(RNS) — Rabbi Arthur Waskow, an iconic social justice activist considered the forefather of postwar American Jewish progressivism, died Monday (Oct. 20), one week after celebrating his 92nd birthday.
Waskow, who since 1983 led the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, was active in many of the leading social causes of the late 20th century, starting with nuclear disarmament, civil rights, environmental justice and many more.
He earned a reputation as a radical on the forefront of movements for equality and justice. With his long white beard and embroidered yarmulkes, he resembled a Hebrew Bible prophet. He never worked as a pulpit rabbi.
“He was really everywhere in terms of progressive Jewish activism from the 1960s until literally last year,” said Shaul Magid, visiting professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School.
Waskow’s reputation for peacemaking prompted the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to issue a statement Tuesday calling him a “steadfast friend, partner, and moral voice for justice.”
Rabbi Arthur Waskow. (Photo courtesy of the Shalom Center)
Waskow was born and grew up in Baltimore, where his father was a labor organizer and his mother helped register Black people to vote. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s shaped him profoundly. In the summer of 1966 he was a founding member of “Jews for Urban Justice” in Washington, which became a part of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign.
The group’s breakout social action occurred on the eve of Yom Kippur that year, when Waskow and others protested a Washington synagogue that included congregants who refused to rent real estate to Blacks. They used Kol Nidre, the Yom Kippur evening prayer, to express their outrage after the rabbi of the synagogue refused to condemn the landlords.
By then, Waskow had already been a seasoned activist working on nuclear disarmament and at the Peace Research Institute in Washington. After that 1966 action, however he became more focused on Jewish issues. He was perhaps best known for writing “The Freedom Seder: A New Haggadah for Passover,” a reinterpretation of the classic retelling the Exodus story of the Israelites’ liberation from Egyptian slavery.
He was on his way to a seder, or Passover meal, a week after King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, when he came across a Jeep with a machine gun and soldiers on the street in Washington, quelling a riot.
“My kishkes (or gut) began to say, ‘This is Pharaoh’s army on the street,’” he told RNS at the time. “I was shaken. I went away totally changed.”
Later that year, he began writing “The Freedom Seder,” weaving together the traditional liturgy alongside texts by King, Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi and others.
“The reason I’m a rabbi now is because of ‘The Freedom Seder,’” said Waskow, who was ordained in 1995, 26 years after “The Freedom Seder” was published. “It was writing me as much as I was writing it. I was possessed.”
The Rev. Channing E. Phillips, from left, Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Topper Carew on April 4, 1969, the night of the first Freedom Seder. (Photo courtesy of Rabbi Arthur Waskow)
He also wrote several other books including “The Bush is Burning!” (1971), “God-Wrestling” (1978), “Seasons of Our Joy” (1990) and “Dancing in God’s Earthquake” (2020).
“He was a real pioneer,” said Susannah Heschel, a professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College who knew him for years. “He saw ways in which the Bible was a way to bring people together, not to divide. There were not a lot of people then interested in that kind of interfaith work, especially not in left-wing circles.”
Waskow was ordained privately at the age of 62 by four rabbis including Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, with which Waskow was involved in the early days. But he defied any denominational affiliation. He taught at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College outside Philadelphia, and at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion, a Reform movement seminary, where he taught what is considered the first course on eco-Judaism.
“He was a model of how to be a human being,” said Heschel. “It didn’t matter if you agreed with him politically or religiously. He would still be your friend.
“He was full of life and enthusiasm.”
A funeral for Waskow will be held Wednesday at Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia.
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