Sabbatical Year 2007: How to Celebrate
A dvar from Rabbi Jill Hammer on how to use Shmita as inspiration to care for the Earth.
Stop Now! ‘Shmita’ and Climate Change
Shmita is the Torah’s prescription for environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Today, climate change is the biggest threat to sustainability.
The Next Jubilee: A Vision for 2050
Theodor Herzl said that if you will it, it is no dream. What our Earth looks like in the next yovel, or jubilee, year will not happen by accident. Whether our Earth continues to heat up or whether we stem the tide isn’t predetermined — it’s actually up to us. While our present is what we make of it, our future, as Herzl taught us, will be what we make it to be. By our next yovel, if we choose, we can let climate change become the biggest problem ever faced in human history, or we can deal with it and assign it to the dustbin of history. The choice is ours.
Shmita Revolution: The Reclamation and Reinvention of the Sabbatical Year
Jewish observance of shmita (alternatively spelled shemitah)—the sabbatical year, or seventh (sheviit) year—is changing. Historically rooted in agriculture, modern Jewish environmentalists are seizing upon the long-ignored environmental and social justice (tikkun olam) aspects of shmita as originally described in the five books of Moses, the Torah in the Hebrew Bible, the basis of Jewish law.
Toward a Jubilee Economy & Ecology in the Modern World
This is a chapter from Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s book, Godwrestling: Round 2, published by Jewish Lights in 1986.