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The Prophetic Green Menorah

The Prophetic Green Menorah By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 11/30/2007 Teruma Earth Global Scorching Va'yyak'heyl Hanukkah By Rabbi Arthur Waskow * On Shabbat Hanukkah, we read the passage from the Prophet Zechariah that envisions the future Great Menorah, taking its sacred place in a rebuilt Holy Temple after the Babylonian Captivity. (We read the same Haftarah for Shabbat Behaalotekha.) Zechariah, in visionary, prophetic style, goes beyond the Torah’s description of the original Menorah (literally, a Light-bearer). That Menorah was planned as part of ...

G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change

G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 7/9/2009 Global Scorching By Dr. Jim Hansen, July 9, 2009 — [director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but he writes on this policy-related topic as a private citizen.] It didn’t take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama’s agenda. As the president was arriving in Italy for his first Group of Eight summit, the New York Times was reporting that efforts to close ranks on global warming between the G-8 and the emerging economies had already tanked: ...

Parsha V’zot HaBracha: Perfecting the World

By Baruch Rock View Print Version l View Source Sheet The Torah reaches the end of its yearly study cycle with V’zot Habracha, literally “and this is the blessing.” In V’zot Habracha, Moses (Moshe), acting in a manner much like his ancestor Jacob who blessed his sons moments before his passing, stands before the nation of ...

Burning & Yearning: Hiroshima and the Ancient Holy Temples

Burning & Yearning: Hiroshima and the Ancient Holy Temples By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 8/1/2008 Devoting Jewish Holidays to Peace Global Scorching Tisha B'Av World Empire Dear friends, Each hot mid-summer, we see again how Jewish theology and practice is one (not the only) microcosm for universal experience. In this case, it is our sorrow for our burning earth, for our own hearts burning with acts of personal and social self-destruction — and our yearning for new hope and transformation. (See two litanies of sorrow and yearning, below.) In mid-summer, ...

Bankers, the Bible, & the Bail-out

Bankers, the Bible, & the Bail-out By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 9/23/2008 Behar Global Scorching Freeing Our Time Globalization and Economic Justice By Rabbi Arthur Waskow Hard-headed Bankers or Masters of Disaster? Sacred Economics — Is it Silly? Hard-headed Economics — Is it Breaking our Heads? If you listen to the hard-headed people who presumably keep us prosperous, Biblical and Quranic economics are, of course, quaint and unrealistic. They’re based on romantic ideas about benefiting the poor, the landless, the outcast. Good for motivating ...

Liberating Passover & the Earth: Making change happen with the Interfaith Seder for the Earth

Liberating Passover & the Earth: Making change happen with the Interfaith Seder for the Earth By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/8/2008 Tzav Devoting Jewish Holidays to Peace Festivals, Life-cycle, & Climate crisis Global Scorching Pesach Environmental Justice Globalization and Economic Justice Interreligious Relations Justice and Race Spirituality of Justice The Shalom Center has created a 40th Anniversary New Interfaith Freedom Seder for the Earth to help us free ourselves from ...

Sukkot: The Season of Our Joy, the Festival of Earth  & Rain

Sukkot: The Season of Our Joy, the Festival of Earth & Rain By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/14/2008 Global Scorching Sukkot By Rabbis David Seidenberg & Arthur Waskow Sukkot, the Jewish harvest festival, is traditionally called THE season of our joy. (My book about the Jewish festival cycle, Seasons of Our Joy, treats them all; but Sukkot is preeminently joyful.) Joy comes from a fruitful harvest, when hard human work – joined to the soil, the sun, the rain, and the seed that human beings do not make, gives us physical, emotional, and spiritual sustenance and the time to refrain from hard ...

MLK Day Litany of Ashes, Stones, & Flowers: Militarism, Racism,  & Materialism

MLK Day Litany of Ashes, Stones, & Flowers: Militarism, Racism, & Materialism By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 11/26/2008 Earth Global Scorching Environmental Justice Globalization and Economic Justice Fasting for Peace and Justice Justice Justice and Race Seasons of American Sacred Time Spirituality of Justice Terrorism Torture World Empire Peace ASHES, STONES, & FLOWERS: A LITANY ON MILITARISM, RACISM, & MATERIALISM IN ...

Interfaith Manifesto on Climate Crisis

Interfaith Manifesto on Climate Crisis By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 12/5/2008 Global Scorching Interreligious Relations Hope for the Future! The Uppsala Climate Manifesto 2008 Faith traditions addressing Global Warming [This Manifesto was signed by more than 40 religious leaders from around the world, including Rabbi Arthur Waskow of The Shalom Center, at an Interfaith Summit on the Climate Crisis called by the Church of Sweden. The signers and a number of supporting leaders gathered in Uppsala, Sweden, in meetings chaired by the Archbishop of Sweden and addressed by the Crown Princess of Sweden, a ...

Blessing of the Sun, April 8; may we let the sun bless us

Blessing of the Sun, April 8; may we let the sun bless us By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 3/17/2009 Earth Global Scorching Globalization and Economic Justice Interreligious Relations Prayer What follows is a service for Birkat HaChamah, the traditional Jewish ceremony for Blessing of the Sun, which comes in a cycle of 28 years — next on April 8, 2009. Though rooted in Jewish tradition, the service invites participation by all. Its universal calling is especially apt in a generation when the world is threatened by the overuse of fossil fuels, and needs to turn ...

Blessing of the Sun: The Talmud, 1981, 2009, & the Future

Blessing of the Sun: The Talmud, 1981, 2009, & the Future By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 3/17/2009 Earth Global Scorching Blessing of the Sun By Rabbi Arthur Waskow * Early in the morning of April 8, 1981, I gathered with several hundred other people at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC, to watch the sun rise and to bless it in what is surely the rarest and perhaps the oddest of all Jewish ceremonies — Birchat HaChamah, the Blessing of the Sun, that comes only once every 28 years. It commemorates, according to ancient tradition, the moment when God created the sun in the first ...

Shabbat HaGadol before Pesach: A Sun of Justice with Healing in its Wings

Shabbat HaGadol before Pesach: A Sun of Justice with Healing in its Wings By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 3/24/2009 Tzav Festivals, Life-cycle, & Climate crisis Pesach Interreligious Relations [This article, along with Avi Katz’ illustration of scorching danger and solar healing, is appearing in the Jerusalem Report as my “word of Torah” concerning the Shabbat of April 4, 2009, just before Passover. For important connections between this article and the Passover and Blessing of the Sun that follows, see the note at the end of this message. – Arthur Waskow...

Healing the Earth & Blessing the Sun:A Decade, not a Day

Healing the Earth & Blessing the Sun:A Decade, not a Day By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 4/23/2009 Earth Global Scorching Freeing Our Time Environmental Justice Dear readers and members of The Shalom Center, Many many of us agree that the threat of climate disaster is the most important danger facing the human race and the web of life upon our planet. Many of us have noticed that in the great and archetypal story of the Exodus, Pharaoh’s arrogance does as much damage to the earth itself – “the Plagues” — as to his own society. But many of us ...

Tikkun Leil Shavu’ot from the Point of View of the Earth

Tikkun Leil Shavu’ot from the Point of View of the Earth By Anonymous | 10/13/2009 Yitro Global Scorching Shavuot Developed by Rain Zohav [Zohav is a rabbinical student in the ALEPH smikha program. This plan for Shavuot was developed for the course in Eco-Judaism taught hy Rabbi Arthur Waskow in 2009.] Idea: Use the attached document, “Ten Commandments From the Earth” as a starting point for discussing what people can do to protect and defend the environment. Since it is often easier to add something new than change existing custom, you may find this to be a good ...

For Shabbat Noach:  A Prayer for Creation

For Shabbat Noach: A Prayer for Creation By Marc Gave | 10/15/2009 Noah Earth Global Scorching The Book of Genesis Prayer Rabbi David Seidenberg has provided us with a prayer focused on global climate disruption (aka “global warming”), healing the skies, and the original blessing of creation. Rabbi Seidenberg writes, “The liturgy is partly based on P’ri Eitz Hadar (the first published Tu Bish’vat seder), and on the Sefardi liturgy for Sukkot. It can be used after Torah reading every Shabbat, alongside prayers for the government, Israel, peace (in many synagogues), and the congregation. It could also be used ...

Seven reasons for optimism about the Senate climate bill

Seven reasons for optimism about the Senate climate bill By Anonymous | 10/18/2009 Noah Climate policy By David Roberts Grist, 12 OCT 2009
 Conventional wisdom says that the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill faces a long uphill slog in the Senate against unlikely odds. BUT – in politics, small changes can build beneath the surface of the news cycle and emerge unexpectedly as a rapid shift. There are seven reasons for cautious optimism. 1. Key Republican support is already in place, as Sen. Lindsey Graham takes to The New York Times editorial page with John Kerry to offer full-throated support ...

Write Your Senators: Support the Climate-Healing Bill

Write Your Senators: Support the Climate-Healing Bill By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/20/2009 Climate policy Click here to see a listing of all recent blog posts Dear shalom-seekers, We are at a great choice point for healing the planetary climate crisis — the most dangerous crisis in all human history, but one we can still heal. Before I expain why and how, let me say right away that we have made it possible and easy for you to write your Senators to support climate-healing action. Click here to write your Senator. And I also want to say right away that in accord with next Shabbat ...

Noah & “Dominion” over the Earth

Noah & "Dominion" over the Earth By Anonymous | 10/22/2009 Noah Global Scorching Ellen Bernstein This coming Shabbat, October 24, 2009, hundreds of thousands of people in 158 countries around the globe will be participating in the International Day of Climate Action. They will try to convince world leaders to craft policies to help bring atmospheric concentrations of CO2 down to 350 parts per million—the figure that scientists say is the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere, the amount that will enable life to continue to thrive on the planet. While the folks at 350.org, the ...

Climate Healing Shabbat in Washington DC

Climate Healing Shabbat in Washington DC By Anonymous | 10/22/2009 Noah Global Scorching Jews United for Justice and Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light are inviting all synagogues, temples, minyanim, and havurot in the DC area to mark October 24 as Climate Healing Shabbat. In our Jewish communities, we will be reading Parshat Noah that day, considering the Torah’s promise to withhold future floods and to preserve creation. Our Climate Healing Shabbat gatherings will join thousands of other “350.org” events around the world that day through which communities are calling on ...

Philadelphia Jewish Exponent: Preventing a New World Flood, Sustaining the Web of Life

Philadelphia Jewish Exponent: Preventing a New World Flood, Sustaining the Web of Life By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/22/2009 Noah Global Scorching Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, October 15, 2009 An old Southern black song cries out: “God gave Noah the rainbow sign; No more water, the fire next time.” Long before that, the ancient rabbis spoke of a mabul eysh — a “flood of fire.” In their days, they were fantasies. But in our generation, the flood of fire has come upon us in the form of global scorching and the rising of the seas. The time has come to heal our Earth, and ...