A Day of Learning and Action

Beginning with an environmental Torah study, we will spend the day together learning and connecting.

Following lunch, there will be plenary sessions with the Rev. Mariama White Hammond of Bethel AME Church and author Mitchell Thomashow. The day will conclude with Havdalah.

9-11 a.m. – Torah study with Rabbi Zecher, Rabbi Jacobson, and Cantor Einhorn

11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m. – Plenary session with Mitchell Thomashow: Wonder Reciprocity and Response: How Heschel’s Depth Theology Provides Guidance for Environmental Challenges

• Environmental challenges such as climate change, species extinction, and threats to biodiversity raise fundamental questions about human survival, meaning and purpose. Environmental and social activists, in living with these challenges, navigate four existential tensions: the relationships between creation and extinction, hope and foreboding, wonder and indifference, faith and doubt. Heschel’s “depth theology” offers extraordinary insight into these psycho-spiritual questions. His notions of reverence, awe, wonder, reciprocity, and response provide activists and educators with remarkable spiritual support and guidance. This talk will explain why and how Heschel’s work is vital for contemporary environmental thought.

12:15-1 p.m. – Lunch

1:15-2:15 p.m. – Plenary session with the Rev. Mariama White Hammond of Bethel AME Church: Answering the Call – The Faith Response to the Ecological Crisis

2:15-3:15 p.m. – First block of workshops

Workshop options:

1. Singing for Our Lives: The Power of Prayer & Song in Climate Action (Rabbi Shoshana Friedman)

2. Analysis of Hope (Harvey Michaels and Susan Israel)

3. The Three Rs and How to Make them as Easy as ABC in Your Life (Sharon Bort)

4. Heschel’s Aphorisms and What They Can Teach Us about Caring for the Earth (Mitch Thomashow)

5. Greening your Congregation (buildings and members) or Business: A TI Case Study (Leon Glicksman and Dan Deutsch)

6. Our Relationship to the Land (Leora Mallach)

3:30-4:30 p.m. – Second block of workshops

Workshop options:

1. Ask the Experts: Green Electricity, Electric/Hybrid Vehicles, Green Electricity, LEDs, MASS SAVE Audits, Sea Level Rise, Solar Power, and More! (David Lowe, Andrew Klein, Sharon Bort, Harvey Michaels, Leon Glicksman, Jen Bender)

2. Communicating Climate to Bridge the Divide (Susan Israel)

3. From Genocide to Ecocide: Learning from the Holocaust (Roger Gottlieb)

4. Getting Unstuck: Using our Faith and Community to Move Past Despair (Rabbi Shoshana Friedman)

5. Currently Pending State and Federal Legislative Proposals Relating to Climate Change (Nancy Israel)

6. Hands-On Art Workshop (Lisa Goren)

4:45-5:30 p.m. – Snacks, followed by Havdalah led by Temple Israel Clergy

Childcare will be available Saturday afternoon – Please register here!