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EcoJewish Action on One Foot
Aytzim and others offer many environmental tips for how together we can help build a more sustainable world. But each of these actions can have vastly different scales of impact. For example, recycling is good, planting your own garden is good, but neither is nearly as impactful in addressing climate change as much as going solar. So how can you prioritize your environmental actions? In the Talmud, Pirkei Avot, ethics of our ancestors, teaches us that the world rests on three things: Torah, service, and kindness (Pirkei Avot 1:2). While proverbially standing on one foot — Jewish shorthand for quickly providing the basis of a complex subject (Shabbat 31a) — the following are three actions for making a positive environmental difference in the world.
Big Changes at Aytzim: WZC and Welcoming Jews of the Earth
While Aytzim’s Green Zionist Alliance will no longer be in the World Zionist Congress, it will continue its mission of education and advocacy about Israel’s environment through resources available at aytzim.org and Jewcology.org as well as, after the coronavirus pandemic has ended, through in-person meetings and public lectures. And the Green Zionist Alliance is only one of the projects in the Aytzim grove. The others are Jewcology.org, the online home of the Jewish-environmental movement; Shomrei Breishit: Rabbis and Cantors for the Earth, a cross-denominational international group for Jewish-clergical environmental advocacy; and EcoJews, a regional group for Jewish-environmental activities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now we are pleased to welcome a fifth project to the Aytzim grove: Jews of the Earth.
EcoJudaism in the Time of the Coronavirus
Covid-19 is not a punishment brought by God for our transgressions against nature; rather Covid-19 is a direct result of our transgressions against nature. In Judaism, the Torah is our guidebook to life. We learn best practices for human behavior. And, we are warned, it is best to maintain a healthy balance with nature because if we do not do so, the results will be deadly for humanity.
Aytzim Brief Statement Against Unilateral Annexation
30 June 2020 / 8 Tammuz 5780
Empowered by a U.S. president facing reelection and courting votes from U.S. evangelical Christians — many of whom see strengthening Israel as key to enabling the New Testament-prophesied "End Times," aka apocalypse and Armageddon with true believers of Jesus raptured to heaven and terrible things happening to nonbelievers — the Israeli government is considering unilaterally annexing parts or all of the West Bank. Regardless of whether or not these lands eventually would become part of Israel as the result of a negotiated two-state solution, unilateral annexation is a mistake, in that it lessens the likelihood of long-term peace in the region, harming both Israelis and Palestinians, and it threatens to extend unjust treatment of Palestinians in perpetuity.
It has been 53 years since Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan in the Six Day War and nearly 27 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords that began steps toward establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. For decades Palestinians in the West Bank have been living under a combination of Israeli martial law and very limited self-rule, without the benefits of Israeli citizenship, and without representation in the Israeli government — a moral failure that should be corrected, not exacerbated. In keeping with Theodor Herzl's vision for a Jewish state that treats all peoples fairly and equally, and in keeping with Jewish laws and customs to treat all peoples fairly and to pursue justice, Aytzim has a long record of supporting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of opposing violating the human rights of Palestinians. Aytzim supports efforts toward peace and justice and condemns efforts that work against peace and justice. Correspondingly, Aytzim opposes plans for Israel's unilateral annexation of part or all of the West Bank and encourages Israeli and Palestinian leadership to return to the negotiating table to reach a lasting agreement for peace in the region.
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