GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis)
Jewish Leaders call for "Climate Healing Shabbat" at Noah/Rainbow Torah-time, Oct 23-24
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | 2. NOAH | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global ScorchingInitiated by The Shalom Center; endorsed by Rabbis Steve Gutow, David Saperstein, & Nina Beth Cardin; by Nancy Ratzan, Nigel Savage, Richard Schwartz, Ellen Bernstein, Rabbi Peter Knobel, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and many others. (See list below.)
Says an old Southern Black song: "God gave Noah the Rainbow Sign; No more water, the fire next time." In our generation, the Flood of Fire has come upon us in the climate crisis of global scorching and rising of the seas. We ourselves -- all of us -- must build the Ark to save humanity and all endangered life-forms. The Rainbow Sign calls us to this work of transformation.
Healing the Earth & Blessing the Sun:A Decade, not a Day
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Earth | Environmental Justice | Freeing Our Time | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global ScorchingDear 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 feel blown away by other crises that seem more urgent: --
The world-wide economic collapse and our own loss of jobs and savings; worsening bloodshed between Israel and its neighbors; the danger of a bloody quagmire in Afghanistan; the AIDS epidemic in Africa and elsewhere; failures in health care and education in the US; crises over immigration; rising rates of gun violence; denial of full human rights to gays and lesbians ….
A Sun of Justice with Healing in its Wings
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | 25. TZAV | Interreligious Relations | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Pesach[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]
Jewish tradition assigns the last chapter of the last of the classical prophets – Malachi, who spoke about 2500 years ago -- to be read on the Shabbat just before Passover. Read this year, the passage takes on an uncanny significance for our generation:
Watch YouTube Film of Original Freedom Seder, 1969!
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Peace | Addressing global militarism & world empire | Interreligious Relations | Justice and Race | Pesach | Seasons of American Sacred Time | Spirituality of Justice | War, Peace, & the Jewish Community 1. To plan your own New Freedom Seder of the Earth, , click on the article just beneath this for the text. For the Blessing of the Sun on April 8, see articles 3 & 4 below.
2. To view on YouTube part of the only existing film of the original Freedom Seder held on April 4, 1969, access the film at –-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5HgiGMqh6g
3. The Shalom Center has available ten DVD's of a much fuller film record of the Seder. To the first ten people to make an on-line DONATION OF $180, we will be glad to give the gift of one of those films. Donate by clicking on the Shalom Center logo on the right-hand margin of this page (right there! >>>>>>>>>>>) and enter "1969" in the "honor of" box.
Blessing of the Sun: The Talmud, 1981, 2009, & the Future
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Festival SpiralBy 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 place.
Ancient Jewish tradition (Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 59b) teaches: "Whoever sees the sun at its tekufah [transformative cycle-marker], the moon in its power, the stars [or planets] in their orbits, and the signs of the zodiac in their orderly progress, should say, 'Baruch oseh ma'aseh v'reshit. Blessed be the Doer of Deeds of "In the Beginning [Creation]."
Blessing of the Sun, April 8; may we let the sun bless us
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Earth | Globalization and Economic Justice | Interreligious Relations | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | PrayerWhat 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 toward the sun for the sources of energy to heal and sustain our lives.
This version of the service integrates support for solar energy in the Asiyah ("Actuality") world with the other three of the Four Worlds of Kabbalistic thought: the spiritual, emotional, and intellectual aspects of the ceremony.
SHALOM CENTER PRESENTS Green Menorah Award to JEWISH RECONSTRUCTIONIST CONGREGATION, Evanston
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Tu B'ShvatSHALOM CENTER PRESENTS
GREEN MENORAH AWARD
TO JEWISH RECONSTRUCTIONIST CONGREGATION:
OFFERS MATCHING GRANT TO YOUTH GROUP
At a celebration of Tu B'Shvat, the midwinter Jewish festival for the rebirthing of trees and nature, on Friday evening February 6, 2009, The Shalom Center presented its annual Green Menorah Covenant Award to the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation of Evanston.
The Green Menorah Covenant Award honored JRC for construction of an extraordinarily "green" energy-saving congregational building, the only religious structure in America to be considered "platinum level" in energy conservation.
Who Hardened Pharaoh's Heart -- and Does it Still?
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | 14. VA'ERA | PesachBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Perhaps the greatest archetypal tale in all of human culture about addiction to top-down, unaccountable power -- and the path it shapes to self-destruction -- is the story of Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus.
We have seen, are still seeing, this tale lived out before our own eyes. For eight years, the government of the United States became so addicted to its own power, so swept away by its own arrogance, that it played out the tale of Pharaoh and brought disasters on the very country that it claimed to lead, as well as on the wider world.
Even though the US government has begun to change, there are still Pharaohs blocking the way to a "promised land" of justice and sustainability, a rhythmic sharing of the earth's abundance with each other -- "adam" and "adamah" -- all earthy-humankind and all the living, breathing beings of the earth. . What can we learn from the ancient story to guide our steps today to do that sharing?
Brief video: Facing the Pharaohs of Global Scorching
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Environmental Justice | Globalization and Economic Justice | Interreligious Relations | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global ScorchingBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow
My life-partner Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I spent a week in Sweden at the Interfaith Summit on the Climate Crisis.
Watch the live 5-minute video of my "words of hope" for the thousand people who filled the Uppsala Cathedral, intertwining a vision of empowering ourselves and drawing on the Spirit. Then read the message just below about the FREEDOM SEDER FOR THE EARTH that the Shalom Center is organizing, and how you yourself can face the Pharaohs of today.
Interfaith Manifesto on Climate Crisis
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Interreligious Relations | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global ScorchingHope 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 vice-president of the European Union, and James Hansen, the scientist who first defined and publicized the actuality and causes of global climate heating. The Archbishop is carrying the Manifesto to the governments assembled in Poznan Poland, to the Swedish government as it prepares to chair the European Union, and to the new administration in the United States. ]
