Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Rabbi Arthur Waskow has been one of the creators and leaders of Jewish renewal since writing the original Freedom Seder in 1969. From 1982 to 1989, and again in 2018, he taught at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. In 2017, RRC bestowed on him its honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters for his lifetime of work in the pursuit of peace and social justice. In 1983, he co-founded The Shalom Center (www.shalomctr.org) with RRC President Ira Silverman and has since been its director, shaping its work as a prophetic voice in Jewish, multi-religious and American life. Among his seminal works have been Seasons of Our Joy; Godwrestling — Round 2: Ancient Wisdom, Future Paths; Down-to-Earth Judaism; and, as editor, Torah of the Earth. He co-founded the National Havurah Institute in 1980; ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal in 1993; and Rabbis for Human Rights/North America (now T’ruah) in 2002.

His most recent books are Dancing in God’s Earthquake : The Coming Transformation of Religion (Orbis, 2020), which he calls “the harvest of my life-work: sown in the past, intended to feed the future” and and Liberating Your Passover Seder: An Anthology Beyond the Freedom Seder, more than thirty essays by a multireligious rainbow of Creators/ Liberators co-edited and partly written by Waskow and Rabbi Phyllis Ocean Berman.

He has lived into two careers. The first was marked with 15 years (1962-1977) as one of the Founding Fellows of the Institute for Policy Studies, working against racial injustice and the nuclear arms race. That life-path included major leadership in opposing the US War against Vietnam, writing From Race Riot to Sit-in, and co-authoring with Marc Raskin, The Limits of Defense and “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority.”