Rabbi Arthur Waskow founded and directs The Shalom Center, a prophetic voice
in Jewish, multireligious, and American life to challenge the pharaohs of
our generation and to seek peace, justice, compassion, and healing of the earth.
In 1996, Rabbi Waskow was named by the United Nations one of forty “Wisdom
Keepers” -- religious and intellectual leaders from all over the world who met
with the Habitat II conference in Istanbul. In 2001, he was presented the
Abraham Joshua Heschel Award by the Jewish Peace Fellowship. In 2004, he was one
of four American clergy of four different traditions who spoke out through
Arabic-language TV networks to condemn the "sinful and systemic" use of torture
by the US military in Iraq.
He has initiated a number of multi-religious projects, such as the Committee
on Overwork and Free Time in American Society, "The Tent of Abraham: an
Inter-religious Statement on Peace in the Middle East," and "Eleven Days in
September: Remembrance, Reflection, & Renewal."
Rabbi Waskow and The Shalom Center have pioneered in the Jewish and
multireligious communities in creating eco-Judaism, in seeking peace between Israel and
an emerging Palestinian state, and in working against the Iraq War and
against the addiction to oil and its "drug lords" in Big Oil that have pushed us
into war and are forcing the world into global scorching.
Among Rabbi Waskow's seminal works in Jewish and spsiritual renewal are The Freedom Seder (1969), The Shalom Seder (1984), and the New Freedom Seder
(2004); Godwrestling (Schocken, 1978); Seasons of Our Joy (Beacon, 1990);
Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life (Morrow, 1995); and
Godwrestling — Round Two (Jewish Lights; recipient of the Benjamin Franklin
Award in 1996).
With Rabbi Phyllis Berman, he wrote A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven:
The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Journey (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002).
Earlier in his life, as a Founding Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies
in Washington DC from 1963 to 1977, he was among the active leadership of
movements against the Vietnam War and racism in America, and the author of books
on racism, disarmament, and nonviolence. In the 1980s he led a major research
project for the US Department of Energy on community-based renewable energy
and conservation.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
