[2] He joined Richard Barnet and Marcus Raskin and helped to found the Institute for Policy Studies in 1963, and he served as resident fellow until 1977.

[11] With Rabbi Phyllis Berman he co-authored Tales of Tikkun: New Jewish Stories to Heal the Wounded World,[12] A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Journey,[13] and Freedom Journeys: Tales of Exodus and Wilderness Across Millennia.

[16] Waskow took pioneering roles in supporting the full presence and equality of women and of LGBTQ people in all aspects of Jewish life and religion, including same-sex marriage; in mobilizing opposition in the Jewish and general communities to the Vietnam and then the Iraq wars; beginning in 1969, after his first summer-long sojourn in Israel and visits to the Occupied Territories, urging a two-state peace settlement between Israel and Palestine; in treating the planetary climate and extinction crises as a profound concern of Torah, necessitating action by the Jewish community; and in urging the Jewish community to treat the increasing concentration of top-down power by small minorities of the ultra-rich and by giant corporations as the reappearance of "pharaoh" in modern American life.

[19] Other activities included the Green Menorah organizing project of The Shalom Center, the Interfaith Freedom Seder for the Earth and climate-focused public actions drawing on traditional liturgies for Tu B’Shvat, Passover, Tisha B’Av, Sukkot, and Hanukkah,[4] and running as a candidate for the World Zionist Congress on the Green Zionist Alliance slate.

[20] In 2010, Waskow joined in founding the Green Hevra, a network of Eco-Jewish organizations,[21] and served on its stewardship committee till 2013.

[22] He is also a practitioner of nonviolent civil disobedience who has been arrested in climate protests in the US Capitol, at the White House, and at Philadelphia conclaves of fracking corporate leaders.

[citation needed] Beginning with his first arrest in 1963, in a walk-in to end racial segregation by a Baltimore amusement park, and continuing through his arrest at the US Capitol in 2016 in a protest calling for more democratic election processes in the US — getting what he called "Hyper-Wealth" out of election campaigns and ending voter suppression aimed at disfranchising especially racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, the young, and the old— and most recently with arrests in Philadelphia at the ICE offices in protest of US governmental hostility to refugees and immigrants—he was arrested about 26 additional times, each time for a non-violent protest against racism, militarism, polluting the Earth, or interference with democratic process.

[29][30][31] He claimed each as a public honor and religious act, in the spirit of the remark by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel after the Selma March for voting rights: "I felt as if my legs were praying.

"[32] He continues to be a prolific writer and speaker in the public sphere on the topic of social justice through a Jewish Renewal lens.