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Is Eating Meat and Other Animal Products Halachically Justifiable Today?

Based on increasingly dire warnings from climate experts and a significant increase in the frequency and severity of  climate events, it is clear that the world faces great danger from climate change. As discussed below, averting a climate catastrophe depends very much on a major societal shift to plant-based diets. That would be helped significantly if rabbis declared that eating meat and other animal products is halachically unjustifiable today. Based on Jewish teachings, there are at least six halachic reasons for rabbis to do this:                         ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 20

Healing the Soil, Healing the Soul by Rabbi Robin Damsky ~ I live a life of privilege. From being a single mother, I have a student loan debt for myself and my daughter that would take 20 debt cancellations to settle. I am approaching Medicare age and my hair thins by the hour. But I am healthier than most. I dance. I understand and prepare healthy food. I teach people about the earth. As a Jew I am in the minority, but I have a voice, and a platform through which to share and amplify that voice. I am newly married to the love of my life. And I live atop a mountain ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 19

A New Way to Do Teshuvah by Maxine Lyons ~Doing teshuvah means to me being responsible for turning toward my better or higher self to improve personal relationships and as well as performing my share for all beings in this coming year. I feel more responsible to contribute to and join others in actions that promote more beneficial positive actions for climate change. In that spirit of responsibility and commitment, I am also honoring the memory of Rachel Carson and her impactful and revolutionary book, Silent Spring. She advocated that each ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 18

Selichot [forgiveness] by De Fischler Herman ~What is the color of forgiveness? Is it pink, delicate as the bloom of a Peace rose? Is it green, refreshing like the mist from the sparkling sea? Is it red, warm as the rock in the desert sand? Is it yellow, bright as the sunflower in summer's field? Is it blue, cool as the water under the azure sky? Is it brown, rich like the soil beneath our weary feet? Is it black, dark like the night surrounding each of us? It must be white, reflecting God's light Crafting peace Healing wounds ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 17

On Green Burials by Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin ~For seventy years this earth has cared for me. It has sustained my body with gifts from its own; given me firm places to take a stand and soft places to lay my head; it has thrilled me and comforted me, delighted me and frightened me. It has cradled my children and helped them grow. And it has done all this asking only one thing in return: “Tend well to me so that I may tend well to others after you.”  For the last fifteen years I have tried to live up to this request. I have worked in the environmental arena ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 16

Learning Turning from the World of Plants by Nina Judith Katz ~I like to spend time playing with plants, both in the woods and in the garden. There is something profoundly grounding about connecting deeply with the earth, whether through my feet feeling the tree roots as I walk a forest trail or my hands burrowing in as I wildcraft, weed, plant, and harvest. This grounding helps me feel my place in the world: among the plants, part of their world, their roots merging with mine. Through them, I feel my own place in the world. As I both weed and harvest weeds, I ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 15

Embracing Change or the Muck at the Bottom of the Pond by Rabbi Judy Kummer ~Change doesn’t come easy for most of us.  Many know the joke about the Buddhist monk who says to a hot dog vendor: "Make me one with everything."  Chuckling, the vendor assembles the hot dog, gives it to the monk and says "that will be $4, please." The monk hands over a $20 bill, which the vendor pockets. After a moment, the monk asks for his change, at which point the vendor taps his chest and responds, “Change? Ah, change must come from within.” I grew up in a family not known ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 14

For Gentle Change by Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner The term ‘climate change’ can feel overly vague in part because of the ambiguity of the word ‘change.’ Change can come quickly or slowly. Change can feel welcome or catastrophic. Change can be the result of concerted, value-based effort—teshuvah—or carry the blunt force of surprise.June of this year was the first time I breathed in the smoke of distant wildfires. I knew it was a mix of luck and privilege that had shielded me up til then. I knew the smoke was coming, but the lived experience was still a ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 13

Skit: Can Humans Be a Blessing? by Bill Witherspoon Historical note: The Green Team at Congregation Bet Haverim, Atlanta created a lay-led service on July 15, 2022, called “Blessings on the Climate.” Our guest d’var presenter was meteorologist and JCAN-GA advisor Mark Papier. To balance Mark’s serious (also hopeful) message, we did this silly skit with two of our funniest members as mimes.  Because of a technical glitch, only the tail end of the skit was preserved on ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 12

Growth and Re-Growth by Rabbi Shahar Colt ~I used to work in a building next to what appeared to be an abandoned parking lot. Mostly it was a sheet of broken up concrete. The lines separating parking spaces were barely visible, and a huge tree stood somewhere near the center. Over the course of the spring and summer, weeds would grow, pushing through the spaces between the concrete, breaking it further with the slow persistence of plants. By late summer, the goldenrod was blooming and I sneezed as I biked by. From the street, the space was so full of weeds you ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 11

50 Years Later, the Work Continues by Rabbi Susan Elkodsi ~When I was in junior high, I was in the Environment Club, and one of our activities was a monthly recycling drive for newspapers and magazines. People would save them, bring them to the school, and we’d load up the truck. Then, the advisor would drive it to a place that would pay the club. The guys loved it, especially when someone included back issues of Playboy in with the rest of the papers. Then the girls were doing all the work. It's 50 years later, and where are we? We’re now recycling all kinds ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 10

Objects as Storytellers: CoEvolving with Thomas Berry by Cara Judea Alhadeff, Ph.D. This video excerpt made with Jay Canode and Shahab Zagari plays with the absurdity and complexity of our consumption-obsessed, waste-oblivious society--particularly in the midst of greenwashing, environmental racism / green colonialism, and the fallacious "renewable" energies movement. Dancing in front of a diptych of West Virginian children coal miners from the 1800s with Congolese children lithium miners, I am wearing Ellza Coyle's VHS tape-ribbon hand-knitted, moebius-looped ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 9

Living in a Fragile World: A Torah Godly Play Story by Rabbi Michael Shire ~I wonder if you have ever looked up at the night sky and wondered how big it is…how far it stretches…..how immense the universe is……?  Or how there are thousands upon thousands of suns, stars, planets and moons, thousands of solar systems and galaxies?  And I wonder how you feel when you look up into the vast space and how see how very big it is?  I wonder what you feel when you realize that you are part of it…and also that it is part of you?  And ...

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Dvar Torah for Parshat Ki Taitzi: Can Compassion to a Bird Help Bring Moshiach?

  If you come across a bird's nest on any tree or on the ground, and it contains baby birds or eggs, then, if the mother is sitting on the chicks or eggs, you must not take the mother along with her young. You must first chase away the mother, and only then may take the young. (Deuteronomy 22:6- 7) What is the reason for this unusual mitzvah? Maimonides argues that we send away the mother bird to teach us compassion. He insists that animal mothers, just as human mothers, suffer when their offspring are harmed. In Part 3, Chapter 48 of the Guide to the ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 8

Canadian Wilderness by Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein I am a lifelong Girl Scout. My love of the out-of-doors comes from many years camping, hiking, canoeing at Girl Scout camps throughout the Midwest, New England and yes Canada.  All summer I have been haunted by an old camp song, known as “Canadian Wilderness” or “The Life of a Voyager”. One verse sings: “Call of the lonely looncoyotes howling at the moonwind rustling through the treesthat’s a Canadian breezesmoke rising from the fireup through the trees in a stately spirebreathe a sigh in the ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 7

Creatress of Night and Day by Rabbi Louis Polisson ~Blessed is She Who causes day to pass and brings the night (1) May She raise up perfect healing to all who are struck (2) Whether they are silent, plant, a living animal, a speaking being (3) Light from darkness, darkness from light (1) May She bring us out from the demonic fire (4) Selfishness The harmful impulse May She cause us to cleave to the good impulse and acts of repair (5) Deeds of healing In wisdom She opens the gates of righteousness (1, ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 6

Blessed by Judith Felsen, Ph.D. ~Blessed are we who have strayed and returned called back by Your mercy, awakened from selfishness to holiness, from cruelty to kindness. Unseeing we concealed, justified, perfected, means to reach our ends, claim desires, perhaps ignorant of damage done, unaware of straying far from You. Detours often deadly to our peace, balance and well- being are brought to halt, corrected paths of our atonement filled, with deep regret, our shame and sadness, healthy guilt a guide of our return to holiness. ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 5

Priestly Atonement and Cleansing the Environment by Andy Oram ~Can you really have an impact on climate change by switching to veggie burgers or lowering the heat in Winter? How about making a change at work that shaves some of the carbon footprint off of your product? Do these really matter when the world continues to pump tons more carbon into the atmosphere each year? The Jewish tradition offers a useful perspective on this question in the afternoon Yom Kippur service, where we recreate the atonement ceremonies of the Temple's High Priest. Atonement is divided ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 4

The Ultimate Emergency is a Cancer on the Earth, but It Can Be Successfully Treated by Deb Nam-Krane ~In 2022, after a decade of worsening symptoms that included erratic energy as well as digestive issues – and plenty of gaslighting – I was diagnosed with colon cancer. It was serious enough that even after every visible trace had been removed I needed to undergo chemotherapy treatments. Just as I should have gotten the attention I needed earlier, climate scientists should have been heeded when we were at "crisis", not "emergency". But once we identify the causes ...

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Earth Etude for Elul 3

Turn it and Turn it Again by Leah Cassorla, Ph.D ~Our lives are marked by recurrences in time and season that nonetheless are not truly a circle, but rather a spiral, in which the return of the familiar sounds more like a harmonious echo than a repetition. Even Torah and holiday cycles regularly repeat and are never the same. This summer, with its heat waves, wildfires, and flood-causing storms, however, seems like a step out of time—in both the musical and seasonal senses. We’ve lost the rhythms of our days. We’ve become slaves. We live in a time of ...

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