Noah

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 »

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.   Read more »

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 for passing clean energy legislation this year.   Read more »

By Jeremy Parnes
[Parnes is a rabbinical student in the ALEPH smikha program. This liturgy/ commitment is a project as part pf the course on Eco-Judaism taught by Rabbi Arthur Waskow in 2009.]

The following is intended as an annual gathering and ceremony:
1. At Motzei Shabbat of Parshat Noach just before Havdalah and leading to a simple Havdalah service.
2. This to be followed by a workshop with the Kahal to make and dedicate a special rainbow Tzit-tzit to signify each attendees commitment to environmental wholeness and to tend the planet with due care.   Read more »

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 many other times, e.g. after the counting of the omer or on Lag B’Omer.”   Read more »