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! It’s been a hard week, and if you’re anything like me, it’s been hard to focus on the long game of climate action while there are horrific things happening around us. Many of us are involved in advocating for other issues as well, and none of us does this work in isolation. So give yourself a moment to catch your breath if you need to, and know that, even if our attention is scattered, all of this work that we do is meaningful and necessary.
Williams, the company behind the NESE Pipeline that Governor Hochul so disappointingly approved last fall, is at it again. They’re attempting to resurrect a project from many years ago, the Constitution Pipeline, which would carry fracked gas a hundred miles through the heart of New York State, putting our water and air quality at risk and setting us even farther behind on the path toward a transition to renewable energy (and putting the mandates of the CLCPA even more out of reach). After failing to even complete the application to NYS for water permits last year, Williams is trying to avoid going back to state authorities at all. So we, the concerned residents of New York, are going directly to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to express our opposition. Comments to the FERC are due TODAY, January 29, so please take a moment to click here and submit a comment now!
Idea to Ponder:
We read Torah over and over again, in one sense, because we need to re-identify with the stories of our ancestors; to see ourselves in their journeys, their trials, and their emotional lives.
This week’s parsha tells the story of the parting of the sea and the final escape from Egypt. It’s also where we first hear the people, shaking with fear, complaining that they were better off as slaves in Egypt than to take the risks of crossing into freedom.
Change can be scary. We see this playing out in our world today. Energy from the sun and wind offer us freedom from our dependence on dirty, dangerous fossil fuels. Yet we see people clinging to these antiquated systems, claiming they are more dependable (they’re not) and affordable (they’re not). Too many of us remain, in the words of Torah, a stiff-necked people, working against our own best interests.
As we tangle with those who would hold us back, can we perhaps afford a small dose of rachmones (compassion) for the fear that grips them without, of course, giving an inch in the battle for a sustainable future?
Like our ancestors in Egypt, we find ourselves in a place of constriction. Maybe this is a good time to recall the old formula: pray as if everything depends on God and work like everything depends on us. Let’s add to this formula our very Jewish admonition to see all people in their full, fragile, fallible, humanity.
Like Moses, sometimes we’ll need to demand; sometimes we’ll need to coax, but either way we’ll need to cross through the sea together.