A peacekeeper, healing the world; Rabbi Arthur Waskow is honored.

[Sapphire Blue]

A peacekeeper, healing the world
A Phila. rabbi, moved to action by Dr. King, is being honored.
By David O'Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writer


"Martin Luther King's death rebirthed me,"
Rabbi Arthur Waskow says of his inspiration.

~ excerpt ~

Ask Rabbi Arthur Waskow how many books he's written, and he strokes his long, white beard for a moment.

"It's either 19 or 20," he says, sitting in the sunlit garden of his Shalom Center in West Mount Airy. "My wife says it's the same number as the times I've been arrested."

And with that he laughs heartily.

Books. Liturgies. Civil disobedience. For the 73-year-old Waskow, all are devices for challenging convention and opening minds "at the God level."

A peace and environmental activist, Waskow has also been bursting open Judaism for 39 years - ever since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination awoke him to Judaism's powerful command to "heal the world."

Esteemed in some circles for his prophetic liberalism, disdained in others, this icon of the Left is nonetheless hard to ignore. In April, Newsweek listed him as one of "the 50 most influential rabbis in America."

And on Thursday, in a ceremony at the Germantown Jewish Center just blocks from his home, Waskow will accept the Rev. Richard R. Fernandez Religious Leadership Award from the Neighborhood Interfaith Movement (NIM), an organization of about 60 churches, mosques and synagogues in Northwest Philadelphia.


Continued @ http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/main_line_delaware/20070601_Healing_the_world.html

[LeftishBrit]

1. Good for him!

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Interesting piece.

Hope more like him will emerge.

[Sapphire Blue]

3. Waskow: Full Bio & Selected Bibliography

Waskow: Full Bio & Selected Bibliography

About Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 7/3/2005

CURRICULUM VITAE AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph. D., founded (in 1983) and directs The Shalom Center, a prophetic voice in jewish, multireligious, and American life, which 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.

In 1996, Waskow was named by the United Nations a Wisdom Keeper among forty religious and intellectual leaders who met in connection with the Habitat II conference in Istanbul. In 2001, he was presented with the Abraham Joshua Heschel Award by the Jewish Peace Fellowship. In 2005, The Forward national Jewish newspaper named him one of the Forward Fifty -- fifty Jews who were contributing most to the community -- and in 2007, Newsweek magazine named him as one of the fifty most influential American rabbis.

(snip)

He was born in Baltimore in l933. He took a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University (1954) and a doctorate in United States history from the University of Wisconsin (1963). His dissertation was on The Race Riots of 1919. It was incorporated into a book, From Race Riot to Sit-in, 1919 and the 1960s: A Study in the Connections between Conflict and Violence (Doubleday, l966) that was favorably reviewed in the American Historical Review.

He worked from 1959 to 1961 as legislative assistant for a Member of the United States House of Representatives, and from 1961 to 1963 as Senior Fellow of the Peace Research Institute. In 1961, he was a Fellow of the Colloquium on Conflict Resolution and Disarmament held by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

(snip)

Through the l960s, Waskow was active in writing, speaking, electoral politics, and nonviolent action against the Vietnam War. In 1964 he worked closely with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. In 1965 he spoke at the first anti-war Teach-in (at the University of Michigan), and at several thereafter; in 1967 he was co-author of "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority" (urging support for those who were resisting the draft and the war); and in 1968 he was elected an anti-war delegate from the District of Columbia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In 1981 and 1986, in concert with other anti-war activists he won a lawsuit against the FBI for illegal harassment of his anti-war work, under its COINTELPRO program. (See a chapter of In Our Defense, a book on the Bill of Rights by Caroline Kennedy and Ellen Alderman, for a discussion of this case.)

(snip)

He has worked since 1969 for peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, and was among those invited by the White House to take part in the signing of the Declaration of Principles by Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat in 1993. He wrote the "Seder for the Children of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah," published in Tikkun magazine in 1999 -- a Passover Seder focused on peace-making between Israelis and Palestinians. Through 2001 he worked closely with Rabbis for Human Rights (Israel) to create the successful Olive Trees for Peace campaign, and from 2002 to 2005 was secretary of the Board of Rabbis for Human Rights/ North America (and continues as a member of its Board and steering committee).


Much, much more @ http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1008

[Sapphire Blue]

4. ..

:kick: