New book by Yonassan Gershom opposes using chickens for Kapporos

Richard H. Schwartz's Foreword to 

Kapporos Then and Now:  Toward a More compassionate Tradition

by Yonassan Gershom

 Kol hakavod (kudos) to Rabbi Yonassan Gershom for writing this splendid, much needed book, arguing that Jews should practice the ritual of Kapporos using money rather than chickens.  He is the ideal person to write such a book for many reasons:

1. He is very knowledgeable on Jewish teachings, especially with regard to those about the proper treatment of animals. These include: 

Jews are to be rachmanim b’nei rachmanim (compassionate children of compassionate ancestors), emulating God, Whose compassion is over all His works (Psalms 145:9).

Compassion to animals is a test for righteousness because, as Proverbs 12:10 indicates, “The righteous person considers the life of his or her animals.” 

Compassion to animals is so important in Judaism that it is part of the Ten Commandments, which indicates that animals, as well as people, are to be permitted to rest on the Sabbath day.

A Jew must feed his or her animals before sitting down to a meal. The great Jewish heroes Moses and King David, were deemed suitable to be leaders because of their compassionate treatment of sheep during the time they were shepherds.  In short, Jews are to avoid tsa’ar ba’alei chaim, causing sorrow to animals.

2. Rabbi Gershom is a Breslov Hasid, so he is very familiar with the thinking of Hasidim about the use of chickens for Kapporos.  He is not an outsider who feels he can and should tell practitioners of Kapporos that their practice is irrational and has no redeeming positives.  He recognizes that one cannot change a traditional practice without first understanding what it is, where it came from, and what it means to the practitioners.  So he carefully explains the history of the rite and why Hasidim and other religious Jews find it meaningful.  Most importantly, he eloquently explains how the purpose of seeking compassion from God during the “Ten Days of Repentance” between the start of Rosh Hashanah and the end of Yom Kippur can better be carried out using money rather than chickens.

3.  He and his wife have long lived on a hobby farm where they raise chickens and other animals, consistent with the powerful Jewish teachings on compassion mentioned above.  Hence he is sensitive to how serious the mistreatment of chickens is, before and during the Kapporos ritual.  He explains that while initially the ritual was carried out using chickens that were raised and treated with care by the practitioners, nowadays massive numbers of chickens in cages are transported long distances by trucks, are often not given sufficient food and water, and mishandled during the ritual by people who are not used to handling chickens.   As Rabbi Gershom explains, holding chickens by the wings during the ritual is very hurtful to the birds and they only appear calm because they are playing dead, as they instinctively do when they are attacked by another animal.

4. He properly sees his role as a bridge between animal rights activists, most of whom are secular and/or non-Jewish and often act in ways that are counterproductive, and practitioners of Kapporos, who do not recognize that they are performing a custom based on transgressing Jewish teachings about compassion to animals, and thereby committing an act that is not recognized as positive in the Jewish tradition.

5.  Rabbi Gershom has a very clear, conversational style of writing, scholarly yet very readable, and he explains complex issues very well.  He is careful to put issues in context.  He is not a polemicist, but seeks common ground and solutions.  He uses examples from his own personal experience and also cites authorities.

In summary, he is the ideal person to argue that Jews should use money rather than chickens for Kapporos and he does it splendidly in this groundbreaking book.  I strongly recommend it,  hope it will be widely read, and that his message will be heeded.

You can order your copy now on Lulu.com

Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus, College of Staten Island

Associate producer of the 2007 documentary film,

A Sacred Duty:  Applying Jewish Values to Help the World

Author of:

Judaism and Vegetarianism

Judaism and Global Survival

Mathematics and Global Survival

Who Stole My Religion? Revitalizing Judaism and Applying

              Jewish Values to Help Heal Our Imperiled Planet

And over 200 articles and at JewishVeg.com/schwartz

New edition of "Who Stole My Religion" to be published by Ktav!

I have just signed a contract to publish a new edition with the Ktav publishing house. Therefore, the old Lulu editions, both print and ebook, are now out of print. However, I expect the Ktav edition -- which may include a hardcover! -- will receive a much wider distribution. Watch for it in a year or so!

"Interfaith Power and Light" group connects religion and ecology to focus on Global Warming

by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom

(reprinted with permission from Rabbi Gershom's blog at JewishThoreau.com)

A religious ecology group called Interfaith Power and Light recently sponsored a nationwide "preach-in," focusing on global warming and climate change, and our religious responsibility as stewards of God's Creation. A very nice segment about this group aired on PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly in connection with Earth Day this past weekend, called Religion and the Environment. Featured are members of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim congregations that are focusing on this issue.

Extended interviews with some of the people in the episode are also available online at PBS:

Jewish: Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb,  leader of Adath Shalom synagogue in Washington D.C., a congregation that had become a model for green energy initiatives.

Christian: Reverend Sally Bingham, founder of Interfaith Power and Light.

Muslim: Sarah Jawaid  director of Green Muslims, a relatively new organization seeking to re-connect with Islamic teachings about caring for the environment.

Also mentioned in the PBS segment (to give both sides of the issue) is an anti-ecology video called Resisting the Green Dragon, put out by a  bunch of extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists.  I link to them here only because I think we need to know our enemy. "Know what to answer the unbeliever," says the Talmud.  In this case, the "unbelief" is outright denial that climate change exists or that we are responsible for taking care of God's Creation.  The group also claims that developing green energy is oppressive to the poor -- a stance that I find absurd.  Their full video is not free to view online, but believe me, the 12-minute preview is all you need to get the gist.  UGH!!!

I also find it really strange (or shall we say ignorant?) that they would call ecology a "Green Dragon," given that dragons are a positive symbol of wisdom in Chinese philosophy -- very different from the nasty dragons of Christian mythology that were slain by medieval knights.  One does not kill a Chinese dragon.  In fact, Chinese dragons were once believed to control the weather, and offending a dragon could result in droughts, floods, and famines -- definitely issues connected to global warming.

Now granted, that's just mythology, but such symbolism can be powerful.  So I have no problem with being labeled a Green Dragon -- let's turn the pejorative into a compliment!  And maybe this right-wing group should be called Green Ostriches, since they are putting their heads in the sand about a threat to our planet that affects everyone and everything living on it.

Unfortunately, right-wing Christians are not the only ones with their heads in the sand.  I have run across a lot of climate change denial in the Jewish community as well, especially among the Orthodox, who tend to lean to the Right politically.  I have more than once been told by fellow Hasidim that global warming is a hoax invented by Al Gore.  One of the reasons I founded this blog was to reach out to my fellow religious Jews and say, "Learning Torah includes ecology, too -- if 'the Earth is the Lord's' (Psalm 24:1), then we are offending God by polluting and destroying it."

And so, for my part in Earth Day today, here is the link to my short video "Saving Our Imperiled Planet: Part 1, Earth and Torah,  which deals with why Jews today are often so disconnected from nature and the environment, and my own journey toward reconnecting with the Earth.  There are both historical and spiritual reasons for this disconnect, as well as the very practical reason that most Orthodox Jews nowadays live in urban environments where there is little contact with the outdoors.

I encourage you to check out all these links, and give some serious thought today as to how you are relating to nature within your own spiritual practice.  Let's make every day Earth Day!

(Yonassan Gershom)

Nature Knows No Political Parties

By Rabbi Yonassan Gershom

(Re-posted here with permission from Rabbi Gershom's blog at JewishThoreau.com)

There is a saying in the Talmud that "Once the sword is let loose in the land, it does not distinguish between the innocent and the guilty."  Perhaps a corollary to this should be:  Once a storm is let loose in the land, it does not distinguish between Republicans and Democrats.

Radar map of areas
 affected by Hurricane Sandy,
October 29, 2012

I am referring to the hypocrisy of  the 36 Republican Senators who voted against federal aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy,  yet previously voted for -- even demanded! -- similar aid for disasters in their own states. (See a list of who they are and what they previously voted for).  In Jewish numerology, the number 36 is "double life," but theirs was hardly a humanitarian decision.

To me this vote was the height of hypocrisy.  It makes me wonder why anybody would vote against helping their fellow Americans recover from the worst storm system to hit the East Coast since we have been recording the weather.  Was this in retaliation for New York City Mayor Bloomberg's support of Obama and acknowledgement that global warming is real?

If that sounds like some sort of paranoid conspiracy theory, consider the fact that in 2011 the Republicans on the House Energy Committee voted unanimously to deny the existence of climate change. This was part of a concerted campaign on the part of  the Tea Party to de-legitimize global warming in the minds of the public, starting right after Al Gore won the Nobel Prize for "An Inconvenient Truth." (Watch the PBS documentary "Climate of Doubt")  And they came close to succeeding -- until Hurricane Sandy hit and demonstrated what the scientists have been predicting all along:  Manhattan was going to end up under water.  Suddenly climate change seems very real after all.

This time the water receded, but if the polar ice caps continue to melt, the flooding of the Coast could  become permanent.  2012 marked a new low in the amount of polar ice since the advent of the satellite era (when we could observe the Earth from space.)  And no amount of denial is going to stop the big meltdown if we don't stop pouring CO2 into the atmosphere.

You can't vote science out of existence.  The universe is not a democracy, it simply is what it is.  Nature is no respecter of party politics.  Had we listened to the warnings that scientists have been sounding for decades, we might not be having these devastating (and very expensive!) super-storms now.  I have argued before that climate change -- not Obamacare or Medicare or whatever -- is the biggest threat to our economy.  Those who resist aid to storm victims are often the same people who have been trying to convince us that global warming is a hoax.  But nature does not listen to votes on congressional committees.  Nature just marches on.

It's not too late to begin changing our polluting ways, although turning the situation around is going to take a long time -- if it is even possible at this stage.  Meanwhile, the very least we can do is to help those who are in the path of the storms.

Shame on those 36 Republican Senators!

Climate Change: Sandy as a Teachable Moment

How to Make Hurricane Sandy a Teachable Moment

By Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D.


In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the prime concern now must be to help the many people who are suffering greatly from its effects.

At the same time we should not miss an opportunity when appropriate to respectfully and cordially increase awareness of the many important lessons related to the monstrous storm. 

For example:

1.   Climate change can have disastrous consequences. In addition to the tens of millions of people who are greatly suffering due to Hurricane Sandy, please also consider how food prices are spiking because the US corn crop was devastated as almost 2/3 of the US is suffering from drought, and the many houses lost and acres of forests destroyed due to severe, widespread wildfires in many states. Also, there are great potential dangers at a time when glaciers all over the world and polar icecaps are melting far faster than the worst-case projections of climate scientists.

2.   We may be facing a new normal, with severe heat waves, droughts, wildfires, wild fires, and storms that are more frequent and more severe. Hurricane Sandy is the type of “extreme climate event” that global warming models predict. While some are in denial about the planet warming, we should consider that every decade since the 1970s has been warmer than the previous decade; the ten warmest years since temperature records have been kept have occurred since 1998; July 2012 was the single hottest month for the US since such records were kept in 1995.

3.   It is essential that saving the planetary environment become a central focus for civilization today. Unfortunately, climate change was not even mentioned in the 2012 US presidential and vice presidential debates.

4.   The federal government, through FEMA, can play a very important role in responding to disasters. However, if Mitt Romney had his way, there would be no FEMA and we would have to depend for help on the profit-driven private sector.  Also, the Ryan budget would reduce funding for FEMA as well as many other programs that Americans depend on, mainly to continue and increase tax benefits for the wealthiest Americans and highly profitable corporations.

5.    Republicans are generally in denial about the tremendous dangers from climate change, despite a very strong consensus in over a thousand peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and dire warnings by scientific academies all over the world that climate change is a major threat, largely caused by human activities, and despite the many wake-up calls we have been receiving in terms of severe, sometimes record-breaking, storms, tornados, floods, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires, Anyone who thinks that climate change is a hoax promoted by liberals should visit the website of ConservAmerica (www.ConservAmerica.org), previously called “Republicans for Environmental Protection. This conservative group only endorsed four percent of Republicans in the 2010 U.S. midterm elections, because so many Republicans are in denial about climate change and other environmental threats. Paul Ryan is a climate denier and has a miserable record on the environment.

6.    Governmental workers, including first responders, should be applauded for their courageous, dedicated efforts to respond to emergencies, not demonized, as many Republican politicians have been doing.

Top 10 Reasons Jews Should Vote for Obama

Top 10 Reasons Jews Should Vote for Obama://

by Richard H. Schwartz, author of Who Stole My Religion? 

There has been much discussion recently about which candidate Jews should support for president in 2012. Below are many important reasons that Jews should vote for Obama:

1. Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and other Republicans are promoting policies similar to or often worse than those that had such disastrous results during the George W. Bush administration, including converting a three-year major surplus, which was on track to completely eliminate the total federal debt, into a major deficit, creating very few net jobs (none in the private sector), and leaving the country on the brink of a depression, with an average of 750,000 jobs being lost during its last three months. Over 800,000 on its final month. Like, Bush, they want to reduce taxes for the wealthiest Americans, cut regulations, cut programs that benefit most Americans, and have a very hawkish foreign policy that might involve the US in additional wars. As Bill Clinton put it, “Romney is Bush on steroids.”

2. Republicans have obstructed efforts to get our country out of the tremendous ditch they left us in by voting no on and sometimes filibustering many Democratic proposals, some of which they previously supported and sometimes even co-sponsored. Hence, it is not surprising that a recent poll showed that 49% of Americans believe that Republican Congress members are purposely sabotaging the U.S. economy in order to defeat Obama and other Democrats, while only 40% disagree. Should we reward a Republican Party that is willing to sabotage our economy for its political gain. 3. Republicans support continued tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and highly profitable corporations, while basic social services that middle class and poor people depend on are being cut and teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and others are losing their jobs. During the 2010 lame duck session, every Republican Senator signed a statement indicating that they would not support any legislation unless tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans were continued.Every Republican candidate during the primaries, including Romney, stated that they would not support tax increases even if there were ten dollars of cuts that they supported for every dollar of tax increases.

4. Almost every Republican is in denial about the tremendous dangers from climate change, in spite of a very strong consensus in over a thousand peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and dire warnings by scientific academies all over the world that climate change is a major threat, largely caused by human activities, and the many wake-up calls we have been receiving in terms of severe, sometimes record-breaking, storms, tornadoes, floods, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires, Anyone who thinks that climate change is a hoax promoted by liberals should visit the website of the “Republicans for Environmental Protection” (www.rep.org), recently renamed ConservAmerica. This conservative group only endorsed four percent of Republicans in the 2010 U.S. midterm elections, because so many Republicans are in denial about climate change and other environmental threats. They are not endorsing Romney for president because he has backed away from his previous concern abut climate change as have most Republicans. So far they have only endorsed Scott Brown for a Senate seat in Massachussetts.
Paul Ryan is a climate denier and has a miserable record on the environment. Please check out

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10855-meet-paul-ryan-climate-denier-conspiracy-theorist-koch-acolyte

5. The Republican Party has moved far to the right under the influence of the Tea Party. There are very few moderate Republicans in Congress today. Gone are the days when there were Republican moderates like Jacob Javits, Clifford Case, John Chafee, and Arlen Specter. Significantly, there is only one Jewish Republican member of Congress, while there are about 40 Jewish Democratic Congressional members. The Republican controlled House has a positive rating from only about 12% of Americans because of their very reactionary stands on economic, environmental, and social issues.

6. Obama’s election is essential in order to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from becoming even more conservative. There are now three justices who are in the mid-seventies, including Ruth Beder Ginsberg, who is not in good health. So, it is likely that the next president will have one or more Supreme Court picks. If a Republican president makes them, it would mean a very conservative Supreme Court for decades. The current Supreme court has struck a blow against democracy by permitting groups to spend unlimited amounts of money to support candidates.

7. Republicans are, in effect, waging a war against women. They have opposed legislation that would provide women with equal pay for equal work. Their platform opposes abortion in all cases, even if rape or incest is involved or the life of the mother is threatened. Paul Ryan and almost all Republicans have supported and in many cases co-sponsored legislation that would ban abortion in all cases and even contraception.

8. While far more needs to be done, Democrats have enacted policies that have turned the economy away from the possible depression that the Bush administration left the U.S. on the brink of. More net private-sector jobs have been created already during the Obama administration than during the entire eight years of the Bush presidency. While 800,000 jobs were being lost when Obama entered office, there now has been positive job growth in 31 consecutive months, and almost 5 million new jobs have been created during that period. The Obama administration has also had success in foreign policy, including ending the war in Iraq, killing Osama bin Laden, weakening al Qaeda. By contrast, Romney has made several gaffes in his statements about foreign policy. While Democratic policies have not always lived up to our hopes, largely due to Republican obstructionism, a return to Republican rule would be a nightmare.

9. Obama has taken many positive actions for Israel including: rejecting the Goldstone report that criticized Israeli actions in the war in Gaza; asking Congress to approve a $205 million package to help Israel build a new anti-missile defense system; successfully advocating for Israel’s admission into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; giving a speech in the heart of the Arab world, in which he told his listeners that they need to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state; stating to the UN General Assembly clearly and unequivocally that “Israel is a sovereign state and the historic homeland of the Jewish people” and “It should be clear to all that efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakable opposition of the US.”

Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have stated many times that the U.S. has been extremely cooperative in meeting Israel’s security needs. Another example of Obama’s strong support for Israel is his very positive response to a frantic, middle-of-the-night call from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that helped free six Israelis who were trapped in the Israeli embassy in Cairo that was under attack by militant Egyptians. After they were freed, Netanyahu said: "I would like to express my gratitude to the President of the United States, Barack Obama. I asked for his help. This was a decisive and fateful moment. He said, “I will do everything I can.” And so he did. He used every considerable means and influence of the United States to help us. We owe him a special measure of gratitude. This attests to the strong alliance between Israel and the United States."

On September 22, 2011, Prime Minister Netanyahu heaped additional praise on President Obama for his talk at the United Nations, in which Obama expressed opposition to U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state, and indicated that he would veto a resolution supporting that recognition in the U.N. Security Council. Netanyahu indicated that Obama deserved a “badge of honor” for that talk.

10. President Obama has had a very positive relationship with Jews: his initial chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was Jewish and the son of Israelis; his present chief of staff Jack Lew is an Orthodox Jew; one of his key advisers David Axlerod, is Jewish, and he is also a key strategist for Obama’s reelection campaign; Obama nominated a Jew, Elana Kagan, as a Supreme Court Justice (even though that left the 9-member Court with three Jews and no Protestant members; he is the first president to have Passover Seders in the White House; Obama refused to send US representatives to Durban conferences, since they have espoused antisemitism; and Obama and his cabinet members have frequently stressed their solidarity with Jews and with Israel

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Outline of President Obama’s accomplishments, with citations:

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/13282-a-list-of-president-obamas-accomplishments

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Activist Ideas: 18 Ways to Help Heal Our Imperiled Planet

Now that the High Holy Days are over and we have all resolved to lead better lives this year, I thought I would share an excerpt from Who Stole My Religion? with 18 practical things you can do to help heal our imperiled planet:

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In attempting to change the world, sometimes we have to start by first changing ourselves.  Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the mussar (ethics) movement in Lithuania, taught: “First a person should put his house together, then his town, then his world.”

 If you feel that global crises are so overwhelming that your efforts will have little effect, then consider the following. Judaism teaches: “You are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it” (Pirkei Avot 2:21). Each of us must make a start and do whatever he or she can to help improve the world.  Judaism also teaches that a person is obligated to protest when there is evil and, if necessary, to proceed from protest to action.  Each person is to imagine that the world is evenly balanced between good and evil, and that each good deed tips the whole world toward the side of good.  Therefore, her or his actions can determine the destiny of the entire world.  Even if little is accomplished right away, the act of trying to make improvements will prevent the hardening of one’s heart and will affirm acceptance of an obligation to try to improve conditions.  Even the act of consciousness-raising itself is important, because it may lead to future action for change.

 In considering how much to become involved, please consider that the world is arguably approaching climate, food, energy, water, and other environmental catastrophes, as well as other threats.  Consider how essential it is that major changes soon be made so that future generations will have a decent world in which to live.

Here are some things that each person can do:

1.  Become well informed. Learn the facts about current environmental and other societal problems and the applicable Jewish teachings from this and other books.

2.  Check rumors you receive by email against the facts before passing them on to others.  Snopes.com is an excellent resource for verifying whether or not a particular Internet rumor is a hoax.  Remember: Spreading lashon hara (evil gossip) is forbidden, and this includes material you receive by email.

3.  Help elect candidates whose positions are most consistent with Jewish progressive values and environmental concerns.  Join their campaigns and, of course, vote for them.

4.  Inform others.  Write timely letters to editors of publications. Set up programs and discussions. Become registered with community, library, or school speakers’ bureaus.  Wear a button. Put bumper stickers where many people will see them. Make and display posters.

5.  Simplify your life-style.  Conserve energy.  Recycle materials.  Buy and wear used clothing.  Bike or walk whenever possible, rather than drive, and learn to combine errands on your trips.  Share rides.  Use mass transit when appropriate.

6.  Become a vegetarian, and preferably a vegan, or at least sharply reduce your consumption of animal products.  As discussed in Chapter 12 of Who Stole My Religion, veganism is the diet most consistent with such Jewish values as showing compassion to animals, taking care of one’s health, preserving the environment, sharing with hungry people, conserving natural resources, and pursuing peace.  Even if you don’t feel you can give up meat right now, try having a meatless day each week, when you try new recipes at home, or eat out in a vegetarian restaurant.

7.  Work with organizations and groups on some of the significant issues.  If your time is limited, then choose one issue that interests you and devote yourself to that.  For contact information for Jewish groups working on such issues, see Appendices D and E. If there are no local groups or if you differ with such groups on some important issues, set up a group in your synagogue, Jewish Center, or Hillel.

8.  Encourage your public and congregational libraries to order, stock, and circulate books on global issues and Jewish teachings related to them. Donate any duplicate copies. Request that libraries regularly acquire such books. Subscribe to relevant magazines, and, if you can afford it, buy some to donate.

9.  Speak or organize events with guest speakers and/or audio-visual presentations on how Jewish values address current critical issues. Consider requesting a complimentary DVD of the documentary film, A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World at aSacredDuty.com  Schedule a showing of the film at your synagogue or other organization.  Offer it to your local film festival or other arts event.

10.  Ask rabbis and other religious leaders to give sermons and/or classes discussing Judaism’s teachings on social justice, sustainability, hunger, peace, conservation, and other Jewish values and how they can be applied to current issues.

11.  Contact editors of local newspapers and ask that more space be devoted to current threats and on religious teachings related to them.  Write articles and letters using information from this book and other books and magazines.

12.  Try to influence public policy on the issues.  Organize letter-writing campaigns and group visits to politicians to lobby for a safer, saner, more stable world.  Run for office if you feel inclined to do so.  Members of city counsels, school boards, and other local institutions can have a big impact.  Think globally, act locally.

13.  Consult with rabbis and religious educators and leaders on how to apply to today’s critical issues such Jewish mandates as “seek peace and pursue it,” “bal tashchit” (you shall not waste), “justice, justice shall you pursue,” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Ask principals of yeshivas and day schools to see that their curricula reflect traditional Jewish concerns with environ-mental, peace, and justice issues.  Volunteer to speak to classes and to help plan curricula. 

14.  As an outgrowth of Jewish teachings on helping feed hungry people and conserving resources, work to end the tremendous amount of waste associated with many Jewish organizational functions and celebrations:

•  Encourage friends and institutions to simplify, reduce wastefulness, and serve less lavish celebratory feasts.  Put this into practice at your own celebrations.
•  Request that meat not be served, since the production of meat wastes grain, land, and other resources and contributes substantially to pollution, deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. Refraining from eating meat also expresses identification with the millions of people who lack an adequate diet, as well as the billions of farmed animals slaughtered each year.
•  Reclaim left over edible food from simchas to donate to shelters and food kitchens.  Recommend to people hosting a celebration that they donate a portion of the cost of the event to Mazon (an organization discussed in Appendix D) or another group working to reduce hunger.

15.  Start a community garden, or participate in one already established.  As much as possible, buy your food from local farmers’ markets.  Volunteer at a homeless shelter or food shelf program.  Encourage your children to go with you, so they develop the habit of caring for others less fortunate than themselves.

16.  Help set up a committee to analyze and reduce energy consumption in your synagogue.  Apply steps taken to reduce synagogue energy use as a model for similar action on other buildings and homes in the community.

17.  Set up a social action committee at your synagogue, temple, Jewish Center, day or afternoon school, or campus, to help people get more involved in educational and action-centered activities. Build coalitions with other social justice groups in your community.

18.  Raise the consciousness of your synagogue and other local Jewish organizations and individuals about how Jewish teachings can be applied to respond to current societal problems.  Ask respectful but challenging questions such as those discussed in Chapter 15 of Who Stole My Religion.

(Excerpted and adapted from Who Stole My Religion?:  Revitalizing Judaism and Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal Our Imperiled Planet by Richard H. Schwartz with Yonassan Gershom.)