URJ Resolution: Environment (1991)

THE ENVIRONMENT

Excerpt:

Adopted at the 61st General Assembly
November, 1991
Baltimore, MD

BACKGROUND

The Jewish community's mandate to cultivate, protect, and nurture the environment is deeply rooted in our tradition. The commandment "Bal Taschit" enjoins "Do not destroy things from which humanity may benefit" (Deuteronomy, 20). The warning against idolatry founded in Deuteronomy reminds us that if we abuse the environment, displaying contempt for the integrity of God's creation, purse rain will cease to fall and the ground will cease to yield its produce.

…As we continue to better understand environmental issues, it becomes clearer that, while in the long term environmental problems affect us all, in the short term they have a greater adverse impact on minorities and the poor. Three out of five trash incinerators in the United States are located in poor or minority neighborhoods.

…THEREFORE, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations resolves to:

1. Call upon the federal, provincial, state and local governments of the United States and Canada to protect our current wilderness areas, create new ones, and work to protect ecologically sensitive and endangered bioregions of the world.
2. Call upon the federal, provincial, state, and local governments of the United States and Canada to ensure the continuation of animal and plant species…

Learn more at http://rac.org/advocacy/issues/issueenv/issuecc/action/.

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