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Earth Etude for Elul 19: Like the Wilderness
by Rabbi David Seidenberg The book of Numbers begins, “YHVH spoke to Moshe in the Sinai wilderness.” The midrash asks, why does it specify “in the Sinai wilderness”? Because the wilderness is ready to receive all people and belongs to no one. Just so, the Torah receives all people and belongs to no one, not even to the Jewish people. In the Shmitah year, we are similarly reminded that the land of Israel/Canaan/Palestine belongs to no one – ...
Earth Etude for Elul 24: Harachaman for Shmita
by Rabbi David Seidenberg As we approach Rosh Hashanah, we are also fast approaching the next Shmita year, when all the land in Israel was supposed to rest, all debts were supposed to be canceled, and all food was to be shared, even with the wild animals. Just like Elul through the High Holidays, the Shmita year itself was a long journey of t’shuvah, returning to God, during which our sense of business-as-usual could fall away, revealing what it ...
Rainbow Day is May 8-9 in 2021, the week following Shabbat Behar-Bechukotai!
Celebrate Rainbow Day and the Rainbow Covenant with all Life! The first covenant in the Torah, when Noah leaves the ark, is a covenant with all creatures, and a covenant with the Earth itself, not just with humanity. There are so many ways you can teach about this covenant, the rainbow covenant, on the day it was established! What is Rainbow Day? On the 27th day of the second month, Noah, his family, and all the animals that were with ...
Rainbow Day is May 8-9 in 2021, in the week following Shabbat Behar-Bechukotai
Celebrate Rainbow Day and the Rainbow Covenant with all Life! The first covenant in the Torah, when Noah leaves the ark, is a covenant with all creatures, and a covenant with the Earth itself, not just with humanity. There are so many ways you can teach about this covenant, the rainbow covenant, on the day it was established! What is Rainbow Day? On the 27th day of the second month, Noah, his family, and all the animals that were with ...
Restoring Eden: Behar and Bechukotai
The loss of Eden near the beginning of Genesis sets in motion the entire saga of the Torah. In fact, the Torah can be read as one long quest to regain Eden. But what does a restored Eden look like? One of Eden’s characteristics was that none of the animals ate each other, and, more specifically, human beings had no permission to eat any of the other animals. Instead, human beings and all the animals shared the plants for food. This motif of sharing ...
The Rainbow Connection: Rainbow Day and Creation
Millennia before Kermit sang about the Rainbow Connection, the very first Rainbow Day marked the connection between God and all animals. The biblical flood began on the 17th of the second month, exactly one lunar year and 10 days (= one solar year) before Noah, his family, and all the animals that were with them left the ark, on the 27th day of the second month. But just before they left, God made a covenant with them that there would never again be a ...
Out of the ark and into the garden: The story of Noah in the Sabbatical year
There are three places in the Torah which talk about human beings and the animals – including wild animals – sharing one food supply. In Eden, in the ark during the flood, and in the Sabbatical year or Shmita. There’s a lot more to these stories, but you don’t really need to know much more to understand the basic message of the Torah. We lived with the wild animals once, rather than carving out separate spaces for us and our domesticated fellow ...
Sukkot and Shmita Resources and Events
SUKKOT AND SHMITA RESOURCES AND EVENTS for 2014-15 contributed by all the organizations and initiatives on “the Map” http://jewcology.org/map-of-initiatives/ Here’s a quick bit of Sukkot Torah to start us off: “The four species of the lulav represent the four types of ecosystems in the land of Israel: desert (date palm), hills (myrtle), river corridors (willow), and sh’feilah, the lowlands (etrog). Each species has to be fresh, with the very ...
Climate on Rosh Hashanah – an existential threat to Israel
Protecting Israel doesn't just mean getting off of Arab petroleum, it means getting off of all petroleum. If you're not advocating for that, you might as well be calling for the destruction of the state.
Here are three things to do for Shabbat Noach!
Here are three very simple things you can do for Shabbat Noach to honor God's covenant with all life: 1) Learn and teach the rainbow blessing: "Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha`olam ZOKHER ET HABRIT -- Blessed be You, Hashem...who remembers the covenant!" And -- you can remember that the first covenant in the Torah wasn't just for humanity. It was a covenant with all animals and with the land itself. 2) Say a prayer for the all living things. You ...
Rainbow Day is coming! Celebrate, learn, create!
I'm so excited to let people know about Rainbow Day – the 27th of Iyyar, and the 42nd day of the Omer. For a few years now I've been working to make Rainbow Day a reality in the Jewish world. Rabbi Arthur Waskow first came up with the idea of using the dates of the flood story in 1981. But now I think we (the Jewish world) are ready to make it happen. I've been collecting prayers and rituals, lesson plans about seed-saving and hydrofracking, learning ...