Hazon Educational Library: B'nai Mitzvah

From the Jewish Climate Network: We are asking our community to place an ice block beside the Seder plate and open up a conversation about climate change this year, while linking it to the fundamental themes of Pesach. The ice block represents the rapidly melting ice caps and sheets throughout the world caused by human activity. As the ice block shvitzes on our Seder table, we are reminded that time isrunning out for action. It becomes a physical prompt to ask questions, much like the other Seder table objects prompt questions. To support these questions the JCN has created a printable Ice Block Challenge guide that can be incorporated into Seder night.

Through the practice of a food waste ritual, we can find deep lessons in how we gather, cook, and scrap food. We visually express those lessons into a “visual blessing” using actual food scraps and stones or other found natural objects. Then, we craft and recite a spoken blessing. Together, this helps us rethink food waste in our homes and communities.

This Guide is designed to be an interesting educational resource and discussion stimulator as well as a practical set of tips and tools for you to adopt. The goal is for you to more closely align your Shabbat practices with your sustainability and Jewish values.

This source sheet is a dive into Jewish tradition's commentary on prohibitions against wanton waste, environmental stewardship, responsibility for community members in need, and responses to hunger and surplus. We hope that it serves to mobilize Jewish communities to act on climate change and food injustice by reducing food waste, keeping it out of landfills, and transforming it to reduce food insecurity.

This is a collection of shmita resources from all across the internet that Hazon has brought together in one place. Curricula, educational materials, essays, articles, audio, and video.

Gan Nashim: Growing Strong Jewish Girls is a health and cooking program which draws upon Jewish tradition to address contemporary challenges of having and maintaining a healthy diet in today's world. The program specifically focuses on teaching conscious and healthy eating with a Jewish spirit and is designed to be used in camps in a variety of different formats.

Home for Dinner: Hazon's Family Meals Initiative is a synagogue-based pilot program for late elementary to early middle school students and their parents.

Included in this guide for synagogues are specific suggestions on how to schedule and promote a vegetarian Green Kiddush, a list of concrete ways to make it “green,” tips associated with each suggestion, and templates of educational signage.

This program is an interactive color exploration through natural dyeing. Participants will learn about the symbolism and holiness associated with certain colors in Judaism, specifically the blue of tekhelet that is found in Tzitzit. They will also learn how to harvest and use different parts of plants to create their own dye and take home a self-dyed bookmark.