In this lesson, students will reflect on their personal material consumption and how it affects the environment. They will then study three Jewish values which conflict with consumerism—not destroying, not coveting, and being happy with what you have.
http://babaganewz.com/teachers/consumerism
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Hazon’s Tu B’Shvat Seder and Sourcebook
Download the 2011 edition of our comprehensive, pluralistic, beautiful haggadah and source book for FREE. Complete with teachings and explanations, our haggadah is available in PDF format so you may print as few or as many copies as you need. Right-click and choose “save as” if you are having trouble… Read More
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By Rabbi Eliezer Shore, PhD
View a Printable Version | View a Source Sheet
Pekudey is the parsha (Torah portion) of ...
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By Rabbi Dovid Sears
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Rabbi Sears requests that adaptations of his article are sent to him at meoreiohr@gmail.com.
If you chance upon a bird’s nest along the way in any tree or on the ground, whether it contains young birds or eggs, and the mother is sitting upon the young birds or upon the eggs; you shall not take ...
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Strengthening the Lieberman-Warner Bill on Climate Crisis: A Detailed Analysis
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 11/8/2007
Earth
Global Scorching
November 7, 2007
To: Members of the Committee on Environment and Public Works and Subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection
We are writing you to express our concerns about Senate Bill 2191, “America’s Climate Security Act of 2007,” introduced by Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.). The legisla...
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Hanukkah, Bali, and Climate Crisis: Because the Earth is Holy
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 11/8/2007
Global Scorching
BECAUSE THE EARTH IS HOLY
[This statement has been signed by a variety of religious leaders and activists, including Rabbis Arthur Waskow& Jeff Sultar of The Shalom Center]
From December 3 to 14, 2007 international representatives and heads of state will meet in Bali, Indonesia to address the historic challenge of setting new parameters on human activity in preparation for the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. ...
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The Prophetic Green Menorah
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 11/30/2007
Teruma
Earth
Global Scorching
Va'yyak'heyl
Hanukkah
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *
On Shabbat Hanukkah, we read the passage from the Prophet Zechariah that envisions the future Great Menorah, taking its sacred place in a rebuilt Holy Temple after the Babylonian Captivity. (We read the same Haftarah for Shabbat Behaalotekha.)
Zechariah, in visionary, prophetic style, goes beyond the Torah’s description of the ...
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G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 7/9/2009
Global Scorching
By Dr. Jim Hansen, July 9, 2009 — [director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but he writes on this policy-related topic as a private citizen.]
It didn’t take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama’s agenda. As the president was arriving in Italy for his first Group of Eight summit, the New York Times was reporting that efforts to close ranks on ...
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By Baruch Rock
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The Torah reaches the end of its yearly study cycle with V’zot Habracha, literally “and this is the blessing.” In V’zot Habracha, Moses (Moshe), acting in a manner much like his ancestor ...
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Burning & Yearning: Hiroshima and the Ancient Holy Temples
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 8/1/2008
Devoting Jewish Holidays to Peace
Global Scorching
Tisha B'Av
World Empire
Dear friends,
Each hot mid-summer, we see again how Jewish theology and practice is one (not the only) microcosm for universal experience.
In this case, it is our sorrow for our burning earth, for our own hearts burning with acts of personal and social self-destruction — and our yearning for new hope and ...
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Bankers, the Bible, & the Bail-out
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 9/23/2008
Behar
Global Scorching
Freeing Our Time
Globalization and Economic Justice
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Hard-headed Bankers or Masters of Disaster?
Sacred Economics — Is it Silly?
Hard-headed Economics — Is it Breaking our Heads?
If you listen to the hard-headed people who presumably keep us prosperous, Biblical and Quranic economics are, of course, quaint and unrealistic. They’re based on romantic ...
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Liberating Passover & the Earth: Making change happen with the Interfaith Seder for the Earth
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/8/2008
Tzav
Devoting Jewish Holidays to Peace
Festivals, Life-cycle, & Climate crisis
Global Scorching
Pesach
Environmental Justice
Globalization and Economic Justice
Interreligious Relations
Justice and Race
Spirituality of Justice
The Shalom Center has created a 40th ...
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Sukkot: The Season of Our Joy, the Festival of Earth & Rain
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 10/14/2008
Global Scorching
Sukkot
By Rabbis David Seidenberg & Arthur Waskow
Sukkot, the Jewish harvest festival, is traditionally called THE season of our joy. (My book about the Jewish festival cycle, Seasons of Our Joy, treats them all; but Sukkot is preeminently joyful.)
Joy comes from a fruitful harvest, when hard human work – joined to the soil, the sun, the rain, and the seed that human beings do not make, gives us ...
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MLK Day Litany of Ashes, Stones, & Flowers: Militarism, Racism, & Materialism
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 11/26/2008
Earth
Global Scorching
Environmental Justice
Globalization and Economic Justice
Fasting for Peace and Justice
Justice
Justice and Race
Seasons of American Sacred Time
Spirituality of Justice
Terrorism
Torture
World Empire
Peace
ASHES, ...
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Interfaith Manifesto on Climate Crisis
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 12/5/2008
Global Scorching
Interreligious Relations
Hope 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 ...
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Blessing of the Sun, April 8; may we let the sun bless us
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 3/17/2009
Earth
Global Scorching
Globalization and Economic Justice
Interreligious Relations
Prayer
What 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 generat...
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Blessing of the Sun: The Talmud, 1981, 2009, & the Future
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 3/17/2009
Earth
Global Scorching
Blessing of the Sun
By 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, ...
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Shabbat HaGadol before Pesach: A Sun of Justice with Healing in its Wings
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 3/24/2009
Tzav
Festivals, Life-cycle, & Climate crisis
Pesach
Interreligious Relations
[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 ...
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Healing the Earth & Blessing the Sun:A Decade, not a Day
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 4/23/2009
Earth
Global Scorching
Freeing Our Time
Environmental Justice
Dear 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 ...
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