English the interrelationship that Torah -- indeed, the Hebrew language itself – teaches so simply. Indeed we do have in English the word "earthling" to mean "human being" and the word "humus" to mean a kind of earth, but each of them is a highly specialized word.

What "adam" and "adamah" teach is deeply different from what the word "environment" we use so often nowadays teaches. The "environment" is in the "environs" -- out there, separate from us. The very words "adam" and "adamah" are intertwined, and they should teach us not only about language but about the reality that language tries to word.

And as if the bare words might still not be enough to teach us, the Torah then explicitly says that we were deeply intertwined at the earthy birthing of the human race.

Notice that in moving from earthiness to humanness, the human lost the "ah" -- a breath-sound --- at the end of Adamah, and then received from God a more conscious independent breathing.

This replicates the process of each human birth – indeed, each mammal's birth -- in which at first the fetus has an unconscious gift of breath from Mother through the placenta; loses this breath as s/he is born; and regains a separate, more conscious breath -- for humans, often by a tap from an attending adult.

What we know from our own experience in every individual birth, says Torah, we should understand is true about our species' origins and our continuing relationship with Mother Earth.

And Torah proceeds to the story of Eden, which this year will be read on October 29.

God – the Truth and Reality of life -- says to the human couple who together make up the human race: "Here there is overflowing abundance. Eat of it, of every tree of the Garden, in joy! – But you must also learn self-restraint. Do not gobble up all this abundance. The fruit of one tree you must not eat."

 [For the origins of these portraits of Eve and Adam and for a remarkable invitation from The Shalom Center, see the end of this essay.]























But the Humans abandon self-restraint. They eat of the one tree they have been told to leave uneaten.

And their greed ruins the abundance. So -– says God/ Reality -- they must work with the sweat pouring down their faces just to wring from the earth enough to eat, for it will give forth thorns and thistles.

Did God, or Reality, rejoice at this reminder that actions bear consequences? Hardly! God wails, "Ayekka, Where are you?" -- which rabbinic midrash understands as the first "Eicha," the word that begins the Book of Lamentations about our exile when the Temple was destroyed. The first exile was the exile of adam, humankind, from adamah, the earth.

This ancient archetypal story is the story of today. The story of the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. The story of rapacious Big Oil desecrating the graves and poisoning the water of the Sioux Nation in North Dakota, to drive a pipeline though Native land and release more fumes of CO2 to burn our Mother Earth. Our modern Corporate Carbon Pharaohs in their greed bring Plagues upon humanity and the Earth, rejecting self-restraint: super-droughts in California and Australia and Syria and central Africa,  unheard-of floods in Pakistan and North Carolina, superstorms in the Philippines and the Jersey shore. 

Yet there are ways to redress this disaster. It happens, says the story of the Wilderness, just after the Breath of Life frees ancient Israelites from the ancient power-greedy Pharaoh.The first discovery of these runaway slaves is the Shabbat that comes with manna -- a gift from the abundant earth and a taste of rest from endless toil.  Shabbat comes as a new form of self-restraint --  filled with joy, rather than ascetic self-denial. The curse reversed. A taste of Eden once again.

In Jewish theology, Shabbat, a foretaste of the Messianic Age, is the redemptive gift that begins the annullment of the "original sin" of Eden -- the sin of abusing Mother Earth. Begins, but only begins. We still must yearn toward "yom sheh-kulo Shabbat, the day that will be wholly Shabbat" -- toward "Eden for a Grown-up Human Race," depicted in the Song of Songs, when love among human beings and between Humanity and Earth, adam and adamah, is freely flourishing.

Says Isaiah (51:3): "Vayasem midbarah k'eden v'arvatah k'gan Yahh. You turn the barren place to Eden, and the desert to a garden breathing Life."

Who is this "You"? Can it be "We"?

Only if we sow the Garden's seeds among us now, with miniature communities of Eden -- and in the same breath, breathing the Great Breath, act to free adam and adamah from domination by the Pharaohs of our day.

*** *** *** ***

The framed "portraits" of Eve and Adam in the Garden that we have presented above are paintings by  Zvi Livni , a renowned artist in the mystics' town of Safed  (Tzfat) in Northern Israel. He co-founded the famed Artists' Colony there. His paintings hang in the Brooklyn Museum, the Toronto Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art at Brandeis University, the Museum of Art at Yale University, and many other museums and galleries.

The originals of these paintings were presented as a wonderful gift to The Shalom Center, with the intention of helping to support our work to bring the Garden closer. We offer these paintings, fully framed, with certified venues, to our readers and members for a minimum gift to The Shalom Center of $3600 (the total for both paintings) or more if a higher offer comes in. If you are interested, please write me directly at <Awaskow@theshalomcenter.org> with "Eve and Adam" in the subject line.

Yom Kippur at Standing Rock, Dakota -- and Sukkot Everywhere

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

[This report from the Lakota Native encampment in Standing Rock, ND, is by Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, who is director of the Social Justice Organizing Program at the  Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and a member of the Board of The Shalom Center. Below his report is a song for Sukkot with words written by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, set to a slightly modified melody by Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield of blessed memory. The song can be seen in full and more readable size by clicking on the title of this article and then clicking on the caption "Sukkat Shalom song" just below the black bar called "Attachment." Rabbi Liebling's report follows:]

We are camped at the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball Rivers, with high winds and sub-freezing night-time temperatures, preparing for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.   Why did I, a rabbi and son of Holocaust survivors, travel to the Standing Rock encampment to support Native Nations in halting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipe Line (DAPL)?

This pipeline is slated to carry Bakken Crude Shale Oil, fracked in North Dakota, beneath 200 different waterways to a refinery in Chicago.  The original plans called for it to cross under the Missouri River close to Bismarck, ND.  The local (white Euro-American) leadership objected and the Army Corps of Engineers decided to reroute it through lands sacred to the Lakota Nation.  The Nations have claimed in several law suits that the Army Corp did not go through the legally required consultation process.  The courts initially ruled in favor of the Army Corps, but the Obama administration has intervened to call for a halt in construction twenty miles on either side of the sacred grounds until the consultation process is completed.

At 2:00 AM the day after Native Peoples' experts filed maps in court showing where the sacred grounds were, the Enbridge Energy company ordered its bulldozers to cross into the legally mandated no-go area. They dug a trench right through the sacred areas that the pipeline crossed.  They have not been penalized.


The Native Peoples are defining themselves as water protectors and not as protestors.  The Missouri River provides drinking water to 18 million people. No man-made thing lasts forever, pipelines routinely leak. It is not a question of if, but of when this pipeline will leak.  They are protecting the water; their call is “Water is Life.” I have come to understand that they are fighting for all of us. They are first and foremost protecting the Earth and are on the frontline against global warming, willing to risk their lives. It would be fully consistent with American history for some Native leaders to be murdered in these actions.

Everyday at the camp there is two-hour non-violent training session. On a day that I attended there were over 50 people, mostly new arrivals from the Comanche Nation in Oklahoma.  It was repeatedly stressed that this is non-violent, peaceful action and that is under the rubric of Ceremony. The primary mode of action is going to the construction sites and praying.  Women are asked to wear long skirts, as this is ceremony, and that for those who need one there is a sewing machine and fabric available to make one.

There are about 40 teepees and hundreds of tents at Standing Rock, housing about 1500 people. Over 300 Native Nations have sent representatives at different times in this unprecedented show of unity.  Each time a delegation arrives they are invited to the main circle to share a dance and a sacred song. The challenge now is how to winterize for the brutal North Dakota winter.

Several times during Yom Kippur we collectively confess a long list of misdeeds against other. It is always we have stolen, we have lied, we have spoken slander, and the list goes on, but never “I” alone.  It acknowledges that we all make mistakes and that each of us bears responsibility. We intone throughout the day the compassionate qualities of the Divine as we pray for forgiveness for our transgressions against other people. White America has stolen, lied and spoken slander about Native Nations for over 500 years.

This year Yom Kippur is October 12 the original Columbus Day.  Christopher Columbus sailed to the West under the Vatican’s Doctrine of Discovery, which gave him the power to “capture, vanquish, and subdue the Saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ," to "put them into perpetual slavery," and "to take all their possessions and property.” 

After Columbus’ voyage of 2493, Pope Alexander VI further defined the Doctrine of Discovery and granted control over all non-Christian lands newly or soon to be “discovered” to the Spanish monarchy, for the purpose of converting the residents there to Christianity -- and to encourage trade.

The Discovery Doctrine became official U. S. law in 1823 when Chief Justice John Marshall cited it in writing for a unanimous court in the case of  Johnson v. McIntosh.  It enshrined in law that the nations of the Native Peoples were subject to the ultimate authority of the nation of Christendom -- in this case the United States –--  that was first to claim possession of a given region of “Indian” lands.  As recently as 2005, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg cited this as precedent in a majority opinion.

The original sin of White America is racism, its first victims were the Native People and it has never stopped.  By any measure they are the poorest, least educated and least healthy of any group in our country. America must atone for the ongoing genocide of our First Inhabitants, genocide is legally defined as the intentional destruction of a people and that is what the policies and practices have been intended to do.

How to atone for the pain inflicted on others that we did not directly cause, but benefit from? In Judaism the deepest form of atonement is to change our actions, next best is by doing our best to make sure that when the situation arises again we will act differently; each are accompanied by reparations for the harm we have done.  We cannot change our lives to stop benefitting from the systemic and institutional oppression of Native People.  We can act to change the situation.

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

[A note by Rabbi Arthur Waskow:

As we respond to Rabbi Liebling's challenge, we move past Yom Kippur and live into one of the powerful teachings of Jewish tradition for the protection of all peoples and all life-forms: the practice of building the Sukkah -- a fragile hut wth a leafy, leaky roof. It is one of the most profound remnants of the ancient Israelites living as a land-based people, like the Lakota Nation in the continent the Native Peoples call "Turtle Island" -- and like other indigenous peoples around our shared Earth today. I offer the words of this song, set to a melody by  Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield of blessed memory, as we greet the last few days of the Festival of Fragile Huts --  Sukkot.]

 

Harvesting: Help Build the Sukkah of Shalom

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

The Harvest festival of Sukkot begins tonight and lasts for seven days. It is named after its most prominent symbol –-  more than a symbol, an active practice: the Sukkah, a fragile hut with a leafy, leaky roof. 

What is the active practice? Traditionally, Jews slept in the sukkah for a week. Now, fewer sleep but many eat there.

I am writing you today to ask for a harvest – a Harvest of contributions to help The Shalom Center do our fragile, vulnerable, crucial work in the world.

Not just because it happens to be Harvest time. Also because we ourselves, The Shalom Center, are fragile, vulnerable, embodying the wisdom of the Sukkah.

In our earlest efforts, focused 33 years ago on the danger of the nuclear arms race becomng nuclear holocaust, we called on the wisdom of the Sukkah. This poster called together one of our earliest spiritually-rooted public actions:


The Sukkah -- your Sukkah of Shalom, The Shalom Center --  is fragile, open to wind and rain. Yet it needs to be built. No one can shelter under a tree or in a cave and call it a Sukkah. And we need you to gather the leafy roof and help us drape the wood or canvas that make our fragile walls.

You can do that by clicking on the maroon Contribute banner on the left margin of this page, and following through with the (tax-deductible) gifts that will keep the leafy roof above our heads.

It is clear the sukkah is fragile, vulnerable. What makes the sukkah crucial? One of the traditional Jewish evening prayers says, “You Who are the Breath of Life, spread over us the Sukkah of Your Shalom.”  Why a fragile, vulnerable sukkah of shalom? Would shalom not be safer in a fortress, a palace, a temple, even a sturdy house?

No, our ancient wisdom says. –-- Not despite fragility but because of it, the sukkah safeguards shalom.  A full shalom will come only when all human beings learn that we are all vulnerable. That we can only be at peace with each other not when we build Pentagons and Kremlins of power but when we fully grok that all those fortresses beckon attack.

Has that moment come? Not yet, but Sukkot beckons us toward it. That is why it is crucial. Indeed, it is understood as the festival that looks toward Messianic time, the days of Peace and Justice.

The Shalom Center is like a sukkah. We are tiny, fragile. We have a staff of two and besides the two of us, two part-time consultants who deal with glitches in our computers, website, and Email software. And yet –- or therefore!– we carry out a crucial role.

  • We have for 33 years been pioneers, a prophetic voice, in the Jewish, multireligious, and American worlds. When no one in the Jewish world was facing the danger of the nuclear arms race, we came into being to do so.
  • When few in the Jewish or other religious communities were willing to reinterpret our traditions to call for full equality for gay men and women,

Franz Kafka, the Leopard, & Yom Kippur

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

There is a wonderful two-line short story by Franz Kafka, more or less like this:

“One day a leopard came stalking into the synagogue, roaring and lashing its tail.

“Three weeks later, it had become part of the liturgy.”


Our task, in every generation, every year, is to let the leopard out of the cage of liturgy.

Scary, and full of life.

For example: How do we treat the Yom Kippur prophetic reading in which Isaiah calls on the crowd not just to fast but to share their bread with the hungry, their homes with the homeless, their clothes with the naked, and then to go one huge and highly political step further and break off the handcuffs put on by wicked power?

On Yom Kippur morning, that Haftarah can be read in any of four ways.

One way is to treat it as part of “the liturgy.”  Someone chants it in a droning Hebrew or reads it in a listless English.

Or we could read it with passion, even with strong music and powerful graphics.  For my own impassioned translation and a YouTube art-and-music video of “Isaiah Lives!"  click here:

<https://theshalomcenter.org/video/video-yom-kippur-haftarah-isaiah-5714-5814-midrashically-translated-rabbi-arthur-waskow>

OR –--  On this coming Yom Kippur, we could let the leopard leap from the page, roaring. We could notice that Isaiah disrupted the official Yom Kippur liturgy, that he says people yelled at him and shook their fists when he broke into the pleasant Levite chanting.

Today someone could actually break through Isaiah’s words for the sake of Isaiah’s truth –- perhaps suddenly in the middle of the Haftarah shouting out a headline about a homeless old man found frozen to death on a wintry downtown street; then, a few verses later, another headline about 300 people lining up in hope of a job when the Postal Service announced three vacancies;

Or someone could read a brief paragraph (just after the verse about the handcuffs) describing how an Arizona sheriff  deliberately feeds rotted food  to immigrants he has imprisoned and forces them to work outside in 130-degree heat.  Or a paragraph about how the US government has explicitly refused to put on trial those who ordered the torture of prisoners.

OR – We could break through the cage of words altogether, and actually do what Isaiah tells us that God, the Breath of Life,  demands:

 How? First someone could read aloud these words:



"In North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux and hundreds of others -– the largest gathering in US history of Natives from all their many nations, plus many Americans of other communities --  have gathered to protect the sacred ancestral lands of the Sioux and the Missouri River from the proposed route of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

"Native people have gathered since last Spring to protect both the graves of their forebears from desecration and their water from poisoning, with the call that "Water is Life" -- Mayim Hayim.

"They are protecting our beloved Mother Earth for the sake of all of us, all life and future generations.

 "For the pipeline will mean still more emissions of CO2 and methane to burn our Mother Earth.

 "The encampments are peaceful, drug and alcohol free, where the elders and tribal leaders conduct daily ceremony and prayer.

 "Yet they face soldiers with rifles loaded and pointed at them as they peacefully pray.

 "They have pledged to camp all winter -- to insure that the pipeline does not get built through their tribal lands.  They need donations to purchase winter supplies, food, tipees, and other necessities."

AND THEN --  as God and Isaiah cry out to us, to feed the hungry and clothe those exposed to wintry chill, to help them face with brave nonviolence the weapons aimed at them by domineering power, come to prayer on Yom Kippur ready as the break-fast begins on Tuesday night to write a check made out to  "Standing Rock Sioux Tribe --- Pipeline Protest Donation Fund." Collect the checks and send them that very night to  Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Attention: Donations, PO Box D, Building #1, North Standing Rock Avenue,  Fort Yates, ND 58538

 

Another leopard we could free: On Rosh Hashanah we read two painful stories –-  one about Abraham’s expulsion of Ishmael his son and Ishmael’s mother Hagar from Abraham’s family, into a wilderness where they were on the point of death from thirst; and the other, about Abraham preparing to put his son Isaac to death at what he thought was God’s command. For both of Abraham’s sons, at the very last moment, God intervenes –-- and both their lives are saved.

Their story does not end with bare survival. Later in the Torah (Gen 25: 7-11), on a Shabbat when many fewer people will be in synagogue to hear, we are told that after twenty years apart, Isaac and Ishmael came together to bury their dangerous father, and then Isaac went to live at Ishmael’s wellspring.

This Yom Kippur, what about lifting up and reading this passage of tshuvah and slichah, “turning” and “reconciliation”? For Yom Kippu is precisely the festival that is supposed to bring us to tshuvah and slichah.

Rosh Hashanah: New Year & Transformation-time

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

The Shofar: Awake! Sob! Breathe! Transform!

Rosh Hashanah – the New Year and (in another translation) the Beginning of Transformation -- begins tonight.  It comes with the glimmer of a reborn moon, the sacred seventh New Moon from the rebirth time of spring.

One of the profound practices of Rosh Hashanah is the sounding of the Shofar, the Ram’s Horn.

We blow our breath into the small end of the Shofar, and out of the other, larger end emerges a blast of uncanny, eerie, untuned sound –--  or a music we train ourselves to shape.

This is a metaphor for every human being. The Breath of Life, the Interbreathing of the world, blows into us –--  and out come breath, words, actions, lives  that may be untuned , discordant  --  or a music of  loving care.  The music of a loving future, calling from our children to ourselves.


The different notes we learn to sound out on the Shofar have different meanings.

One calls out, “Alarm!”  --  “Awake!”

Another evokes sobs of grief as we realize how far we have wandered off the path of a loving life, the hurt we have caused others and ourselves.

Still another is a series of deep breaths as we begin to heal ourselves by healing those around us.

And still another is the joyful news of Transformation. We are taught that at Sinai,  the sound of a Shofar flooded the world  as the Breath of Life breathed words and music of Transformative Teaching.  -- And we are taught that the Shofar will sound again when we enter the Messianic days of peace and justice.

 It is a Jewish custom to wish that the Year ahead, the Transformation ahead, be “good and sweet.”

I am writing to send all of us –-- all of us, whether we celebrate these particular holy days or not --– this blessing:

That the year ahead will be sweet & good for a reason:

Because the glimmers of Transformation we are seeing within us and around us grow into a glow. And that even some of the darkness we see on the path teaches us how to keep moving

And above all, the blessing that we ourselves, each of us,  take a hand in growing that light within us and around us.

Although the holy days on which we are about to embark have been enriched by layer on layer of Jewish wisdom and practice, the underlying point is universal:

Face our mistakes, our misdeeds, the ways in which we have aimed the arrows of our actions toward lives of justice, peace, and healing but have missed the mark --- and turn ourselves in a new direction that, deep within us, is the “old” direction --- love.

That goes for us as individuals and also as members of a society.  When a whole society turns in an unloving direction, we call it a systemic failure – systemic racism, systemic militarism, systemic materialism, to face the “deadly triplets” that Dr. Martin Luther King named in a speech at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his death.  (This new year we are beginning includes the April that will be the 50th anniversary of that speech; April 4, 2018, will be the 50th anniversary of his death.)

When we recite our misdeeds on these holy days, we deliberately say “We.”  “We have slandered, we have cheated, we have stolen, we have murdered.” I myself have not done all these things, but as a member of society, I have been complicit in them all.

This year, as the new year begins, we are hearing the Shofar-note of “Awake!” more deeply than for generations. We can hear the grinding, clashing sounds of a chasm in American society,  one that has been widening and sharpening for years but has been made far more visible and audible by an extraordinary election campaign.

And it is not only Americans who face that chasm, but all human communities and all the life-forms on our planet.  

So may we all, this Beginning–time, turn the Shofar-call of Alarm into the response of Transformation.

May all of us  -- Board, staff, members, friends of  The Shalom Center –-  bless each other: May the coming year be filled with goodness and the sweet taste of loving Transformations.

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