Dear chevra, dear rebbeim, dear co-signers of “Elijah’s Covenant Between the Generations to Heal our Endangered Earth” -- 

One of the forms of action that “Elijah’s Covenant “urges is that we draw in activist ways on the deep meanings of the Jewish festivals, in order to end the climate crisis.  – All the festivals were born of the fruitful embrace between the Jewish people and the sacred dance of Earth/ Moon/ Sun.  Now we need to draw on these children of Earth to heal the mother that birthed them.

There is still time to celebrate Tu B’Shvat, ReBirthDay of Trees and of the Tree of Life, this way. Here are three items on The Shalom Center‘s website, to help ypu do this:

https://theshalomcenter.org/content/trees-earth-justice-tu-bshvat-seder-if-all-3-really-matter

https://theshalomcenter.org/content/tu-bshvat-seder-planet-poetry-and-power

https://theshalomcenter.org/tu-bshvat-reforesting-earth-heal-both-poverty-climate

AND – it is already time to turn our attention to Pesach, beginning with the first Seder on Wednesday evening April 8. In some ways it starts even earlier, on the Full Moon of the Spring moonth of Nisan --  Wednesday evening March ;

Even yet more strongly, the atmosphere of pharaonic tyranny danger bringing plagues upon Earth as well as human society becomes tangible on the Shabbat just before Pesach. Through the Prophetic Haftarah (Malachi chapter 3, the last words of the last of the classic ancient Prophets), we hear that –

“A day is coming that will burn like a furnace, turning to ashes the wicked who spurn my Name. But to those who revere My Name --  [YyyyHhhhWwwwwHhhh, the Interbreathing Spirit of all life, the Great Wind of Change]  --  a sun of justice with healing in the beating of its wings [solar and wind power?] will  become the remedy.  And I [YHWH] will send you Elijah the Prophet to turn the hearts of parents to children and the hearts of children to parents, lest I come [as a Hurricane of calamity] to bring utter disaster upon Earth.”

Our commitment to Elijah’s Covenant is exactly our commitment to turn our hearts to each other through intergenerational action. What can it mean as we approach this Passover?

For example -- could it mean marching alongside Christians on Palm Sunday with matzot – MLK’s “fierce urgency of Now” -- and palm branches --  Life renewed – in our hands as we challenge Congress or a New York bank to act to heal our wounded Earth and human kin?

Could it mean taking the Ten Days before Passover to face each day one of the Ten Plagues facing our own generation?

Could it mean shaping a Passover Seder that itself is an embodiment of the world reborn in justice, Earth reborn as a conscious ecosystem?

Could it mean – and here we pause to say, We ask the question and we ask you to answer. Please click on Reply and write us – what would you want to do to challenge modern pharaohs and create the Beloved Community, the Promised Earth, during the weeks before Passover and Holy Week?