Rabbi Arthur Waskow has been one of the creators and leaders of Jewish renewal since writing the original Freedom Seder in 1969. In 1983, he founded and has since been director of The Shalom Center -- a prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, and American life that draws on Jewish and other spiritual and religious teachings to work for justice, peace, and the healing of our wounded earth.

In 1996 Rabbi Waskow was named by the United Nations one of forty “Wisdom Keepers” -- religious and intellectual leaders from all over the world who met with the Habitat II conference in Istanbul. In 2001, he was presented the Abraham Joshua Heschel Award by the Jewish Peace Fellowship. In 2005, he was named one of the "Forward Fifty" by the Forward, a leading American Jewish newspaper.

In his newest book (Beacon, 2006) he is one co-author, along with Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chisti, of The Tent Of Abraham: Jewish, Christian, & Muslim Stories of Hope and Peace. The book draws on the saga of Abraham to encourage peacemaking, shared celebration, and sharede political action among the three Abrahamic communities in America.

His books Seasons of Our Joy on the Jewish festival cycle, Godwrestling -- Round 2 on new interpretations of the Bible; Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Sex, Money, & the Rest of Life; and (with his wife Rabbi Phyllis Berman) A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven on the Jewish life-cycle have all brought new spiritual depth and newly progressive political substance to Jewish life.

Rabbi Waskow is now leading a Shalom Center project on "Beyond Oil," involving religious communities in addressing both the personal and household addiction to oil and the political and economic structures that feed and intensify this addiction.

In 2002 he joined in founding Rabbis for Human Rights/ North America as secretary of its Board and steering committee, and was instrumental in urging it to work on human rights issues in the US (especially torture) as well as supporting RHR /Israel's work on human rights in Israel and Palestine.

Waskow was legislative assistant to a US Congressman from 1959 to 1961; then a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC till 1977 and of the Public Resource Center till 1982. During those years he wrote seven books on US public policy in foreign affairs and military strategy, race relations, and energy policy, and was among the leaders of the movement to end the Vietnam War. He was elected an antiwar, anti-racist delegate from the District of Columbia to the Democratic National Convention of 1968, and was co-author of the Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority, supporting draft resistance to the Vietnam War.

He taught at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College from 1982 till 1989 and has taught as a Visiting Professor in the departments of religion at Swarthmore, Vassar, Temple University, and Drew University.

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