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Rabbi's Week in Review - 4/17/2023

04/17/2023 04:01:43 PM

Apr17

As we have completed our Pesach celebration — a wonderful seder for Kol Ami and a particularly meaningful celebration for me personally — it is feeling like spring (notwithstanding that, as I write this on a Sunday morning, it is 37 degrees outside). As we begin to spend more time outside, it is a good time to consider the environment in which we live and hopefully enjoy.

This coming Shabbat is Earth Day, a day spent focusing on how we can save our planet from human-created pollution and put a halt to climate-change disasters. While pursuing a more just world, neither we as a synagogue community nor I as rabbi have spent much time focusing on the specter of ecological devastation. It is not a conscious decision. Time and energy are finite resources, and our bandwidth only goes so far.

Yet the introduction of a new Haggadah for the congregation this past Pesach, Rabbi Ellen Bernstein’s The Promise of the Land, has led me to consider how we can add this to our already busy plate. After all, if we are going to work for a more just world, we need to do it from a world that still exists.

In addition to some ways I will seek to get us more attuned to these crucial ecological challenges, I am open to what others are doing at Kol Ami or the things we could be doing to be the responsible stewards of our Earth that is our Torahitic obligation.

Fri, March 29 2024 19 Adar II 5784