Ask Rabbi Arthur Waskow how many books he’s written, and he strokes his long, white beard for a moment.<\/p>\n
“It’s either 19 or 20,” he says, sitting in the sunlit garden of his Shalom Center in West Mount Airy. “My wife says it’s the same number as the times I’ve been arrested.”<\/p>\n
And with that he laughs heartily.<\/p>\n
Books. Liturgies. Civil disobedience. For the 73-year-old Waskow, all are devices for challenging convention and opening minds “at the God level.”<\/p>\n
A peace and environmental activist, Waskow has also been bursting open Judaism for 39 years – ever since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination awoke him to Judaism’s powerful command to “heal the world.”<\/p>\n
Esteemed in some circles for his prophetic liberalism, disdained in others, this icon of the Left is nonetheless hard to ignore. In April, Newsweek listed him as one of “the 50 most influential rabbis in America.”<\/p>\n