Reb Arthur's Latest Thoughts

Last Sunday (Nov 20, 2011), a delegation from the Council of Elders (veteran leaders of the freedom and peace movements of the mid-20th century) led an interfaith service at Zuccotti Park in NYC, with hundreds of Occupy Wall Street activists taking part.
 
The 26-minute service included — about 5 minutes in — my leading a modern “Dayenu,” celebrating the victorious steps from Tunisia to the Tar Sands pipeline and to the very moment of our coming together.
 
Later in the afternoon, we Elders and about 600 Occupiers met at Judson Memorial Church for a conversation on the meaning and future of the movement.
 
WBAI radio interviewed those Elders who took part in this conversation and in a similar one in San Francisco.

These people were among the Elders who met with the Occupy movement on Nov. 20, 2011 in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland:  Rev. James Lawson, Jr., Dr. Vincent G. Harding, Rev. Phillip Lawson, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Dr. Grace Lee Boggs, Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Rev. John Fife, Rev. Mel White, Rev. Nelson Johnson, Joyce Hobson Johnson.

Video and audio of these moments can be accessed at URL’s listed at the end of this message. Also at the end are brief biographies of the Elders who took part in these conversations.
 
These encounters between the generations were remarkable both in content and in process.

First of all, during and after the celebratory service we could taste the Occupiers’  hunger for the Spirit. Many occupiers came up to us afterward with tears in their eyes out of the experience of multireligious prayer that was real, was connected to the profound issues in the lives of all of us and of America and of the planet.
 
Some of that intensity arose from the call and response––what the occupiers call “Mic Check” – that the Occupy encampments use because the police have forbidden public address equipment. Someone speaks, and all those who can hear repeat the phrase in a loud voice so that everyone can hear.
 
When this was done with the Dayenu, with a litany of commitment to specific change, and with a statement by the Elders committing us to solidarity with the Occupy movement, the effect of this call-and-response was profound.
 
The Occupiers were not simply repeating by rote some phrases from a dusty book (as many had been asked to do in the churches, synagogues, and mosques that many of them had quit). These litanies addressed their own deepest experiences and desires. They could – and did—affirm their support by “twinkling” gestures of their hands and fingers. As in many Black gospel churches, by shouting out the whole community joined in these covenants.
 
I realized that these folks were so thirsty for the Spirit and for community because they had been denied the time and space to seek the spirit and shape community. They had created both by turning “Zuccotti Park” into “Freedom Square,” where they could work out their own patterns of direct democracy and the Beloved Community.
 
They had dropped out of the spaces of their own homes or campuses or offices, had dropped out of the time for their “regular” jobs or desperate searches for jobs.
 
Not out of laziness or disorderliness. —Instead, they had created their own time and space, their own alternative order. And this “alternative America” is a deep threat to the Corporate Order of official America.
 
That is why in many cities the police – who when push comes harshly to shove defend not the Bill of Rights, not freedom of assembly, but the Corporate Order – have broken up these times and places of assembly.
 
And that is why the Occupiers have so persistently fought back – mostly but not always nonviolently – to defend their liberated, “occupied,” turf.
 
Both by implicit living example during the interfaith service in “Freedom Square” and in explicit conversations later in Judson Church, many of the Occupiers made clear how important this was to them. What should they do when sacred space was torn away from them by outright violence, from billy clubs to tear-gas grenades to pepper spray?
 
My own suggestion is for the movement to be fluid, creative, experimental, about what is sacred communal space – and to develop also a politics of time: free time.
 
For instance, the Occupy movement has already discovered that some churches (Judson, for example) have offered themselves as communal space. Some churches have been much more constricted (and I know of no synagogues or mosques that have yet offered their space in an openhearted way).

So whether congregational space becomes communal space depends on those of us who must choose whether to demand that our congregations ally themselves with Occupy in a spacious way.
 
And there are other possibilities. In many cities, there are neighborhoods pockmarked by homes whose families have been forced to leave by foreclosures. What about working with these exiled families and their neighborhoods to “occupy” these homes and the nearby schools and community centers, mixing the families and the Occupiers as the public Occupy parks have mixed the homeless and the movement?
 
What about “occupying” factories closed by fiat of Wall Street’s disinvestment and job-outsourcing, by working with the exiled disemployed workers to make these factories once again productive?
 
As for freeing time:  In our lives today, overwork is driven by fear of disemployment, by the need to work two or three jobs to pay for food and rent, and for some by the relentless need to “prove” one’s utter dedication to “getting ahead.” The result: Little time or no time for family and neighbors, for grass-roots political involvement, for the Spirit.

When the labor movement in the 1930s finally won the long long battle for a five-day week with an eight-hour day, technologies of work had made that amount of time enough to produce what people needed and wanted.
 
But new technologies since then have greatly increased “productivity.” The result is that workers are deliberately disemployed, wages and salaries drop, corporate owners sell products at the same prices, and the surplus goes not to workers’ income but only to corporate profits.
 
Imagine requiring a four-day week, a seven-hour day. This could begin with direct action by workers and customers, as the fight for the forty-hour week began in the 1880s with strikes and community support  — consumer boycotts of businesses with exploitive hours. Then states and the Federal government could legislate the 28-hour week while forbidding pay cuts and limiting overtime..
 
Profits would drop. A sensible tax policy could cushion this drop for small businesses – say those hiring fewer than 500 workers – while encouraging lower profits for global corporations. Employment would rise. And so would free time.
 
In these ways, the lived practice of the Occupy movements – liberated space and time – could be expanded to include the 99%.  The top-down pyramidal power of Wall Street and our modern corporate pharaohs could be greatly reduced. Democracy and the Spirit-rooted Beloved Community could be renewed.

You can watch the 26-minute service at Zaccutti Park by clicking here.
 
An interview on WBAI radio of those Elders who took part in this conversation and in a similar one in San Francisco can be accessed by clicking here and then  scrolling down to Nov 24 3 pm

These people were among the Elders who met with the Occupy movement on Nov. 20, 2011 in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland:

REV. JAMES LAWSON, JR. served 14 months in prison as a conscientious objector to the Korean War draft in 1951. After studying Gandhi’s principles of civil disobedience in India, he went on to train the Freedom Riders and other future leaders of the Civil Rights Movement as director of the Congress for Racial Equality.
 
DR. VINCENT G. HARDING++. Native New Yorker, theologian, civil rights activist, and author of nine books including Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement. He was an educator and activist in the Southern Freedom Movement and continues to advise churches, schools, prisons and community groups.
 
REV. PHILLIP LAWSON** is a long-time civil rights leader, Cofounder of California Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and Director of East Bay Housing Organization.
 
DR. BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON. Singer, author, educator, and Civil Rights Activist in the Freedom Singers organized by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, Reagon has recorded several albums including Lest We Forget, Vol. 3: Sing for Freedom and written on African American culture and history including We Who Believe In Freedom.
 
DR. GRACE LEE BOGGS. At 95, Boggs’ life as feminist, activist, and author, collaborating with scholars such as C.L.R. James in the ‘50s, is world renowned. She has been an integral part of the Detroit Social Justice Movement since the ‘60s, founding Detroit Summer in 1992, a program aimed at connecting youth education with community struggle.
 
DR. GWENDOLYN ZOHARAH SIMMONS++. Activist in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in the ‘60s, Simmons is also a student of Islam and Sufism and was staff for 23 years with American Friends Service Committee. She currently teaches subjects such as Race, Religion, and Rebellion.
 
RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW** founder and director of The Shalom Center, leader in the movement to end the Vietnam War, author of books on nuclear deterrence and disarmament and on the sit-in movement; author,  the original Freedom Seder, Since 1969 a leader of the movement for Jewish political and spiritual renewal;  ardent peace activist in the Israel-Palestine conflict, pioneer in developing Muslim-Jewish interfaith action.
 
REV. JOHN FIFE.++ co-founded the Sanctuary Movement, which organized over 500 churches to illegally support refugees fleeing U.S.-supported death squads in the ‘80s, and No More Deaths, a coalition to end border deaths.
 
REV. MEL WHITE.** After starting his career ghostwriting for homophobic evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell, White struggled to accept his homosexuality and broke with the Christian Right. He has since become an outspoken LGBTQ advocate and author for and minister to the LGBTQ community.
 
REV. NELSON JOHNSON** is founder of the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, NC and a longtime advocate for poor people. He led the 1979 anti-Klan march in which neo-Nazis and Klan members, with police collusion, murdered 5 protesters on November 3, 1979, and has been a leader in the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation process, designed to seek truth and reconciliation around those events.
 
JOYCE HOBSON JOHNSON.** Active in civil rights struggles since the ‘60s, Johnson is Director of the Jubilee Institute of the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, NC, which provides institutional support, social and political analysis, and training for the broad-based progressive movement. She was also an important figure in the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation efforts.

 
 
 

The Prophetic Reading for the Fast of Yom Kippur, Isaiah 57:14-58:14
[Slightly midrashic translation by Rabbi Arthur O. Waskow]

And God said:
Open up, open up, Clear a path!
Clear away all obstacles
From the path of My People!
For so says the One
Who high aloft forever dwells,
Whose Name is Holy:

I dwell on high, in holiness,
And therefore with the lowly and humiliated,
To breathe new breath into the humble,
To give new heart to the broken-hearted.

For your sin of greed
Through My Hurricane of Breath Y*H*W*H*
I smashed you.
Worse: I hid My face, withheld My Breath.

Yet I will not do battle against you forever,
I will not be angry with you forever.
From Me comes the breath that floats out to make all worlds.
I breathe the breath of life, I am the Breath of Life.

When you wander off the path as your own heart,
wayward, takes you.
I see the path you need —— and I will heal you.
I will guide and comfort you
With words of courage and of comfort
For those who mourn among you.
Peace, peace … shalom, shalom!… to those who are far and near,
Says the Breath-of-Life —-
And I will heal you.

But the wicked are like a troubled sea
Which cannot rest,
Whose waters toss up mire and mud.
There is no peace, said my God,
For the wicked.

Cry out aloud, don’t hold back,
Lift up your voice like the shofar!
Tell My people what they are doing wrong,
Tell those who call themselves the “House of Jacob” their misdeeds.
For day after day they go out searching for Me,
They take some kind of pleasure in getting to know My ways —-
As if they were a people that actually did righteous deeds
And never ignored the just rulings of their God.

They keep asking Me for the rules of justice
As if they would take delight in being close to God.

They say: “Why is it that we have fasted, and You don’t see our suffering?
We press down our egos —- but You don’t pay attention!”

Look! On the very day you fast, you keep scrabbling for wealth;
On the very day you fast, you keep oppressing all your workers.

Look! You fast in strife and contention.
You strike with a wicked fist.

You are not fasting today in such a way
As to make your voices heard on high.

Is that the kind of fast that I desire?
Is that really a day for people to “press down their egos”?

Am I commanding you to droop your heads like bulrushes
And lie around in sackcloth and ashes?

Is that what you call a fast day,
The kind of day that the God of the Burning Bush would wish?

No!

This is the kind of fast that I desire:

Unlock the hand-cuffs put on by wicked power!
Untie the ropes of the yoke!
Let the oppressed go free,
And break off every yoke!

Share your bread with the hungry.
Bring the poor, the outcasts, to your house.
When you see them naked, clothe them;
They are your flesh and blood;
Don’t hide yourself from them!

Then your light will burst through like the dawn;
Then when you need healing it will spring up quickly;
Then your own righteousness will march ahead to guard you.
And a radiance from YHWH will reach out behind to guard you.
Then, when you cry out, YHWH will answer;
Then, when you call, God will say: “Here I am!”

If you banish the yoke from your midst,
If you rid yourself of scornful finger-pointing
And words of contempt;
If you open up your life-experience to the hungry
And soothe the life that has been trampled under foot,

Then even in darkness your light will shine out
And your moments of gloom turn bright as noonday.
Then the Breath of Life will always be your guide,
Will soothe your own life in your own times of dryness
And strengthen your bones when they are weary.

Then you shall be like a garden given water,
Like a wellspring whose waters never fail.
Those who spring from you shall rebuild the ancient ruins
And you shall lay foundations for the coming generation.
You shall be called “Those who mend torn places,”
You shall be called “Those who build lanes to live in.”

If you refrain from trampling my Renewal-time*
And from being busy-busy on My holy day;
If you will not only call Renewal-time* delightful
But also turn far from your usual way
And set aside your business and your chatter
To be yourselves the rays by which God’s Holiness
Can turn this world into a radiant joy —-

Then indeed you will find delight in YHWH.
For then —- when you have joined the lowly —-
I will set you all with Me,
Astride the heights of earth.
Then —- when you feed others —- I will let you eat your fill
From what is truly due you as the heirs of Jacob.

Now!
For this word come from the Mouth that
Breathes all life.

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

How shall we read the Great Haftarah — the passage from Isaiah that the rabbis taught us to read on the morning of Yom Kippur ?

Since the earliest days of Fabrangen, 30 years ago, I have made it my business to do the reading of this Haftarah in whatever congregation I am part of, each Yom Kippur.

I read it in English, since it seems to me the whole point of the passage is to break through ritual patterns to address the urgent needs of the poor. I try to read it like an outraged activist who has just heard that some president signed an “Act for the More Efficient Starvation of Children.”

In some years I have done more than read it. More on that below.

There are several things about the Haftarah that seem important to me:

1. The whole rhythm of Isaiah’s speech is to move from ecstatic “religiosity” to concrete acts of loving-kindness, and then through this connection with the humble and humiliated to reestablish connection with the Infinite.

In other words it moves from a fake high to a deep grounding to a real high — real because everyone, including the lowly, is part of it.

2. I connect this speech with (Deutero)Isaiah’s explanation of his mission in Chapter 61, which in verse1 talks of “likro lishvuim dror, to call out to prisoners release.” Isaiah Chapter 61 explicitly talks of “calling for the Year of YAHH’s favor/pleasure/will” and talks of “dror [release],” a word powerfully used in the Leviticus passage about the Jubilee and used by Jeremiah when he calls for the people explicitly to release their slaves, as required in the Year of Jubilee.

Chapter 58 of Isaiah, which is part of the Yom Kippur reading, bears several strong hints at calling for the Jubilee (e.g. the Yovel was supposed to be announced on Yom Kippur with the blowing of a shofar; I read “Lift up your voice like a shofar” as the Prophet’s feeling himself called to substitute his voice for the Shofar that was not being sounded to call for a Yovel).

The other specifics in 58, like those in 61, fit the notion of the Jubilee. What’s more, the shift to Shabbat at the end of the passage would make special sense if the Prophet had in mind the super-Shabbat of the Jubilee. If he did, then part of it would be the release of indentured servants.

3. I think the speech was actually given as an interruption of a Yom Kippur service, or at minimum is deliberately written as if it were. I fantasize Isaiah elbowing his way thru the crowd at the Temple or through the crowd at a Super-Synagogue in Babylonia — and interrupting — shouting out this radical challenge to the liturgy.

4. Unfortunately, the result of the Rabbis’ assigning this to be read on YK is that it becomes not a challenge to the liturgy but a part of it. There is a wonderful story by Franz Kafka:
“One day a leopard stalked into the synagogue, roaring and
lashing his tail. Three weeks later, he had become part of the
liturgy. ”

Many synagogues read the haftarah in Hebew or English as another droning piece of the machzor.

I have therefore tried hard to break thru this drone. For several years, I worked with someone in my congregation to interrupt my reading of the Haftarah by shouting out short lines — headlines fom the newspaper — that exemplify poverty, homelessness, etc.:

“72-Year-old Man Freezes to Death on Philadelphia Street.”

“Post Office Announces 30 Jobs, 300 Line Up to Apply”

I read a line of Isaiah about the poor — and the “plant” interrupts. I pause, read another line — and he interrupts again. We make sure people get the content of the interruption.

At first the congregation is scandalized — “He’s INTERRUPTING THE SERVICE !!!” They even shake their fists, just as the haftarah says. Then they get it, and they listen with a deeper part of themselves.

Ideally, there should then be time to discuss.

This understanding of the Yom Kippur speech comes from the way I try to read these (and other) texts, which is to put myself in the place of someone saying these things and to ask myself —

What was going on for the author, the editor, of these words? What spiritual struggle, what “political” despair, had arisen for him? (Mostly it was a “him,” if the text is more than a century old. Few women had their responses to their own spiritual struggles and oppressions recorded in “the tradition.” )

Then I ask myself, “What images, symbols, passages of Torah arise in my head and heart as I overhear the struggle that led to these words upon this paper?” What social / spiritual struggle is really eating at my kishkes?

I try to unleash the leopard in the liturgy and the leopard that is stalking in me, in the synagogue, and in the world. I try to hear the Divine roar of passion and compassion, and give it voice.

Click on this graphic, to expand and enjoy it. It is by Avi Katz of the Jerusalem Report,  where it illustrated an essay of mine on the healing of trauma. Like the poem of Steve Kovit that I quote below, it transports the erotic joy of the mid-summer full moon beyond all seas and across millennia.

How do we recover from collective trauma? What is the place of joy, the erotic, and social solidarity in letting us absorb and grow past our suffering?

Tonight, Monday night August 15, 2011,  in the Western calendar, begins what was in the ancient Jewish calendar a joyful festival celebrating sexuality.

The Mishna (a second-century outline of Jewish practice), reports that on the full-moon day of the mid-summer month of Av, there was a healing from the  day (the 9th of Av) of grief for the trauma of Destruction of the Temple The healing came on the seventh day after the mourning –a kind of Shabbat, or the end of the grief of shiva. 

  What could this ancient festival teach us today, as we seek to recover from the traumas of 9/11, the Naqba, the Holocaust, and many other profound shocks to our varied societies and even to the Earth?

The Mishna (Taanit 4:8) says:

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said, There were no holidays for Israel as great as the fifteenth of Av and as Yom Kippur.  For on them the daughters of Jerusalem would go forth in white garments they borrowed from each other, so as not to embarrass young women who could not afford dresses of rich finery. … And the daughters of Jerusalem would go forth and dance in the vineyards. And what would they say? “Young man, lift up your eyes and see whom you choose for yourself.”

Recently I came across an American poem that echoed that wonder-filled festival. After its text, you will find below some additional thoughts about the Fifteenth of Av.

SRNGARARASA: IN THE EROTIC MOOD

By Steve Kovit

Where the swollen Monongahela
Washes the Alleghenies
Wind perfumes the air with fine pollen
& butterflies flicker among the vines
& birds
abandoning all modesty
sing of paradise
in the cool branches.
Here young girls
Whirl about on the hillside,
Their summer dresses
Billowing out
Like colorful petals.
Shortly, young men will join them
& they will shriek with delight
& chase each other
& dance
& couple
by couple vanish
into the swaying field
where honey-bees feast
on the bells
of delicate flowers.

This day of joy and Eros, woven of the loving relationships that made sure the poor would not be embarrassed or the rich made arrogant, according to the Mishna echoes the moment in the Song of Songs that was  “the day of the gladness of the heart. ” And that day, they said, was the day of the rebuilding of the Temple. So the 15th of Av was a way to heal the traumatic wounding they mourned upon the 9th.

On the full moon of Av some dozen years ago, my beloved Rabbi Phyllis Berman taught about the numbering of the day. If we were using the conventional Jewish numbering system for “15,” we might use the letters that make “YH” – 10 + 5. But these two letters make up one of the most sacred Names of God. So Jewish practice masked these numbers by counting instead “TU, 9+6.”

If only, Phyllis taught, we had the courage to say that on every full moon, “Yah,” the Breath of Life, is fully visible, audible, touchable, tastable!  In every breath, in every kiss.

Tonight and tomorrow, amongst wild woods and flowers, from Jerusalem to the Alleghenies, across millennia, the erotic fruitfulness of Humankind is reborn. Six months from tonight, on Yah B’Shvat, the Rebirth-Day of the Trees, the erotic fruitfulness is reborn of that Tree Whose roots are in Heaven and whose fruits are – us. And all the world.

On July 28, 2011, for half an hour under the great dome of the US Capitol, along with ten others (Methodists and Presbyterians, Mennonites and Roman Catholics, folk from the United Church of Christ and Interfaith Worker Justice, clergy and laity, women and men, African-Americans and Euro-Americans), I prayed, sang, and spoke out – and then was arrested — on behalf of the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the squeezed middle-class, the victims of war, and the wounded Earth itself––against the travesty of Congressional and Presidential kowtowing to the hyper-wealthy and the largest corporations in the world.

 I am joyful that Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, came to spend more than an hour with us and to speak in strong support of us, even though he could not himself take part in civil disobedience because he was committed to lead gatherings of Jewish leaders that afternoon. They themselves were coming to approach members of Congress on behalf of meeting the needs that Torah and all of Jewish experience teach us that governments need to meet.

And I am joyful that Rev. Bob Edgar, former six-term Congressman from Pennsylvania, former head of the National Council of Churches, a recipient of The Shalom Center’s “Prophetic Voices” honor, now head of Common Cause, invited us to gather. On 24 hours notice, eleven of us came prepared to be arrested; dozens more came to support and affirm our insistence that the present debates about the budget and the debt ignore the deepest teachings of our faith.

We gathered first at the Methodist Building, two blocks from the Capitol. As we prepared to leave, Bob Edgar invited me to send us forth in prayer. I said, “You Who taught us long ago that “Tzedek tzedek tirdof, Justice justice shall you seek,” and Who taught us that “justice” is mentioned twice to insist that we must use just means to seek just  results — May You fill us with courage and compassion as we go forth to use that form of action that is purest justice: nonviolence —  on behalf of those who most need justice.”

When we gathered under the Rotunda, welcomed by Congressman Rush Holt and Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, we gathered in a tight circle to pray, to sing hymns, to speak our truths to the powerful, and to tell each other our stories about visiting the Rotunda, about encountering the Congress, about getting arrested.   

I noticed that each of us chose hymns and songs with care to be inclusive of all our traditions -– “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me”; “We Shall Overcome”; “Down by the Riverside.”   

You can see some brief videos and photos here:

New York Times, July 29, p. A12.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/the-caucus-click-conscient…

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/29/Clergy-arrested-in-Capitol-bud…

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/07/faith-leaders-arrested-in-us-ca…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/28/religious-leaders-arreste_n_912…

http://www.pressherald.com/blogs/maine_washington_politics/126322718.html 

(Some of the photos and video show me in a wheel chair.  Still a hangover from my auto crash two years ago: If I have to stand or walk for more than 20 minutes, my knee and back begin to ache. The Capitol Police were kind enough to bring me a wheel chair. I wore the Rainbow tallit that my mother, peace be upon her, embroidered for me on my 50th birthday. I have been arrested about a dozen times wearing it, and about ten times before – about as many times altogether, Phyllis says, as I have written books.)  

The eleven of us were arrested at 1:30, charged with interrupting the flow of traffic in the US capital. In fact, the flow was interrupted only by the Capitol Police themselves, who cleared tourists and visitors  from the great rotunda. We, gathered in a tight circle under that great dome, were no hindrance to those who watched and listened to us and then went their way to Congressional offices.  

We were a hindrance to the legislators of both parties for carrying on the travesty of defining the great crisis before the United States as the national debt –

 Not about millions deprived of jobs and despairing whether they could ever work again; 

 Not about the danger that the poor and senior citizens could be deprived of the payment of their Social Security pensions and their Medicare and Medicaid health needs; 

Not about the rotting infrastructures of our water systems and sewers and railroads; 

Not about the failing school systems and tuition raises making college impossible for large numbers of the middle class; 

Not about the dead and maimed of unending, unwinnable wars, or the trillions spent to kill and destroy;

  Not about the unprecedented droughts and unprecedented floods afflicting not only such faraway countries as Russia and Pakistan but increasingly, whole regions of the United States itself, as a result of the worsening climate crisis; 

Not about any of these but about different ways of squeezing choking, drowning those governmental programs that could meet these needs.

 Why? to reduce the federal debt swollen by senseless wars, by slashing the taxes of the hyper wealthy 2% of Americans, and by failing to tax the real incomes of great global corporations.  

For me, this echoed the teaching of the Passover Seder that In every generation, a Pharaoh arises to oppress us – in this generation, Pharaoh in the form of the great corporations that have now bought most of Congress; and that In every generation, every human being must know that it is we, not our ancestors only, who must go forth to freedom.

When one policewoman read us the first of three warnings that must precede the arrest, I thanked her for their courtesy and then added – “As police officers, you must enforce the law. And you are also citizens, and I hope that you too will join us to speak on behalf of the hungry and the homeless, against those who now control this Capitol.”

And to all our readers —  May you do the same, in the Name of that Unity Who under many different names calls us to pursue justice by just means.  Now more than ever: As the Hassidim teach, it is from the deepest dark that new light rises.

NOW more than ever — i urgently ask for your help in making a donation to The Shalom Center. Summer is traditionally a dry time for all donations — but as you can see, we don’t stop our work for justice, poach, and healing.  I impolore yo — we need your help NOW. — Please click on the [urple “Donate” banner to donate. Thanks!!

[Dissociated Press, Washington DC, September 5, 2011. The Dissociated Press seeks to report not the “actual facts” but the deeper “counter-factual” truth. Sometimes that truth is datelined from a hidden place beneath the surface of the facts, sometimes from the future  — as in the photograph of our reporter, above.  Often this kind of truth will read like satire.]

By Arthur Waskow, Special Roving Reporter for the Dissociated Press 

Jon Huntsman, former US ambassador to China, former governor of Utah, and declared candidate for the Republican nomination for president, today urged the Republican Party to nominate Barack Obama for president.

Huntsman spoke before a meeting of the Republican National Committee. About one-third of the RNC walked out while he was speaking, and about half the remaining members gave him a standing ovation. 

Huntsman asserted that Obama has proved himself the most effective Republican president since Ronald Reagan. “To win the next election by making our Grand Old Party once again the party of the conservative center in American life, we should nominate Mr. Obama,” he said. “Let the Democrats nominate Nancy Pelosi or someone like her. The country would stand with us.”

“Look at Obama’s record,” he said. “When most Republicans were beating their heads against the stone wall of Medicare and Social Security, he figured out a way to dislodge a stone here, a stone there  — weakening their foundations. And he won support in the Congress and the country to do that. Now we can keep moving step-by-step to dismantle these two socialist programs.”

“He understood that the best way to keep wages low and allow business profits to soar was to make sure that there were millions of desperate disemployed workers who were anxious for a job at any wages.  So he pursued an economic program to prop up Big Banking, Big Oil, Big Coal, while keeping millions jobless.

“He patted labor unions on the head while kicking their legs out from under them. What more Republican policy could he possibly have pursued?

 “Healthcare?  The insurance companies should be sending him their finest brandy and cigars. He made sure they would have millions of new compulsory customers, while also making sure there would be no public alternative to challenge any shenanigans they wanted to pursue.”

 One RNC member shouted to Huntsman, “What about your own candidacy?” He answered, “I would be honored to stand beside Mr. Obama and serve with him if our Party had the good sense to nominate him. Those who attack me for serving as his Ambassador to China are ignoring the profound and subtle conservatism of his policy.”

 “Sooner or later,” he said, “the real grass-roots Tea Party neo-populists will realize they have nothing in common with solid conservative Republicanism, and they will join with populist Democrats instead. Those shrill demagogues  in our own party who draw on the anger and frustration of the grassroots Tea Party members will find themselves abandoned.

“ If we nominate one of these shrill demagogues for president while the Democrats renominate Obama, they will win the election and we will never reemerge from the mud of slander, anger, and frustration. Who but Obama can carry forward a responsible pro-business, anti-labor policy while winning the votes of Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, and gays?”

“Our job should be, as it has been ever since William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan, to stand fast against populists of every stripe and their demagogic leaders, and to make sure that the great corporations that have brought such prosperity to America continue to stand strong as the spine of our society.”

After the RNC meeting, six RNC members separately muttered to this Dissociated Press reporter, “Don’t quote me under any conditions, but Huntsman made a lot of sense. Maybe we should give him a second look!”

The White House told the Dissociated Press they would have no comment on Huntsman’s proposal. “Of course we have a high regard for his work as Ambassador to China, but the future of the Republican Party is for them to explore, not for us,” said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

==30==

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

[The Dissociated Press is a new project of The Shalom Center.  Previous Dissociated Press reports can be accessed by clicking here.    Unlike regular Shalom Reports, the Dissociated Press seeks to report not the “actual facts” but the deeper “counter-factual” truth. Sometimes that truth is datelined from a hidden place beneath the surface of the facts, sometimes from the future.  Often this kind of truth will read like satire.  We welcome all readers of this report to disseminate it to others. To subscribe to future Dissociated Press reports separately from regular Shalom Reports, click here. ]

For more than the last generation, the new tallit of Judaism renewed has been woven of two great strands of thought and action: Hassidism and feminism. On of the most important weavers of the feminist strand has been Esther Broner.  

On Tuesday afternoon, June 21 (19 Sivan), after 83 years of intense life, after the recent death of her life-long husband, and after weeks of worsening illness, Esther’s life-force gave out. 
 She was surrounded by loving family and friends and by many prayers and messages of love and kindness, coming from many who had been inspired by her –- sometimes face-to-face, sometimes  through her writings.
 
Many who wrote were, I am sad and joyful to say, responding to The Shalom Center’s alerting us all to her illness. 

Esther wrote  The Women’s Haggadah; Her Mothers; A Weave of Women; The Telling: The Story of a Group of Jewish Women Who Journey to Spirituality through Community and Ceremony; and Mornings and Mourning: A Kaddish Journal.
 


For me, Her Mothers and A Weave of Women – her mid-‘70s novels (the second about a semi-fictional group of women from all around the world, gathered in Jerusalem, who were reinventing Judaism with new ceremonies and midrash) were a crucial opening in my own rebirth.  

And her memoir of the Seder Sisters who have gathered for more than 30 years each Pesach to create and recreate their own Haggadah was both an affirmation and a beyond-growing of my work on the Freedom Seder. Her pioneering mark on our thought and lives have already made her into a permanent presence, fuller than a memory, of tzaddik-hood.

Her family will begin sitting shiva  following the burial on Thursday from 6pm to 8pm, and again on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, at 49 West 96th Street, apartment 1B (212-749-0022); all are welcome any evening.

Her daughter Nahama quotes her mother’s writing in Bringing Home the Light (p.168)

:
 

I see the day fade like smoke,
like fog in the harbor.
Tomorrow, the fog will burn off
in the morning sun.
The boats will depart,
the trees emerge,
so I live in and out of my life,
so I border on yours,
on the pillow of the past
and the brink of the day. 

The family suggests that donations in her memory may be sent in Esther’s name  to one of the following three organizations:

1. B’nai Jeshurun Rabbis’ discretionary fund to Rabbi Rolando Matalon or to Rabbi Marcello Bronstein—2109 Broadway, Suite 203, New York, NY 10023-2106 or www.bj.org 
2. Center for Constitutional Rights, 666 Broadway, NYC 10012
3. New Israel Fund (Projects focusing on women) www.nif.org

Beside these, I suggest as an act of creative memory and more than memory, reading or rereading A Weave of Women.  Through fiction set in an Israel of struggle and hope, it stirred many of its readers to help create the facts of a transformed Judaism, shaped especially but not exclusively by women, drawing on new forms of prayer and celebration and new acts of peacemaking.

Not only that novel but all her writing and her work as well can  help us  do what the tradition calls us to: “Chadesh yamenu k’kedem, Make new our days as they were long ago.”  Not just in nostalgia celebrating the “good old days” of that early wave of Jewish feminism and neo-Hasidic renewal,  but  making our own days new and full of creative energy as those days were in their own time.

With my joy in Esther’s life transcending my sadness in her dying —
Arthur

[This is the first article from the Dissociated Press, a new  project of The Shalom Center.  Unlike regular Shalom
Reports, the Dissociated Press seeks to report not the “actual facts” but the deeper “counter-factual” truth. Sometimes that truth is datelined from a hidden place beneath the surface of the facts, sometimes from the future (by way of a prophetic crystal ball — see graphic above).  Often this kind of truth will read like satire. Readers can join as subscribers to the Dissociated Press by clicking here, separately from their subscription to the regular Shalom Report.]

{Washington, DC, Dissociated Press, June 3, 2011.

By Arthur Waskow, Roving Special Reporter for the Dissociated Press

Prime Minister “Bibi”Netanyahu of Israel today announced that he is reclaiming his US citizenship and will run for President in the Republican primaries.

“I was greatly moved and inspired by the 29 standing ovations I received last week from members of Congress of both political parties. They clearly  recognized the Real Deal when they saw it, and I will be calling on them all to support me in bringing the Real Deal to America,” he said. “Not the scatter-brained robber barons of the Old Deal, not the utopian-fantasy New Deal, but the muscular Real Deal.”

Flanked by Speaker John Boehner and former Gov. Sarah Palin at a hastily called news conference on the steps of the US Capitol, Netanyahu explained that he has accomplished as much as he can in Israel and wants to broaden his impact on the world.

“I have protected Israel against terrorism; I have eliminated the Muslim menace to our society; I have stimulated new high-tech capitalism amid high prosperity; I have broken up the ultra-left-wing institutions and practices the ill-begotten Labor Party imposed upon our society; and now I want to bring the same benefits to the country of my birth, the USA. 

“It does not matter whether Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, wherever
that is, or in Hawaii, whoever those people are.  I was born right here
in good old America, in Northeast Philadelphia to be exact, and I have
no hesitation about providing full copies of my birth certificate to say
so.

 “Mr. Obama’s willingness to compromise the security of Israel is
paralleled by his softness on many other issues of security for America,
despite his single success in getting Osama bin Laden,.  And his
insistence on higher taxes for the most productive Americans, combined
with his soft-heartedness toward many lazy and uneducated folk, cry out
for a new and vigorously competitive capitalism here.”

 Ms. Palin explained, “For the sake of Real Americans and the Real
Deal, I am available to help BiBi’s candidacy in whatever way possible,
whether on the ticket itself or walking door to door in Arizona.”

Reporters rushed to the offices of Rabbi David Saperstein, director
of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism –-  a Jewish center
that is one of the most respected lobbies in Washington. On being
informed of the Prime Minister’s decision, Rabbi Saperstein’s face first
drained of blood and then flushed. 

He said, “We are of course a religious organization, and therefore do
not support or oppose any candidate for public office. The Religious
Action Center will continue, as it always has done, to work strongly in
the Jewish community and on Capitol Hill for social justice,
environmental protection, civil liberties, and religious freedom.”

At 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, a spokesperson for the Lubavitch
Chabad Hassidic community said, “We do not take stands on political
candidates, but I can say for sure that the miraculous entry of an
Israeli Prime Minister into the US presidential campaign is another sign that the coming of Mashiach [Messiah] is very very near.”

 Political analysts disagreed over whether this astounding bombshell
in American politics would drastically change the Jewish vote, which
has consistently been very strongly for Democratic presidential
candidates. “Even if it only shifts the Jewish vote from 80-20 Democrat
to 70-30, that could shift the election in New York, Pennsylvania,
Illinois, and California,” said Wolf Bluster of CNN.

 When asked by one reporter at the hastily called news conference on
Capitol Hill what he meant by “eliminating the Muslim menace,” BiBi
responded: “In Israel, about 1/5 of the population is Muslim. They have
absolute freedom to pray as they like in their mosques, except for
occasional restrictions at Al Aqsa on our Temple mount, because it has
been the center of demonstrations and riots and because periodically we
need to reassert our unique ownership of Jerusalem. Of course we have a
constant police presence and surveillance to make sure they do not
become a fifth column. 

“We also make sure that their schools are dilapidated, their
neighborhoods receive little support for their sewage systems and roads
and other amenities. They have to invest all their energy in daily life,
with nothing left over for politics. With a much bigger  potential
problem than the US has, we have made sure there is no actual problem.

“And we have learned to use military force against Muslim
organizations that are our declared enemies, like Hamas and Hezbollah.
 As President of the United States, I will not hesitate to use full
force to protect the free world against this enemy.”

“When a reporter called out, “Do you think you can win the nomination
and the Presidency on that platform?” Mr. Netanyahu smiled. 

“Would you like to sit down with me and count those 29
standing ovations, and the numbers of Congressmembers and Senators who
stood for them?” he asked. 

* * * * *

To subscribe to the Dissociated Press reports separately from the regular Shalom Report, click here.  

Last night (Monday night, May 9, 2011), the executive committee of the CUNY Board of Trustees reversed the Board’s refusal of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner.

Behind the Board’s original decision and its reversal are three stories.

The first: There has been a concerted attack against the best traditions of open debate and exploration of opinion in academia and in Jewish life, when it comes to criticism of the Israeli government.  The second story: There is a new wave of bold resistance to such arrogance, in the world and in the Jewish community. The third: The Middle East is on the dizzying verge of an opening toward peace — and that infuriates some hawks on both sides of the barricades.

1. Mr. Trustee Wiesenfeld, who swept the CUNY Board into its unprecedented refusal to honor someone nominated by the faculty of one of its constituent campuses, was not just attacking Tony Kushner in some momentary outburst.

He had earlier temporarily won the dismissal of a Brooklyn College professor (later reversed by the college) for the same reasons; he had led the fight to squash the first Arabic-language charter school in New York, reviling its professional educator Debby Almontaser; he  opposed the right of Muslims to create a community center/ mosque in Lower Manhattan.  And a network of such bigots has been haunting academia for several years.

2. The new story is that this time, a wave of outrage stopped this bigotry in its tracks.  Jews committed to Jewish values, intellectuals, artists, academics, joined in condemning the Board’s action. (We at The Shalom Center were among the earliest to respond. And we admire the swift and vigorous response of Jewish Voice for Peace.)

This uprising — which we should take honorable joy in —  is why Benno C. Schmidt Jr., chairman of the CUNY board since 2003 and a former president of Yale University,  told the NY Times that  the board had “made a mistake of principle, and not merely of policy,” in failing to approve Tony Kushner’s degree, at its meeting last Monday.  “Freedom of thought and expression is the bedrock of any university worthy of the name,” said Mr. Schmidt.

Duhhh! – It’s not likely that Mr. Schmidt was fast asleep and snoring so loud he couldn’t hear Mr. Trustee Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld’s  “impassioned speech” against a made-up caricature of the real Tony Kushner, when the issue came before the Board last week. 

It’s more likely Chairman Schmidt was thinking that bigots like Wiesenfeld have more money, more glower, and more power, than gay playwrights, wimpy professors,  and soft-hearted peaceniks.   If so, he was awakened by the wave of outrage that swept over the CUNY Board.

Five years ago, or even five weeks ago, many of those who rose up might well have rolled their eyes but kept their mouths shut.

Why now? For one thing, a new sense of ferment is bubbling, from Tahrir Square to Madison, Wisconsin. God is troubling the Waters.

3. And the third story: The REALLY New Middle East is challenging Israel to think anew. Its government might respond by making new wars, or seeking a newer, broader peace.

 Whichever direction it now takes, those Jews who disagree will be tenser than ever, more fearful that the old path or any new one spells disaster. Expect bitter fights, expect less room for shrugging off the struggle, expect more efforts to “excommunicate” the critics. 

In the last two weeks, we have seen the tiny openings for a possible though perilous passage toward peace between Israel and Palestine.

In Israel, for the first time in years those committed to peace have raised their voices with serious proposals for a two-state solution. Thirty crucial veteran leaders of the military / security establishment (not the usual peacenik suspects) have put forward a detailed plan. Hundreds of writers, artists, scholars who are the usual suspects but have for years now kept their mouth shut —  the intellectual flower of Israel – have also called for action to that end.

Among the Palestinians, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah have all agreed to halt attacks on Israel and create a caretaker government of national unity, led by technocrats rather than political figures. Some leaders of Hamas have said that if a majority of the Palestinian people votes for peace with Israel, Hamas will set aside its original framework calling for the abolition of the state of Israel.

The new government of Egypt has announced that its border with Gaza will be opened for trade – import and export.

Plans are moving ahead for the UN General Assembly to admit a new Palestine, within approximately the 1967 Green Line boundaries, as a UN member.

All this could lead in the direction of a true peace settlement, supported by peace treaties between all Arab governments, the new state of Palestine, and the state of Israel – as the Arab League has several times proposed during the last decade.  (Till now, these proposals have been ignored by the government of Israel and the Hamas government of Gaza.)

Or the very possibility of a breakthrough for peace might drive hawks on either or both sides, in or out of their governments,  to sabotage these openings. If that happens, there could be another wave of violence as both the Israeli government and some parts of the Palestinian leadership react with fear and rage to yet another collapse of hope for peace.

So far, the Netanyahu government and the Obama government have rejected the notion of a Palestinian government of national unity that includes Hamas; have rejected the notion of a UN role in establishing Palestinian independence; and have failed to end the blockade of civilian goods from entering or leaving Gaza, to end the demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, and to stop the settlement of Israelis in the West Bank.  This triple rejection makes peace impossible.

 A great deal depends on what American Jews, speaking both to their own government and to the government and people of Israel, say and do at this moment.

The ever-quivering Jewish nerve of fear, honed by many many generations  of oppression, has been sharpened in our own day by moments of murderous attacks  upon Israeli civilians. But as Prime Minister Rabin argued in every Israeli town and village before he was murdered,  Jews are no longer victims but possess great power.  Ignoring that truth, and strumming only on the nerve of fear, would bring again the screeching music of Forever War.

But if American as well as Israeli Jews could see how strong the worldwide Jewish people is today, no longer pariahs, no longer victims, possessed of powerful weapons and a strong economy, it might be possible for them to choose the risks of peace –- far less dangerous in the long run than choosing the short-run habit of Forever War.

On the Palestinian side, giving up the wistful hope that not only actual refugees of 1949 and 1967 might return to their old homes inside what is now Israel,  but also their children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren in millions –-  would mean leaving behind a fantasy in favor of a liberated reality — a state with its capital in East Jerusalem, ports and airports in Gaza, a thriving culture and economy and politics throughout.

There is no hope of peace without Hamas. There is no hope of peace without the Israeli center-right.  Those who say they want peace but only without Hamas, do not in fact want peace. Those who say they want peace but only on condition that millions of Palestinian refugee families can return within the borders of the State of Israel do not in fact want peace.

Those who claim to be for peace but refuse to take the only risks that can make peace possible, should recognize the truth: In actual practice, in reality, in truth, they are unwilling to make peace.

Martin Buber once said, “The real barricades are not between nations; the real barriers are not between political parties; the real barricades are within each human being.”

Within each of us  — each Israeli, each Palestinian, each Jew, each Arab, each Muslim, of whatever nation and whatever political party —  is the barricade between fear and rage on the one side, desire and hope and even love on the other.  On which side of our internal barricade do we choose to live, to act?

 In the four decades and more since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem began, there have been many moments when those who really did want peace have warned that a failure to move forward would bring not merely a longer uneasy stalemate, but war.

They (we) were right: the first Lebanon War,  the Second Intifada, the Second Lebanon War, the Gaza War all poured new blood upon the sand. The blood of Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptians, Europeans, Americans, has indeed been drawn inexorably into the bloody sandstorm of war after war, terror after terror, torture after torture, fear after fear, rage after rage, hatred after hatred.

Now we are again at such a moment.

The United States government can make a difference, but so far it has refused to. American Jews, Christians, Muslims, and those of other religious and ethical communities could insist that our government use its influence and power on behalf of the flowering of peace, instead of undergirding violence and war.

Could we work out an approach that strong majorities of our communities can embrace?

Or would we rather pour more blood into the sand?

This “Could we?” is no mere rhetorical question. I welcome your ideas— write back!

With blessings toward shalom, salaam, peace –- Arthur

More than one hundred of our members and readers wrote  agreeing with my letter (see the Blog entry just below this one) about responding to the death of Bin Laden. Only two wrote disagreeing.

Thanks! —

And —his death and the myriad deeper questions it raises suggest that —now is the time to take a new direction for Afghanistan, and for America.

This letter points toward a petition to President Obama that we invite you to sign, on-line. You can click to the sign-on petition right  away, here, or absorb the rest of this letter and click then.

End military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, bring our soldiers safely home, and redirect the hundreds of billions of dollars we are spending there to rebuild and renew America.

Beginning when President Obama took office, there has been only one reason to send more and more American soldiers to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, in Afghanistan.

That was the institutional claim of some in the American military and even more civilian hawks that only military force brings change.

That was never so, and now we know it:

The regions of Afghanistan that were in rebellion against a national government imposed and supported by the US are just as rebellious as they were three years ago.

Without popular support, the Afghan “government” is even more corrupt than it was three years ago.

The people and the government of Pakistan are more hostile to the United States than they were three years ago.

More American soldiers are dying than were three years ago.

More Afghan and Pakistani civilians are being killed than were three years ago.

The heart and muscle of Al Qaeda  is no longer in Afghanistan, and the death of bin Laden confirms that it is no longer in Pakistan. The most dangerous Al Qaeda cells are thousands of miles away, and the US Army in Afghanistan has no effect upon them.

AND perhaps most important, now we know that steadfast nonviolence on the part of the Egyptian people has done far more to bring democracy closer than years of  US bombs and bayonets.

 If we were serious about protecting the American homeland, we would –

•    End the humiliation, exploitation, and support for tyrannical governments that  Big Oil and Big Army have imposed on the Arab and Muslim worlds,  thus spawning terrorism;

•    Put our technological, economic, and political smarts into a swift transformation from fossil fuels and uranium to wind and solar power;

•     Uphold our Constitutional commitment that American Muslims are full and equal participants in our society;

•    Renew the American economy so that it is fair to everyone and does not generate pockets of rage and despair.

•    Invest here, on behalf of life and prosperity, the hundreds of billions of dollars that are being worse than wasted on death and destruction in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Now is the time to bring home the American soldiers still fighting an endless, hopeless war in Afghanistan.  All of them, not just a token few.

Now is the time to offer instead small-scale grassroots help to Afghan women’s groups, impoverished farmers, and the Pushtun patriots  thrown by our policy into the hands of the Taliban.

Now is the time to appeal to those within the ranks of the Taliban themselves to choose between civil war and social peace.  Not on the basis of a will-o’-the-wisp, ever-vanishing possibility of an end someday to American intervention, but a commitment that it is only Afghans who will rule Afghanistan, either with knives at each others’ throats or with hands clasping each others’ hands. They, not we, must decide.

And now is the time for Americans to say so.

If you agree, please join in a Petition to our newly empowered President. Please share this letter with your friends, co-workers, fellow-congregants –- and ask them to sign too.

We will deliver the Peace Petition to the White House when there are 1800 names, and again at 3600 names, and so on. (“18” is the mystical Jewish number that means “chai,” “life.”)

Your outreach will speed the moment of delivery!

Click here to sign the petition.

And to help The Shalom Center carry this work forward, please send a (tax-deductible) gift. Click on the “Donate” banner in the left-hand column.

With blessings of shalom, salaam, peace to you and the world –— Arthur

Rabbi Jeff Roth, co-founder of the Elat Chayyim spiritual retreat center and founder of Awakened Heart experiences in Jewish meditation,  teaches that the archetypal Biblical “forty” —  40 years in the wilderness, 40 days and nights on Mount Sinai — is a pregnant pause. For, he points out, the real length of human pregnancy is not nine months but 40 weeks.

After 40 years, something new should be born. So in 1969, The Shalom Center  created the 40th-anniversary Interfaith Seder for the Earth. And in 1971, 40 years after I wrote The Bush is Burning, Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I published our new book  — Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness Across Millennia. 

Both are far richer in understanding of Torah and of the world than I knew how to write 40 years ago. Both are deeply informed by feminist Judaism and eco-Judaism and by the deep and loving relationship between Phyllis and me —  none of which even existed 40 years ago. 

Both of them ascribe to modern pharaohs like Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Banking the planetary plagues of today — like BP’s oil blowout in the Gulf, so similar  to those ecological disasters that Pharaoh’s arrogance and stubbornness brought upon his own country. 

And in Freedom Journeys we also broke the assumption that Exodus belongs to Jews alone, by inviting two Christians and one Muslim to assess the power of the Exodus story in the Gospels, the Quran, and the Black American freedom movement. 

Not everyone, it turns out, responds to this 40-year span by birthing newness. Indeed, exactly 40 years after Commentary magazine bitterly attacked the original Freedom Seder, it has just attacked the Freedom Seder –— again!  Instead of a birth, it gives forth a belch.  What can we learn from this strange episode of the forty-year Commentary belch?

It erupts from one response to a harsh truth: We are all living through a world earthquake. Every aspect of our lives is shaking under foot and in our bellies – political, sexual, familial, intellectual, military, economic, ecological.

 Among us there are three basic responses to this earthquake:

• Some of us stagger along, helpless, falling, being clobbered, even dying as the planet trembles. 

• Some of us look desperately for something immovable that we might be able to hang onto while the world shakes. These folks look to a photograph they carry in their heads from the “orderly” past. (The photo may in fact be fuzzy and untruthful, but better this past “certainty” than so much disorder in the present.)
 That immovable past has in it power structures of the soul, the psyche, and society: The patriarchal family.  Contempt for queers. America’s “manifest destiny” to control the world.  And, of course, a Judaism and a Passover as it was handed down to us, not
contaminated by a search for modern pharaohs or by listening seriously to other religious traditions – let alone to the always unfolding Voice of God.

• And then there is the third way of responding to the world-quake we are living through: Learning to dance in the earthquake. 
Renewing, transforming Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism.  Renewing, transforming, what it means to be an American, an Israeli, a Palestinian, an Egyptian, a French(wo)man. Not only transforming each community for the sake of its own future, but reshaping each so that all can connect with each other.
Connecting with each other in the social and political equivalent of an eco-system, in which all our cultures interbreathe in joyful diversity in order to transform the world into a joyful home for human beings and all our life-forms. 

It is hard to dance when the dance floor itself is shaking, changing shape, heaving up and lurching down. How to bring grace, music, joy into that dancing?

Hard – but that, it seems to me, is the life-giving response to the world we live in.
Commentary’s new attack on the Freedom Seder is a poster boy for trying to hang on to the “immovable” past in the midst of earthquake. 

The article itself is a  40-year belch, repeating an undigested past. 

And its message matches its medium. Even its “new” twists attack what is new — the myriad of new  haggadot that were stirred into life by the Freedom Seder. Feminist haggadot, vegetarian haggadot, haggadot of spiritual self-examination to remove the self-swollen interior chametz (leavening or souring), meditative haggadot, gay-liberation haggadot, haggadot for use by families where some partners but not all are Jewish,  earth-healing haggadot. 

Its author, Michael Medved, is angry because I have often reported that what moved me to write the Freedom Seder was that in April 1968, I saw as if it were Pharaoh’s Army the US Army occupying Washington DC beginning the day after the assassination of Dr. King, and saw as oppressed people the thousands of Blacks jailed that week for violating the curfew imposed by an unelected government. 

He is also angry that I referred to Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in the 1830s as one form of liberation struggle. 

What he wrote was far less than a “half-truth.” For what he does not mention is that when I wrote the Freedom Seder, I absorbed my anger at Lyndon Johnson’s Army and the repression of Blacks into a deeper exploration of freedom.  

As the central spine of the Freedom Seder I wove a debate about violence and nonviolence —  the slave revolts, John Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, and  the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on one side, Gandhi and King and Rabbi Tamaret on the other. What’s more, I affirmed that nonviolent resistance to oppression was a more worthy path.  Not a peep from Mr. Medved about this central teaching of the Freedom Seder.

His critique of the many Haggadot that were sparked by the Freedom Seder belched contempt for the upwelling of so many urgencies for Freedom, so many outcries of the heart against the top-down pharaohs of our day – political, economic, ecological, sexual, religious. 
He did not discuss the Interfaith Seder for the Earth or our new book Freedom Journeys, but it is clear he would have attacked them too. 

Obviously, this effort to recapture the past and impose it on the future is not the dancing-in-the-earthquake that I espouse.  And since it was an attack on my own work, my first response was anger. 

But I ask myself –— what are the implications of the nonviolent resistance I celebrated in the original Freedom Seder, for responding to this attack? 

So I try to turn from anger at Commentary toward a compassion that sees the pathos of its yearning for certainty, for control, for an immovable place in the midst of quake. A place where it can control its own world, and in order to do that control, stamp out, or at least tamp down, these curls and curves of change. 

Suddenly, with a smile, I  feel compassion even for a belch, which after all is one of the body’s natural responses when it can’t digest the food it may have to eat.

Compassion – but not surrender. 

The Shalom Center is committed to learning and teaching how to dance in the earthquake. 

The Shalom Center is committed to learn and to teach a Judaism poised to work with other communities to transform the world.

L’chayyim!  – For the sake of life, all life.

For two videos that address how we move forward – “Let Our People Go!”  by Lawrence Bush, editor of Jewish Currents, with a sardonic graphic take on the pharaohs of our day, and my own thoughts “Beyond Passover –— Toward a Transformative Judaism”  —  see our Home Page.

In 1943,  A. J. Muste, one of America’s great social activists, wrote an essay on the Biblical Exodus in which he called Moses the labor organizer of “Brickmakers Union Number One.” (Muste took part for half a century in nonviolent efforts to seek peace and justice (from support for textile workers in the “Bread and Roses”strike in 1919 in Lawrence, Mass., to helping organize the first great march against the  Vietnam War in 1965).
 
Phyllis and I quoted this passage on Moses in our newest book, Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness Across Millennia  (just now being published by Jewish Lights).  Even before the great upheaval in Egypt and the one in Wisconsin, we were applying the lessons of the Exodus to today.  (E.g. The transformative role of women in the Exodus; understanding the ‘plagues” as eco-disasters brought about by arrogant Pharaoh.)

In honor of Moses and in joyful memory of the years we spent as students in Madison, Wisconsin, in the 1950s and 1960s;  in memory of our teachers Howard K. Beale and Merle Curti and Hans Gerth and Selig Perlman; in honor of Congressman Robert W. Kastenmeier, for whom Arthur worked as legislative assistant, 1959-1961;in honor of Rabbi Max Ticktin & Esther Ticktin of UW Hillel in those days;  and in strong support of the right of workers to organize unions as a crucial part of democracy, we vigorously support the present freedom movement in Madison and all across the State of Wisconsin.
 
We are delighted to join with many members of a wide variety of religious communities who have vigorously supported the public workers and students who are demonstrating.

The Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice (ICJW) of South Central Wisconsin, 2300 South Park Street,  Suite 109 Madison, WI  53713,  608-255-0376, has taken a central role in mobilizing religious support for the workers and students. 

They are providing food, water, warmth to the protest. We encourage you to send donations, through their website, here: 

ICJW’s Director is Rabbi Renee Bauer,  608-320-1144, director@workerjustice.org  She writes:  Their intern is working with protesters to have a continual presence at the State Capitol, and any financial support would be greatly appreciated.  The ICWJ is also organizing clergy and congregations to speak up in favor of the protests and the right to organize.
^^^^^^^^
We at The Shalom Center also applaud the members of the State Legislature who have courageously prevented passage of the Governor’s attempt to smash the rights of workers –- so reminiscent of Pharaoh’s response to Moses’ first efforts to protect workers’ rights in ancient Egypt.

Just as the midwives Shifra and Puah, Miriam and Pharaoh’s Daughter  carried out nonviolent resistance to Pharaoh’s tyranny, so the State Legislators of Wisconsin are carrying it out today. 

We are living through  intense  efforts by the modern Pharaohs of Big Banking, Oil, Coal, and other industries, and their governmental allies, to  radically shift power and wealth away from the middle class and workers in favor of those who are already powerful and extremely rich.

They are aiming not only to destroy unions but to shatter women’s health centers (defunding Planned Parenthood), smash even mildly independent media and cultural centers (defunding NPR & PBS and the National Endowments for the Arts & Humanities), and treat Hispanics and Muslims as pariahs. 

Much of this class war against the middle class, the working class, and the poor has been justified by alleged “budget shortfalls” in the US & state budgets.

But in fact the budget deficit is caused by a trillion dollars spent on unconscionable wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of billions in slush funds for the Military-Corporate Complez, and hundreds of billions in tax cuts for the top  super-rich of America. 

And if the  deficit were to result from money being spent on providing jobs for 15 million desperate jobless workers, it would be a valuable tool to get our economy going again for everybody – not just Wall Street (as Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate in economics and NY Times columnist, has been wailing into the heedless ears of Washington for two full years). 

Just as when Moses organized workers who had been turned into slaves in ancient Egypt, this is a religious question, a moral question, not merely political and economic. Nonviolent resistance to Pharaoh then and to Gov. Walker now is obedience to God’s command: “Justice, justice, must you pursue!” 

Here is the ICJW statement:

Religious Leaders Condemn Governor Walker’s
Budget Bill

A moment of contingency is upon Wisconsin
workers and citizens. Protests and rallies have accelerated this week in
Madison and across the state at remarkable rates in opposition to Gov. Scott
Walker’s budget repair bill that, for all practical purposes, would eliminate
the right of all state, local, and school district employees in Wisconsin to
form and maintain unions. 

The Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice
of South Central Wisconsin (ICWJ) is at the center of this historic movement to
protect worker rights and assure that this bill is not signed into law. The
mission of the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice is to build
relationships between the faith and labor communities, to educate and mobilize
these communities in the struggle for just wages, benefits and working
conditions for all workers and to support workers’ rights to organize and
engage in collective bargaining.

In response to the profoundly unsettling, and
morally problematic, SB11 budget repair bill, ICWJ has collected dozens of
signatures from clergy and religious leaders across the state who are raising
their voice to oppose this bill. The letter, which was hand delivered to the
governor’s office this afternoon, reads in part,

“Our religious traditions insist that
workers, as human beings with inherent dignity, have the right to form
associations to improve their conditions at work. Statements issued [by a wide
array of faith bodies] support the right of workers to organize and bargain
with their employers over wages, benefits, and a voice on the job”

“Governor Walker’s bill is an affront to the
human dignity of public sector workers,” said Rabbi Renée Bauer, Director of
the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice “As a religious leader I recognize
this as a moral crisis. Now is the time for all of us to live out our faith by
raising our voices to protect the rights of workers in Wisconsin and throughout
the country.”
 
##### Clergy letter follows
 
As people of faith, we oppose Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s plan to deny
collective bargaining rights for public employees.

Our religious traditions are very clear that workers, as human beings that have inherent dignity, have the right to form associations to improve their conditions at work. Statements issued by the
following Christian denominations— Roman Catholic, African Methodist Episcopal
Zion, American Baptist, Christian Methodist Episcopal, Disciples of Christ,
Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Presbyterian Church U.S.A.,
United Church of Christ, and United Methodist Church— along with the Central
Conference of American Rabbis, Union of Reform Judaism, Council on American
Islamic Relations, Muslim American Freedom Foundation, the Unitarian
Universalist Church and others, support the right of workers to organize and
bargain with their employers over wages, benefits, and a voice on the job.

Teachers, public health workers, county/municipal employees and all people who provide vital services to our
communities are under attack, falsely blamed for budget problems caused by the unemployment crisis and the drop in state revenues as businesses have closed, fewer people pay taxes, and consumers spend less. Wholesale attacks on public servants will only worsen this situation.

Therefore we urge our legislators and Governor Walker to stop this bill and stand for genuine efforts to create jobs,
improve standards, and respect all people who work and contribute to their families and communities.

1.Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, Congregation
Shaarei Shamayim, rabbi@shamayim.org
2.  Rev. David Dragseth, Lake Park Lutheran Church
pastordavid@lakeparklutheran.com
3. Rev. Lisa D. Schoenwetter, lisas0257@gmail.com
4. Rev. Dr. Mark E. Yurs, Pastor, Salem United Church of Christ,
myurs@salemchurchverona.org
5.  Rev. Tisha Brown, Community of Hope, UCC, mcctisha@tds.net
 6.  Rev. Curt Anderson, Pastor First Congregational UCC,
canderson@firstcongmadison.org
7. Rabbi Jonathan Biatch, Temple Beth El. rabbi@templebethelmadison.org
8. Rev. Marilyn S. Gamm, Pastor, Dale Heights Presbyterian Church, 
revmsgamm@yahoo.com
9.  Rev. Leah Makemson Lonsbury, Pastor, Memorial UCC, leahlonsbury@gmail.com
10. Rev. Phil Haslanger, Pastor, Memorial UCC
11. Rev. Elias Kitoi  Nasari, Galilee Lutheran Church,
pastorelias@galileelc.org,
12., Rev. Dr. Michael A. Schuler, First Unitarian Society of Madison,
michaels@fusmadison.org,
13., Rev. Karen Gustafson, First Unitarian Society of Madison,
kareng@fusmadison.org,
14. Rabbi Renee Bauer, Director, Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of
South Central Wisconsin, director@workerjustice.org,
15. Rev. Dr. Jerry L. Mosser, Affiliated Minister, First Unitarian Society of
Madison, jerrymosser@tds.net, 16. Rev. Jim Stein, Pastor, Church of the
Resurrection, pastorstein@gmail.com, 17. Sister Barbara Pfarr, SSND, School
Sisters of Notre Dame, bpfarr@ssnd-milw.org,
 18. Sister Mary Catherine Jarema, SSND, School Sisters of Notre Dame,

19. Rev. Gregory J. O’Meara, S.J., gregory.omeara@marquette.edu,

20. Rev. Dennis Jacobsen, Pastor, Incarnation Lutheran Church, lynnjake@sbcglobal.net,

21. Sister Janet Gregorcich, SSND, Director, Global Partners Program, School Sisters of Notre Dame, jgregorc@ssnd-milw.org,
 22. Reverend Amanda Stein, Pastor, Trinity United Methodist Church , pastor@tumcmadison.org,
 
23. Reverend Nick Utphall, St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church, Utphall.ststephens@tds.net,

24.  Rev. Heide Walker Hackman, First United Church of Christ, pastorheide@bellevillefirstucc.org,
 25. Rev. Deborah Dean-Ware, Pastor of Worship and Faith Formation, Lake
Edge United Church of Christ, ddean-ware@lakeedge.org,
 26.  Rev. Kenneth L. Pennings, Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ, kpennings@yahoo.com,
27. Rev. Amy Becker, Church of the Resurrection (ELCA Lutheran), pastor.amy.becker@gmail.com,
28.  Fr. Mike Berthram, St. Francis of Assisi  , BerthramM@ArchMil.Org,
 29. Fr. Art Hei , St James    , heinzea@archmil.org,
 30.  Jim Zalinski OFM, Capuchin Justice Peace and Ecology  ,  Zelito@Juno.Com ,
31. Rev. Kirsten Fryer , Lutheran Church, ELCA , klfryer@gmail.com,
32  Rev. Eldonna Hazen, First Congregational UCC, ehazen@firstcongmadison.org,
 33. Rev. Jay McDivitt; , Grace Lutheran Church (ELCA); Thiensville,, pastorjay@grace53092.org,
 34. Rev. Charles A. Wolfe, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ , cwolfe@pcucc.org,
 35.  Rev. Jerry Folk, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America , jlfolk@tds.net,
36. Rev.Curt Rohland   ,  Evangelical Lutheran Church in America  , prcurt@dwave.net ,
37. Rev. Terry Peterson  , Evangelical Lutheran Church in America  , tlp53558@hotmail.com ,
38. Rev.Jerry Schroeder  , St. Benedict the Moor Parish, benspastor@sbcglobal.net,
39. Rev. Bryan N. Massingale, Associate Professor/, Marquette University, bryan.massingale@marquette.edu,
40.  Fr. Mike Michaeliski, Catholic Priest on the East Side of Milwaukee ,  michalskim@archmil.org.,
41. Rev. Winton Boyd, Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ, winton@orucc.org,
42. Rev. Keith Schroerlucke, First United Methodist Church, kschroer@fumc.org,
 43. Rev. Tammy Martens, Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ, tmartens@orucc.org,
 44. Sister Ruth Poochigian, O.P.  , Dominican Sister (Sinsinawa), RuthOP@aol.com,
45. Rev. Paula Harris, St Luke’s Episcopal Church, stlukesmadisonrector@gmail.com,

46. Rev. Dean Kirst , Lakeview Lutheran Church, pastordean@lakeviewlutheranmail.org,
 47. Maureen McDonnell, O.P., Wisdom’s Well, mcdonnel@edgewood.edu,
48. Rev. Earl Zimmerman, Madison Mennonite Church, pastor@madison-mennonite.org,
 49.  Rev. Paul Jackson Way, Barneveld Lutheran, pastorjack@barneveldlutheran.org ,
50.  Rev. John Mix, Madison Area Lutheran Council (Jail Chaplain) , Jmix4peace@hotmail.com,
51. Rev. Msgr. Thomas F. Baxter, St. James and St. Joseph Catholic Parishes, tbaxter@straphael.org,
 52.  Rev. Kerri Parker , McFarland United Church of Christ, pastormcfarucc@frontier.com,
53.  Rev. Connie Matye  , ELCA, peaceluth@laagrant.net,
54. Rev. Robert Schoenknecht , ELCA marybob@cvol.net,

55.  Rabbi Bonnie Margulis, WI-Religious Coalition for Reproductive CHoice, bmargulis@tds.net
56.  Rabbi David Brusin, Congregation Shir Hadash, Milwaukee, WI

Dear friends, readers, members --

What has The Shalom Center accomplished during the past year?

I will be listing some specifics, but before doing that, I want to note that this year was unique -- because I myself had both the extra burden and the unexpected love and learning that came from doing all this while recovering from the broken leg, broken ribs, and their aftermaths that I suffered in the auto crash of August 21, 2009.

I surely would not have chosen the pain and the pressure that I experienced, especially during the first half of this year – but deep learning and deep loving did come through it. My deepest thanks to you-all for your responsiveness.

I hope that even as I continue to grow past the Great Crash, you will continue to be responsive with your help -- through action, through ideas, and materially -- through your gifts.

By summing up our work of this past year, we want to be clear what your gifts make possible, and ask you – urgently -- to help make more possible, with a tax-deductible donation now.

You can make your donation by clicking on the "Donate" banner on the left-hand margin of the Website

We especially ask you to make a continuing monthly donation through your credit card -- $36 a month, $18 a month, $10 a month. And if you prefer a one-time gift, that's utterly welcome too.

Now here's the year's report:

1. One effort that began before last January, is blossoming now, and will reach full fruition this spring:

The Shalom Center has opened up the time and space for me to think, to share ideas with you, and to work with my beloved Rabbi Phyllis Berman to create the book Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness Across Millennia that Jewish Lights will publish in February.

The original Freedom Seder, which I wrote in 1969, was my "bar mitzvah" doorway into Jewish life, my first tentative Godwrestle with how to see the Exodus. Now I have been able to draw on forty-plus years of Torah learning and life-experience, plus 25 years of life and learning with and from Phyllis, plus almost ten years of serious engagement for the two of us with Jews, Christians, and Muslims together, plus 28 years of action and shared learning with you-all through The Shalom Center, to made possible this "grown-up" understanding of the Exodus. A lot more Questions than the Four Questions of the Seder, I can tell you!

Thank you – and to keep this process growing, please help The Shalom Center through your actions in the world and your donations to our work.

2. All through this year, we have sent out Shalom Reports about life, politics, and Torah. Hundreds of you have written to say how they have enriched your life. It takes money to keep them coming.

3.This past year, we did a deep reworking of our Website and entered the FaceBook and YouTube worlds. Color, videos, brief notes, more than 1300 FaceBook friends, a much clearer and more inviting structure of the several thousand essays on our Website. All of this took money (and still does).

4. When fear and hatred of Islam erupted across America and even among Jews who should know better than to demonize a religious minority, we spoke out for not only toleration but celebration of religious diversity. On CNN, on MSNBC, in the largest daily newspaper in Tokyo, on the streets of New York when we welcomed Park51 with a Jewish housewarming ceremony of bread, salt, honey, and a candle, in far-flung TV public service announcements, in interviews with US State Department radio, at the National Press Club in Washington, we spoke out.

5. When the US Senate betrayed its duty to protect America and the Holy Temple of our entire planet from the destructive force of global scorching and from the modern Pharaohs of Big Oil and Big Coal, we helped organize a multireligious, multicultural vigil and prayer service on Tisha B'Av at the Capitol –perhaps the first time ever that Christians, Muslims, atheists, Wiccans joined with Jews to mourn on Tisha B'Av.

6. When the AFL-CIO and the NAACP called tens of thousands to join at the Lincoln Memorial on behalf of "One Nation – Working Together," we helped organize the interfaith segment of the gathering and I spoke to that throng – drawing on Martin Luther King's great speech there, echoing his outcry, "We are not satisfied!"

7. At synagogues in Chicago and Pittsburgh; at churches in Baltimore, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia; on the streets at Independence Park and outside the Martin-Marietta military corporation;
at a seminar for synagogue administrators at the Jewish Theological Seminary; at the 92d Street Y on the world-wide day celebrating Adin Steinsaltz' completion of his translation of the Talmud;
at a workshop for Jewish educators held by the Teva Learning Center at Isabella Freedman retreat center; at Chestnut Hill College for the interfaith inauguration of its Center for Spirituality and Sustainability;
at a gathering of African-American imams in New York; for a symposium on "Macbeth" at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia;
at a national conference on "Pricing Carbon" held at Wesleyan University in Connecticut; for a Rabbis for Human Rights national conference on "Human Rights Under Fire";
testifying at the invitation of the Philadelphia City Council on the danger of fracking the Marcelllus Oil Shale region --
at all these amazingly varied places, and many others, I spoke on the "Pharaohs and Caesars" of our generation, and especially on the danger that top-down centers of enormous corporate power are bringing new plagues upon the earth today.

8. Before hundreds of participants, The Shalom Center honored Tony Kushner as a Prophetic Voice in the Arts and arranged for him to teach master classes for young playwrights and actors in Philadelphia. .

9. In many public interviews, letters, petitions, and private conversations, The Shalom Center worked for an end to the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and for vigorous US action to end the state of war between Israel, the Arab states, and the nascent state of Palestine. We strongly opposed terrorist attacks by some Palestinian groups upon Israelis, as well as the Israeli government's blockade of civilian goods from entering or leaving Gaza, its continuing and worsening occupation of the West Bank, and its demolition of Palestinian homes and neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and in Bedouin regions of the Negev. We criticized the policies and action of the Israeli government while opposing actions that would have demonized Israeli society as a whole. If you especially want to help continue this kind of work, please click here.

10. We led dozens of prayer sessions and Torah-study sessions and sent out dozens of suggestions for new forms of prayer and Torah-study and new ways of using traditional prayer and Torah passages, to strengthen a Judaism that can help transform the world and to make deep connections with other religious traditions and communities that share our values.

11. We did all this while holding meetings of our Board and its committees to sharpen and improve our work, while reaching out to new communities, and while conversing by phone and face-to-face with hundreds of people who sought our advice and help this past year.

I hope that even as I continue to grow and heal past the Great Crash, you will continue to be responsive with your help. Thanks for all the blessed year that you have given us through thought and action, heart and spirit!

Blessings of shalom, salaam, shantih, peace!
-- Arthur