Noah

By Rabbi David Seidenberg See his Website at http://www.neohasid.org/

Monday, May 10, 2010, is also the 27th of Iyyar—the date when
Noah’s family and the animals left the ark and received the rainbow
covenant.

There is a special correlation between this week’s Torah portion and
the rainbow covenant of Noah’s time. And there is a foreboding
contrast between the rainbow covenant and what’s happened in the Gulf
of Mexico. The tension between these dynamic relationships in many
ways defines the predicament of our time.   Read more »

As US governmental bodies like the Senate and the world’s governments in bodies like the mid-December UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen falter and delay, it becomes ever clearer:

The governments will take vigorous action only if the grass-roots public insists on serious change. We encourage you to take action rooted in the following Seven Principles and a unified Yardstick that should underlie Jewish and interfaith efforts to shape US and world policy on healing the climate crisis.

1. Our planet has always been a living demonstration that “YHWH Echad” (“the Breathing Spirit of the universe is One”) — but the climate crisis invites us into the clearest awareness in all human history of that truth. The planet is in this as One. Policy must reflect that. (Underlying Jewish principle: The Sh’ma, especially the traditional second paragraph on rain and crops, etc.)   Read more »

Congregation Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia will focus its Shabbat Noach services (10 a.m. October 24) on protection of the earth and especially healing our global climate, and then many members of the congregation will take part in the 350.org rally as part of the International Day of Climate Action. We will meet at Independence Mall at 1pm to make the 350 message heard. We will hear from Katherine Gayewski, Director of the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, and our keynote speaker Ray Anderson, radical industrialist and environmental heavyweight.   Read more »

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.   Read more »

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.   Read more »