The name Arthur Waskow meant nothing to me until my friend Joan Soble, in one of her lyrical Substack pieces, mentioned that someone with that name had recently written a pamphlet called The New Constitution, an item that is freely available online. I took a look at this work, which has a dedication signed 'By Shir Hashirim Rabbi Pesach-Lev / Dr. Paul Zeitz' — one person with two names, or two people with one slash? — containing remarks like "Love is not the absence of awe" and "The name of God is not a word at all but a breath — Yahh — the breath we share with every tree, every neighbor, every stranger." There are also a lot of Hebrew words in this introductory material, and it may be obvious to those familiar with my writings that I am not the ideal reader here. But, whoever's fault it may be, this (possibly co-authored?) dedication includes a lot of the kind of writing that I can live without, so I skipped through it and jumped ahead to get some sort of picture of what the late Reb Waskow's idea of a better U.S. Constitution might have been. When I saw that his proposals seemed pretty sensible, I began to wonder whether Waskow had a background in politics or government, which led me to check his Wikipedia page. I discovered there that Waskow was not only a well-known Rabbi who was closely involved with something called "The Jewish Renewal Movement," but had also been a lifelong progressive protester who, after obtaining a Ph.D. in American history, worked as an aide to Congressman Kastenmeier of Wisconsin for a couple of years. Then, Wikipedia goes on to say, Waskow helped found the Institute for Policy Studies where he was a resident fellow until 1977.
Waskow was a frequent anti-Vietnam War protester, and was also involved in agitation against global warming, and racial discrimination as well as for a two-state Palestinian solution, women's and LGBTQ rights, and other progressive positions. In a word, if I had been following the news instead of engaging in odd, time-consuming activities as a young adult, things like reading the entire output of two different George Moores (G.E., the early analytic philosopher, in addition to the Irish novelist/essayist/iconoclast), I'd have surely known who Waskow was. In fact, I'll bet my older brother Dick, who was an active Vietnam War protester himself (while I was mostly just scared of being drafted) would have known Waskow's name--in spite of being as indifferent to Judaism as both of his siblings. In fact, Dick might have actually chanted with Waskow on one or more occasion.
Nevertheless, I do share some things in common with Waskow (eventually "Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow"). While I never had the slightest interest in my "Jewish heritage," I did once write a book on the psychology of mysticism and religious experience. And, while my government employment was on the state rather than the more exalted Federal level, Waskow and I both spent several years in legislative chambers and committee rooms. Most importantly, it's clear that we share a devout interest in getting a new and quite different U.S. Constitution.
When I found out that shortly before his death last year at 92 (in Philadelphia where my aforementioned 82-year-old brother Dick now resides in a nursing home, stricken with Parkinson's), Waskow had published some autobiographical writings, I thought I might read those along with his Constitution pamphlet and write something on the life as well as the thought. Hence, this blog.
Perhaps some of my readers will remember the beautiful death made by Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited even after a life of complete apostasy. Cordelia suggests (following Chesterton) that God has us on a long fishing line and has twitched her father back into his final sign of the cross on his deathbed. Like Waugh's religious hero, Waskow spent most of his life caring little about his religious background — he says he was only 'nominally Jewish' as a kid — until his 'Freedom Seder,' written in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination.# In any case, by the time Waskow has gotten to writing his autobiography, he is regularly mentioning "The Spirit" [referred to by "they/them"] as being present and rising or falling during various events in his life. But I'm afraid that the non-believers among us are likely to translate those references into something like "This occurrence made me happy; this other one saddened me." It can't just be a coincidence that when Waskow is uncertain or confused, The Spirit is as well.
The book jumps around in time, and there are several gaps concerning matters readers are sure to be interested in -- like the author's love life. Waskow mentions his first wife only to say that they have split, and he says nothing whatever about meeting or falling in love with his second spouse: she just starts to be there at his sit-ins. He does mention his second marriage ceremony, but it is mostly to tell a story about sufficiently making up with his nearly estranged brother at the event, a healing that made it possible for them to collaborate on a book.
There is much more to be found here about Waskow's political advocacy, and some of it, like his description of his role as a delegate for D.C. at the sad and violent 1968 Democratic convention is absolutely riveting. We learn here that his delegation put forward the first ever black candidate for President at a large party convention in the U.S., and the discussions of Eugene McCarthy and Paul O'Dwyer are likely to make readers hate them and cheer their losses in the races that followed. Nevertheless, one is likely to want more. For example, Waskow tells us that he testified for the Chicago Eight. But while he mentions his nervousness (and The Spirit's similar take), he tells us nothing of what he had to say at that famous trial.
More touching than the rapprochement with his brother is Waskow's discussion of his falling out with fellow agitator, Marc Raskin (Rep. Jamie Raskin's father). In this case, the dispute -- over a pay reduction for staff at their co-founded Institute for Policy Studies -- came after collaboration on their 1962 book, the anti-nuke Limits of Defense. Raskin was the Director of the Institute at the time, and Waskow, along with the rest of the staff, was surprised by a dramatic salary cut forced by asset reductions. Waskow (who at one time used lawsuit damages in a successful First Amendment case to offer $3000 to each of his two children if they'd care to spend a year protesting various evils), found he didn't care for this unexpected alteration in the terms of his employment and promptly quit the Institute. The two men had been close allies for years after meeting on Capitol Hill right after college, but were entirely estranged for a couple of decades following Waskow's departure from IPS. The narrative here shows Waskow to be at least dimly aware that the beef might have been his fault. Their final meeting during Raskin's cognitive decline makes for a poignant passage in the autobiography.
The main thing one is likely to take from this little book is how both fearless and tireless Waskow was. He spends only a bit of time trying to explain why his version of the Torah, and Judaism generally, is so much farther left than that of so many of his ancestors, but his recounting of a classroom discussion of the rape of the Biblical Dina (I had always seen "Dinah") is quite moving. I suppose, however, that whatever the particular reasons may have been, both for the liberality of his views and for associating them with his religious faith, it is quite clear that Rabbi Waskow spent much of his life fighting ferociously for his progressive beliefs. He must have gone to at least a thousand protests, spoken at ten times as many meetings, and even went to prison a couple of dozen times. The regrets he mentions in the book generally have to do with his not blocking even more streets or arguing with even more police than he actually did. I mean, he's still sorry he wasn't more belligerent to a teacher who wasn't sufficiently impressed with his test-taking abilities when he was seven. It's hard not to admire -- or at least wonder at -- that sort of feisty mensch.
In Waskow II, I will take a look at the firebrand's proposals for a new and better U.S. Constitution.
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# However, I have seen an on-line interview with Waskow in which he mentions that he grew up in a nearly all-Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore and went to a Jewish camp each summer. Couldn't it be that Marchmain's magnificent chapel (which produced the famous "Golly" from Charles Ryder) as well as his always having a priest at his beck and call made it hard for him to fully abandon Catholicism, and that Waskow's childhood associations might have made it equally difficult for his Judaism to stay merely 'nominal'? I note further that if God (Waskow's 'Spirit') really does have an interest in tugging those born Jewish back to Judaism, and those born Catholic back to Catholicism, that's not merely a conservative theology — it's a reactionary one, treating religious identity as a matter of blood and birth rather than choice. That's the kind of thinking I'd expect to be more at home with white supremacists and Christian nationalists than with egalitarian progressives like Waskow.
