Eco-Meaning of the Sukkot Plants
by Rabbi David Seidenberg
The four species of the lulav [waved in blessing and praise on the holiday of Sukkot] represent the four types of ecosystems in the land of Israel: desert (date palm), hills (myrtle), river corridors (willow), and sh’feilah or lowlands (etrog – agricultural). (more…)
BeMidbar: Finding God in the Wilderness
“My time in the desert has helped me understand why God so often seems to speak to people when they are in the wilderness.”
Rabbi Barry Leff (more…)
My Mother’s Spiritual Journey
My daughter Arielle once bought me a bookmark at a local store, embellished with a quotation from Henry David Thoreou, “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.”I knew that saying from a poster that we had at our Ranch in Texas, that had accompanied a Sierra Club photo book by Eliot Porter. Arielle had not heard the story about it that my late mother, Betty Hilton, retold in a sermon she gave at her synagogue. (My mother became a hospital chaplain in her 70’s, and passed away at age 75.) The sermon was about her own time of “wandering in the wilderness” and not realizing that she was being led. In a sukkah (the symbol of wilderness sojourns), she got a new direction that changed her life.
Gardeners Reflect
Gardener friends share their thoughts on the spiritual meaning of gardening…
AGAMI (a poem)
AGAMI
by Steve Margolin
Shlayma Zalman!
Huh?
Shlayma Zalman!
Passover in the Desert with Wilderness Torah
Passover in the Desert with Wilderness Torah is an annual multi-generational celebration that takes the spring Festival of Freedom back to its wilderness and dessert origins.
Seasons in the Era of Climate Change
by Stephen Jurovics, Ph.D.
Each of the seasons of the year can evoke, for many of us, an image of what we most enjoy about that period. It may be the sequence of warm spring days with clear blue skies during which the outside world exerts a strong pull and diminishes our commitment to work or study, that period we call “spring fever.”
For others, it’s the summer days of sunshine and high temperatures when many leave work to vacation at the beach and enjoy the water, sand, and sunshine.
The familiar images and anticipated enjoyment are inexorably moving towards the remembered and unpredictable. Climate change is transforming everything, including our experiences of the seasons, and those changes will challenge our physical, visual, and emotional lives.
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