Submitted by Viv Hawkins on
As Reb Arthur Waskow received the first Lifetime Achievement Award offered by T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, he invited those present in New York on Mar 25, 2014 to join him in this song. It's a fragment of Psalm 150, "Hallelu-YAH" -- "Let us praise the Breath of Life." The psalm recites all the instruments of ancient music and feeling -- including "T'ruah," one of the notes sounded on the shofar every Rosh Hashanah. Since the burst of song was spontaneous, the videotaper caught only a fragment of the fragment Reb Arthur led -- but that fragment celebrates the outcry of the shofar as well as the organization. As Reb Arthur along with three other honorees was then interviewed by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone , he responded to her question "What now, what next?" by pointing beyond human rights to The Shalom Center's crucial work to heal and protect from the climate crisis the whole wounded web of life on the planet -- the web in which other species are interwoven with our own.