We are Jewish folks who joined more than a thousand others in getting ourselves arrested in front of the White House this past summer protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. Some of us are rabbis; many of us wore kippot that day; all of us did what we did because it felt, among other things, like a mitzvah …

http://3bl.me/65zpzk

Joelle Novey, along with Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, Rabbi David Shneyer, Jonah Adels, Phil Aroneanu, Laura Bellows, Lisa Jo Finstrom, Robert Friedman, Elizabeth Gaines, Johanna Galat, Richard Graves, Glenn Hurowitz, Joshua Kahn Russell, Lawrence MacDonald, Jeff Mann, Geri Maskell, Karen Menichelli, Sam Novey, Lore Rosenthal, Leslie Schwartz Leff, Harriet Shugarman, Joe Solomon, and Basia Yoffe, were among 1,253 people arrested at the White House in August and September protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Each section of the booklet offers specific suggestions for how families can make purchasing choices for their special day in ways that are mindful of workers’ rights and environmental impact.

The book is illustrated throughout with Jewish teachings, and with the real-life stories of more than forty DC-area families who made creative green and just choices for their own celebrations.

Click here to download a PDF copy of the guide or the Engagement Jewelry Supplement.

Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light

Friday October 7 Testimony to State Department Against Keystone XL Pipeline

Through Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light, hundreds of congregations of all religious traditions work together on energy and climate issues. I am submitting into the record today hundreds of comment cards from local churches and synagogues where good folks have concluded that the Keystone XL Pipeline would do great harm, and that their religious traditions call them to speak out. These cards join thousands of online comments sent from religious folks around the country, and they join the testimony of religious leaders at previous hearings in Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas.

When the sun sets this evening, I will join millions of Jewish Americans in marking the holiest day of our year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. For me, this is a day to tune out distractions, and to be honest with myself about whether or not I am on the right path.

A New York Times editorial this week spoke out against the Keystone XL pipeline. The paper cited concerns I share, about the damage Tar Sands extraction does to Canada's Boreal forest, and the risks the pipeline poses to Americans' drinking water.

But the editorial concluded with a larger question: Should "this country … keep conducting business as usual … or will [we] seriously grapple with the reality of climate change"?

This is the choice before you today. This is our nation's Yom Kippur moment. The concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere are already higher than they have been in hundreds of thousands of years. And warming temperatures are already causing stronger storms, devastating droughts, and great suffering all around the world.

The path we are on is treacherous. If we build this pipeline to extract every last drop of oil from the Tar Sands, and push the concentrations of pollution in our atmosphere to the point that we permanently damage our Earth's climate, any arguments you have heard today in support of the pipeline's short-term benefits will pale in comparison. The human suffering that will be caused by our nation continuing along the fossil fueled path we are on is catastrophic.

Every single person who works at the State Department is also a human being who lives on Earth, and hopes for their children and grandchildren to also live on Earth. You surely know in your hearts that, at some point, our nation will be forced to shift away from dirty fuels, no matter which foreign corporations stand to benefit from further delay, and to turn instead towards investing in clean energy and repairing our climate.

But it matters when we make that decision. As Bill McKibben has said, "Physics and chemistry don’t bargain. They don’t give us much time, and they’re bad at haggling." We cannot wait to turn back until after this pipeline is built. We must turn back beforehand.

On this Yom Kippur, this day of moral clarity, please tune out distractions. Please have the integrity, instead, to simply make the right decision for the people of the United States and the people of the world.

Please do not approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Delivered to Sept 2 2011 Rally Against the Keystone XL Pipeline
Behind the White House

I speak this afternoon on behalf of hundreds of congregations in the DC area that are working to respond to climate change in their sacred communities. These congregations work together through an organization called Interfaith Power & Light.

And I speak as one of dozens of religious people – priests and ministers and rabbis, Christians and Jews and Muslims and Unitarian Universalists and Buddhists – who put their faith into action over the past two weeks by walking across the street to the White House and who would not be moved.

We are here today about a pipeline. Pipelines, essentially, take something from one place to another. And to be a human being living on Earth is to benefit every day from lots of good pipelines.

This land on which we find ourselves is criss-crossed by hundreds of waterways –- natural pipelines — mountain streams and gullies and culverts that bring water to rivers and the ocean where it eventually returns to the mountains.

In every tree in this park, the sap and water rises through xylem pipelines into the air and along each branch, nourishing every leaf.

And in each of our own bodies today, our hearts are pumping blood through the rest of us, through arteries and veins, bringing oxygen to every cell along extraordinary pipelines. There is a Jewish prayer that praises the openings and closings that allow our bodies to function each day. We are, each of us, fearfully and wonderfully made, and we are full of pipelines.

But now, we have been asked to stand idly by as our government makes way for TransCanada to build an enormous, unnatural pipeline, the Keystone XL pipeline.

This afternoon I borrow from the prophet Isaiah and imagine us being asked a question from on high: “Is this the pipeline that I desire?”

This pipeline, which would carry oil extracted from the Earth by destroying indigenous people’s homeplaces in Alberta, Canada. Is this the pipeline that I desire?

This pipeline, which would endanger the drinking water of families in six states, across 1700 miles of ranch land and farm country. Is this the pipeline that I desire?

This pipeline, which would bring its dirty crude to be refined in communities already bearing too many toxic facilities, in refineries that pollute the air and water, making children and elders sick. Is this the pipeline that I desire?

This pipeline, whose oil would be burned, releasing heat-trapping carbon into our atmosphere, permanently damaging our Earth’s life-giving climate. Is this the pipeline that I desire?

This pipeline, whose crude would be sold for filthy high profits, dollars that would surely be used in turn to buy off our leaders and distort our politics. Is this the pipeline that I desire?

And this pipeline, whose dirty contents will reek of the destruction their extraction caused on the way in, and surely only do damage to living things on the way out. Is this the pipeline that I desire?

No. This afternoon, I believe that this is not the pipeline that God desires of us.

So what is desired of us?

Well, pipelines connect. And we do so deeply need to be more strongly connected to each other.

We need pipelines of solidarity, that remind us that the hopes and dreams of First Nations communities in Canada, and families in Nebraska, and families in Texas, are not so different from the hopes and dreams we have, and from the hopes and dreams of people around the world on the front lines of climate change in Bangladesh and in Uganda. But this Keystone XL pipeline is not the pipeline we need.

We need pipelines carrying ingenuity, to bring us new solutions for getting our electricity from sun and wind, to get our energy from heaven instead of coal and oil energy from hell. But this Keystone XL pipeline is not the pipeline we need.

We need pipelines full of compassion, to remind our leaders and businesspeople of our common humanity, that we are all in one boat, and that we will only preserve the Earth’s climate by working together. But this Keystone XL pipeline is not the pipeline we need.

We need pipelines to bring us an expanded consciousness, to see that we are deeply connected to the entire ecosystem, to the plants and to the animals, to see that what we do to our natural world will touch us too, and soon. But this Keystone XL pipeline is not the pipeline we need.

We need pipelines conveying our highest hopes for the future, that might lead us towards decisions that dare to imagine a better, safer, cleaner world for our children and grandchildren. But this Keystone XL pipeline is not the pipeline we need.

May this afternoon mark our turning. May today be the day of our turning together.

Today, let’s turn together to the task of building only the pipelines that are desired of us.

And let all of these good people say: Amen.