Topic: Weekly Parsha

Rejuvenating Ourselves and Our Planet

By Hazon on July 1, 2012 in Holidays, Jewish Texts, Resources, Spirituality, Weekly Parsha

Jewcology is a diverse platform for Jewish environmental activists to learn from each other in order to educate Jewish communities about our responsibility to protect the environment. Hazon is excited to share these resources with you! We promote the interrelatedness of shabbat as a time to reflect on environmental and sustainable ideas through many of our programs and resources. Our Food Guide has kosher sustainable meat options, Greening Your Shabbat Table, Sustainable Kiddush, and all of our Food Programs help you to draw connections between Jewish tradition and contemporary food issues. By Rabbi Yonatan Neril In modern society, we are running, speaking, and thinking at an exceptional rate, and oftentimes we continue all week long without slowing down. Constantly doing, always mobile accessible, habitually multi-tasking. If being too busy is a malady of modern man, slowing down on Shabbat may be a key remedy. The Torah teaches, “These are the things that the Divine commanded to make. Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have sanctity, a day of complete rest to G-d…” Achieving sanctity and complete rest is the stated goal of Shabbat. Yet how can this happen? (more…)

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D’Var Torah: Yitro

By Hazon on February 3, 2012 in Weekly Parsha

By Kerry Chaplin The first chapter of parshat Yitro is the Torah’s guidelines for the community organizer. Well before Alinsky, it outlines how to build a leadership to organize community for a specific goal. Yitro, Moses’s father-in-law, met Moses at Mount Sinai, and when he saw that Moses himself ruled for each and every dispute of the people, he was troubled: “The thing that you do is not good! Surely you will drop [from exhaustion], and so too will your people” (Exodus 18:17). He is concerned that Moses will not only wear himself to complete exhaustion, but that there will be no one left to guide the people. It’s a “heavy thing,” he says, and “you will not be able to do it alone” (Ex. 18:18). Those of us who work for food justice see the heaviness of our burden, and we question whether we will achieve our vision of a fed, quenched, and healthy world. Just as Rashi says Moses’s heaviness was greater than his strength, so too the heaviness of our work is greater than a single organizer’s or director’s strength. Yitro offers Moses a solution – an organizing plan applicable to our own vision: “Provide from all […]

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Talking turkey

By Nigel Savage on November 17, 2011 in Israel, Israel Sustainable Food Tour, Nigel, Tu B’Shvat, Weekly Parsha

New York November 17th / 20th Cheshvan Dear All, This is the period of giving thanks. Thank you: to all the people who commented on (and re-circulated) the piece I wrote last week on Federations. There are various comments on our website, and also on Facebook and elsewhere. We welcome your further feedback. Thank you: to the 17 participants in our second Israel Sustainable Food Tour, and to our partners on that tour at The Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership. We’re really psyched to be playing a role not only in developing more sustainable food systems in the US, but also in directly and indirectly both learning from and supporting some of the amazing work that’s starting to happen in Israel. You can see photos here. (And if you’re looking for an interesting Thanksgiving or Chanukah gift for someone – check out Negev Nectars.) (more…)

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