Tag: climate change

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CCAR Convention Convention

CCAR Convention 2020: Acting Upon the Jewish Moral Imperative to Confront Climate Change

If you are anything like me, I imagine you strive to reduce your harm on the environment. Perhaps you bring reusable bags to the supermarket or limit your use of single use plastic and paper products. Maybe you compost or drink coffee from a reusable travel mug.  

And yet, if you are anything like me, despite having made some or all of these personal lifestyle changes, you feel that these small tweaks to your daily routines aren’t enough. Large scale systemic changes are what’s needed to positively impact the future of our fragile planet. 

This year at CCAR Convention in Baltimore, I am thrilled that we’ll dive deep into both the small scale actions we can take and the systemic changes we can fight for to truly be spiritual leaders on the devastating issue of climate change. 

On Wednesday morning, Karenna Gore, activist, advocate, and Director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary will inspire us as religious leaders with her moral and ethical vision for climate justice. After learning from her, we’ll gather for workshops that give us tools and strategies to take back home and implement locally. Topics will include: clean and accessible water, rising sea levels, and we’ll also learn from experts at Baltimore’s National Aquarium. 

Choni the Circle Maker from Taanit 23 famously states that he plants a tree, not for his own benefit but for the good of generations to come. In doing so, Choni reminds us of the urgency of working today to benefit the future. But have you read the end of this Choni parable? There, we learn that when Choni makes his infamous time travel journey 70 years into the future, upon visiting the Beit Midrash, no one recognizes him, and he is left alone. He cries out in pain from the grief he feels of being left out. This ending to the story gives us an equally important moral about the need for community. Choni reminds us that we cannot act effectively when we are alone. We need each other.

This idea certainly rings true for me as a solo clergy in a small congregation and as a Hillel rabbi on a local campus. At Convention, I draw energy and strength from being with you all and feeling that together we can raise our voices to positively impact our fragile planet, its plants, animals, and human beings.

If you haven’t yet registered for this year’s Convention, please consider joining us. It will be a better Convention with you there.

I look forward to seeing you all in Baltimore!

Rabbi Lisa Vinikoor is the rabbi of Beth Israel Congregation in Bath, Maine and Bowdoin College and a member of the CCAR Convention committee. CCAR Convention 2020 will be held in Baltimore, March 22–25, 2020. 

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Social Justice

Digging Into the Second Justice: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

A Note to Rabbis About The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 

“Justice, justice, you shall pursue” (Deuteronomy 20:16) is the baseline of Jewish social justice work. It is our oft-repeated mantra that undergirds our fight for everything from trans-inclusion to gun violence prevention. And yet, how often do we dig into the second justice? When do we really consider what it means that our text tells us not “justice you shall pursue” but “justice, justice”? I believe that this second justice represents a second level of obligation, a level that speaks directly and inherently to our need as Jews to champion climate change.

In the pursuit of justice, we find ourselves “championing the poor and the needy” (Proverbs 31:9) on a micro-level. Justice-justice requires a more systemic approach, beyond giving to charity or advocating for policies to protect folks experiencing homelessness in our cities. The “poor and the needy” immediately require clothes and shelter, but their lives are also fundamentally shaped by global food and water scarcities due to rising sea levels and shifting weather patterns.

In Leviticus 19:34, we read that we should “welcome in the stranger.” Justice alone would have us allow entry of immigrants and refugees into our borders, while justice-justice requires us to look at the wars and famines that are causing people to flee their homes. In short, our Jewish obligation to pursue justice is more than case-by-case direct service work, but is a call to combat system structures of inequality, like the industrial greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global climate disruption.

Next month, I will be joining a delegation of young faith leaders to attend The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, France. I am the manager of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life and will be there representing the Jewish community. Our delegation, comprised of myself along with Muslim, Mennonite, and Zoroastrian lay leaders along with a Baptist preacher, mirrors the spirit of the UNFCCC.

The UNFCCC is perhaps the only governmental mechanism that has a real shot at addressing and combating a problem as large and inter-national as climate change. The conference lasts for two weeks and includes representatives from both developed and developing countries. The hope is that by the end of negotiations, there will emerge an international agreement on emissions reductions.

In the same way that the UN represents international collaboration, we aim to act as an interfaith group, learning from each other and bringing climate mitigation practices and our moral imperative to care for our planet and fellow human beings back to our respective faith communities. While there, we’ll join pop-up prayer vigils, the People’s Pilgrimage, and climate protests. We’ll also be speaking to Parisians and decision-makers who will gather at the conference to make some of the most important policy calls of our time in order to bring them the voice of faithful ethics that informs our climate change advocacy.

One of the most important things that the faith community and in particular our Jewish rabbinic leadership, can do ahead of this paradigm-shifting conference, is to show their support for a strong international agreement. Rabbis have the unique ability to pass on this connection between the issues happening in the world around us and our sacred text to your congregations. Reform Jewish leaders have a critical role to play in giving voice to our moral obligation to act on climate change, and to protect the poor and the needy, not only in the immediate ways in which we are well-versed, but also with our eye to a second “justice.”

You can sign the Paris pledge, asking our leaders to act on climate at the UNFCCC here.

For more resources and materials on Jewish environmentalism, you can also check out the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life website here.

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Guest Blogger Liya Rechtman is the Manager of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL),  and a Policy Associate of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. She is also co-chair of the Washington Inter-religious Staff Council’s Energy and Environment Working Group. CCAR is a member of COEJL.