Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching
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:
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.
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. ]
MLK Day Litany of Ashes, Stones, & Flowers: Militarism, Racism, & Materialism
Peace | Justice | Addressing global militarism & world empire | Addressing Global Terrorism | Earth | Environmental Justice | Fasting for Peace and Justice | Globalization and Economic Justice | Justice and Race | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Seasons of American Sacred Time | Spirituality of Justice | TortureASHES, STONES, & FLOWERS:
A LITANY ON MILITARISM, RACISM, & MATERIALISM
IN HONOR OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING
By Rev. Patricia Pearce, Tabernacle United Church, Philadelphia
Militarism
For each vibrant life and hopeful dream that is annihilated by war and written off as necessary collateral damage,
We lift up the ashes of our pain, O God.
For the millions who go hungry or suffer sickness because bombs are more lucrative than bread and missiles are deemed more important than medicine,
We lift up the ashes of our remorse, O God.
For each mind that is forever haunted and each body that is left broken by war,
Order of Service & Teach-in, MLK Day, Jan 19, 2008
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Peace | Addressing global militarism & world empire | Justice and Gender | Justice and Race | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Seasons of American Sacred Time | Spirituality of Justice | War, Peace, & the Jewish CommunityLITURGICAL SCENARIO FOR MLK BIRTHDAY OBSERVANCE,
EVE OF INAUGURATION DAY, 2009
(From Rabia Harris, Muslim Peace Fellowship, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center)
: Remember we awant people to stay interested, be moved, get motivated, have fun, and draw closer together. We are assuming that programs, including the text of the pledge, will be distributed at the door.)
Introduction Coming Together Summoning of the People According to the Traditions Blowing of the Shofar Ringing of Church Bells Muslim Call to Prayer Buddhist bells, etc.
