EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Four, Number Five May/June 1995 JEWISH LEADERS RESPOND TO THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS On March 29, over 1000 Jewish activists gathered in listening sites across the country to participate in an historic, forty-five minute discussion among Jewish leaders on "the relevance to Jewish community and continuity of a Jewish response to the global ecological crisis." Sponsored by the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), a member of the National Religious Partnership on the Environment, the telephone seminar brought together seven leading Jewish thinkers to answer questions posed by participants in selected listening sites. Dr. Henry Kendall, Nobel Laureate scientist, opened the seminar with a quote from the "Warning to Humanity," by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Vice President Al Gore also joined the discussion briefly from Airforce Two (see Call to Action). The Sabbath Is the Environmental Holy Day In answer to a question about how to get an environmental group started, Dr. Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary, replied : "The Torah sanctifies Shabat, which lacks any natural precedent, by anchoring it in the sequence of creation. Shabat is the environmental holy day; one day when Jews desist from tinkering and tampering with the world they inhabit. The ritual of rest impresses upon us our status, as stewards placed in the garden only to till it and tend it. In the tranquility of the day we rediscover our obligation to those who will follow us and what we owe to those who preceded us. . . . Shabat renews in us a sense of proportion... "Devoted to the theme of creation, Shabat beckons us to celebrate the grandeur of the cosmos, the singular beauty of this lone blue planet and the modest role of human consciousness. We are but a speck of the divine spirit endowed with the task to preserve and admire, to cultivate and complete God's creation. Shabat restores a modicum of balance for us between the value of the individual and the value of community. . . . I submit that an exemplary start for Jews on the environment is to re-embrace the weekly celebration of Shabat." For more information, or a copy of the recently published manual To Till and to Tend: A Guide to Jewish Environmental Study and Action ($10), write to Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, 443 Park Ave. South, 11th Floor, New York NY 10016-7322, 212/684-6950. Home     Table of Contents