About

SHALOM CENTER Board, June 1, 2011

Arlene Goldbard, President and Chair
Richmond, CA 94804-7404
San Francisco Bay Area; organizational consultant;
Expert & author on cultural development and community-based arts
Former member, ALEPH board
arlene@arlenegoldbard.com

Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, Chair Emeritus
1016 W Upsal St., Philadelphia, PA 19119
Director of Social Justice Organizing Program, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Coll.
Long-time former director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation;
Former executive vice-president, Jewish Funds for Justice.
 215/843-4933.   Read more »

The Shalom Center’s street address is 6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia PA 19119. Phone: 215/844-8494
For most general inquiries, please write Office@shalomctr.org
If you need to get in touch directly with Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center, write Awaskow@shalomctr.org

The Shalom Center was founded in 1983 as a division of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, then a member of the RRC faculty, who became its director, and Ira Silverman, alav hashalom, then president of RRC.

Its original mission was to address the raging nuclear arms race from a Jewish perspective. It addressed this question as the danger of a planetary ecological disaster (the “Flood of Fire,” in Jewish tradition) rather than an ordinary war-peace question.

Beginning in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the diminution of the nuclear arms race, The Shalom Center refocused on other planetary ecological dangers. Waskow developed both a theology and practice of eco-Judaism and wrote several books on those questions, while The Shalom Center went forward with these issues.   Read more »

Arthur Ocean Waskow was born in Baltimore on October 12, 1933 — the real Columbus Day, a delight when he was young and much more problematic now. (He wasn’t named “Ocean” then; he and Phyllis Berman both took it as their middle name when they were married. And to his eighth-day Hebrew birth name, Avraham Yitzchak — Abraham Isaac — he added Yishmael, Ishmael, when he was 41.)   Read more »

Dear Friends,

I am tickled and pleased to report that the Forward (the nearest there is to a national Jewish weekly in the US) this past week (November 11, 2005) listed me as one of the “Forward 50” (50 American Jews who are moving the community and the world forward, I guess; at least I hope).

Their summary of my life (close enough, but not wholly accurate; I did not co-found SDS) is as follows:

Shalom, Arthur

FORWARD
Forward 50
November 11, 2005

THE PUBLIC SQUARE

Arthur Waskow   Read more »

One way in which The Shalom Center does its work (and supports the work financially as well) is by arranging Shabbatonim, Teacher-in-Residence engagements, etc., for Rabbi Arthur Waskow, its director, and his wife Phyllis O. Berman, co-director of Elat Chayyim Center for Healing & Renewal.

Usually the two lead Shabbatonim together for synagogues, campus Jewish groups, etc. Typically, they might.

• As part of a Friday-evening service, do story-telling of new Jewish midrashic tales, which they have written.
  
• On Shabbat morning, Arthur might lead a Torah-study discussion and Phyllis then lead a chanting service in Jewish-renewal style.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph. D., founded (in 1983) and directs The Shalom Center , a prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, and American life that brings Jewish and other spiritual thought and practice to bear on seeking peace, pursuing justice, healing the earth, and celebrating community. He edits and writes for its weekly on-line Shalom Report.    Read more »