Rabbi Arthur Waskow, radical writer in a rainbow kippa and tallit, stands as his own Earth metaphor.
His turquoise shirt calls to mind the ocean; his burly physique evokes the image of a granddaddy oak tree; his white beard floats down like wispy clouds.
Waskow funnels his energy, intelligence, and creativity into healing the planet. The 66-year-old Philadelphia Jewish Renewal leader has 20-odd books to his credit, including Seasons of Our Joy, Down-to-Earth Judaism, and the new Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought. His trademark, however, is Godwrestling - the book and the phrase. Waskow liberally coins nouns and adjectives to weave new forms of ancient ideas into being. He capitalizes on capital letters to make his point.
He says he helped bring wrestling with Torah - Godwrestling - to the masses. "I think Judaism is one of the great currents of wisdom on the planet, and has gotten stuck under the impact of modernity," he muses one morning over a breakfast of peanut butter and crackers at Elat Chayyim, a Jewish spiritual retreat center in upstate New York.
The Torah teacher in residence, he peppers services with Waskow-speak - for example, calling Jews the Godwrestling people. In Godwrestling - Round 2 he explains that the One who wrestles Jacob renames him Israel, or Godwrestler, but doesn't tell Jacob a name by which to call Him.
Waskow calls God Yod Heh Vav Heh in his singsong translation of the Torah portion.
"I invite people to say, without vowels, 'YHWH.' They say what comes out for them is the breath or the wind. That imagery of God as Breath-of-the-World cuts across all languages."
"It's also true," he continues, "the deep name of God is not limited to human beings." Trees, for instance, breathe out what we breathe in, and vice versa.
Waskow also favors Ruah Ha'olam, Breath of the World. He paraphrases Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a Lubavitcher yeshiva-ordained rabbi and friend, when he says that observing that the old ways of understanding God are dead, and metaphors of wellspring and breath have emerged.
Schachter-Shalomi, the moving spirit behind Jewish Renewal, admires the way Waskow "dances" with Torah. "A lot of people who grew up with Torah from childhood on don't see anything other than how they got it in childhood," he says.
"Arthur brought an adult critical and revolutionary mind to Torah. It is always a great delight to look at Torah through the lenses of his vision."
Their paths first crossed after Waskow published a radical Haggada in the late Sixties. As he recounts, "The Wrestle began for me before I knew it was a wrestle, before I had the language to describe it. It started minutes before Passover in April 1968."
IT BEGAN just after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Waskow, a civil-rights activist, had met King in 1964 at the Democratic National Convention and found him an incredible man, not for his charisma but for his dedication to hard work.
After King's assassination, Washington blazed with unrest. Police enforced curfews. At 34, as Waskow walked home for the Seder, the only Jewish ritual he practiced, he passed an armored car with a machine gun pointing down his block.
"What began to echo in my kishkes was, 'This is Pharaoh's army,'" he recalls.
After that Pessah, Waskow, a Baltimore native who'd split from religion after his bar mitzva at a trendy Orthodox synagogue, became drawn to Judaism, Torah, and festivals. That fall he penned a Haggada for the next Seder.
He wove Ginsberg with Gandhi, Vietnam with the Warsaw Ghetto, and Martin Luther King with the King James version of Exodus and Psalms.
The radical magazine Ramparts published "The Freedom Seder." To Waskow's amazement, tens of thousands of people responded, among them Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi, excited by the new voice.
In turn, Waskow found inspiration in Reb Schachter-Shalomi when the latter led a Simhat Torah celebration and invited people to look up their Hebrew birthdays. The author discovered that he was born not only on Columbus Day, but also on Shmini Atzeret, a festival prompting inward reflection after Succot. He realized he was "the explorer who can go home again."
"It was as if I had been struggling with my Hebrew birthday before I knew when it was," he marvels.
Waskow has continued to struggle with his identity. It unfolded more when his brother, Howard, called him Ishmael. An admitted outsider to his family and to the Jewish community in which he grew up, Waskow saw his Hebrew name, Abraham Isaac, as incomplete. He added Ishmael to the mix, redefining himself as an explorer rather than an outcast.
Changing one's name deepens identity, he believes. So when he married Phyllis Berman in 1986 they both took the middle name Ocean to affirm a shared love of the sea and bond to each other.
Coincidentally, the Seder brought them together. A guest of Berman's gave her a gift, Seasons of Our Joy. The book - and author Waskow - captivated Berman.
"I wrote him, literally, a love letter, not just a fan letter," she reveals.
Each has two children from a previous marriage, and Waskow recently became a grandfather for the first time.
He nurtures many pet projects, including the Shalom Center, a network of American Jews who draw on their tradition and spirituality to seek peace, heal Earth, and built community. They encourage "eco-kosher" practice in Jewish life to protect the planet.
When asked about his hobbies, Waskow seems a bit puzzled. Then he offers that he enjoys, not surprisingly, a mental pursuit: science fiction, particularly Marge Piercy's novel, He, She, and It, a futuristic reworking of the classic tale about the Golem of Prague.
Reading, he says, allows him to explore possibilities.
[Published in the Jerusalem Post, September 1, 2000]