Wednesday, April 21, 2021 | 24th day of the omer – tiferet she’b’netzach Dear All, Tomorrow is Earth Day, and there’s lots happening. I hope you will attend some of the many events that are taking place, including our second annual #SoundTheCall. And tune in this Friday for the first episode of a new 6-part series that we’ve produced with EarthX – Jewish Life & Planet Earth. I wrote two weeks ago about Earth Day as a “secular chag.” My point was that it makes sense for us to use ritual, and to leverage the calendar, to really think about how we live on this planet – and how we change how we live upon it. Last week at our staff meeting I took this in a different direction. There are essentially three different contemporary narratives for someone who (for instance) is Jewish and thinking about relationships to ha’aretz – to the earth. I want to sketch these out, for us all to think about. One is Israel – the land of Israel, and nowadays the state of Israel. It’s where we entered human history. Our synagogues face towards it. Three times a day, we point ourselves in its direction – […]
Topic: Earth Day
#SoundTheCall – huge thanks!
Dear All, Well over a thousand participants joined us live yesterday on our livecast, #SoundTheCall, to celebrate the 50th Earth Day. We had high hopes for the event, but as it turned out, they were significantly exceeded. What we were most delighted with is that it very clearly struck a chord with many people. We’ve had the strongest positive public response to this of anything we have done as an organization in recent memory. To everyone who was involved in it – participants, attendees, speakers, singers, staff – huge huge thanks. If you were part of it or viewed it and would be willing to share your feedback by filling out this quick survey we would greatly appreciate that. We scrambled for this, like lots of things in the world at the moment, and we’ve certainly never done anything remotely like it (people coming in live from 24 locations on three continents, plus two taped segments). In certain ways it was quite scrappy. But we think the reason people most loved it is that, in the end, it manifested Hazon’s values and vision in quite a deep and serious way. People like David Gergen, Amy Larkin, and Bill McKibben were inspiring and strong, […]
Noon, Wednesday April 22nd (Please read this.)
Thursday, March 19, 2020 | 23rd Adar 5780 Dear All, First: my heart goes out to everyone. This is unbearably painful. People are in hospital. People are losing their lives. People are losing their jobs. People are losing their savings. People are afraid. And as I wrote last week, Hazon is one of the organizations most directly impacted by this. We are especially exposed because we have had to close Isabella Freedman, our retreat center, for at least two months, and have thus lost all our revenue from the busiest time of the year. We’re reviewing options right now, from a tight place. (We’re writing separately to people to whom we will be returning retreat deposits. Some of you will feel unable to do so, and we will understand that, but to the extent that you are able to donate some or all of your deposits – we would appreciate that enormously.) I also want to let you know that we have begun gathering community resources for both inside and outside activities at hazon.org/stuckinside. We’re curating there all sorts of things to watch, to read, and to do. Check it out and bookmark it. But as well as coping with […]
