Shaarei Shamayim sponsors Shabbaton with Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman

April 24-26, 2009

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, focusing on Interfaith work between the Abrahamic traditions and on Jewish and other spiritual and religious teachings to work for justice, peace, and the healing of the 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 2005, he was named one of the "Forward Fifty" by the Forward, a leading American Jewish newspaper. In 2007, Newsweek named him one of the fifty most influential American rabbis.

In his newest book (Beacon, 2006) he is one co-author, along with Sister Joan Chittister and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chisti, of The Tent Of Abraham: Jewish, Christian, & Muslim Stories of Hope and Peace. He pioneered in shaping Eco-Judaism through such books as Seasons of Our Joy; Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Sex, Money, & the Rest of Life; and Torah of the Earth; through festival and life-cycle celebrations that were also political action to protect and heal the earth; and through the Green Menorah Covenant of The Shalom Center, involving religious communities in addressing both personal and household energy issues as well as the political and economic structures surrounding them. He also taught the first course on Eco-Judaism given at a rabbinical seminary, at the Hebrew Union College in New York in 2008.

Rabbi Waskow received a Ph. D. in US history at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in 1963. He was legislative assistant to a US Congressman from Watertown, Wis., 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.

Rabbi Phyllis O. Berman has, since the early 1980s, been a leading Jewish-renewal liturgist, prayer leader, story-writer, and story-teller. From 1994 to 2005, she was Director of the Summer Program of the Elat Chayyim Center for Healing and Renewal. She is the co-author of Tales of Tikkun: New Jewish Stories to Heal the Wounded World (1996) and A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Journey (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002). She wrote two essays for the book The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Peace and Hope for Jews, Christians, and Muslims (Beacon, 2006), and co-authored one that appeared in Righteous Indignation. She was chair of the board of the P'nai Or Religious Fellowship from 1985 to 1993, and a member of the board of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal from 1993 to 2002. Her articles on new ceremonies for women and new midrash have appeared in Moment, Worlds of Jewish Prayer, Tikkun, and Good Housekeeping. She was ordained an Eshet Chazon (Woman of Vision) by the Jewish-renewal community in 1991 and Rabbi by the ALEPH ordination program in 2004.

Rabbi Berman founded (in 1980) and has since been Director of the Riverside Language Program in New York, a unique intensive school for teaching English language and American culture to newly arrived adult immigrants and refugees. Out of that work she co-authored a book of stories of the lives of immigrants, Getting into It, and several articles on the impact of American public policy on immigrants and refugees.

From its founding in 2002 through 2008, she has been the key facilitator for the spiritual interfaith retreat group known as The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah. She has taught as a Visiting Scholar and led prayer services for synagogues, retreat centers, campuses, and interfaith conferences throughout the USA and the world -- Israel, Beijing, Edinburgh, Geneva, Paris, Spain, Sweden, and England.