I used to be saddened to study this previous hour that Rabbi Arthur Waskow has handed on on the age of 92. Activist, wisdom-seeker and instructor, his teachings and his actions interfered with injustice in so some ways. Prophets by definition intervene, as Rabbi Heschel teaches.
Over his lifetime, Arthur was arrested greater than two dozen occasions. He additionally wrote greater than two dozen books, together with Godwrestling, Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought, and Seasons of Our Pleasure. He was dedicated to updating rituals as he did along with his “Freedom Seder” motion.
He’s credited with coining the time period “Jewish Renewal” and co-founded ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and others. As a motion “grounded in ‘Judaism’s prophetic and mystical traditions,’” it was very a lot a parallel to the creation spirituality motion in Christianity. The truth is, when the Vatican of previous got here after me, his co-partner, Rabbi Zalman, wrote Pope Benedict and stated that “what Matthew is doing in Christianity we’re doing in Judaism,” and he was prepared to go to Rome and sit with the pope to elucidate it.
On the time of his demise, Arthur was engaged on two books, Tales of Spirit Rising and Generally Falling, an activist’s memoir, and Handbook for Heretics and Prophets: A New Torah for a New World. In 2019, he was arrested for protesting the Trump regime’s remedy of migrant ladies.
He was bringing “Jewish values to the political scenario,” as one Rabbi put it.
Waskow in contrast right this moment’s modernity to the destruction of the Temple—a problem of cascading crises now dealing with humanity [that] present a profound transformation in spiritual thought—from one centered on serving God as a ruler or king to a extra ecological worldview that sees all of creation as a part of an natural complete. Modernity did to us what Rome, and earlier than Rome, Egypt and Babylon did. And the query is now has modernity gotten so highly effective, and so uncaring, and so uncontrollable, it’s going to wreck the entire joint earlier than we are able to create an efficient response. Or can we create an efficient response? And that’s what I’ve been attempting to do.*
In my autobiography, Confessions, I inform the story of how Arthur and I carried out a retreat collectively for every week in a Jewish retreat middle in upstate New York. It was very shifting to me, and as I listened to a presentation on Martin Buber (who I later discovered did his doctorate on Meister Eckhart and two different Jewish mystics), I discovered myself crying out of gratitude for the Jewish custom that had so profoundly blessed me.
Folks like Buber, Freud, Otto Rank, Heschel, Adriene Wealthy, Mark Chagall, Leonard Bernstein, Albert Einstein, Starhawk. The place would my soul be—the place would any of our souls be—with out these prophets and mystics? And, after all, Jesus Christ, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and extra.**
But additionally the horrible pogroms and the Holocaust and the selection by the church, so usually, to desert Jewish non-dualist thought in favor of dualistic Hellenistic thought.
The week ended with a shock when the group, about 100 Jewish individuals robust, was requested to have a good time a Mass collectively. We took the theme of the “Music of Songs,” and every discovered a associate with whom we danced down the aisle, and so forth. On the urging of Rabbis Waskow and Schactner, I concelebrated Mass with 12 rabbis, a number of of them ladies. One 65-year previous Jewish man got here as much as me afterward and stated it was a “therapeutic occasion of a lifetime.”
Because it turned out, and to my full shock, this was the final Mass I ever celebrated as a Roman Catholic priest. Ten days later, I acquired my formal dismissal papers from the Vatican.
Arthur was the founding father of Shalom Heart in Philadelphia, dedicated to Center East peace, interfaith relations, and local weather change. I extremely advocate their e-newsletter.
True to deep ecumenism, on the election of Pope Leo XIV, he supplied this prayer:
Breath-of-life, we thank You for Your presence in us and past us in selecting a brand new Pope who appears prepared to maneuver ahead on the agenda that Pope Francis left us.
We thank all members of The Shalom Heart…for becoming a member of within the prayer simply earlier than the conclave of cardinals met….Prayers have introduced the Spirit swooping in delight. Pope Leo XIV has each toes within the Americas — the America of Peru and the America of Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Might Pope Leo XIV stay and love with continued concern for the World South and for the individuals of the US residing below a ruthless President who’s anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-Black, anti-GLBTQ, anti-Palestinian, anti-Labor, anti-Muslim, and anti-Jewish. Shalom.***
The title of my guide, Wrestling With the Prophets, is derived from Waskow’s work, and I cite him within the Introduction: To face a God who teaches that merciful loving kindness is strict justice—with such a God a completely human being should wrestle….****
Thanks, Arthur, for being the Godwrestler you all the time had been proper as much as the top. Might we observe in your holy footsteps and with what you known as “holy chutzpah.”
* Ben Harris, “Arthur Waskow, activist rabbi who introduced Jewish non secular knowledge to bear on progressive politics, dies at 92,” Jewish Telegraphic Company, October 20, 2025.
** Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Publish-denominational Priest, pp. 229f.
*** Rabbi Arthur Waskow, “Prayers for the Pope,” Might 9, 2025, on Arthur’s Substack.
**** Matthew Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and On a regular basis Life, p. xv.
See additionally “Deep Ecumenism,” in Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Therapeutic of Mom Earth and the Start of a World Renaissance, pp. 228-244.
Banner Picture: Rabbi Arthur Waskow, risking arrest on the State Dept. in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline. Picture for NoKXL by Rick Reinhard on Flickr.
Yow will discover a collection of Rabbi Waskow’s books (and rather more) on Matthew Fox’s Creation Spirituality bookstore, hosted by Bookshop.org. Purchases yield a small fee to assist assist Matthew’s work, whereas Bookshop.org subsidizes unbiased booksellers.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree with Rabbi Arthur that the “cascading crises now dealing with humanity present a profound transformation in spiritual thought that sees all of creation as an natural complete”? Do you name upon creation-centered mystics and prophets—together with Rabbi Waskow—to help you?
Advisable Studying
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth
Authentic Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox: Important Writings on Creation Spirituality, Charles Burack, ed.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul & Society
