StoptheFlood! Eco-Torah Resources for Judaism and Ecology

Make change a spiritual habit. Do at least one new thing every six months or every season to reduce your personal impact on global warming. Make a commitment now!

The time of debate about climate change is over and the time of action is now. Every level and aspect of our society will need to adapt and evolve in order for humanity to live sustainably on this earth. But what should each of us do now, in this society that we live in? Everyone knows that the things we can do as individuals have only the tiniest of impacts on global climate disruption. If we need to act, it needs to make sense on another level...

 

Tu Bish'vat Resources

Save the Negev

Protect the Bedouin – Protect the desert

The Giving Tree: A Way to Honor Our Vision for Israel

In this season, so many of us are inspired to plant trees. As we come upon Israel's 60th anniversary, planting a tree for the future sounds like second nature, a wise investment for both Israel and the planet. I'm writing to ask you to do something a little different...

Birkat Ha-ilanot

Once a year the Jewish custom is to say a special blessing on flowering fruit trees...

Liberation and the Land

"An Earth Covenant Perspective on Human Rights" taught at the first Rabbis for Human Rights Conference in NYC.

Longer meditations on Pri Etz Hadar

Imagine a Jewish practice which has the purpose of restoring all the species and creatures, and all the sparks they contain, to the fullness of blessing.

How to make a Kabbalstic Tu Bishvat Seder

Instructions on how to run a seder, how to use the blessing from the first Tu Bishvat seder, and how to use the One-page Haggadah chart.

The Flood

Using the Biblical flood story and how we can keep taking small steps to build an ark against the flood of global warming.

About

Stop the Flood! provides spiritual tools to help people to take personal action, to share what action or change they're doing, and to partner with each other.

Shabbos!

Turn on Shabbos and make the world cooler!

27th of Iyyar

What can we do to commemorate the rainbow covenant of the Noah story? What rituals, liturgies, actions? Read (and record) suggestions here.

The Land Ethic

The essential parts of Aldo Leopold's famous essay, including: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

Kabbalah and Ecology

Reb Duvid's article from The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature

Rambam and the Earth

Maimonides' Guide is the foundation for any Jewish ecotheology.
from The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature

Tashlikh

Tashlikh was written at a time when no one could have imagined that human actions could deplete entire oceans. With meditations on the ocean from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

An environmental Al Chet

For the sin of destroying God's creation...

Conquer her?

"Fill up the land and conquer her" – does the verse really mean that?

An Offering In God's Image

On Shavuot, when we celebrate receiving the Torah, we also celebrate the offering of the first fruits in the Temple, the bikurim. The offering was a supremely humble gesture. Yet without the small, perhaps wrinkled fruit of the bikurim, there could be no offering...

Heart Exercises

Meditations for connecting our hearts to the challenge of confronting global climate change.

Signwave

Make a Commitment!

Yachats: Sharing the Broken Piece

At Yachats we split the middle matsah, inviting the stranger to share a fragment of broken matsah that wouldn't be even enough for one.

Sparks of Pesach

The Besh"t on the Pesach sacrifice and raising the holy sparks.

CF bulbs can be hazardous waste

Did the conservation campaign that gave out CF bulbs in your community tell you that they contain mercury?

Reflections on the IPCC report

The moment when we sense the enormity of consequences is the moment when the realm of Spirit must come to the forefront.

Blessing for the first Tu Bish'vat Seder

From the first published seder, based on the Kabbalah of the four worlds. The seder calls on us to bring blessing to all creation.

Tu Bish'vat wisdom

Three teachings about how holy eating brings blessing to all life and all creatures, submitted by Jacob Fine.

What the mute world is saying

In this world, what is further below branches off from a higher place...

Dominion

Dominion in the Bible is not the anti-environmental concept that both environmentalists and anthropocentrists would imagine...