Earth Day celebrations—hangover or new beginning?

Sure it's easy to find your Tikkun Olam groove around Earth Day. But now we're eating vegetarian and composting raw food and garden scraps, coffee grinds, and more, we feel we're making tangible strides toward helping perfect—or at least protect—creation. We're nowhere near there yet—wherever "there" is—but we're better oriented than we were a year ago. 

I love how Kathy Freston reckons eating vegan impacts the environment: it does more to prevent global warming than buying a Prius. Simple. Here are some more of her many simple-but-telling comparisons: 

• Farmed animals excrete 60 times as much waste per day as the world's human population
  
• It takes 11 times more fossil fuel to make one calorie of animal protein than one calorie of plant protein
  
• Livestock worldwide consumes enough water in 24 hours for every human alive to shower eight times daily
  
• Farmed animals produce 40 percent more harmful emissions than all cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships in the world combined

As composters, we are bumbling neophytes; proud owners of a shiny new Tumbleweed. It's light, was easy to assemble, and seems robust, and while we've not yet produced compost, I'm anticipating or have noticed at least three positive effects. Composting is good for our: 

• Yard, replacing expensive water-saving mulch and, over time, helping turn our Hill Country clay into quality planting soil
  
• Environment, helping us cut back massively on the amount of trash we send to the landfill 
  
• Kids, encouraging them to work in the yard, learn about the environment, and play at science 

Of course we also benefit personally from eating vegetarian and composting—we live more healthful, more interesting, and more joyful lives. But for us, performing Tikkun Olam—in these and many other ways—means carrying out mitzvot, and there's no reason carrying out mitzvot, and living Jewishly, should be anything but joyful. Talk about win-win.

Try to find the joy. Good shabbos.

Let's do Shabbat

You can talk and talk—or blog and blog—but it's doing that makes the difference. So here's some doing: to help build an egalitarian South Austin minyan, we plan to host two informal religious gatherings every month: 

• A family-centric Saturday evening Havdalah and pizza party
  
• A family-friendly Saturday morning learning service 

OK, enough with doing and back to the talk. How might these gatherings look and feel?

 

Havdalah is Havdalah is Havdalah. Kati can lead, I can lead, or anyone else can lead—please. But it takes no great planning and preparation. The service is short and sweet—really sweet; I love Havdalah—and provides the opportunity to share relaxed downtime with a hopefully growing circle of friends on a monthly basis. You bring the ruach, we'll buy the pizza.

 

Saturday morning services require more forethought. Here are some initial ideas—feel free to amend and append:

• Start short and sweet—45 minutes to an hour at most—with hope that interest engenders elongation
  
• Abbreviate the traditional Hebrew liturgy, building consensus around a few central Hebrew prayers—yes many new liturgies are at least in part bilingual and uniquely meaningful to their congregations, but the traditional Hebrew liturgy is an indispensible cultural glue that adheres Jews across space and through time
  
• Consider reading not singing prayers at first, allowing worshipers to learn not only to read and enact the prayers, but also to understand them
  
• Incorporate a brief reading from the week's Torah portion, perhaps even in English, and tie to topical issues
  
• Share responsibility for kids, with different parents volunteering for different services
  
• Make a simple vegetarian Oneg—we'll even provide the Manischewitz

Now is as good a time to start as any. We are happy to provide the impetus, but this must be a shared community in every way—unlike the dogmatic and fiscal autocracies that rule many synagogues. It will work only if everyone makes their voice heard respectfully and respectfully hears the voices of everyone else.

 

Your thoughts?