Pre-shabbat action

Make climate action a regular habit, and connect that action to your Jewish values and practices.

Pre-shabbat action of the week

Shabbat Shalom! Fall routines are underway: back to school for students and teachers, the buildup of physical and spiritual preparations for the High Holidays, the return of pumpkin spice lattes (not my thing, but you do you!)…  Let’s take a moment to add one more element to your fall routines: quick, meaningful climate action!

If you feel like you’ve heard a lot about pipelines here lately…you’re right!  While there certainly are other climate-related issues to pay attention to, the newly-resurrected Williams NESE pipeline feels especially urgent; Governor Hochul is expected to make a decision very soon, and building this fracked gas pipeline through New York Harbor would cost billions of dollars, lock us into further decades of fossil fuel emissions, and harm the delicate harbor ecosystem.  This week, we’ll be sending letters to the Governor urging her to protect New Yorkers’ health by denying the permit for this pipeline.  Click here to send an email now, and be sure to add that you’re from JCAN!

Idea to Ponder:

Ki Tavo, this week’s Torah portion, is alarming. With its grizzly curses, it is the second “tochecha” or rebuke in the Torah.

“God will strike you with fever, with swelling lesions, with burning heat, with thirst, and with sword; and with wind blasts and with withering—and they will pursue you until your destruction. The heavens over your head will be copper and the land beneath you will be iron. God will make the rain of your Land dust and dirt; from the heaven it will descend upon you until you are destroyed.” (Deut. 28:23-25).

As 5786 approaches the curses seem to have come true. For examples listen to or read the news. Do we give up since this devastation has been decreed by God because we did not follow the commandments?

Not yet - let us return to the opening verses of the parasha “God brought us to this place, and gave this land, a land flowing with milk and honey (Deut. 10).” Pure land was ours, and if it is not too late, it can be ours again. When we understand the notion of Imitatio Dei – that we all contain a Godlike power; then we can have the audacity to believe that we have the capacity to return the land to its original purity…