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Arthur Waskow, activist rabbi who brought Jewish spiritual wisdom to bear on progressive politics, dies at 92
(JTA) — Rabbi Arthur Waskow, an activist and author of more than two dozen books that refracted progressive causes like civil rights, economic injustice and, most pressingly in his last decade, climate change through the lens of Jewish text and tradition, died Monday at his home in Philadelphia. He was 92.
Starting with his creation in 1969 of the “Freedom Seder,” a version of the Passover Haggadah that introduced contemporary liberation struggles into the ancient story of the Israelite escape from Egyptian bondage, Waskow became one of the leading voices bringing Jewish spiritual wisdom to bear on the progressive political agenda.
Waskow disseminated these ideas as the founder of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, initially to address the threat of nuclear weapons through a Jewish lens. Over time, the organization came to focus on other concerns, including Middle East peace, interfaith relations and climate change.
In 1993, Waskow co-founded, with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and others, ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, a flagship for the Jewish Renewal movement. Waskow was said to have coined the term “Jewish Renewal” — a movement grounded in “Judaism’s prophetic and mystical traditions” — in an issue of Menorah, a magazine for social justice and ritual issues he launched in 1979.
The author of more than two dozen books, several of which have become Jewish classics, Waskow celebrated his 92nd birthday this month while in hospice care at a Zoom launch of two books that he’d written since turning 90. “Tales of Spirit Rising and Sometimes Falling” is an activist’s memoir; “Handbook for Heretics and Prophets: A New Torah for a New World” is a collection of essays by Waskow and fellow Jewish activists.
His reach was so extensive that, in 2012, the feminist icon Gloria Steinem told Oprah Winfrey that it had been Waskow’s urging that kept her going as an activist at a pivotal moment of disillusionment back in 1968. The pair reconnected for the first time since then in a public conversation about their eight decades of activism.
More than an armchair theologian, Waskow was arrested more than two dozen times, first while protesting a segregated amusement park in his hometown of Baltimore in the 1960s and continuing throughout his life. In 2019, Waskow was arrested outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Philadelphia while protesting the Trump administration’s treatment of migrant women.
Waskow was destined for activism from an early age. Both his parents were politically engaged — his father was a labor organizer who had headed the Baltimore teachers union and his mother registered Black voters. Both were active with Americans for Democratic Action. His grandfather was a precinct organizer for Eugene Debs, the union organizer who ran for president five times as a socialist between 1900 and 1920.
“That was in my bloodstream,” Waskow told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2021.
Waskow received a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1954 and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin in 1963. He went to work on disarmament and civil rights for Robert Kastenmeier, an influential longtime member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Later he became a fellow at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies. In 1970, he testified for the defense at the trial of the Chicago 7, Vietnam war protesters who had been arrested for incitement at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. The defendants included the Jewish radicals Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
The trial was the first time that Waskow had worn a kippah in a nonreligious setting — the judge tried to have him remove it, but relented at the prosecutor’s urging. At the time, Waskow “was still wrestling with what this weird and powerful ‘Jewish thing’ meant in my life,” as he would write later. Though he had always observed Passover, Judaism had failed to seriously capture his attention until well into adulthood.
That changed on an April evening in 1968 as Waskow headed home to prepare for the Passover Seder. Federal troops were out in force to quell riots sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. just days before. Seeing a machine gun pointed at his block in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, D.C., Waskow likened the show of force to Pharaoh’s army.
That insight inspired Waskow to write the “Freedom Seder,” which referred to King and Mahatma Gandhi as “prophets” and introduced quotes from a range of modern thinkers alongside the traditional text, including Thomas Jefferson, the enslaved abolitionist Nat Turner and the Black Power leader Eldridge Cleaver. In 1969, a group of young Jewish activists led by Waskow organized the original Freedom Seder, which was held in the basement of a church in Washington.
Although it was written in a long tradition of adapting the Passover seder script for contemporary issues, the Orthodox Rabbinical Alliance of America denounced the work as “most offensive” for making radical changes to the Haggadah without rabbinic authority and quoting alleged anti-Semites.
“There’s no question, it was chutzpadik,” Waskow said of the book, using a Yiddish expression that roughly means audacious. “I think it turned out to be holy chutzpah.”
The “Freedom Seder” would be the first of many works Waskow would pen that reimagined Jewish tradition to speak more directly to contemporary concerns, initiating a movement that many Jews now take for granted.
Waskow continued in this vein with his 1982 work “Seasons of Our Joy,” a New Age guide to the Jewish holidays (New Age became “modern” in subsequent editions). Written in the DIY spirit of “The Jewish Catalog,” the book reintroduced the earth-based, agricultural roots of the Jewish holidays decades before Jewish farmers and environmental activists would make such linkages seem obvious.
In 1982, when hundreds of Palestinians were massacred by Israel-aligned Christian Phalangists at Sabra and Shatila, Waskow was at a retreat center near Baltimore for Rosh Hashanah. Waskow took the front-page article on the killings from the Philadelphia Inquirer and chanted it as the haftarah at the morning service.
“He was almost a lone voice for a long time, really trying to bring Jewish values to the political situation,” Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, a fellow Philadelphia activist rabbi and the founder of the social justice training program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, said in 2021. “Heschel certainly had done this, and there were two or three other rabbis who did that well — Everett Gendler, some more. But they weren’t as radical as Arthur.”
Waskow decided to seek rabbinic ordination in 1995, when he was 62 and already teaching at the Reconstructionist seminary. He also taught at Swarthmore College, Temple University, Drew University, Vassar College and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion (where he taught the first course on eco-Judaism in any rabbinical seminary).
In 2007, Newsweek named him one of the 50 most influential American rabbis.
Waskow met Rabbi Phyllis Berman at a conference in 1982, some months after she read “Seasons of Our Joy” and sent Waskow a love letter, which he never answered. (It had been lost in the mail.) Berman confronted Waskow over the lapse and the two struck up a friendship. Four years later they were married and each took on a new middle name — Ocean — inspired by their shared love of the sea.
“People have said that I have softened him,” Berman told JTA in 2021. “And I think that I have. And he has also toughened me. So both things are true. He said to me very recently, in a very precious exchange, that I don’t take any shit from him anymore. And I think I probably did for a long time. He is a frightening man when he’s angry. But I’ve learned to stand in the face of it in a much, much more profound way.”
Waskow told JTA that he hoped his legacy would be a deeper shift in Jewish theology — and by extension in the Jewish psyche. Waskow believed that modernity presented Judaism with a challenge on par with the one faced by the ancient rabbis following the destruction of the Temple. That challenge, reflected in the cascading crises now facing humanity, will require a profound transformation in religious thought — from one centered on serving God as a ruler or king to a more ecological worldview that sees all of creation as part of an organic whole.
“Modernity did to us what Rome, and before Rome Egypt and Babylon, did,” Waskow said. “And the question is now, has modernity gotten so powerful, and so uncaring, and so uncontrollable, it’s going to wreck the whole joint before we can create an effective response. Or can we create an effective response? And that’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
Waskow’s successor at the Shalom Center, Rabbi Nate DeGroot, announced earlier this month, ahead of Waskow’s Oct. 12 birthday, that he had entered hospice care.
Berman survives him, as does a son, David Waskow; a daughter, Shoshana Elkin Waskow; stepchildren Josh Sher and Morissa Wiser, their spouses and five grandchildren.
His other books included “Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought,” “Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life” and “Godwrestling,” a collection of Torah commentaries.
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UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – The United Kingdom threatened to sanction Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion after the Jewish state’s Lands Authority opened bids for 1,234 homes in the largely underdeveloped E1 section of the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Construction in E1 “would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution,” the British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a special statement he posted on X on Thursday.
Targeted sanctions, Miliband wrote, would be part of a series of measures his government would take. His office also summoned Israel’s charge d’Affaires Thursday to demand a closure of the bidding process, which first opened on Tuesday, and a withdrawal of the construction project altogether.
“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote. Miliband has held his position for a month and is part of the new leadership Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed when he took office in July.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked Miliband on X, stating that Britain’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”
He said that the U.K. government’s “systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of antisemitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community.”
The Jewish people have the same right to “live throughout the Land of Israel” just as the British people have a right to live anywhere in the U.K., Sa’ar wrote.
Plans to expand the built-up area of Ma’aleh Adumim settlement by constructing some 3,400 housing units on a largely underdeveloped hilltop within the city’s boundaries have been in place since 1994 when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister.
Israel mostly froze those plans under pressure from the international community, including the U.S., with many countries warning that building homes in E1 would harm their diplomatic ties with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to advance the project in earnest in 2012 to protest the United Nations General Assembly decision to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member state and has since pushed the project forward in spurts, particularly during election seasons.
The publication of the bidding process for the homes was first announced on Tuesday and is set to close on Oct. 19, one week shy of the Israeli elections on Oct. 27. Opening the bids is a move that plays well with Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base, which opposes Palestinian statehood and believes that settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim and the E1 area should be annexed into sovereign Israel.
But the move reverberated globally, with the U.K. signing onto a joint condemnation by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in which they warned that settlement building in E1 distanced peace and undermined the country’s international standing.
They also reminded businesses who might bid for E1 construction that they could face legal or reputational consequences, given that such companies could be in breach of international law.
Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh said he welcomed the condemnation, explaining on X that such a position “reflects the importance of the international role in confronting settlement activity and safeguarding the two-state solution.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first
(JTA) — An Argentine federal judge was removed from office Tuesday for a series of antisemitic posts on his social media accounts that constituted misconduct incompatible with his role, an impeachment panel ruled.
Alfredo Eugenio López, who headed Federal Court No. 4 in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, was removed by Argentina’s Jury of Impeachment, a special panel composed of judges, lawmakers and lawyers.
It is the first time in Argentina’s history that a judge has been removed over antisemitic remarks.
In López’s social media posts, the judge referred to the Jewish people as “a brood of vipers,” Israel as a “fictitious state” and Argentinian Jews as “foreigners.” He has also used such terms as “Zionist” and “gay” as insults.
According to the panel, the judge committed acts of “discrimination and the denial of equal rights against the Argentine Jewish community. For the purposes of these proceedings, it is particularly significant that, by acting in this manner, he shattered public confidence in his continued fitness to administer justice impartially.”The case reached the panel through Argentina’s Council of the Magistracy, based in Buenos Aires, the constitutional body responsible for the selection and discipline of federal judges.
The first complaint against López was filed in February 2025 by the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, which is the umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community. One month later, the Argentine Forum Against Antisemitism also filed a complaint. In July 2025, attorney Yamil Santoro from Apolo Foundation added another one.
In his defense, López argued that his messages were “ subjective and decontextualized interpretations of exchanges on social media, which in no way affect the administration of justice or his impartiality” as a judge. He added that his remarks were unrelated to any pending case and that he had never been recused or removed from any judicial case.
Neither Lopez nor his attorney were immediately available for further comment.
“He was removed because he simply would not stop engaging in hate speech,” jury member Alberto Maques said during a live interview Tuesday on the A24 news channel. “It is absolutely disgraceful for a federal judge to engage in this kind of conduct.”
Maques said there were 15 social media posts that he acknowledged, but more than 50 posts in which he said “outrageous things that are not worth repeating because they truly constituted hate speech.”
“This is not merely an issue of hate speech against the Jewish community. This is someone who lacks common sense,” he added, interviewed by A24 news channel.
Prosecutors in the impeachment proceedings argued that the messages were not isolated political comments but reflected a pattern of hostility toward Jews, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
“No position of authority can shield hatred. This is not a matter of punishing an opinion. It is about sanctioning repeated conduct involving antisemitism, hostility and dehumanization, conduct incompatible with the impartiality, dignity and public trust required of the judiciary,” DAIA said Tuesday in a statement.
“This case sets a precedent: for the first time in more than a century, DAIA initiated proceedings of this nature against a judge. No office is above democracy.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race
(JTA) — California progressive Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed moderate Melissa Hernandez in a congressional runoff this week, capping off a contest that had become unexpectedly tight after the pro-Israel lobby entered the fray.
The Associated Press called the race between the Democrats — who were vying to replace a disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a full two days after polls closed, when Wahab secured 53.1% of votes to Hernandez’s 46.9%, with 95% of ballots tallied. The gap between them grew by four percentage points from Tuesday evening, when Wahab had held a narrow 51% lead to Hernandez’s 49%.
“We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a Thursday statement, noting her journey “from foster care to Congress” in her East Bay community.
Although Wahab ended up victorious, the narrow initial margin on Tuesday shocked California’s 14th District, given that she had secured a double-digit lead in preliminary races two months ago.
But in the past few weeks, an unforeseen variable appeared to influence the trajectories of the two campaigns: a massive spending push from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee aimed at turning the tides for Hernandez.
Since the beginning of August alone, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and other affiliated groups spent more than $2.5 million on both boosting Hernandez and denigrating Wahab with negative ads and mailers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“This was not a landslide for Wahab by any means,” local Democratic strategist Noah Finneburgh, who is not affiliated with either candidate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They narrowed the gap for sure,” Finneburgh added, referring to AIPAC. “They spent millions of dollars attacking Wahab very aggressively.”
These attacks, he explained, did not involve Israel and instead focused on divisive issues for the Bay Area, such as public safety and protecting kids.
“Negative advertising with a persuasive message can be very effective,” Finneburgh said.
In her Thursday night statement, Wahab declared that her “district cannot be bought,” describing the race as “one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen.”
Prior to this influx of cash and related ads, neither AIPAC nor Israel had played a significant role in this short-lived race — which began in April following Swalwell’s resignation over allegations of sexual assault.
When the district held a special primary to seek Swalwell’s replacement on June 16, Wahab and Hernandez finished as the top-two candidates and moved on to this week’s special general runoff election.
California primaries are “nonpartisan” or “top-two” races, in which the two highest ranking candidates move on to the general election, irrespective of their parties. The top-two in this case were both Democrats, like Swalwell, in a district that the Cook Political Report deems solidly blue.
Even though Wahab will now finish the remainder of Swalwell’s term, she will have to compete with Hernandez again in the November general election for a full term that begins on January 3, 2027.
In a June 16 special primary that preceded this week’s runoff, there was still a massive gap between the two candidates, with Wahab accruing 42.8% of the votes, compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%. A separate primary for the November race, which occurred two weeks earlier, placed Wahab at 38.3% and Hernandez at 17.2%.
Wahab, who will be the first Afghan American in Congress, has focused on affordability, civil rights, education and climate change. Her campaign calls for an end to wars and “prolonged occupations” but only specifically calls out U.S. military activity in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.”
Though Wahab has been critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza, she has not been as vocal about the issue as many other progressive colleagues nationwide. She responded “yes” when asked if Israel was committing genocide in a primary debate, but she didn’t include Israel or Gaza in her campaign priorities.
During a recent appearance on far-right influencer Hasan Piker’s livestream, Wahab acknowledged that “it’s not a zero-sum game in the Middle East,” adding that “we can care for all people.” She also referenced a resolution she introduced last year in the California legislature, pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza but also condemning Hamas and demanding the release of the hostages.
“We talk about both Palestinians and the Israeli victims there,” Wahab told Piker. “We talk about holding the perpetrators accountable from both sides.”
Asked if she was in favor of “ending all U.S. aid to Israel,” she responded “yes,” while stressing that “humanitarian aid is important to me, too.”
Wahab has earned the backing of multiple labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. The liberal pro-Israel group J Street also recently invested $108,000 in her campaign, according to the FEC. American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC, also spent at least $200,000 on supporting her.
Hernandez has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
Come November, Hernandez will gain one additional asset. Due to statewide redistricting, the 14th District will gain about 26,000 new voters from Dublin, where Hernandez previously served as mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But Finneburgh said he believes that Hernandez has only a minimal chance of winning that race, especially because Wahab will be heading into that election as an incumbent.
He also suggested that if “she plays her card right,” Wahab could even take some endorsements away from Hernandez.
“There’s going to be people who are going to probably move over from the Hernandez camp and back her,” Finneburgh added. “It’s going to be hard to unseat her.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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