The Bush Is Burning!: Radical Judaism Faces the Pharaohs of the Modern Superstate

A foundational work at the crossroads of Jewish radicalism and spiritual renewal, back in print after over fifty years.

By 1971, when this transformative text was first published, Arthur Waskow (1933–2025) had already shaken the pillars of American Judaism. Born into a family of Baltimore leftists, Waskow spent the 1960s on the front lines of nuclear disarmament, civil rights, and anti-war activism. He became a household name among Jewish progressives after writing and co-leading the 1969 Freedom Seder on the one-year anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, crystallizing for a generation that Judaism can and must be made absolutely present.

The Bush Is Burning!: Radical Judaism Faces the Pharaohs of the Modern Superstate is Waskow's first book after the Freedom Seder. In it, he traces his own journey from "Jewish radical" to "radical Jew," exploring the religious upheaval of young Jews, the fraught relationship between American Jewry and Israel, and the revolutionary possibilities of a liberatory Judaism. Personal, political, and religious, Waskow’s vision for how to collectively create and embody such a transformative diaspora within his historical context remains, more than fifty years later, as urgent, prescient, and resonant as the day it was written.

This new edition, with essays by Gloria Steinem, Rabbi Shaul Magid, Susannah Heschel, and Rabbi Nate DeGroot situates this landmark text for a new generation of radicals, dreamers, and seekers.

About the Author

Arthur Waskow was a lifelong activist, author, rabbi, and religious leader. He published more than two dozen books, including the Freedom Seder and his best seller, Seasons of Our Joy. He founded The Shalom Center in 1983 as a “prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, and American life.” He trained rabbis at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, co-founded Aleph: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal (with Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi), helped to found the National Havurah Institute, the Green Hevra (an early network of Jewish environmental organizations), and Rabbis for Human Rights North America (now T’ruah).

Book Details
Paperback | 5 1/16 in. x 7 ¾ in. | ISBN: 978-1-961814-63-9
Publication date: Spring 2027