Arthur Waskow (1933-2025) was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and went on to receive a PhD in American History from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963. Born into a family of pre-WW II leftists, he began his activist career working on nuclear disarmament and civil rights at the Peace Research Institute in Washington DC from 1959 to 1963. He was one of the founding members of one of the first Jewish social justice organizations, Jews for Urban Justice, in 1966. He became a household name among Jewish progressives after he wrote the Freedom Seder Haggadah and led the Freedom Seder in the basement of a Washington DC church with over eight hundred in attendance in 1969, commemorating the first anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

The author of many books including The Bush is Burning! (1971), God-Wrestling (1978), Seasons of Our Joy (1990), and Dancing in God’s Earthquake (2020), and many more. Arthur has been at the forefront of Jewish progressivism in politics and religion for over sixty years. His work on social justice, environmentalism and climate change, spirituality and the renewal of religious ritual, along with his writing on the role Judaism can play in the evolution of global consciousness, continues to inspire a new generation.

Already adept at activist politics, in the summer of 1966 he was a founding member of “Jews for Urban Justice” in Washington DC. “Jews for Urban Justice” was one of the signature movements of the “Jewish New Left.” It was part of MLK’s “Poor people’s Campaign” and fought for racial justice in urban America. Its monumental action occurred on Kol Nidre in 1966 when Waskow and others protested a Washington synagogue that included congregants who refused to rent real estate to Blacks. They initially tried to convince the rabbi to speak out, and he refused. They used Kol Nidre as a moment to express their consternation, not unlike what Jews in Occupy Wall Street did in Zuccotti Patk in Manhattan in 2010, although few there probably ever heard of “Jews for Urban Justice.” This began over sixty years of social activism and civil disobedience that characterized Waskow’s long public life. In 1968 he was elected as an alternative delegate for DC in the now infamous Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Perhaps he is best known in this period for his famous Freedom Seder in the basement of a Washington, DC church on the first anniversary of MLK’s assassination in 1969. Over 800 people attended. A year later he held a similar seder at Cornell University where Jesuit priest and social activist Daniel Berrrigan, then wanted by the FBI, showed up unannounced.

Throughout the 1970s Waskow played a prominent role in the Soviet Jewry Movement and with Everett Gendler and a few others spearheaded the Jewish environmentalist movement. The Freedom Seder and the Freedom Haggadah Waskow wrote for the event helped spark a new era in creative Jewish liturgy and ritual experimentation. It stirred up so much negativity that a young assistant professor named Robert Alter at UC Berkeley wrote a scathing review of it in Commentary Magazine in 1971. The Freedom Haggadah is still used, while few remember Alter’s review. What we see now in terms of the merging of religious ritual and progressive activism in the campus protest movement in 2024 is in large part the product of Waskow’s career.

Through his work at The Shalom Center, which Waskpw founded in 1983, Arthur continued to push the boundaries and to speak truth to power, including getting arrested on his eighty fifth birthday for nonviolently protesting Trump’s border policies. His activism on everything from opposition to the military-industrial complex, marching with Cesear Chavez for worker’s rights, fair immigration laws, his critique of Israel’s half century of occupation of Palestinians, the Iraq War, economic inequality, and the rise of Trumpism.

He was ordained as a rabbi in 1995 by rabbis Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Max Ticktin, Laura Geller, and Judith Plaskow. In 2007 he was recognized by Newsweek Magazine as one of the most influential American rabbis.

Aside from all the awards, organizations, and accolades, Waskow was a true Jewish radical. He defined his journey in his 1971 book The Bush is Burning as one from “Jewish radical to radical Jew.” This captures his intellectual and spiritual trajectory. He was both audacious and humble, for example, he readily admitted that when he wrote the Freedom Haggadah, he knew almost nothing about Judaism. And yet he knew the moment was ripe for ritual activism and learned on the job, as it were. Sometimes intuition precedes knowledge and when knowledge catches up that mix can create worlds. Waskow certainly created worlds, in his activism, his organizing skills, his personhood, and his fearlessness. People who knew him, knew he could be stubborn, irascible, and had a will of steel. But with that he was also kind, generous, and could laugh at himself, as he often did.

We organized a panel to celebrate the 49^th anniversary of the Freedom Seder at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan (YouTube linked below). Aside from his razor-sharp memory of the past, one could see how self-effacing he was, how appreciative of the recognition, deeply humbled by the adoration. In many ways, and I use the term rhetorically, he was a “prophet” of his time, he spoke truth to power, he led those who followed him into the new territory of Jewish progressivism, he initiated movements like Eco-Theology and then stepped back and let others develop his ideas, as well as their own.

He didn’t have the pedigree of others of his time such as Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and thus he often did not have the same draw, but Reb Zalman saw in him a fellow traveler, a deeply soulful and passionate solider for justice and one who stood in the world as a Jew, unashamed and proud.

One often hears the platitude, “they don’t make them like that anymore” but in Waskow’s case I think it is true. He was a person of his time, but he also transcended his time. In some way he became canonical in that people reflected his ideas, values, and are inspired by what he initiated even though they never met him, sometimes never even heard of him. His longevity enabled him to see the fruits of his labor not only in his generation but at least two generations beyond. In 2022 he told me that he wanted to stay in this world long enough to make sure Trump didn’t get re-elected. After that, he said, “I am happy to depart.” He didn’t get his wish, but we are certainly happy he stayed around as long as he did.

Arthur, you don’t only leave behind a legacy, you leave behind talmidim. You leave behind a movement of your creation. You have given Jews like us hope that the lives of the prophets will not be muted by the exigencies of the times. That violence and militarism solve nothing. That survivalism can never supplant the pursuit of justice. You have left us with a gift, dear Arthur, and we will cherish it in your name, for as long as we are blessed to inhabit God’s green earth you taught us to love. יהי זכרו ברוך

The Bush Is Still Burning: An Interview with Arthur Waskow Celebrating His Ninetieth Birthday – Ayin Press

The Freedom Seder 49 Years Later with Arthur Waskow