206 results for tag: Advocacy and/or Policy

Shabbat Brit Olam – Annual “Sustainability Shabbat” in Israel

Dear Friends, Shalom! We are proud to report that for the third consecutive year, Teva Ivri joined the international Jewish world in the observance of Shabbat Noach as a “Sustainability Shabbat” – a time to raise awareness about environmental challenges and to inspire effective change in Jewish communities. A few weeks ago, hundreds of communities from all denominations of Judaism observed Shabbat Noah from a Jewish-Environmental perspective, with study groups, lectures, articles in the media, and grassroots action projects throughout the country. View Shabbat Noach highlights. Blessings for a year of ...

facebook and the dark side of computers

Dear Friends, I was in our local co-op yesterday and, as often happens, I ran into a friend. My friend started by saying, “you know, I’ve started to sign up for facebook three or four times, and then I realize it wants me to give over all of my emails… I’m just not going to do it. It looks innocent- but it’s all of my emails!” I said, “I know- I’ve been almost logging on to facebook too- and when I get to those emails- I’m out of there!” We talked there in the aisle, me holding my cereal and freshly ground coffee, one thing led to another and soon we had a full purging crank ...

Samar Gets Temporary Reprieve — Let’s Make it Permanent!

Israel's Samar sand dunes — and the unique animal species that live there — may be destroyed, unless we act now. (Photo courtesy of Taal Goldman of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies) NEW YORK (Nov. 14, 2011) — We are being heard: The Samar sand dunes have been granted a temporary reprieve from destruction! Although the bulldozers were scheduled to start mining the dunes weeks ago, work has been indefinitely postponed in the wake of our efforts and the protests conducted by our partner environmental organizations in Israel. Environment Minister Gilad Erdan arranged for the delay in conversa...

We Must Also Give Thanks

It is very easy to get down when thinking about all environmental issues we face throughout the world. However, as Thanksgiving approaches, as most people, at some point or another I start to think about those things that maybe I take for granted. This week while walking I started to think about a class I am taking in law school on the Clean Water Act. Although we still continue to face severe issues related to water pollution, prior to 1972, industries and public water works did not have to attain a permit in order to discharge into waters of the United States. In 1990 major improvements were made to the Clean Air Act, which again, has some ...

Official Launch of Jews Against Hydrofracking: Learn how you can help combat this Environmental & Public Health crisis!

If one Jew sins, all of Israel feels it….This can be compared to the case of men on a ship, one of whom took a drill and began drilling beneath his own place. His fellow travelers to said to him:what are you doing?’ He replied: ‘What does that matter to you, I am drilling only under my own place?’ They continued: ‘We care because the water will come up and flood the ship for us all. Midrash: Vayikra (Leviticus) Rabbah- 4:6 First off, open http://www.facebook.com/jewsagainsthydrofracking in a new window and like us. Now read on: This teaching of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai seems ...

My arrest at theTar Sands Protest

This was one adventurous day. There was the earthquake. Where were you when it occurred? I was just outside the Park Police holding cell after being released from police custody. I joined in today, very unexpectedly, with about 60 others to be arrested for “failure to obey a lawful order”. We stood in three long lines in front of the White House singing and chanting our protest of the Tar Sands oil pipeline that would extend from northern Canada, down through the heartland of the West, and directly through Yellowstone National Park, to Texas. This will be a dirty, toxic pipeline. Just the extraction of the oil in Canada ...

Why We Occupy Shabbat!

This past Shabbat I participated in Vancouver’s first “Occupy Shabbat.” The thirty of us crammed into Occupy Vancouver’s meditation tent weren’t the only ones celebrating this way. In cities across North America, Jews of all types are joining together to Occupy Shabbat in conjunction with the Occupy Together movement now galvanizing the continent. What does it mean to celebrate this weekly holy day in solidarity with and surrounded by activists, artists, and people calling for a better tomorrow? What can we learn from this day about social and environmental change? How can Shabbat be a model for us and the ...

Halfway Through the Food Stamp Challenge

I am at the halfway point of the one week Fighting Poverty with Faith Food Stamp Challenge. My personal challenge has been to spend the allotted $1.50/meal but with a twist: to eat organically. There is method to my madness. My understanding is that 46 million Americans live on Food Stamps to ‘supplement’ their nutritional needs. I imagine that many of these 15% of Americans live food insecure lives. This means that the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable food in socially acceptable ways are limited or uncertain. My goals in taking the challenge were to ...

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 can find a prayer based on the rainbow covenant and P'ri Eitz Hadar (the first Tu Bishvat seder) on jewcology.org/resource/Shabbat-Noach. (You'll also find other resources for Shabbat Noach.) The ...

Green Eggs and Us

(reposted from Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin's blog, dated October 18, 2011: http://blog.bjen.org/) We can learn a lot from Dr. Seuss, or a local CSA, or a child's coloring book. That is: there's a lot more variety in the world than we think. Not all carrots are orange; not all potatoes are white; not all watermelons are red; not all bananas are yellow. According to Plants for a Future, there are 20,000 edible plants in the world today. Yet, fewer than 20 species supply 90% of what the world eats. It seems that in our rush to be food efficient, we have stripped the grand diversity of nature down to a narrow, ...

Take the Food Stamp Challenge!

Join me for the 4th annual Fighting Poverty with Faith mobilization this week by taking the Food Stamp Challenge from Thursday, October 27th through Thursday November 3rd. The challenge is to limit yourself to a food budget of $31.50/week, $4.50/day or $1.50/meal. This is the average amount allotted a person who qualifies to receive food stamps. Almost 46 million or 15% of Americans live on food stamps or SNAP. I imagine that many are hungry, undernourished and live food insecure lives. Food insecurity exists when the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially ...

Forest Gardening: A Living Sukkah

Sitting in our Sukkah at Eden Village, a hexagon of black locust from our forest, I can gaze in each direction and learn something about the place I am dwelling. I can look out to the east and see our production fields, mostly in covercrop of oats, with an occasional row of cosmos or cabbage, and behind the fields a cob oven, and behind that, our kitchen. To the south, a wetland and forest, from which we harvested the black locust and the invasive phragmites which we used as schach to cover our Sukkah. To the north, the office, theatre,and share circle, center of the creative cyclone during the summer camp season. But to the west is my favorite ...

Turning Waste Into Treasure

I read a story last week that really got my attention. It was posted on the New York Times Green Blog (see story here: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/an-oil-bonanza-in-discarded-plastic/), and was discussing a company’s effort to convert discarded plastic into crude oil. Now I know this does not sound like the most environmentally friendly initiative, as the crude oil will eventually be utilized, resulting in the release of green house gases into the atmosphere. However, although I am a huge supporter of renewable energy, I think there is room for businesses such as this, in our effort to create a more sustainable society. ...

Almost Out of Time: Act Now to Save Samar

Israel's Samar sand dunes — and the unique animal species that live there — may be destroyed, unless we act now. (Photo courtesy of Taal Goldman of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies) NEW YORK (Oct. 12, 2011) — The bulldozers and dump trucks are getting ready. Without intervention, they will begin carting away one of Israel’s unique ecosystems, the Samar sand dunes, home to species that live nowhere else on the planet. And soon, at the government’s initiation, the sands of Samar in Israel’s Arava Valley will be turned into concrete. Eilat needs sand for concrete, ...

“This is our nation’s Yom Kippur moment.” Testimony to State Department against Keystone XL Pipeline

Joelle Novey, Director Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light Friday October 7 Testimony to State Department Against Keystone XL Pipeline Through Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light, hundreds of congregations of all religious traditions work together on energy and climate issues. I am submitting into the record today hundreds of comment cards from local churches and synagogues where good folks have concluded that the Keystone XL Pipeline would do great harm, and that their religious traditions call them to speak out. These cards join thousands of online comments sent from religious folks around the country, ...

“Is this the pipeline that is desired of us?” Talk to Rally Against Keystone XL Pipeline

Joelle Novey, Director Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light Delivered to Sept 2 2011 Rally Against the Keystone XL Pipeline Behind the White House I speak this afternoon on behalf of hundreds of congregations in the DC area that are working to respond to climate change in their sacred communities. These congregations work together through an organization called Interfaith Power & Light. And I speak as one of dozens of religious people – priests and ministers and rabbis, Christians and Jews and Muslims and Unitarian Universalists and Buddhists – who put their faith into action over the past two ...

Fostering Environmentally Sustainable Behavior

Many of us who want to get people to behave in an environmentally sustainable way, tell them why they should do so. Sometime we even tell them how to do so. But research studies confirm what many of us have learned through personal experience. For most people, having the right attitudes, values and information is not sufficient to produce the amount of environmentally sustainable behavior that we would like. I attended Doug McKenzie-Mohr’s workshop on Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community Based Social Marketing and learned much about how to be more effective. Sometimes, doing the right thing requires too ...

Clean Earth to Till: An Environmental Vision of Redemption

The concept of Tikkun ‘Olam (the repair or healing of the world) in a contemporary form has been extensively used in Jewish social justice ethics over the last 50 years. In this iteration of Tikkun ‘Olam, there is a high degree of human freewill, instead of divine intervention, as the chief means by which the world will be perfected. But what do Jewish environmentalists imply when they use Tikkun ‘Olam? What kind of Jewish environmental perfection are we seeking? This is an important question because even if we are seeing the repair or perfection of the world as a symbolic and not literal goal, the concept of redemption we ...

GZA Leads KKL-JNF Effort Against Fracking in Israel

NEW YORK (Sept. 16, 2011) — Hydraulic fracturing and in-situ retorting for oil in Israel should be banned in Israel pending further research into the environmental effects of the relatively new fossil-fuel extraction techniques, according to a new report issued by Israel’s Keren Kayemet L’Yisrael / Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) at the initiation of the Green Zionist Alliance. The report and its recommendations, which were drafted and approved unanimously by a KKL-JNF committee convened and chaired by Green Zionist Alliance representative Dr. Orr Karassin, constitutes the official policy of KKL-JNF according to the ...

Coming Together

Writing a blog post for Jewcology is usually a fairly fluid process for me. Throughout the month I generally collect different articles and compile thoughts in a document that I then go back to when I am trying to figure out what theme I want to address in my blog. This month was different. It did not occur to me until last week that the blog I was going to post had a deadline of September 11th. Sitting in the passenger seat of my car, with the Hudson River to my right and my wife listening to NPR which is playing personal stories of families who lost loved ones on 9-11, I feel compelled to convey a story of hope that is also ...