Just a short post today to make note of a special event in which all change agents might want to participate–Jewish or not: Climate Healing Shabbat and International Day of Climate Action.
On October 24, Jews all over the world read Parshat Noah, the the biblical story of Noah, the flood, the ark, and the rainbow. Interestingly, this Sabbath coincides with the International Day of Climate Action, an event organized by Bill McKibben and 350.org, as well as more than 4,000 local groups around the world. The Jewish community’s participation in Shabbat Noah–Climate Healing Shabbat–was initiated by The Shalom Center in a meeting of grass-roots Eco-Jewish organizations this past June 22, 2009. It was then endorsed by major leaders and organizations in the Jewish world in America, Israel, and other countries.
The Shalom Center’s website (http://www.theshalomcenter.org/torah/Genesis) offers a rich set of resources: lists of endorsers, midrash on the Noah story, supplemental prayers for the earth, descriptions of actions planned by dozens of groups and congregations, songs, stories, policy analysis, plans for future action. And new resources have been added recently.
Additionally, you can find tons of information and numerous ways to get involved in a more secular manner at www.350.org.
Whether you are Jewish or not, you can participate this weekend in the earth’s healing. “In our own generation, the only ark that can save the web of life from a world-wide flood of heat, drought, and rising oceans is the healing we undertake for the planet as a whole,” Rabbi Arthur Waskow, secretary of the board and rabbinic director of the Shalom Center, says. “If we are to affirm the wisdom of our forebears and save the lives of our grandchildren, we ourselves must build that ark, undertake that healing. Let us begin!”
Will you heed the call? Will you be a change agent this Saturday? Will you heal help heal the world tomorrow and every day thereafter?
For more information on this topic, read my San Jose Jewish Examiner.com article.
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