Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on
Jewish perspectives on moving our money
to support healing, not wounding, the Earth
Rabbi Lawrence Troster has done some of the best work on applying Jewish ethical teachings, including Halakha, to the question of investment in fossil fuels. See:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/beyond-the-letter-o...
On the GreenFaith resource page for its Divest and Reinvest campaign is Troster’s full piece and a document with all the sources that he used:
http://greenfaith.org/programs/divest-and-reinvest/religious-and-moral-r...
Other relevant articles by Troster:
http://www.qscience.com/toc/rels/Environment
http://greenwisdomrabbi.com/?attachment_id=72
For an essay by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Moving Our Money, including some suggestions about why Jewish involvement has been slower than that of similar Protestant communities, see:
https://theshalomcenter.org/content/move-our-money-protect-our-planet-go...
For an essay by Rabbi Eliezer Diamond on eco-Jewish ethics, in a collection on business ethics published by Uri L’tzedek, see:
http://www.utzedek.org/takeaction/campaigns/business-ethics-campaign/990...
US SIF – The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment is the US membership association for professionals, firms, institutions and organizations engaged in sustainable and responsible investing. US SIF and its members advance investment practices that consider environmental, social and corporate governance criteria to generate long-term competitive financial returns and positive societal impact.For more information see:
http://www.ussif.org/climatereinvestment
Broader issues of Judaism and the Earth
For three collections of Jewish texts and essays on the theology and practice of the relationship between humanity and the Earth, see:
Trees, Earth, & Torah: A Tu B’Shvat Anthology (ed. by Ari Elon, Naomi Mara Hyman, & Arthur Waskow; JPS,1999).
Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought (ed. by Arthur Waskow; 2 vols., Jewish Lights, 2000). Included are articles by Rabbis Everett Gendler, Arthur Green, A. J. Heschel, Norman Lamm, David Seidenberg, Michael Lerner, & Fred Scherlinder Dobb; Ellen Bernstein, Jeremy Benstein, Judith Plaskow, Erich Fromm, Elon Schwartz, Evan Eisenberg, & al.
Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word (ed. by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Harvard University Press, 2002).
See Arthur Waskow, Seasons of Our Joy (3d ed.,JPS, 2013); Down-to-Earth Judaism (Morrow, 1995); Godwrestling — Round 2 (Jewish Lights, 1996).
See especially Waskow, “Jewish Environmental Ethics: Adam and Adamah,” in Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality (Dorff & Crane, eds.; Oxford Univ. Press, 2013).
When it becomes available, see David Seidenberg, Ecology and Kabbalah: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2014).
See Arthur Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God & Tradition (Yale University Press, 2010); Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow (Jewish Lights, 2003); Seek My Face: A Jewish Mystical Theology (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2003).
See Evan Eisenberg, The Ecology of Eden (Knopf, 1998).
See Ellen Bernstein, Ecology and the Jewish Spirit (Jewish Lights, 2000).
For Eco-Judaism in fiction, see Marge Piercy, He, She and It (Fawcett, 1991); Bernard Malamud, God’s Grace (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982).
Especially important Websites, see:
https://theshalomcenter.org/treasury/5
http://neohasid.org/stoptheflood/
Rabbi Michael Lerner, Tikkun magazine, and the Network of Spiritual Progressives have developed a proposed “Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment” (ESRA) to the US Constitution as a model for how to deal with the problem of pyramidal top-down unaccountable power that underlies the climate crisis. See:
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/esra-environmental-and-social-responsibili...
