Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s "big idea" has been to integrate religious celebration and practice (festivals, life-cycle ceremonies, daily practice like the kosher food tradition) with prophetic action for social justice, international peace, and environmental healing.

From 1969 to 1999, Waskow focused these efforts toward re-energizing the American Jewish community as a prophetic body and broadly renewing Judaism spiritually, liturgically, and politically. Since 1999, he has also been working with renewal-oriented people in the other Abrahamic faith-communities – - Christianity and especially Islam – - toward the same goals.

By organizing The Shalom Center (1983; www.shalomctr.org) and its email outreach network; writing a dozen books and hundreds of articles; and teaching for myriads of synagogues, churches, campuses, retreat centers, and interfaith conferences, Waskow has focused celebration of festivals and life-cycle ceremonies, study of religious texts, and theology not only on meeting spiritual needs but also on addressing universal concerns for peace and justice.

Thus The Shalom Center: Addressed the nuclear arms race by drawing on ancient teachings of the danger of a planetary Flood of Fire and shaping "Rainbow Sign" times of education and action to shelter all species; Urged "eco-kosher" practice; Organized large-scale American support for Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel through shaping the Tu B’Shvat Festival of Trees into an "Olive Trees for Peace" Campaign; Addressed conflict with the Muslim world by initiating joint multireligious action in the October 2005 confluence of Ramadan with the High Holy Days; etc.

In 2006 Waskow co-authored with a Benedictine nun and a Sufi teacher a book, THE TENT OF ABRAHAM Beqcon), that is being used by thousands of people in hundreds of congregations as a guide to peacemaking among Jews, Christians, and Muslims — by drawing in new ways on the different Biblical and Quranic tales of Abraham’s families.