Shalom everyone,
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
1. Best Wishes for a Joyous Sukkot
2. Jewish Climate Campaign Pledge
3. Talk on Protecting Waterways of Israel and Neighbors Scheduled
4. Help Get A SACRED DUTY shown on Your Local TV Channel
5. Israeli Conservative Jews Join Fight Against Kapparot
6. Israeli Chief Rabbi Speaks Out Against Cruelty During the Kapparot Ritual
7. JVNA Advisor Videotapes Recent Kapparot Ceremonies
8. Blog on Kapparot
9. National Public Radio Has a Segment on Kapparot
10. Temperature Increase Projections Worsen
11. Ecokosher Entering the Mainstream?
12. Article Considers the Ethics of Meat
13. Article Urges that Money Rather Than Chickens Be Used for Kapparot Ritual
14. More Climate Change-Related Articles
15. Israeli Vegetarian Activist Biking in Support of Children With Disabilities
16. New Podcast Has JVNA Vice President Noam Mohr Discussing Animal-Based Agriculture’s Connections to Climate Change
17. Paul Krugman Op-Ed Article on Urgency of Climate Change Responses
18. Two Great Power Points Relate Meat-Eating to Global Climate Change
19. Northern Ice Melting Accelerating
20. Article Presents Jewish Case for Vegetarianism/My Posting
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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1. Best Wishes for a Joyous Sukkot
The joyous harvest festival of Sukkot begins Friday evening at sundown. My article on “Sukkot and Vegetarianism” is in the festivals section at www.JewishVeg.com. Please use the material in that articles and other related material for talking points. Thanks.
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2. Jewish Climate Campaign Pledge
http://www.jewishclimatecampaign.org/pledge.php
[I signed, and I urge you to do so also.]
Jewish Climate Campaign Pledge
The Pledge
284 people have signed so far
The task at hand is to rally Jewish communities worldwide to make a difference on climate change in a way that strengthens Jewish life and helps make a better world for all.
On November 2nd 2009 The Alliance for Religions and Conservation is hosting a program for the world's faiths to present their plans for generational change in the face of climate change. ARC has asked Hazon to manage the program for the Jewish faith, and the result is this campaign.
The medium-term goal is that by September 2015, six years from now (at the end of the next sabbatical year in the Jewish calendar), Jewish communities worldwide will have integrated sustainability into the fabric of all that they do.
In the short-term, the UN Climate Change Conference takes place this December in Copenhagen.
The intent of the Jewish Climate Change Campaign is that it be simple enough that a person can immediately sign the pledge and take one or two specific actions, yet substantive enough that it sets in motion serious change over a six-year period.
By the time of the Copenhagen Conference we hope to have galvanized worldwide support. Jewish institutions will be able to utilize this energy to integrate environmental education, action and advocacy over the following years.
YES: I believe that the Jewish People can and should play a distinct role in responding to climate change and fostering sustainability between now and September 2015 (the end of the next 7-year sabbatical cycle in the Jewish calendar);
YES: I call on all Jewish organizations, small and large, to create Green Teams that will draw up seven-year goals to effect change and specific steps to get started this year;
YES: I believe we must integrate education, action and advocacy. So I commit every month to learn more about the environment and about Jewish teachings on sustainability; to act by making more sustainable choices; and to advocate for generational change by speaking up to friends, family members, colleagues and opinion-leaders;
YES: I'll write to my elected representatives "I call on you and our government to build a more sustainable global economy; to support the creation of green jobs; to prioritize protecting vulnerable populations; and to ensure that the UN Climate Change Conference creates the strongest possible framework to ameliorate climate change."
YES: I hope 600,000[1] Jewish people join me in signing this pledge. Please add my name to the list.
Sign the pledge
[1] Why 600,000? It's a large number; and in Jewish tradition there's a special blessing if 600,000 people come together. But what's most important is that this be a really large number of people - to make plain to Jewish leaders and the wider world that Jewish people care strongly about these issues.
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3. Talk on Protecting Waterways of Israel and Neighbors Scheduled
GIDON BROMBERG
Protecting Water at the Grassroots: Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians Working Together
Monday, October 26, at 6:00 pm at Hadassah, 50 West 58th Street, New York, NY
Gidon Bromberg is a former NIF Law Fellow and the founder of Friends of the Earth-Middle East. Hear about the environmental challenges Israel and the region face, and the opportunities to promote cooperation at a community level to advance sustainable development and create necessary conditions for lasting peace.
This event is presented by the Sierra Club, New York City Group, and is co-sponsored by Friends of the Earth-Middle East, Hadassah, Hazon, and the New Israel Fund.
RSVP for this event online or call us at 212-613-4400.
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4. Help Get A SACRED DUTY shown on Your Local TV Channel
“A Sacred Duty” was recently shown on MNN1 channel 34 in Manhattan.
Please contact your local community TV stations and ask if they would show the movie. We would be happy to provide complimentary DVDs. Thanks.
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5. Israeli Conservative Jews Join Fight Against Kapparot
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1253198168254&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
This is just one example (several more are below) of what seems to be a trend toward using money rather than chickens for the kapparot ritual. Hopefully, the momentum will continue next year.
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6. Israeli Chief Rabbi Speaks Out Against Cruelty During the Kapparot Ritual
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3780402,00.html
The Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger indicated that he plans to issue a rabbinic paper re kapparot. Some time ago he issued a decision that Israel should not import furs from China where animals are skinned alive. So he seems sensitive to animal issues. I met with him a few years ago and I hope to do so again. I think he should be asked to issue a responsa (rabbinic response to a question) on vegetarianism. Suggestions welcome. Thanks.
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7. JVNA Advisor Videotapes Recent Kapparot Ceremonies
Rina Deych’s video about kapparot in Crown Heights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpTTk-o88-I&feature=channel_page
Kudos to Rina for her courageous work challenging practitioners of kapparot with chickens to switch to the use of money.
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8. Blog on Kapparot
http://gothamist.com/2009/09/24/kaparot.php
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9. National Public Radio Has a Segment on Kapparot
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113179433&sc=emaf
Kudos to Orthodox rabbi Shlomo Segal for speaking out for the application of Judaism’s compassionate teachings on animals.
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10. Temperature Increase Projections Worsen
Why our efforts are increasingly important:
New Analysis Brings Dire Forecast Of 6.3-Degree Temperature Increase
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 25, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092402602.html
Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world's leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a much faster and broader scale of change than forecast just two years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program.
The new overview of global warming research, aimed at marshaling political support for a new international climate pact by the end of the year, highlights the extent to which recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.
Robert Corell, who chairs the Climate Action Initiative and reviewed the UNEP report's scientific findings, said the significant global temperature rise is likely to occur even if industrialized and developed countries enact every climate policy they have proposed at this point. The increase is nearly double what scientists and world policymakers have identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in order to avert catastrophic climate change.
"We don't want to go there," said Corell, who collaborated with climate researchers at the Vermont-based Sustainability Institute, Massachusetts-based Ventana Systems and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to do the analysis. The team has revised its estimates since the U.N. report went to press and has posted the most recent figures at ClimateInteractive.org.
The group took the upper-range targets of nearly 200 nations' climate policies -- including U.S. cuts that would reduce domestic emissions 73 percent from 2005 levels by 2050, along with the European Union's pledge to reduce its emissions 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 --and found that even under that optimistic scenario, the average global temperature is likely to warm by 6.3 degrees.
World leaders at the July Group of 20 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, pledged in a joint statement that they would adopt policies to prevent global temperature from climbing more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit: "We recognize the broad scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed two degrees C."
Corell, who has shared these findings with the Obama administration as well as climate policymakers in China, noted that global carbon emissions are still rising. "It's accelerating," he said. "We're not going in the right direction."
Achim Steiner, UNEP's executive director, told reporters at the National Press Club on Thursday that the report aims to update the IPCC's 2007 findings to reflect both new physical evidence and a more sophisticated understanding of how Earth systems work.
"With every day that passes, the underlying trends that science has provided is . . . of such a dramatic nature that shying away from a major agreement in Copenhagen will probably be unforgivable if you look back in history at this moment," Steiner said. He noted that since 2000 alone, the average rate of melting at 30 glaciers in nine mountain ranges has doubled compared with the rate during the previous two decades.
"These are not things that are in dispute in terms of data," he said. "They are actually physically measurable."
Other findings include the fact that sea level might rise by as much as six feet by 2100 instead of 1.5 feet, as the IPCC had projected, and the Arctic may experience a sea-ice summer by 2030, rather than by the end of the century.
While the administration is pressing this week for an end to fossil-fuel subsidies as part of the current G-20 summit in Pittsburgh -- and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told reporters Thursday that world leaders appear open to such a proposal -- activists such as 350.org director Bill McKibben said politicians worldwide are not taking aggressive enough steps to address climate change.
"Here's where we are: The political system is not producing at the moment a result which has anything to do with what the science is telling us," said McKibben, whose group aims to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, well below the 450 ppm target that leaders of the Group of 20 major nations have embraced.
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-sponsor of the House-passed climate bill that researchers included as part of their new temperature analysis, said, "As sobering as this report is, it is not the worst-case scenario. That would be if the world does nothing and allows heat-trapping pollution to continue to spew unchecked into the atmosphere."
Michael MacCracken, one of the scientific reviewers for the IPCC and a contributor to the UNEP report, said that if developed nations cut their emissions by half and the developing countries continued on their current path, or vice versa, the world would still experience a temperature increase of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050.
"We face a situation where basically everybody has to do everything they can," MacCracken said.
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11. Ecokosher Entering the Mainstream?
Thanks to rabbi Arthur Waskow (and JVNA advisor Arthur Poletti) for forwarding this article:
From today's front page of the Phila Inquirer -- our daily metropolitan newspaper.
Shalom, salaam, shantih --- peace, Arthur
'Ecokosher' is finding a place at the table
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20090927__Ecokosher__is_finding_a_place_at_the_table.html
New dietary standards commit to treating workers, animals, and Earth with care.
By Dianna Marder
Inquirer Staff Writer
[Unfortunately, vegetarianism is not even mentioned in this article. Too radical? We have to keep sending articles and letters and spreading our message in more creative ways.]
For centuries, rabbis have taught that the kitchen table is an altar.
By this they mean that drawing food from the Earth, preparing it for the table, and eating it is part of a covenant with God - an understanding that we must not defile the Earth or ourselves.
But a growing number of Jews are questioning whether the traditional Jewish dietary laws go far enough and are spawning a national, distinctly Jewish, food movement, with roots in Philadelphia, known as ecokosher.
"The kosher laws actually have nothing to do with sustainable agriculture, treating workers fairly, protecting the air and the water - any of that," says Robin Rifkin, a member of Kol Ami Congregation in Elkins Park. "And that's what we're concerned about."
A small but increasing number of Jews across the usual denominational lines of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform are feeling an obligation to confront these ethical issues in a variety of ways.
And, in a revolutionary effort, like-minded Jews nationwide are launching a new uber-kosher symbol that could appear on food products as early as next year - a symbol of ethical responsibility demonstrating a manufacturer's commitment to treating workers, animals, and the Earth with care.
"The emphasis now is on what it really means for a particular food to be fit to eat," says Mark Kaplan, a Reform Jew who does not keep kosher but who helped Rifkin start a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program with weekly produce deliveries from local farms to their synagogue in Elkins Park.
Main Line Reform Temple in Wynnewood hopes to form a CSA with its neighbor Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, and Rabbi David Straus recently told his congregants that they face a moral and spiritual responsibility to be proper stewards of the environment - an idea he calls eco-theology.
As the Jewish community marks the new year 5770 with a 24-hour fast that begins at sunset, the People of the Book are sounding more like the People of the Land.
Rooted in the '70s
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi coined the term ecokosher - building on the significance of Jewish dietary laws - in the 1970s. A quirky rabbi who started his career as an ultra-Orthodox, he had become versed in Jewish mysticism, the American Indian Shundahai Network, and Chinese feng shui by the time he retired to Boulder, Colo.
All that only served to make him more respected, and now Rabbi Arthur Waskow carries on at the Shalom Center in Mount Airy, bringing spiritual-based ecological teachings to the masses.
The message has resonated much more widely in recent years as it has played off the secular fresh-food movement heralded by Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food).
Estimating the size of the Jewish food movement is nearly impossible, Waskow says. But it is likely to expand on or after Oct. 24, which is designated worldwide as Climate-Healing Sabbath, a day of prayer and education devoted to ecological issues on the day the Torah portion concerns Noah and the flood.
That event, too, is Philadelphia-centric, as the idea sprang from the Germantown Jewish Center on Lincoln Drive. [Actually sprang from The Shalom Center; Rabbi Leonard Gordon of GJC took it into the Conservative movement and got it endorsed by them. -- AW] [Actually, it really started with JVNA, but I am happy to have larger groups spearheading the effort.]
In recent years, ecokosher thinking has sprouted at least a half-dozen national programs, among them the Jewish Farm School in West Philadelphia, which has classes for adults and Philadelphia schools on organic gardening and sustainability.
Some people in the movement are members of synagogues and some are not, Waskow says. But all seem to agree that the adage "you are what you eat" has never been more accurate, more essential, or more in need of a faith-based perspective.
Shamu Fenyvesi Sadeh, director of Adamah, a three-month Jewish farming fellowship in Connecticut for college grads, says food and agriculture are entry points, "a gateway to Jewish values."
That's the driving force, too, behind Hazon, which hosts an annual Jewish food conference and a blog called "The Jew and the Carrot" (jcarrot.org), and supports CSA programs.
John Edgar belongs to the Hazon-affiliated CSA at Temple Kol Ami, which is in its third year. (CSAs - in which members prepay for the growing season and get weekly baskets of fruits and vegetables from a local farm - help ensure survival for small farms.)
Every Thursday evening, Edgar, with his 2-year-old son, William, in tow, collects his share. One week, his baskets are filled with corn, tomatoes, and spaghetti squash; another week, carrots, beets, red peppers, and lettuce.
While this CSA sees itself as part of the Jewish food movement, it does not necessarily promote keeping kosher. And Edgar, who is pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Elkins Park, is proof that one need not be Jewish to join.
Founded by Kol Ami members Kaplan, Rifkin, and Shelley Chamberlain, this CSA distributes recipes in weekly newsletters, holds cooking demonstrations on the use of unusual vegetables, and hosts free education sessions.
"These [ecokosher] issues are relevant to us as Jews because so much of our heritage is based on the fact that Jews were originally farmers and shepherds," Rifkin says. "So many of our holidays are based on the agricultural season."
'Shield of Justice'
The most tangible and perhaps controversial element to come out of the Jewish food movement was revealed Sept. 9. It is a seal of ethical responsibility - a Magen Tzedek, which translates as "Shield of Justice" - for kosher products that meet additional standards of workplace and environmental responsibility.
Project developer Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendota Heights, Minn., says he was motivated by the May 2008 raid on the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, in Postville, Iowa, where federal officials found that untrained illegal immigrants made up almost half the workforce.
Technically, kosher certification refers to how meat is slaughtered and prepared and has nothing to do with workplace practices. Still, Postville was an embarrassment.
Shira Dicker, a spokeswoman for the Magen Tzedek project, calls it "the God-Housekeeping Seal of Approval." The symbol is a stylized Star of David, designed "not to look too Jewishy."
Thousands of non-Jews buy kosher products. Some do so because they are Muslims, Buddhists, or vegetarians; have food allergies; or, in an era of E. coli and salmonella outbreaks, have come to trust a kosher symbol on a product more than, perhaps, FDA or USDA approval. Others buy unintentionally, because, in the $225 billion kosher-food business, even Coke and Oreos are kosher-certified.
The Magen Tzedek project is in its infancy; guidelines were released Sept. 9, and it is unclear how many companies will apply for approval.
Still, Nati Passow, founder of the Jewish Farm School, says this effort and others are necessary:
"We need to raise the level of awareness in the Jewish community and beyond to issues of food justice."
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12. Article Considers the Ethics of Meat
Thanks to Australian animal rights activist for forwarding this interesting article:
This is a good little article by Ari Solomon, based on the ethics of meat.
Phil
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-solomon/who-you-callin-vegangelic_b_290582.html
Recently I've heard some perplexing criticisms of veganism. They go something like this: vegans are extremists, vegans are so preachy, veganism is like some fanatical religion, veganism is a cult.. There obviously is some misunderstanding going on and I'd like to try and stamp out this issue once and for all. I realize I can't possibly speak for all vegans, but this is how I see it:
First of all, veganism is clearly not some religion or cult. There is no Church of Vegan. Veganism is a philosophy. Donald Watson first coined the term "vegan" in 1944. This was how he defined it:
The word "veganism" denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude -- as far as is possible and practical -- all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.
Sounds pretty simple right? Well, nowadays people become vegan for all different reasons. They might go vegan because of health reasons, or perhaps they've read that animal agriculture is the number one cause of global warming. But, if someone is an ethical vegan, that means they've chosen to open their mind and heart to the suffering of animals. They want to alleviate unnecessary suffering where they can. (There are actually some people who feel that unless you go vegan for ethical reasons that you're not really "vegan", but that's a whole other story.)
Here's where things get interesting. While many of us may feel a certain attachment to the food we eat (cheese, anyone?), there is actually no human dietary requirement for animal foods. It's true. You don't need to eat meat, dairy or eggs to live.
In fact, Dr. Colin Campbell, who conducted the foremost study on human nutrition for over 40 years, detailed in his book The China Study how a vegan diet is actually better suited for optimal human health. This means that people eat animals not because they have to, but because they want to. Now, of course I'm not talking about people who live in countries where food is scarce and they'll die unless they eat animal foods. I'm talking about you and me. People who shop at the supermarket where tofu, beans, rice, grains, fruits and vegetables are mere feet from meat, dairy and eggs. We have a choice.
In case you're not up to speed, over 98% of all meat, dairy, and eggs produced in the US comes from factory farms. The conditions in these places are truly horrendous. Animals are crammed in spaces so tight they can't turn around. They literally go insane, lying around all day and night in their own feces. They never see sunlight, have their beaks, horns and genitals cut off (without anesthetic) and are horribly abused by stressed and desensitized farm workers. We kill 10 billion animals for "food" a year in this country, that's over 27 million animals a day. Most of those animals are birds, and all poultry (chickens, turkeys, ducks, and rabbits... yes, rabbits are considered poultry under the law) are excluded from the barely enforced Humane Slaughter Act.
Now, before you start at me with some "humane meat" "happy meat" bullshit please take note that all animals, whether they are raised in the nastiest of factory farms or grass-fed, free-range, blah blah blah, are all sent to the same slaughterhouses. That's right, your organic steer is being sent to the same hell as a downer cow and will meet the same ghastly end. If you are a "humane meat" consumer, please take a moment and meditate on the whole concept of humane killing... bloody, fearful, struggling, screaming, despairing humane killing. It's never pretty and it certainly isn't "humane."
There is a video making rounds on YouTube that shows a lone cow shaking in terror as she contemplates walking down the kill chute. She walks forward, then back. Animals can hear and smell the violence and death that awaits them. Their last moments are ones of abject horror and suffering. If you wouldn't condemn your dog or cat to such a fate, how can you pay for others do it to these poor animals?
So. When a vegan is talking to a meat-eater about these issues, he or she is not "preaching", "trying to convert", or any such thing. We're not telling you what to eat. We're telling you what you're eating.
Since animals can't speak a language humans can understand (though I think the screams and terrified moans that fill slaughterhouses should be pretty much universal -- all living beings want to live) it's up to us to tell their stories and inform people of the suffering that goes on conveniently out of the public eye.
If, as a meat-eater, being exposed to this reality bothers you, it is not the fault of the vegan. Lashing out or making up endless excuses doesn't change the stark scientific fact that animals are suffering because of our taste buds. Your neatly packaged chicken breast, all wrapped in pristine plastic, was once part of an animal that felt fear and pain. It's called responsibility and culpability, and we're all to blame.
Now, you may try to argue that eating animals is a matter of personal opinion or choice, but again I'd have to disagree -- this is not about your opinion versus my opinion, this is about animal suffering. You can't discuss your "personal choice" of eating animals while leaving animals completely out of the conversation.
Think of it this way, if you were walking down the street and saw someone beating their dog, would you try to do something to stop it? The same principle applies here. Since eating animal foods is a question of want and like versus need, killing a sentient being, when there is absolutely no need -- except for someone's pleasure -- becomes simply unnecessary and merciless.
And if we say we care about cruelty to animals then it's time we start caring about all animals. Yes, dogs and cats are companion animals but in terms of suffering our canine and feline friends feel the same as a pig, cow, chicken, lamb, or turkey. To pick and choose species in terms of whose pain we care about is incredibly hypocritical and inconsistent. Sorry, but if you're eating veal parmigiana or turkey sandwiches, you don't really care about animals. You may care about dogs and cats but you certainly don't care about birds and baby cows.
So, who's the real extremist? The person who tries to stop unnecessary suffering by cutting out animal products, or the person who says, "I like the way that tastes, so a sentient being needs suffer and die?"
Who's the real fundamentalist? The person who simply speaks the truth about where food comes from, or the person who knowingly chooses to ignore it, listening only to the falsehoods of the meat and dairy clergy? Isn't the latter more akin to choosing to believe the earth is 5,000 years old despite clear evidence to the contrary?
The reality is that veganism couldn't be more different from religion. While religion is based on faith, veganism is based on facts. Animal suffering is not some ethereal concept, it's very real.
All animals deserve to be free from unnecessary pain, fear, and suffering at the hands of humans. How can anything less claim to be humane? Do I want more people to go vegan, is that why I talk and write about it? Of course, but it has nothing to do with me or some group that I belong to. It has to do with the animals who suffer everyday so that we can eat them, wear them, and do whatever we want to them simply because we can.
Veganism is the practical response to a social injustice. Instead of vegangelical, the word should be veganlogical.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-solomon/who-you-callin-vegangelic_b_290582.html
--
Philip Wollen OAM
The Winsome Constance Kindness Trust
Australia
Venture Capital for Good Causes
http://www.kindnesstrust.com
Telephone (613) 98221662
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13. Article Urges that Money Rather Than Chickens Be Used for Kapparot Ritual
http://www.jewishjournal.com/yom_kippur/article/why_chickens_should_be_eliminated_from_kapparot_ceremonies_20090925/
Yom Kippur
September 25, 2009
Why Chickens Should Be Eliminated From Kapparot Ceremonies
BY KAREN DAVIS, PHD
Kapparot is a ceremony preceding Yom Kippur in which many Orthodox Jews, especially in the Hasidic world, swing chickens around their heads while reciting a chant about transferring their sins symbolically onto the bird: “This is my exchange, my substitute, my atonement. This rooster (or hen) shall go to its death, but I shall go to a good, long life, and to peace.”
The chickens are then slaughtered and may be given to the poor. The idea is that when practitioners swing chickens slated for slaughter, they’re supposed to regard the slaughter of the bird as a substitute for the punishment that God in “strict justice” would mete out to them instead of mercy. Rather than the sinner, the innocent chicken suffers “strict justice.” This idea of the role of the chicken contradicts assertions that chickens used in Kapparot ceremonies are treated with compassion.
Documentation of Kapparot ceremonies shows that the birds are seldom if ever treated humanely. On the contrary, prior to the ceremony, the chickens are packed in crates, often for days without food, water or shelter. Birds not used have been found abandoned in their crates when the ceremony was over. Practitioners often stand around chatting with fellow observers while holding a chicken with the wings pulled painfully backward and the legs dangling, as if the bird were an inanimate object instead of living, feeling being.
This way of holding chickens is painful and potentially injurious to them. It is particularly painful given that the main types of chickens used in Kapparot ceremonies are young “broiler” chickens about six weeks old. These birds have been bred to grow many times faster and larger than normal chickens. As a result, they are susceptible to painful joint degeneration, crippling lameness, and heart attacks reflecting genetic infirmities incurred in the quest for meat production. In his paper “Pain in Birds,” Dr. Michael Gentle cites the “widespread nature of chronic orthopaedic disease in domestic poultry,” and Dr. John Webster, professor of animal husbandry in the University of Bristol School of Veterinary Science, points out that these birds “have grown too heavy for their limbs and/or become so distorted in shape as to impose unnatural stresses on their joints.”
Shown pictures of chickens being held with their wings pulled back by Kapparot practitioners, Dr. Ian Duncan, Professor Emeritus of Poultry Science at the University of Guelph in Ontario, wrote that “holding a domestic fowl with the wings pinned back as shown will be painful. It will be extremely painful if the bird is held in this position for some minutes.” Dr. Nedim Buyukmihci, Emeritus Professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, observed that “the manner in which the man is holding the chicken, with the wings pulled back, puts the chicken at risk for ligament and tendon injury, possibly even bone fracture.”
Opponents of the use of chickens in Kapparot ceremonies point out that their use is not required by the Torah or the Talmud. Most Kapparot observers swing money for charity as a gesture of atonement, repentance, and goodwill. Swinging money in a handkerchief, which maintains the tradition of giving charity to the poor, has been endorsed by many rabbis and is mentioned in prayer books, including the Artscroll Siddur, which is used in many Orthodox synagogues.
In the 16th century, a Code was devised to offer practical guidance in the application of Written and Oral Laws. This Code, known as the Shulchan Aruch, is considered authoritative within Orthodox circles. In it, the concept of tzaar baalei chaim - the mandate not to cause unnecessary pain to any living creature - is affirmed: “It is forbidden, according to the law of the Torah, to inflict pain upon any living creature. On the contrary, it is our duty to relieve the pain of any creature, even if it is ownerless or belongs to a non-Jew.” In other words, the concept of tzaar baalei chaim includes a need not only to avoid causing pain to animals, but also to show them compassion.
For these reasons, we urge Jews and others who care about animals to disperse the kindness message in Jewish teachings that encourage compassion for animals. We urge that Kapparot observers use money instead of chickens, and that rabbis incorporate the cruel facts about the use of chickens in Kapparot ceremonies, and how to have a compassionate ceremony, into their Rosh Hashanah sermons. While reducing the suffering of the chickens is possible, genuinely compassionate treatment of the birds is not compatible with their use in these rituals, which do not require them. Even in communities where religious traditions are strong, customs can evolve to a higher standard of justice and compassion for all of God’s creatures, and this is what opponents of using chickens in Kapparot ceremonies are asking for.
Karen Davis, PhD is president of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. For more information, visit www.upc-online.org.
Rob Eshman
Editor-in-Chief
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
www.jewishjournal.com
(213) 368-1661 ext 108
3580 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 1510
Los Angeles, CA 90010
www.jewishjournal.com
Serving a community of 600,000, The Jewish Journal is the largest Jewish weekly outside New York City. Our award-winning paper reaches over 150,000 educated, involved and affluent readers each week. The Journal is LA's only Jewish newspaper. No other Jewish institution reaches so many Los Angeles Jews on a weekly basis.
The Journal's www.jewishjournal.com is the web hub for Jewish LA with more monthly users than any other Jewish news web site in the world; its GodBlog was selected by The Times of London as “one of the best religion blogs in the world.” The GodBlog won Best Independent Blog from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2008.
The Journal also publishes Jewish Family magazine, reaching 45,000 Jews in the affluent West and Conejo Valleys.
The Journal is an independent not-for-profit publication, unaffiliated with any movement or institution.
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14. More Climate Change-Related Article
As flood waters continue to ravage Georgia, the U.S. Geological Survey is calling the natural disaster a "once in 500 years flood." Vice President Biden will travel to Georgia today to help coordinate a federal response with local and state leaders.
A new study by climate researchers reports that the planet is likely to warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if global leaders fulfill their most ambitious pledges on carbon reduction. Robert Correll, one of the researchers who conducted the study, said that "we're not going in the right direction" on reducing carbon emissions quickly enough.
http://www.care2.com/causes/global-warming/blog/climate-change-occuring-faster-than-expected/
New Mexico's largest utility, PNM, yesterday announced that it was dropping out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the group's refusal to support climate change legislation. "[W]e have decided that we can be most productive by working with organizations that share our view on the need for thoughtful, reasonable climate change legislation," said PNM in a statement.
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15. Israeli Vegetarian Activist Biking in Support of Children With Disabilities
Forwarded message from JVNA advisor Shaya Kelter:
Pre-Yom Kippur 2009
For a child suffering from serious injury or debilitating illness, performing ordinary activities are like climbing high mountains. Alyn Hospital in Jerusalem provides devoted care and innovative treatments that help the children to reach ever higher.
Alyn Hospital does not receive government funding to pay for the special treatments so critical to the children such as pet therapy, individual computer programs for each child and medical clowns. The budgetary gap is made up by contributions of generous donors.
I have witnessed amazing rehabilitation. An adolescent fell from a cliff in a climbing accident and was told he would never walk again. 4 years later he walked out on his own two feet. Two years ago he married. Last year I met him carrying his newborn child.
I invite you to help me help these children by sponsoring me in the 500 km Wheels of Love (WOL) 2009 charity bike ride Nov. 1-5 in any amount. Gift are tax deductible in the U.S., Canada, Israel and other countries. Payment modes below:
*Credit card: for Israeli donors www.alynride.org and for U.S. donors www.alynus.org/SPONSORRIDER/USA
Type in as Rider name Steven (Shaya) Kelter.
*Call in NY (212) 869-8085 and in Israel 02-649-4235.
*Checks should be made out to American Friends of Alyn Hospital or in Israel, to Alyn Hospital, and mailed to my office:
Steven (Shaya) Kelter
9 Diskin St. Villa 11A
96440 Jerusalem Israel
On behalf of the children of Alyn Hospital, thank you very much! May you be blessed!
Love,
Steven “Shaya” Kelter, “Wheels of Love 2009” Rider
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16. New Podcast Has JVNA Vice President Noam Mohr Discussing Animal-Based Agriculture’s Connections to Climate Change
09/23/09: New Global Warming Strategy with Noam Mohr LISTEN
Noam Mohr is a physicist at Queens College with degrees from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked on global warming campaigns for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and EarthSave International, publishing a number of reports on climate change including A New Global Warming Strategy, Flirting with Disaster, Pumping Up the Price, and Storm War.
http://media.podcastingmanager.com/3/5/4/2/7/148422-172453/Media/ItsAllAboutFood092309.mp3
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17. Paul Krugman Op-Ed Article on Urgency of Climate Change Responses
A very insightful September 28, 2009 article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/opinion/28krugman.html?ref=opinion
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18. Two Great Power Points Relate Meat-Eating to Global Climate Change
http://www.planetdiet.org/pdf/Slideshow_Climate%20Change%20and%20Livestock%20Farming-opt.pdf
http://www.planetdiet.org/pdf/SOS_save_the_planet-_opt.pdf
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19. Northern Ice Melting Accelerating
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20090923/4ab9ab50_3421_13345200909231962110910
NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worsening
By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP Science Writer)
From Associated Press
September 23, 2009 1:00 PM EDT
WASHINGTON - New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.
British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to a paper published online Thursday in the journal Nature.
Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 percent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003.
These new measurements, based on 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, confirm what some of the more pessimistic scientists thought: The melting along the crucial edges of the two major ice sheets is accelerating and is in a self-feeding loop. The more the ice melts, the more water surrounds and eats away at the remaining ice.
"To some extent it's a runaway effect. The question is how far will it run?" said the study's lead author, Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey. "It's more widespread than we previously thought."
The study doesn't answer the crucial question of how much this worsening melt will add to projections of sea level rise from man-made global warming. Some scientists have previously estimated that steady melting of the two ice sheets will add about 3 feet, maybe more, to sea levels by the end of the century. But the ice sheets are so big it would probably take hundreds of years for them to completely disappear.
As scientists watch ice shelves retreat or just plain collapse, some thought the problem could slow or be temporary. The latest measurements eliminate "the most optimistic view," said Penn State University professor Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the study.
The research found that 81 of the 111 Greenland glaciers surveyed are thinning at an accelerating, self-feeding pace.
The key problem is not heat in the air, but the water near the ice sheets, Pritchard said. The water is not just warmer but its circulation is also adding to the melt.
"It is alarming," said Jason Box of Ohio State University, who also wasn't part of the study.
Worsening data, including this report, keep proving "that we're underestimating" how sensitive the ice sheets are to changes, he said.
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20. Article Presents Jewish Case for Vegetarianism/My Posting
http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2009/09/judaism-and-vegetarianism-2/
Judaism and Vegetarianism
September 28th, 2009
In recognition of Yom Kippur, a solemn day of moral reflection in Judaism, we repost this article from September 2008, on vegetarianism and Jewish moral values. Comments on the original article can be found here.
There are many excellent reasons to adopt a vegetarian diet. By not eating meat one helps to discourage the cruel treatment of cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals on factory farms and the wasteful diversion of grain crops for consumption by farmed animals rather than by poor humans. One also helps to improve the environment, insofar as factory farms are major sources of water and air pollution, including gasses that contribute to global warming. And by not eating meat one helps oneself, since a vegetarian diet is far healthier for humans than a diet based on meat.
In recent decades, increasing numbers of people in North America, Europe, and Israel have been moved by considerations like these to become vegetarians. Among vegetarians who are Jewish, some have been led to their decision by their own faith. They have come to view vegetarianism not merely as a choice that is good for animals, the environment, and themselves but also as an expression of Jewish values, especially the values of compassion toward animals, avoidance of waste, and the preservation of health. Indeed, many prominent rabbis from Orthodox and Conservative as well as Reform congregations have used these and other principles to argue that meat eating is inconsistent with Jewish dietary law (kashrut). For example, Rabbi David Rosen, the former of chief rabbi of Ireland, argues that the conditions of animals raised for their meat on factory farms and the risks to human health posed by a meat-based diet render meat eating “halachically [according to Jewish law] unacceptable.”
This article briefly summarizes the main “Jewish reasons to go vegetarian,” as described in the essay “A Case for Jewish Vegetarianism,” by Aaron Gross, M.T.S., Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D., Roberta Kalechofsky, Ph.D., and Jay Levine, M.D. The essay is published by PETA.
Tsa’ar Ba’alei Chayim
The principle of tsa’ar ba’alei chayim, which prohibits the cruel treatment of animals, including the infliction of unnecessary suffering on them, is recognized as a fundamental mitzvah (commandment) of the Torah. Although the specific actions it forbids have been a matter of interpretation, many recent scholars have held that any reasonable understanding of the principle must rule out modern methods of factory farming, which involve animal suffering on a scale unimaginable to ancient rabbis. It also seems clearly at odds with scriptural passages that compare God’s kind treatment of humans with human kindness toward animals (Psalms 23:1—3) and with the Jewish principle of imitatio dei, or the ethical emulation of God. As a “Good Shepherd,” God would not treat humans in the way humans treat animals on factory farms.
Bal Tashchit
Vegetarianism is supported by the principle of bal tashchit, or the avoidance of wasting or destroying something of value. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a meaning for this principle if it does not apply to the incredible waste of grain crops and land and water resources involved in the industrial-scale production of meat. This system is massively inefficient, since vastly more people could be fed by the grain crops now consumed by beef cattle than can be fed by the beef cattle themselves. The diversion of grain crops to animal agriculture has decreased the supply, and therefore raised the price, of grains available for human consumption and thereby contributed to a world food crisis in which hundreds of millions of people face daily hunger or starvation.
Preserving health
The Torah’s mandate to preserve health logically dictates that believing Jews should avoid smoking. And yet dietary factors, including the consumption of animal fats and meat, account for a greater proportion of cancer cases in the United States than smoking does. The adoption of vegetarianism is also consistent with the traditional Jewish approach to medicine, which emphasizes preventing disease over curing it. As the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides observed: “The ability of a physician to prevent illness is a greater proof of his skill than his ability to cure someone who is already ill.”
Eden, the messianic era, and human dominion over animals
Many scholars have found additional support for vegetarianism in the fact that the Hebrew Bible clearly portrays the paradise of Eden and the redemption following the coming of the Messiah as not involving the eating of meat. Thus, they argue, God originally intended for humans to be vegetarian.
The covenant between Noah and God as portrayed in Genesis did allow humans to eat meat. But, according to this view, this represented only a grudging concession on the part of God, who saw “how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth” (6:12). The many commandments regarding meat eating and animal sacrifice that follow, including the prohibition against eating “flesh with its life-blood in it” (9:4), are not an endorsement of meat eating but a means of curtailing and regulating what by then had become an entrenched practice. As the Jewish scholar Jacob Milgrom pointed out, the sacrificial system described in Leviticus functions to limit the number of animals killed and to expiate the guilt that humans incur by killing. In truth, in the Torah meat eating is linked with degeneracy and corruption and is not portrayed as an ideal. It is noteworthy in this connection that the kashrut does not restrict the eating of plant food except when it is contaminated with animal products and that there are specific blessings for bread, fruit, wine, and vegetables but not for meat.
Finally, although God granted humans “dominion” over animals in Genesis, he certainly did not have in mind a dominion of exploitation, torture, and enslavement, as now exists in the system of modern factory farming. As Abraham Kook, the first chief rabbi of pre-state Israel, observed:
No intelligent, thinking person could suppose that when the Torah instructs humankind to dominate … it means the domination of a harsh ruler, who afflicts his people and servants merely to fulfill his personal whim and desire, according to the crookedness of his heart. It is unthinkable that the Torah would impose such a decree of servitude, sealed for all eternity, upon the world of God, Who is ‘good to all, and His mercy is upon all His works’ (Psalms 145:9), and Who declared, ‘The world shall be built upon kindness’ (Psalms 89:3).
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My posting in response to this article:
Kudos on this wonderful article.
As president of the Jewish Vegetarians of North America, I believe it is time for the Jewish community to address the many moral issues related to animal-based diets - they arguably violate many Jewish teachings as the article indicates.
We respectfully challenge any rabbi or Jewish scholar to a respectful dialogue/debate on "Should Jews be Vegetarians?"
With the world heading rapidly to an unprecedented climate catastrophe, as evidenced by recent meltings of glaciers and polar ice caps and severe floods, heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfires, it is essential that everything possible be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is sheer insanity to keep raising over 60 billion animals worldwide for slaughter annually.A UN FAO report in 2006 indicated that animal-based agriculture emits 18 percent of greenhouse emission in CO2 equivalents, more than all the means of transportation combined (13.5 percent). The sustainability of the planet depends on a major shift to plant-based diets. More info at JewishVeg.com and in our documentary "A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World" at ASacredDuty.com.
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September 30, 2009
September 25, 2009
9/23/2009 JVNA Online Newsletter
Shalom everyone,
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
1. Best Wishes for a Meaningful, Transformative Yom Kippur
2. I Ask Your Forgiveness Before Yom Kippur
3. Efforts to Get Vegetarianism Onto the Copenhagen Climate Conference Agenda Continue
4. Group Seeking Information on Animal-Friendly Synagogues
5. Campaign Links Peace to the Foods People Eat and Climate Change
6. JVNA Advisor Links Rosh Hashana to Compassion to Animals
7. Great Video re 3 People going Vegan and All the Reasons For Such a Change
8. Farm Sanctuary Event Considers Legal Issues re Animals
9. UN Plans Shock therapy To Awaken Leaders to Climate Threats
10. Follow-Up Re Kapparot
11. Animal Sanctuary Schedules Talks Relating ‘Livestock’ Agriculture to Climate Change
12. Lantern Books Celebrating Tenth Anniversary
13. Article Challenges Non-Vegetarians on Diets
14. New Website Has Powerful Material Advocating Vegetarianism as Solution to Global Warming
15. First New York City VegFest Scheduled
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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Notice: Seeking Volunteers To Help Get Vegetarianism Onto the Copenhagen Climate Conference Agenda
As indicated in item #3 below, I am working as director of Veg Climate Alliance with some very dedicated activists from several countries in trying to get vegetarianism onto the agenda of the December Copenhagen climate conference. I am increasingly convinced that a major societal shift to plant-based diets is essential part of steps necessary for the world to avoid an unprecedented climate catastrophe, and it is essential that the Copenhagen delegates urge such dietary changes. If you can volunteer even a few hours a week to help us get our message to conference delegates, that would be much appreciated. If interested, please let me know.
Thanks, Richard
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1. Best Wishes for a Meaningful, Transformative Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur begins at sundown on Sunday evening. May all who will be fasting have an easy fast and may the holiday be the start of a very positive period for everyone. Please see my article on “Vegetarianism and Yom Kippur” in the festival section at JewishVeg.com/schwartz, and my articles about Kapparot in the sections on festivals and about animals at that web site. More about kapparot later.
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2. I Ask Your Forgiveness Before Yom Kippur
Judaism teaches that acts of repentance, prayer and ch arity can result in God’s forgiveness for sins between human beings and God, but that one must ask people you offended for forgiveness for acts against them. So, I ask your forgiveness for anything that I may have written or done in the past year that may have offended you. It was certainly not intentional.
I forgive anyone who may have unintentionally offended me during the past year.
In the words of an anonymous source:
“I hereby forgive whoever has hurt me,
Whoever has done ma any wrong,
Whether deliberately or on purpose,
Whether by word or by deed.
May no one be punished on my account.
AS I forgive and pardon fully
Those who have done me wrong,
May those whom I have harmed
Forgive and pardon me
Whether I acted deliberately or by accident,
Whether by word or by deed.
With God’s help, may I not willingly
Repeat the wrongs that I have committed.”
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3. Efforts to Get Vegetarianism Onto the Copenhagen Climate Conference Agenda Continue
As director of Veg Climate Alliance, I have been working with some dedicated activists in Europe and Australia in putting together the press release and letter to Copenhagen delegates below. Suggestions welcome, and please help spread the messages. Thanks.
COALITION URGES WORLD TO PUT DIETARY CHANGE ONTO COPENHAGEN CLIMATE AGENDA
Contact: Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D., Director of Veg Climate Alliance
Phone: (718) 761-5876
New York, September 22, 2009: A society-wide shift to plant-based diets i s essential to avoid an unprecedented global climate catastrophe! This is the message that a broad coalition of groups is sending to world leaders and organizations involved with December's UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (letter attached).
Veg Climate Alliance wants our leaders to know about the major role of animal-based agriculture in increasing global warming, clearly demonstrated in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2006 report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow.”
The UN report aims to raise awareness of “the very substantial contribution of animal agriculture to cl imate change and air pollution, to land, soil and water degradation and to the reduction of biodiversity.”
Director of Veg Climate Alliance Dr. Richard Schwartz stated “it’s essential that leaders at the UN climate conference apply these findings and recommend dietary changes as they set the agenda for mitigating climate change.”
The letter also stresses benefits of plant-based diets in many other areas of concern: health; environmental sustainability; resource conservation; reducing hunger; and reducing threats of terrorism and war.
Many of the people and groups supporting this initiative will be taking part in Friends of Earth’s ‘Human Flood’ demonstration, and will be bringing the vegan solution to grassroots attention in forums and other activities surrounding the UN conference.
Veg Climate Alliance is a non-profit international organization with a website packed full of information on diets and global warming [www.VegClimateAlliance.org].
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Below is the accompanying letter
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Veg Climate Alliance
Richard H. Schwartz, Director
263 Warwick Avenue
Staten Island, NY 10314
USA
Email: director@VegClimateAlliance.org
Phone: 001-718-761-5876
Re: Avoid Climate Catastrophe: Please Support Shifts to Plant-Based Diets
September 22, 2009
Dear ______________ ,
Please consider the mounting evidence that a major societal shift towards plant-based diets is essential if the world is to avoid an unprecedented catastrophe from climate change and other environmental threats. And please help inform the public of the negative environmental effects of their food choices and the urgency of major dietary changes, in order to help shift our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.
We urge you to consider the following important but often overlooked research, as you consider recommendations for reducing climate threats.
• A 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization “Livestock’s Long Shadow” determined that livestock production is globally responsible for more GHGs (in CO2 equivalents) than all the world’s transport combined (18 percent vs. 13.5 percent).
• There is increasing evidence that the impact of animal agriculture is far worse than the 18% mentioned, with a major new assessment to be published soon concluding that the livestock sector contributes over half of global human-caused emissions.
• Making the situation even worse, the UN report projects that the world’s population of farmed animals will double in 50 years if current trends continue. The resulting increase in GHGs would largely negate emission reductions from all other sectors – making it very unlikely that we will be able to avoid the impending climate disaster.
Hence it is absolutely imperative that there be a major shift toward plant-based diets if we are to have even a chance to avoid the impending catastrophe. This is why Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others are urging people to significantly reduce their consumption of meat.
Besides reducing global warming threats, a dietary shift away from animal products would have many other globally significant social and environmental benefits:
• Increased health and quality of life. There would be a major relief from chronic disease epidemics such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes, with a related decrease in medical expenditures, freeing public funds to meet environmental and other societal challenges.
• The prevention of future zoological diseases and infections such as swine flu, bird flu, MRSA, mad cow disease, blue tongue disease, E. coli.
• A significant relief to global chronic hunger which now afflicts over a billion people. Over 40 percent of the world’s grain is fed to farmed animals, and most vital nutrients are lost in the conversion.
• The reduction of many environmental threats. Raising over 60 billion animals annually worldwide is the major contributor to most, if not all, environmental problems. These include wholesale deforestation, soil erosion and depletion, ocean and fresh water pollution and other habitat poisoning, the rapid extinction of species, and many more environmental problems (outlined well in Livestock’s Long Shadow).
• Safeguarding future resources. The production of animal products wastes huge amounts of water, land, energy and other valuable resources.
• Peaceful prospects. Because of global climate change, there will be many more desperate hungry, thirsty, homeless people fleeing droughts, wildfires, storms, floods and disease, greatly increasing the potential for instability, violence, terrorism and war.
Taking the above factors into account, it is clear that the world’s people are at a perilous turning point. We can continue present diets and contribute to the mounting problems and approaching calamity. Or we can shift to nutritious plant-based diets, greatly increasing prospects for a more peaceful, healthy and sustainable future for the planet’s people.
You are in a position to help determine the fate of future generations. Please do all that you can to help the world make the dietary and other choices that can help avoid the impending cataclysm. For example, please consider recommending that governments stop subsidizing the production of animal products and begin subsidizing healthier, more environmentally-positive food production and consumption choices, as for instance the organic vegan diet.
Thank you for your consideration, and best wishes as you carry on with your important efforts toward a better, more environmentally sustainable world.
Very truly yours,
Richard Schwartz
Director, Veg Climate Alliance
Supporting groups include: (List in formation)
Veg Climate Alliance (Initiator of the Letter)
http://www.VegClimateAlliance.org
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
AgireOra Network - Italy
http://www.agireora.org
Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals, UK
http://www.aswa.org.uk
Animal Place, USA
http://www.animalplace.org
Animal Protectors, USA
Animals Australia, Australia
http://www.AnimalsAustralia.org
http://www.SaveBabe.com
http://www.LiveExport-Indefensible.com
A Well-Fed World, USA
http://www.wellfedworld.org
Penny Bassett-Scarfe, reporter and TV interviewer, Australia
Bunny Huggers, UK
http://www.bunnyhuggers.org.uk
Campaign Against Animals in Research Experiments , UK
http://www.caare.org.uk
Catholic Concern for Animals-USA, USA
http://www.Catholic-animals.org
Christian Vegetarian Association, USA
http://www.all-creatures.org/cva
Centro Vegetariano, Portugal
http://www.centrovegetariano.org
Compassionate Action for Animals, USA
http://www.ExploreVeg.org
Compassion For Animals Day, Australia
http://www.CompassionForAnimalsDay.com
Concern for Helping Animals in Israel (CHAI), USA and Israel
http://www.chai-online.org
Dansk Vegetarforening (Danish Vegetarian Society), Denmark
http://www.vegetarforening.dk
Edinburgh the Fur-Free City, UK
http://www.edinburghfurfreecity.co.uk
European Vegetarian and Animal News Alliance (EVANA), Europe
http://www.evana.org
Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), USA
http://www.farmusa.org
Global Meat FREE Petition, International
http://www.MeatFreePetition.com
God’s Creatures Ministry, USA
http://www.Godscreaturesministry.org
Jens Holm, former Member of the European Parliament 2006-2009, Sweden
http://www.jensholm.se/english
Humane HEART (Health, Education, & Abuse Resolution Taskforce), USA
IG Glücklich leben ohne Fleisch (Happy Life without Meat), Switzerland
http://www.legalbanofmeat.info
In Defence of Animals (IDA) USA
http://www.idausa.org
Interfaith Council for the Protection of Animals and Nature (ICPAN), USA
http://www.ICPANonline.org
Jewish Vegetarians of North America, USA
http://www.jewishveg.com
Jews for Animal Rights (JAR), USA
http://www.micahbooks.com
Helmut F. Kaplan, Ph.D., philosopher and animal rights author, Austria
Let’s Act Now, International
http://www.letsactnow.org
Meat Free Movement, International
http://www.MeatFreeMovement.org
Menschen für Tierrechte, Tierversuchsgegner Baden-Württemberg e.V. (Humans for Animal Rights, Registered Association of Opponents of Animal Testing Baden-Württemberg), Germany
Nutrition Ecology International Center (NEIC), International
http://www.nutritionecology.org
Charles Patterson, Ph.D., author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA (in 14 languages), USA
http://www.powerfulbook.com
Proanima, Romania
http://www.proanimasv.ro
http://www.proanima.wordpress.com
programa accion comunitaria por el medio ambiente
(Community Action Program for the Enivironment ), Dominican Republic
http://www.acxm.blogspot.com
Protectia si Drepturile Animalelor (Animal protection & rights), Romania
http://www.protectiaanimalelor.ro
Revolutionary Action Conservation Society For Helping Animals, India
John Robbins, USA
Author of many books, including “The Food Revolution”
http://www.Foodrevolution.org
San Francisco Vegetarian Society, USA
http://www.sfvs.org
Schweizerische Vereinigung für Vegetarismus (Swiss Union for
Vegetarianism), Switzerland
http://www.vegetarismus.ch
Dr Nandita Shah, India
http://www.sharan-india.org
Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians, USA
http://www.serv-online.org
SOS Klimawandel (SOS Climate Change), Austria
http://www.sos-klimawandel.info
Tierschutznews (Animal Protection News), Switzerland
http://www.tierschutznews.ch
Uncaged, UK
http://www.uncaged.co.uk
VEGAN 2050, USA
http://www.vegan2050.org
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4. Group Seeking Information on Animal-Friendly Synagogues
All-Creatures has a listing of vegan/vegetarian animal-friendly churches:
http://www.all-creatures.org/church/churchdir.html.
We’d like to start of list of synagogues that fit this category.
Any suggestions? Ideas? Thoughts? Links?
And if you know someone who would to work with us on this, let us know.
Thanks much,
Veda
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All-Creatures.org is committed to expanding an online listing of synagogues and temples where people who care about animals and are committed vegans or vegetarians will feel welcomed and not have to be confronted with “animal meals.” We would like to know about synagogues and temples where people can worship, knowing their commitments to compassionate living for the whole of creation are honored.
Thanks!
Veda
[Please let me know if you have any information about Veg-friendly synagogues, or would like to help Varda find some. Thanks.]
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5. Campaign Links Peace to the Foods People Eat and Climate Change
Campaign Links Peace to the Foods People Eat and Climate Change
United Nations International Day of Peace September 21st - Peace begins on our Plate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_BjptdM_Ss
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
United Nations Peace Day Events Link Peace to Vegetarianism and Climate Change
Santa Monica, California – September 15, 2009 – To mark the United Nations’ International Day of Peace on September 21st, individuals across the globe are highlighting the peaceful effect of eliminating or reducing meat from our diets.
A number of events promoting the idea that “Peace beings on our Plate” will be held in North American cities such as New York, Santa Monica, San Jose, San Francisco, Victoria, and Ottawa as well as in Costa Rica, Australia and China.
Each event is officially recognized as part of the United Nations’ International Day of Peace. The U.N. General Assembly has named September 21st as the permanent date for the celebration, where individuals create practical acts of peace.
“The compassionate consumer saves resources and recognizes that an organic vegan diet is a tremendously effective way to promote peace,” says Leron Rabinowiz, organizer of Peace begins on our Plate. Rabinowiz also recently founded an organization to coordinate and link global initiatives such as petitions[1] calling for government support of weekly Meat-Free days in order to reduce climate change.
A weekly meat free day is a simple yet effective way to reduce climate change that is recommended by Nobel Peace prize winner and Chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Dr. Pachauri has said, “If you eat less meat you would be healthier and so would the planet … it would help the global community enormously because the entire meat cycle is very, very intensive in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.”
Rabinowiz says that both climate change and peace are linked to meat free days because a vegetarian diet uses less resources that are common causes of global conflict, particularly water and energy[2],[3]. A University of Chicago study found that switching from the average American diet to a vegan diet would save 50 per cent more greenhouse gas emissions than switching from the average American car to a hybrid Prius.[4]
“A simple act of Peace is choosing sustainable health for oneself and for our planet. By choosing organic foods, eating vegetarian, and buying from local farmers, you are… nourishing your body, conserving water and energy,reducing pollution and helping the local economy. Peace begins with your plate!” says Avon Mattison, President, and co-founder of Pathways to Peace.Pathways to Peace is the non-profit organization granted as an official UN Peace Messenger in 1987; it manages UN Peace Day www.PathwaysToPeace.org
For further information on the events, please visit:
http://meatfreemovement.org/peace-day
http://internationaldayofpeace.org/participate/events_calendar.html News contact:
Leron Rabinowiz 1.818.921.4845 P.O. Box 8398 Van Nuys, CA 91409 www.MeatFreeMovement.org
Sources and additional information:
[1] www.MeatFreePetition.com
[2] Steinfeld et al. (2006) Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Rome: UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
[3] McMichael, A., Powles, J., Butler, C., Uauy, R. (2007): Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health. The Lancet. Sept. 13, 2007
[4] Eschel, G., Martin, P.A. (2005) Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.: Diet, Energy, and Global Warming, scientific journal article in: Earth Interactions, Volume 10 (2006). http://www.vegetarisme.be/download/interndocs/milieu/klimaat/diet%20energy%20and%20global%20warming%20-%20martin%20eshel%20%20-%202005.pdf
Be veg! Go green! Save the planet!
www.suprememastertv.com
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6. JVNA Advisor Links Rosh Hashana to Compassion to Animals
Thanks to JVNA advisor Patti Breitman for giving this talk and for giving us permission for including it in this newsletter.
Shana Tova, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today about my own history with guilt, forgiveness and new beginnings.
Last night when we got to page 31 in our machzor, we read in unison, “Help us stand in awe of all Your creatures.” I realized it was the perfect title for what I wrote to share today.
Help us stand in awe of all Your creatures.
As a child I learned to say thanks for the God who brings forth bread from the earth and fruit from the vine. And last night, with Rabbi Dan’s help, we said thanks for the God who brings us apples.
I don’t pray when I wake up, when I lie down, when I sittest in my house or when I walkest by the way. But I do pray – most of the time – before and after most meals.
One thing I love about Judaism is that we are encouraged to say thank you after we eat because it’s easy to remember to be thankful when we are hungry, but it’s more of a challenge to remember our gratitude after we have sated our appetites.
So before most meals and after as many as I can remember to do it, I express my gratitude to the earth as the source of all my food, and to the people who helped get that food from the earth to my table. And this year, because I planted my first every garden, I included thanks to the experience gardeners and friends whose advice, support and compost helped me plant and tend the garden successfully. There were so many Shehekianus as we harvested our first radishes, beans, lettuce, arugula, and now, finally, painstakingly slowly, our tomatoes.
Despite years of Hebrew School, summer camp is where I learned the most about Jewish values. What stands out in my memory is how simple it seemed to live in accordance with God’s requirements for us:
Do Justly
Love Mercy
Walk humbly with God.
When I was a very young girl my family visited a farm in NJ called Pop Freeze. One afternoon I played with a chicken for an hour or more. We ran alongside one another and I watched the bird, chased the bird, and was delighted with her company.
That night I was told at dinner that the chicken we were eating was the bird I had been playing with that afternoon. I cried and cried and refused to take another bite of the chicken.
While I didn’t have words then to describe my feelings, I now know that I was feeling mad, sad and betrayed. How could the people who loved me not care about my friendship with that bird? How could my own family do this to me?
Many years later I got to know cows, lambs, turkeys and pigs, I remembered those early feelings of betrayal. I imagined what this kind of betrayal might feel like from the animals’ point of view.
It is so moving when I see parents encouraging children to visit petting zoos and to gently stroke the baby cow or rub the bellies of the piglets. But I am saddened to know that some of those families will be serving cow for dinner that night, but they will call the meat hamburger. And some will be serving pigs, but they will call the meal ribs or bacon, not Wilbur or Babe. So many betrayals. I do not want to be part of the systemic betrayal of people or animals.
When I became a vegetarian, it was in part because I felt that eating animals did not feel just or loving or merciful. I much prefer to eat food that I can harvest myself without cringing and without taking the life of an animal.
Living as a vegetarian was a new beginning for me. It has opened my heart and provided a n avenue for me to practice justice and mercy.
When I first stopped eating animals I felt guilty for all the times I had been oblivious to their lives and deaths. But I learned that I could assuage that guilt by taking action on behalf of the animals who are still bred, confined and killed for food. And I learned to forgive my loving parents whose early betrayal at Pop Freeze farm came from wanting me to eat what they had learned to eat and what society back then believed was the best food possible.
Now I speak up for the birds, pigs, cows, lambs, ducks and other animals who cannot speak up for themselves. I think of every meal as practice in justice and mercy and nonviolence.
In a world so filled with violence about which I can do so little, with my food choices I can take a stand against violence, practice peace on my plate, and help to reduce some of the violence toward animals.
Judaism places a very high value on health and life. So much so that people who are sick are not allowed to fast on Yom Kippur. As a vegetarian, I like to honor that reverence for life and health by choosing what science now tells us is one of the most health promoting diets there is: whole natural foods including vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes. And I am grateful also for the Jewish Vegetarian Society of North America (JewishVeg.com) that is supporting me in learning how a vegetarian diet is in accordance with and a good ambassador for Jewish values.
On Rosh Ha Shana and on Yom Kippur I feel the most connected with my Jewish heritage. And at every meal I feel the most connected with my Jewish values. May the new year be a sweet and healthy one for you and everyone you love.
Shana Tova.
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7. Great Video re 3 People going Vegan and All the Reasons For Such a Change
http://www.kindgreenplanet.org/programs/glasswalls/
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8. Farm Sanctuary Event Considers Legal Issues re Animals
Forwarded message:
Dear Richard,
For 23 years, Farm Sanctuary has been leading the charge to expose factory farming cruelty and increase legal protections for farm animals. On the local level, we have worked with prosecutors to punish those who neglect and abuse the animals in their care. On the state level, we have passed landmark ballot initiatives and legislation banning some of the worst factory farming practices, most notably with our victory in California last year with Proposition 2. On the federal level, we have called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop the slaughter of downed animals and have seen recent success with President Barack Obama closing a loophole that allowed downed cattle to be sold for slaughter. As our movement gains momentum, Farm Sanctuary is continually finding new opportunities to use the law to help farm animals.
Find out how you can get involved in efforts like these by joining us on October 14 for “Farm Animals and the Law,” a panel discussion with three of the nation’s leading experts on farm animals and the law at the New York University School of Law. Farm Sanctuary’s Director of Legal Campaigns Delcianna Winders and attorneys Mariann Sullivan and David Wolfson will discuss the legal status of farm animals today, legal efforts currently underway to help farm animals, and how we can all use the law to pursue more protections for farm animals. More details can be found below:
Farm Sanctuary Presents “Farm Animals and the Law ” Wednesday, October 14; 6 to 9 p.m. New York University School of Law Furman Hall, Room 216 245 Sullivan St. (Between Washington Square Park South and West 3rd Street) New York, New York
Refreshments will be served. Please bring a photo ID to enter the building. The event is being hosted by the New York University Student Animal Legal Defense Fund as part of the New York Week for the Animals.
I look forward to seeing you at this exciting event as we work together to build a more compassionate world for all.
Sincerely,
David Benzaquen
New York Advocacy Organizer Farm Sanctuary
P.S. If you’re receiving this alert and haven’t yet signed up for our Advocacy Campaign Team, please join your fellow New York advocates and sign up today!
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9. UN Plans Shock therapy To Awaken Leaders to Climate Threats
UN plans 'shock therapy' for world leaders on environment
Pared-down summit will force heads of rich states to listen to those of third world in hope of kickstarting radical action
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 20 September 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/20/united-nations-summit-climate-change
The United Nations is planning a form of diplomatic shock therapy for world leaders this week in the hope of injecting badly needed urgency into negotiations for a climate change treaty that, it is now widely acknowledged, are dangerously adrift.
UN chief Ban Ki-Moon and negotiators say that unless they can convert world leaders into committed advocates of radical action, it will be very hard to reach a credible and enforceable agreement to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change.
As the digital counter ticking off the hours to the Copenhagen summit – which had been supposed to seal the deal on climate change – hit 77 days today, progress at the UN summit in New York is seen as vital. Nearly 100 heads of state and government are to attend the summit, for which a pared-down format has been devised.
"We need these leaders to go outside their usual comfort zones," said one diplomat. "Our sense is that leaders have got a little too cosy and comfortable. They really have to hear from countries that are vulnerable and suffering."
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore, agreed. Commenting on the leaders attending the G20 summit in Pittsburgh next week, he said: "We n eed to remind these people about impacts of climate change – the fact that they are inequitable and fall very heavily on some of the poorest people in the world. We are likely to see a large number of failed states if we don't act in time."
The heads of state attending the UN summit are to be stripped of their entourages. Each will be allowed just one aide, generally their country's environment minister, in the sessions.
Instead of set-piece speeches, leaders will be paired off to chair discussion groups. Britain will be with Guyana, Tuvalu with the Netherlands, and Mongolia with the European commission.
The leaders will also lunch with environmental activists and chief executives of corporations who have been pressing their governments for action. At dinner, the leaders of the biggest polluting countries will dine with the leaders of Banglade sh, Kiribati and Costa Rica – which are among the primary victims of climate change.
By the end of the day, the rationale goes, the leaders will be imbued with a new sense of purpose. Leaders of rich countries will have been galvanised to take on the big emissions cuts – 25-40% over the next decade, 80% by 2050 – needed to keep temperatures from rising more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels, the temperature set by science to avoid the most calamitous effects of climate change.
The leaders will also, it is hoped, have some understanding of the threat to poorer countries. And, at the very least, they will have more of a common purpose in tackling the problem. "We need to gather together. We don't want to blame or point fingers at each other," said Yaqoub al-Sanada, counsellor at the Kuwaiti mission to the UN. Kuwait – one of the biggest producers of oil – will co-chair a discussion session with Finland.
The UN is hoping for help from Barack Obama. The US president will speak at the session, and there is anticipation he will deliver a strong signal that America is committed to action. There is growing anxiety for those kinds of reassurances, especially as opposition to Obama's green agenda grows in Congress. "The first question I get any time I meet with anybody is, 'Where's the legislation? How's it going?'," Todd Stern, the State Department's climate change envoy, said. There are also reports that China's president, Hu Jintao, in his first appearance at the UN, will announce new commitments to curb pollution – the kind of signal that will be crucial to boost negotiations in the days leading up to Copenhagen.
"We can get a successful outcome from Copenhagen. It is achievable, but at the moment it's in the balance," said John Ashton, Britain's climate change envoy. "We need to close the gaps."
Those gaps grew over the summer. There is what Ashton calle d the "ambition gap" – the failure of leaders of the big polluting countries to sign on to the deep emissions cuts needed. Then there is the "finance gap" – the failure of industrialised states to come up with a package on how to compensate poor countries that will suffer the most devastating consequences.
Britain came forward last June with an estimate of £61bn a year by 2020. Negotiators are frustrated that major industrialised states have not set clear figures on how much they are willing to commit, or how they will provide the funding.
Some climate change experts and negotiators have already begun planning a fallback position should the December Copenhagen summit fail to produce a strong enough agreement.
In Washington, Obama administration officials now talk openly about negotiating beyond Copenhagen. "Let's not make that one parti cular time the be-all and end-all, and say that if it doesn't happen we are doomed," Steven Chu, the energy secretary, told reporters.
Thinktanks are already starting to work on what is being called "Plan B" – scenarios for how the world could come up with an action plan before it is too late. But some are not holding their breath.
"It seems to me that Copenhagen is not the end of this," said Tim Wirth, the president of the UN Foundation, and the man who, in the 1980s, helped to write the first cap-and-trade plan for acid rain. He added: "We are going to have Copenhagens for the rest of our lives."
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10. Follow-Up Re Kapparot
Thanks to JVNA advisor and activist Rina Deych for her long-time dedicated efforts to reduce abuses of chickens during Kapparot, and for sending the report below. As indicated above, I have 2 articles about kapparot, both at JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, one in the section on animals and one in the section about Jewish festivals.
[While JVNA strongly urges that Jews who perform the kapparot ritual use money instead of chickens, we do not necessarily endorse all the characterizations of kapparot in the following message.]
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Dear Friends,
I did a little one-woman demo outside some places where they are doing Kapparot.
In case you are not familiar with them, here are two articles on the subject, one by me and one by Richard Schwartz:
http://rrrina.com/kaporot.htm
The raw footage is on my YouTube page (I didn't get any of them killing the birds, because, in each case I got kicked out before I had a chance ... one slaughterer stopped himself right before he made impact): http://www.youtube.com/user/rrrina
Through the years, I've done one-person demos outside these places.
My grandfather, a kosher butcher (who, in his final year of life was so revolted by what he witnessed when he had occasion to visit a slaughterhouse that he gave up his business and went vegetarian), was opposed to Kapparot. He was known throughout the neighborhood as a Tzadik (righteous man), who rescued abandoned cats, dogs, and even injured birds, gave free food away to the poor, and allowed homeless people to sleep in his store. Growing up, I remember a series of "borders," as he called them, homeless people whom he would allow to stay in a room on the top floor of his home, until he was able to help find them jobs so they could afford to live in an SRO (single room occupancy).
My grandfather denounced the practice of Kapparot as cruel, unnecessary, and, in fact, un-Jewish. He said that it was not in the Torah or the Talmud, and that for those who felt the need to do the ritual, it could be done with an inanimate object (money).
Kapparot takes place during the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Being around the places where they do this obscene sacrifice is bone-chilling. The stench of fear and blood permeates the entire neighborhood. The birds are left, packed tightly in crates, with no food and no water for the entire week.
The "unused" birds are often left in the crates in the heat and cold, starving amid the excrement, until they can be picked up. Some, in desperation, pluck each others' eyes out.
About a year ago, some Orthodox rabbis had a meeting about the practice. It was decided that there needs to be closer monitoring and regulation of Kapparot. Until last year, I used to see some of the slaughterers throw the birds into garbage bags (contradicting their claim that the meat is donated to the poor). This year, while I didn't get to film it, I found one place actually taking the dead birds, plucking them, and preparing them for donation... certainly not ideal, but an improvement over discarding them. Still this is a heinous practice that needs to be abolished.
Yesterday, I called the ASPCA to report that the animals had no food or water and were packed tightly in crates (stacked on top of each other), left in the hot sun.
Please call and complain... they WILL come. The more people who call, the more seriously they will take the complaints.
The ASPCA cruelty division number is: 212-876-7700, ext. 4450.
So far, I found three places where it is being done in Boro Park, Brooklyn:
- 43rd Street, between 13th and 14th Ave., closer to 13th, next to a synagogue.
-2050th Street, bet 13th and 14th Ave, closer to 14th, outside a school.
- corner of 49th Street and 14th Ave, next to the YM-YWHA.
Please call and complain that these animals have no food and water.
Thanks so much!!!
Rina
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11. Animal Sanctuary Schedules Talks Relating ‘Livestock’ Agriculture to Climate Change
Forwarded message from Animals Sanctuary:
[While this event is scheduled on the Jewish Sabbath, I am
including it here as an example of how to spread the message about dietary connections to global warming.]
To view this alert as a Web page, please use this link: http://action.farmsanctuary.org/site/MessageViewer
To share this message, please click here:
http://action.farmsanctuary.org/site/TellAFriend
Dear Richard,
On Friday, Septemb er 25, join me, Mia MacDonald (executive director of Brighter Green and Farm Sanctuary board member) and Marisa Miller Wolfson (outreach director of Kind Green Planet) for a presentation on the links between food, agriculture and global warming. As part of Climate Week, which is being held in NYC in conjunction with the UN General Assembly and special session on climate change, this workshop will address the contribution of meat and dairy production to rising greenhouse gas emissions, and the steps we need to take to reduce our “foodprint” and sustain our planet. This workshop is also being sponsored by New York University’s student group Earth Matters.
Food and Climate Change: The Meat of the Matter
NYU Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South,
Room 804 Friday, September 25, 2009;
7 - 8:30 p.m.
Free
E-mail Mollie
http://www.kindgreenplanet.org/programs/presentations/general/workshopnscreenings_details.php?id=80
Also, read on for more information about the connections between the environment and farm animal agriculture, and take action on the NYC Foodprint Campaign!
Hope to see you on September 25
Warmly,
Jasmin Singer
National Advocacy
Organizer Farm Sanctuary
http://www.kindgreenplanet.org/programs/presentations/general/workshopnscreenings_details.php?id=80
P.S. If you’re not yet a member of Farm Sanctuary’s Advocacy Campaign Team, please join your fellow New York advocate s and sign up today! It’s a great way to stay on top of our local outreach opportunities and NYC happenings.
Farm Sanctuary, PO Box 150, Watkins Glen, NY 14891
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12. Lantern Books Celebrating Tenth Anniversary
Forwarded message from Lantern Books:
[Full disclosure: Lantern is the publisher of my books “Judaism and Vegetarianism” and “Judaism and Global Survival” and many more books on vegetarianism, animal rights, environmentalism, spirituality and related issues. They are a very valuable asset to our movement. I wish them much continued success.]
Lantern is 10 Years Old!
We made it through the terrible twos, past the seven year itch, and this fall, Lantern Books will celebrate a full decade in the publishing business.
In those ten years, the "baby" of Gene Gollogly and Martin Rowe has employed, published, used the services of, provided services for, and sold to untold numbers of people, all who've helped step their vision of a more peaceful and sustainable planet forward.
We'll be celebrating our anniversary and launching an exciting, new book on Thursday, October 8th, 6:30 to 9 p.m., at Jivamukti Yoga, near Union Square in Manhattan.
PLEASE JOIN US while we toast our successes, launch this beautiful new book, and look forward to our next years in the publishing business.
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13. Article Challenges Non-Vegetarians on Diets
Thanks to JVNA Secretary/treasurer to forwarding this link to an important article, well worth reading.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-solomon/who-you-callin-vegangelic_b_290582.html?view=print
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14. New Website Has Powerful Material Advocating Vegetarianism as Solution to Global Warming
http://www.planetdiet.org/
I strongly recommend taking a look at some of this material, especially the VERY powerful powerpoint presentation, which is the best presentation of the arguments for a shift to veg diets being essential to avoid a pending climate catastrophe that I have seen. The=2 0material at this web site has the potential to really get vegetarianism onto society’s agenda, so please help spread the word about it.
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15. First New York City VegFest Scheduled
Forwarded message:
I am writing to inform you about the 1st edition of NYC VegFest taking place on Sunday, October 11, 2009 in Tompkins Square Park from 12-6 pm. There will be special guest speakers, yoga, meditation, vegan fashion show, and entertainment.
[This event occurs on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, but I am including it here as an example of what is happening and as a model for people to plan similar events.]
The 1st edition of NYC VegFest is an outdoor festival-come rain or shine from noon to 6pm, we will celebrate Vegetarianism and it is free to the public. There are so many reasons to choose a vegetarian diet: for health, the planet, and our precious animals. The NYC VegFest has something for everyone to enjoy, so please come w/your friends & family.
Peas & blessings,
Natalie P.
Event on Sunday, October 11, 2009
http://vegfest.webs.com
http://twitter.com/nycvegfest
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The material on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes. It may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made available in an effort to advance the understanding of vegetarian, environmental, nutritional, health, economic, social justice and human rights issues etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in using the included information for educational or research purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The information on this site does not constitute legal, technical or medical advice.
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
1. Best Wishes for a Meaningful, Transformative Yom Kippur
2. I Ask Your Forgiveness Before Yom Kippur
3. Efforts to Get Vegetarianism Onto the Copenhagen Climate Conference Agenda Continue
4. Group Seeking Information on Animal-Friendly Synagogues
5. Campaign Links Peace to the Foods People Eat and Climate Change
6. JVNA Advisor Links Rosh Hashana to Compassion to Animals
7. Great Video re 3 People going Vegan and All the Reasons For Such a Change
8. Farm Sanctuary Event Considers Legal Issues re Animals
9. UN Plans Shock therapy To Awaken Leaders to Climate Threats
10. Follow-Up Re Kapparot
11. Animal Sanctuary Schedules Talks Relating ‘Livestock’ Agriculture to Climate Change
12. Lantern Books Celebrating Tenth Anniversary
13. Article Challenges Non-Vegetarians on Diets
14. New Website Has Powerful Material Advocating Vegetarianism as Solution to Global Warming
15. First New York City VegFest Scheduled
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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Notice: Seeking Volunteers To Help Get Vegetarianism Onto the Copenhagen Climate Conference Agenda
As indicated in item #3 below, I am working as director of Veg Climate Alliance with some very dedicated activists from several countries in trying to get vegetarianism onto the agenda of the December Copenhagen climate conference. I am increasingly convinced that a major societal shift to plant-based diets is essential part of steps necessary for the world to avoid an unprecedented climate catastrophe, and it is essential that the Copenhagen delegates urge such dietary changes. If you can volunteer even a few hours a week to help us get our message to conference delegates, that would be much appreciated. If interested, please let me know.
Thanks, Richard
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1. Best Wishes for a Meaningful, Transformative Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur begins at sundown on Sunday evening. May all who will be fasting have an easy fast and may the holiday be the start of a very positive period for everyone. Please see my article on “Vegetarianism and Yom Kippur” in the festival section at JewishVeg.com/schwartz, and my articles about Kapparot in the sections on festivals and about animals at that web site. More about kapparot later.
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2. I Ask Your Forgiveness Before Yom Kippur
Judaism teaches that acts of repentance, prayer and ch arity can result in God’s forgiveness for sins between human beings and God, but that one must ask people you offended for forgiveness for acts against them. So, I ask your forgiveness for anything that I may have written or done in the past year that may have offended you. It was certainly not intentional.
I forgive anyone who may have unintentionally offended me during the past year.
In the words of an anonymous source:
“I hereby forgive whoever has hurt me,
Whoever has done ma any wrong,
Whether deliberately or on purpose,
Whether by word or by deed.
May no one be punished on my account.
AS I forgive and pardon fully
Those who have done me wrong,
May those whom I have harmed
Forgive and pardon me
Whether I acted deliberately or by accident,
Whether by word or by deed.
With God’s help, may I not willingly
Repeat the wrongs that I have committed.”
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3. Efforts to Get Vegetarianism Onto the Copenhagen Climate Conference Agenda Continue
As director of Veg Climate Alliance, I have been working with some dedicated activists in Europe and Australia in putting together the press release and letter to Copenhagen delegates below. Suggestions welcome, and please help spread the messages. Thanks.
COALITION URGES WORLD TO PUT DIETARY CHANGE ONTO COPENHAGEN CLIMATE AGENDA
Contact: Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D., Director of Veg Climate Alliance
Phone: (718) 761-5876
New York, September 22, 2009: A society-wide shift to plant-based diets i s essential to avoid an unprecedented global climate catastrophe! This is the message that a broad coalition of groups is sending to world leaders and organizations involved with December's UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (letter attached).
Veg Climate Alliance wants our leaders to know about the major role of animal-based agriculture in increasing global warming, clearly demonstrated in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2006 report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow.”
The UN report aims to raise awareness of “the very substantial contribution of animal agriculture to cl imate change and air pollution, to land, soil and water degradation and to the reduction of biodiversity.”
Director of Veg Climate Alliance Dr. Richard Schwartz stated “it’s essential that leaders at the UN climate conference apply these findings and recommend dietary changes as they set the agenda for mitigating climate change.”
The letter also stresses benefits of plant-based diets in many other areas of concern: health; environmental sustainability; resource conservation; reducing hunger; and reducing threats of terrorism and war.
Many of the people and groups supporting this initiative will be taking part in Friends of Earth’s ‘Human Flood’ demonstration, and will be bringing the vegan solution to grassroots attention in forums and other activities surrounding the UN conference.
Veg Climate Alliance is a non-profit international organization with a website packed full of information on diets and global warming [www.VegClimateAlliance.org].
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Below is the accompanying letter
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Veg Climate Alliance
Richard H. Schwartz, Director
263 Warwick Avenue
Staten Island, NY 10314
USA
Email: director@VegClimateAlliance.org
Phone: 001-718-761-5876
Re: Avoid Climate Catastrophe: Please Support Shifts to Plant-Based Diets
September 22, 2009
Dear ______________ ,
Please consider the mounting evidence that a major societal shift towards plant-based diets is essential if the world is to avoid an unprecedented catastrophe from climate change and other environmental threats. And please help inform the public of the negative environmental effects of their food choices and the urgency of major dietary changes, in order to help shift our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.
We urge you to consider the following important but often overlooked research, as you consider recommendations for reducing climate threats.
• A 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization “Livestock’s Long Shadow” determined that livestock production is globally responsible for more GHGs (in CO2 equivalents) than all the world’s transport combined (18 percent vs. 13.5 percent).
• There is increasing evidence that the impact of animal agriculture is far worse than the 18% mentioned, with a major new assessment to be published soon concluding that the livestock sector contributes over half of global human-caused emissions.
• Making the situation even worse, the UN report projects that the world’s population of farmed animals will double in 50 years if current trends continue. The resulting increase in GHGs would largely negate emission reductions from all other sectors – making it very unlikely that we will be able to avoid the impending climate disaster.
Hence it is absolutely imperative that there be a major shift toward plant-based diets if we are to have even a chance to avoid the impending catastrophe. This is why Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others are urging people to significantly reduce their consumption of meat.
Besides reducing global warming threats, a dietary shift away from animal products would have many other globally significant social and environmental benefits:
• Increased health and quality of life. There would be a major relief from chronic disease epidemics such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes, with a related decrease in medical expenditures, freeing public funds to meet environmental and other societal challenges.
• The prevention of future zoological diseases and infections such as swine flu, bird flu, MRSA, mad cow disease, blue tongue disease, E. coli.
• A significant relief to global chronic hunger which now afflicts over a billion people. Over 40 percent of the world’s grain is fed to farmed animals, and most vital nutrients are lost in the conversion.
• The reduction of many environmental threats. Raising over 60 billion animals annually worldwide is the major contributor to most, if not all, environmental problems. These include wholesale deforestation, soil erosion and depletion, ocean and fresh water pollution and other habitat poisoning, the rapid extinction of species, and many more environmental problems (outlined well in Livestock’s Long Shadow).
• Safeguarding future resources. The production of animal products wastes huge amounts of water, land, energy and other valuable resources.
• Peaceful prospects. Because of global climate change, there will be many more desperate hungry, thirsty, homeless people fleeing droughts, wildfires, storms, floods and disease, greatly increasing the potential for instability, violence, terrorism and war.
Taking the above factors into account, it is clear that the world’s people are at a perilous turning point. We can continue present diets and contribute to the mounting problems and approaching calamity. Or we can shift to nutritious plant-based diets, greatly increasing prospects for a more peaceful, healthy and sustainable future for the planet’s people.
You are in a position to help determine the fate of future generations. Please do all that you can to help the world make the dietary and other choices that can help avoid the impending cataclysm. For example, please consider recommending that governments stop subsidizing the production of animal products and begin subsidizing healthier, more environmentally-positive food production and consumption choices, as for instance the organic vegan diet.
Thank you for your consideration, and best wishes as you carry on with your important efforts toward a better, more environmentally sustainable world.
Very truly yours,
Richard Schwartz
Director, Veg Climate Alliance
Supporting groups include: (List in formation)
Veg Climate Alliance (Initiator of the Letter)
http://www.VegClimateAlliance.org
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AgireOra Network - Italy
http://www.agireora.org
Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals, UK
http://www.aswa.org.uk
Animal Place, USA
http://www.animalplace.org
Animal Protectors, USA
Animals Australia, Australia
http://www.AnimalsAustralia.org
http://www.SaveBabe.com
http://www.LiveExport-Indefensible.com
A Well-Fed World, USA
http://www.wellfedworld.org
Penny Bassett-Scarfe, reporter and TV interviewer, Australia
Bunny Huggers, UK
http://www.bunnyhuggers.org.uk
Campaign Against Animals in Research Experiments , UK
http://www.caare.org.uk
Catholic Concern for Animals-USA, USA
http://www.Catholic-animals.org
Christian Vegetarian Association, USA
http://www.all-creatures.org/cva
Centro Vegetariano, Portugal
http://www.centrovegetariano.org
Compassionate Action for Animals, USA
http://www.ExploreVeg.org
Compassion For Animals Day, Australia
http://www.CompassionForAnimalsDay.com
Concern for Helping Animals in Israel (CHAI), USA and Israel
http://www.chai-online.org
Dansk Vegetarforening (Danish Vegetarian Society), Denmark
http://www.vegetarforening.dk
Edinburgh the Fur-Free City, UK
http://www.edinburghfurfreecity.co.uk
European Vegetarian and Animal News Alliance (EVANA), Europe
http://www.evana.org
Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), USA
http://www.farmusa.org
Global Meat FREE Petition, International
http://www.MeatFreePetition.com
God’s Creatures Ministry, USA
http://www.Godscreaturesministry.org
Jens Holm, former Member of the European Parliament 2006-2009, Sweden
http://www.jensholm.se/english
Humane HEART (Health, Education, & Abuse Resolution Taskforce), USA
IG Glücklich leben ohne Fleisch (Happy Life without Meat), Switzerland
http://www.legalbanofmeat.info
In Defence of Animals (IDA) USA
http://www.idausa.org
Interfaith Council for the Protection of Animals and Nature (ICPAN), USA
http://www.ICPANonline.org
Jewish Vegetarians of North America, USA
http://www.jewishveg.com
Jews for Animal Rights (JAR), USA
http://www.micahbooks.com
Helmut F. Kaplan, Ph.D., philosopher and animal rights author, Austria
Let’s Act Now, International
http://www.letsactnow.org
Meat Free Movement, International
http://www.MeatFreeMovement.org
Menschen für Tierrechte, Tierversuchsgegner Baden-Württemberg e.V. (Humans for Animal Rights, Registered Association of Opponents of Animal Testing Baden-Württemberg), Germany
Nutrition Ecology International Center (NEIC), International
http://www.nutritionecology.org
Charles Patterson, Ph.D., author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA (in 14 languages), USA
http://www.powerfulbook.com
Proanima, Romania
http://www.proanimasv.ro
http://www.proanima.wordpress.com
programa accion comunitaria por el medio ambiente
(Community Action Program for the Enivironment ), Dominican Republic
http://www.acxm.blogspot.com
Protectia si Drepturile Animalelor (Animal protection & rights), Romania
http://www.protectiaanimalelor.ro
Revolutionary Action Conservation Society For Helping Animals, India
John Robbins, USA
Author of many books, including “The Food Revolution”
http://www.Foodrevolution.org
San Francisco Vegetarian Society, USA
http://www.sfvs.org
Schweizerische Vereinigung für Vegetarismus (Swiss Union for
Vegetarianism), Switzerland
http://www.vegetarismus.ch
Dr Nandita Shah, India
http://www.sharan-india.org
Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians, USA
http://www.serv-online.org
SOS Klimawandel (SOS Climate Change), Austria
http://www.sos-klimawandel.info
Tierschutznews (Animal Protection News), Switzerland
http://www.tierschutznews.ch
Uncaged, UK
http://www.uncaged.co.uk
VEGAN 2050, USA
http://www.vegan2050.org
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4. Group Seeking Information on Animal-Friendly Synagogues
All-Creatures has a listing of vegan/vegetarian animal-friendly churches:
http://www.all-creatures.org/church/churchdir.html.
We’d like to start of list of synagogues that fit this category.
Any suggestions? Ideas? Thoughts? Links?
And if you know someone who would to work with us on this, let us know.
Thanks much,
Veda
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All-Creatures.org is committed to expanding an online listing of synagogues and temples where people who care about animals and are committed vegans or vegetarians will feel welcomed and not have to be confronted with “animal meals.” We would like to know about synagogues and temples where people can worship, knowing their commitments to compassionate living for the whole of creation are honored.
Thanks!
Veda
[Please let me know if you have any information about Veg-friendly synagogues, or would like to help Varda find some. Thanks.]
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5. Campaign Links Peace to the Foods People Eat and Climate Change
Campaign Links Peace to the Foods People Eat and Climate Change
United Nations International Day of Peace September 21st - Peace begins on our Plate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_BjptdM_Ss
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
United Nations Peace Day Events Link Peace to Vegetarianism and Climate Change
Santa Monica, California – September 15, 2009 – To mark the United Nations’ International Day of Peace on September 21st, individuals across the globe are highlighting the peaceful effect of eliminating or reducing meat from our diets.
A number of events promoting the idea that “Peace beings on our Plate” will be held in North American cities such as New York, Santa Monica, San Jose, San Francisco, Victoria, and Ottawa as well as in Costa Rica, Australia and China.
Each event is officially recognized as part of the United Nations’ International Day of Peace. The U.N. General Assembly has named September 21st as the permanent date for the celebration, where individuals create practical acts of peace.
“The compassionate consumer saves resources and recognizes that an organic vegan diet is a tremendously effective way to promote peace,” says Leron Rabinowiz, organizer of Peace begins on our Plate. Rabinowiz also recently founded an organization to coordinate and link global initiatives such as petitions[1] calling for government support of weekly Meat-Free days in order to reduce climate change.
A weekly meat free day is a simple yet effective way to reduce climate change that is recommended by Nobel Peace prize winner and Chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Dr. Pachauri has said, “If you eat less meat you would be healthier and so would the planet … it would help the global community enormously because the entire meat cycle is very, very intensive in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.”
Rabinowiz says that both climate change and peace are linked to meat free days because a vegetarian diet uses less resources that are common causes of global conflict, particularly water and energy[2],[3]. A University of Chicago study found that switching from the average American diet to a vegan diet would save 50 per cent more greenhouse gas emissions than switching from the average American car to a hybrid Prius.[4]
“A simple act of Peace is choosing sustainable health for oneself and for our planet. By choosing organic foods, eating vegetarian, and buying from local farmers, you are… nourishing your body, conserving water and energy,reducing pollution and helping the local economy. Peace begins with your plate!” says Avon Mattison, President, and co-founder of Pathways to Peace.Pathways to Peace is the non-profit organization granted as an official UN Peace Messenger in 1987; it manages UN Peace Day www.PathwaysToPeace.org
For further information on the events, please visit:
http://meatfreemovement.org/peace-day
http://internationaldayofpeace.org/participate/events_calendar.html News contact:
Leron Rabinowiz 1.818.921.4845 P.O. Box 8398 Van Nuys, CA 91409 www.MeatFreeMovement.org
Sources and additional information:
[1] www.MeatFreePetition.com
[2] Steinfeld et al. (2006) Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Rome: UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
[3] McMichael, A., Powles, J., Butler, C., Uauy, R. (2007): Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health. The Lancet. Sept. 13, 2007
[4] Eschel, G., Martin, P.A. (2005) Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.: Diet, Energy, and Global Warming, scientific journal article in: Earth Interactions, Volume 10 (2006). http://www.vegetarisme.be/download/interndocs/milieu/klimaat/diet%20energy%20and%20global%20warming%20-%20martin%20eshel%20%20-%202005.pdf
Be veg! Go green! Save the planet!
www.suprememastertv.com
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6. JVNA Advisor Links Rosh Hashana to Compassion to Animals
Thanks to JVNA advisor Patti Breitman for giving this talk and for giving us permission for including it in this newsletter.
Shana Tova, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today about my own history with guilt, forgiveness and new beginnings.
Last night when we got to page 31 in our machzor, we read in unison, “Help us stand in awe of all Your creatures.” I realized it was the perfect title for what I wrote to share today.
Help us stand in awe of all Your creatures.
As a child I learned to say thanks for the God who brings forth bread from the earth and fruit from the vine. And last night, with Rabbi Dan’s help, we said thanks for the God who brings us apples.
I don’t pray when I wake up, when I lie down, when I sittest in my house or when I walkest by the way. But I do pray – most of the time – before and after most meals.
One thing I love about Judaism is that we are encouraged to say thank you after we eat because it’s easy to remember to be thankful when we are hungry, but it’s more of a challenge to remember our gratitude after we have sated our appetites.
So before most meals and after as many as I can remember to do it, I express my gratitude to the earth as the source of all my food, and to the people who helped get that food from the earth to my table. And this year, because I planted my first every garden, I included thanks to the experience gardeners and friends whose advice, support and compost helped me plant and tend the garden successfully. There were so many Shehekianus as we harvested our first radishes, beans, lettuce, arugula, and now, finally, painstakingly slowly, our tomatoes.
Despite years of Hebrew School, summer camp is where I learned the most about Jewish values. What stands out in my memory is how simple it seemed to live in accordance with God’s requirements for us:
Do Justly
Love Mercy
Walk humbly with God.
When I was a very young girl my family visited a farm in NJ called Pop Freeze. One afternoon I played with a chicken for an hour or more. We ran alongside one another and I watched the bird, chased the bird, and was delighted with her company.
That night I was told at dinner that the chicken we were eating was the bird I had been playing with that afternoon. I cried and cried and refused to take another bite of the chicken.
While I didn’t have words then to describe my feelings, I now know that I was feeling mad, sad and betrayed. How could the people who loved me not care about my friendship with that bird? How could my own family do this to me?
Many years later I got to know cows, lambs, turkeys and pigs, I remembered those early feelings of betrayal. I imagined what this kind of betrayal might feel like from the animals’ point of view.
It is so moving when I see parents encouraging children to visit petting zoos and to gently stroke the baby cow or rub the bellies of the piglets. But I am saddened to know that some of those families will be serving cow for dinner that night, but they will call the meat hamburger. And some will be serving pigs, but they will call the meal ribs or bacon, not Wilbur or Babe. So many betrayals. I do not want to be part of the systemic betrayal of people or animals.
When I became a vegetarian, it was in part because I felt that eating animals did not feel just or loving or merciful. I much prefer to eat food that I can harvest myself without cringing and without taking the life of an animal.
Living as a vegetarian was a new beginning for me. It has opened my heart and provided a n avenue for me to practice justice and mercy.
When I first stopped eating animals I felt guilty for all the times I had been oblivious to their lives and deaths. But I learned that I could assuage that guilt by taking action on behalf of the animals who are still bred, confined and killed for food. And I learned to forgive my loving parents whose early betrayal at Pop Freeze farm came from wanting me to eat what they had learned to eat and what society back then believed was the best food possible.
Now I speak up for the birds, pigs, cows, lambs, ducks and other animals who cannot speak up for themselves. I think of every meal as practice in justice and mercy and nonviolence.
In a world so filled with violence about which I can do so little, with my food choices I can take a stand against violence, practice peace on my plate, and help to reduce some of the violence toward animals.
Judaism places a very high value on health and life. So much so that people who are sick are not allowed to fast on Yom Kippur. As a vegetarian, I like to honor that reverence for life and health by choosing what science now tells us is one of the most health promoting diets there is: whole natural foods including vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes. And I am grateful also for the Jewish Vegetarian Society of North America (JewishVeg.com) that is supporting me in learning how a vegetarian diet is in accordance with and a good ambassador for Jewish values.
On Rosh Ha Shana and on Yom Kippur I feel the most connected with my Jewish heritage. And at every meal I feel the most connected with my Jewish values. May the new year be a sweet and healthy one for you and everyone you love.
Shana Tova.
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7. Great Video re 3 People going Vegan and All the Reasons For Such a Change
http://www.kindgreenplanet.org/programs/glasswalls/
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8. Farm Sanctuary Event Considers Legal Issues re Animals
Forwarded message:
Dear Richard,
For 23 years, Farm Sanctuary has been leading the charge to expose factory farming cruelty and increase legal protections for farm animals. On the local level, we have worked with prosecutors to punish those who neglect and abuse the animals in their care. On the state level, we have passed landmark ballot initiatives and legislation banning some of the worst factory farming practices, most notably with our victory in California last year with Proposition 2. On the federal level, we have called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop the slaughter of downed animals and have seen recent success with President Barack Obama closing a loophole that allowed downed cattle to be sold for slaughter. As our movement gains momentum, Farm Sanctuary is continually finding new opportunities to use the law to help farm animals.
Find out how you can get involved in efforts like these by joining us on October 14 for “Farm Animals and the Law,” a panel discussion with three of the nation’s leading experts on farm animals and the law at the New York University School of Law. Farm Sanctuary’s Director of Legal Campaigns Delcianna Winders and attorneys Mariann Sullivan and David Wolfson will discuss the legal status of farm animals today, legal efforts currently underway to help farm animals, and how we can all use the law to pursue more protections for farm animals. More details can be found below:
Farm Sanctuary Presents “Farm Animals and the Law ” Wednesday, October 14; 6 to 9 p.m. New York University School of Law Furman Hall, Room 216 245 Sullivan St. (Between Washington Square Park South and West 3rd Street) New York, New York
Refreshments will be served. Please bring a photo ID to enter the building. The event is being hosted by the New York University Student Animal Legal Defense Fund as part of the New York Week for the Animals.
I look forward to seeing you at this exciting event as we work together to build a more compassionate world for all.
Sincerely,
David Benzaquen
New York Advocacy Organizer Farm Sanctuary
P.S. If you’re receiving this alert and haven’t yet signed up for our Advocacy Campaign Team, please join your fellow New York advocates and sign up today!
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9. UN Plans Shock therapy To Awaken Leaders to Climate Threats
UN plans 'shock therapy' for world leaders on environment
Pared-down summit will force heads of rich states to listen to those of third world in hope of kickstarting radical action
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 20 September 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/20/united-nations-summit-climate-change
The United Nations is planning a form of diplomatic shock therapy for world leaders this week in the hope of injecting badly needed urgency into negotiations for a climate change treaty that, it is now widely acknowledged, are dangerously adrift.
UN chief Ban Ki-Moon and negotiators say that unless they can convert world leaders into committed advocates of radical action, it will be very hard to reach a credible and enforceable agreement to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change.
As the digital counter ticking off the hours to the Copenhagen summit – which had been supposed to seal the deal on climate change – hit 77 days today, progress at the UN summit in New York is seen as vital. Nearly 100 heads of state and government are to attend the summit, for which a pared-down format has been devised.
"We need these leaders to go outside their usual comfort zones," said one diplomat. "Our sense is that leaders have got a little too cosy and comfortable. They really have to hear from countries that are vulnerable and suffering."
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore, agreed. Commenting on the leaders attending the G20 summit in Pittsburgh next week, he said: "We n eed to remind these people about impacts of climate change – the fact that they are inequitable and fall very heavily on some of the poorest people in the world. We are likely to see a large number of failed states if we don't act in time."
The heads of state attending the UN summit are to be stripped of their entourages. Each will be allowed just one aide, generally their country's environment minister, in the sessions.
Instead of set-piece speeches, leaders will be paired off to chair discussion groups. Britain will be with Guyana, Tuvalu with the Netherlands, and Mongolia with the European commission.
The leaders will also lunch with environmental activists and chief executives of corporations who have been pressing their governments for action. At dinner, the leaders of the biggest polluting countries will dine with the leaders of Banglade sh, Kiribati and Costa Rica – which are among the primary victims of climate change.
By the end of the day, the rationale goes, the leaders will be imbued with a new sense of purpose. Leaders of rich countries will have been galvanised to take on the big emissions cuts – 25-40% over the next decade, 80% by 2050 – needed to keep temperatures from rising more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels, the temperature set by science to avoid the most calamitous effects of climate change.
The leaders will also, it is hoped, have some understanding of the threat to poorer countries. And, at the very least, they will have more of a common purpose in tackling the problem. "We need to gather together. We don't want to blame or point fingers at each other," said Yaqoub al-Sanada, counsellor at the Kuwaiti mission to the UN. Kuwait – one of the biggest producers of oil – will co-chair a discussion session with Finland.
The UN is hoping for help from Barack Obama. The US president will speak at the session, and there is anticipation he will deliver a strong signal that America is committed to action. There is growing anxiety for those kinds of reassurances, especially as opposition to Obama's green agenda grows in Congress. "The first question I get any time I meet with anybody is, 'Where's the legislation? How's it going?'," Todd Stern, the State Department's climate change envoy, said. There are also reports that China's president, Hu Jintao, in his first appearance at the UN, will announce new commitments to curb pollution – the kind of signal that will be crucial to boost negotiations in the days leading up to Copenhagen.
"We can get a successful outcome from Copenhagen. It is achievable, but at the moment it's in the balance," said John Ashton, Britain's climate change envoy. "We need to close the gaps."
Those gaps grew over the summer. There is what Ashton calle d the "ambition gap" – the failure of leaders of the big polluting countries to sign on to the deep emissions cuts needed. Then there is the "finance gap" – the failure of industrialised states to come up with a package on how to compensate poor countries that will suffer the most devastating consequences.
Britain came forward last June with an estimate of £61bn a year by 2020. Negotiators are frustrated that major industrialised states have not set clear figures on how much they are willing to commit, or how they will provide the funding.
Some climate change experts and negotiators have already begun planning a fallback position should the December Copenhagen summit fail to produce a strong enough agreement.
In Washington, Obama administration officials now talk openly about negotiating beyond Copenhagen. "Let's not make that one parti cular time the be-all and end-all, and say that if it doesn't happen we are doomed," Steven Chu, the energy secretary, told reporters.
Thinktanks are already starting to work on what is being called "Plan B" – scenarios for how the world could come up with an action plan before it is too late. But some are not holding their breath.
"It seems to me that Copenhagen is not the end of this," said Tim Wirth, the president of the UN Foundation, and the man who, in the 1980s, helped to write the first cap-and-trade plan for acid rain. He added: "We are going to have Copenhagens for the rest of our lives."
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10. Follow-Up Re Kapparot
Thanks to JVNA advisor and activist Rina Deych for her long-time dedicated efforts to reduce abuses of chickens during Kapparot, and for sending the report below. As indicated above, I have 2 articles about kapparot, both at JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, one in the section on animals and one in the section about Jewish festivals.
[While JVNA strongly urges that Jews who perform the kapparot ritual use money instead of chickens, we do not necessarily endorse all the characterizations of kapparot in the following message.]
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Dear Friends,
I did a little one-woman demo outside some places where they are doing Kapparot.
In case you are not familiar with them, here are two articles on the subject, one by me and one by Richard Schwartz:
http://rrrina.com/kaporot.htm
The raw footage is on my YouTube page (I didn't get any of them killing the birds, because, in each case I got kicked out before I had a chance ... one slaughterer stopped himself right before he made impact): http://www.youtube.com/user/rrrina
Through the years, I've done one-person demos outside these places.
My grandfather, a kosher butcher (who, in his final year of life was so revolted by what he witnessed when he had occasion to visit a slaughterhouse that he gave up his business and went vegetarian), was opposed to Kapparot. He was known throughout the neighborhood as a Tzadik (righteous man), who rescued abandoned cats, dogs, and even injured birds, gave free food away to the poor, and allowed homeless people to sleep in his store. Growing up, I remember a series of "borders," as he called them, homeless people whom he would allow to stay in a room on the top floor of his home, until he was able to help find them jobs so they could afford to live in an SRO (single room occupancy).
My grandfather denounced the practice of Kapparot as cruel, unnecessary, and, in fact, un-Jewish. He said that it was not in the Torah or the Talmud, and that for those who felt the need to do the ritual, it could be done with an inanimate object (money).
Kapparot takes place during the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Being around the places where they do this obscene sacrifice is bone-chilling. The stench of fear and blood permeates the entire neighborhood. The birds are left, packed tightly in crates, with no food and no water for the entire week.
The "unused" birds are often left in the crates in the heat and cold, starving amid the excrement, until they can be picked up. Some, in desperation, pluck each others' eyes out.
About a year ago, some Orthodox rabbis had a meeting about the practice. It was decided that there needs to be closer monitoring and regulation of Kapparot. Until last year, I used to see some of the slaughterers throw the birds into garbage bags (contradicting their claim that the meat is donated to the poor). This year, while I didn't get to film it, I found one place actually taking the dead birds, plucking them, and preparing them for donation... certainly not ideal, but an improvement over discarding them. Still this is a heinous practice that needs to be abolished.
Yesterday, I called the ASPCA to report that the animals had no food or water and were packed tightly in crates (stacked on top of each other), left in the hot sun.
Please call and complain... they WILL come. The more people who call, the more seriously they will take the complaints.
The ASPCA cruelty division number is: 212-876-7700, ext. 4450.
So far, I found three places where it is being done in Boro Park, Brooklyn:
- 43rd Street, between 13th and 14th Ave., closer to 13th, next to a synagogue.
-2050th Street, bet 13th and 14th Ave, closer to 14th, outside a school.
- corner of 49th Street and 14th Ave, next to the YM-YWHA.
Please call and complain that these animals have no food and water.
Thanks so much!!!
Rina
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11. Animal Sanctuary Schedules Talks Relating ‘Livestock’ Agriculture to Climate Change
Forwarded message from Animals Sanctuary:
[While this event is scheduled on the Jewish Sabbath, I am
including it here as an example of how to spread the message about dietary connections to global warming.]
To view this alert as a Web page, please use this link: http://action.farmsanctuary.org/site/MessageViewer
To share this message, please click here:
http://action.farmsanctuary.org/site/TellAFriend
Dear Richard,
On Friday, Septemb er 25, join me, Mia MacDonald (executive director of Brighter Green and Farm Sanctuary board member) and Marisa Miller Wolfson (outreach director of Kind Green Planet) for a presentation on the links between food, agriculture and global warming. As part of Climate Week, which is being held in NYC in conjunction with the UN General Assembly and special session on climate change, this workshop will address the contribution of meat and dairy production to rising greenhouse gas emissions, and the steps we need to take to reduce our “foodprint” and sustain our planet. This workshop is also being sponsored by New York University’s student group Earth Matters.
Food and Climate Change: The Meat of the Matter
NYU Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South,
Room 804 Friday, September 25, 2009;
7 - 8:30 p.m.
Free
E-mail Mollie
http://www.kindgreenplanet.org/programs/presentations/general/workshopnscreenings_details.php?id=80
Also, read on for more information about the connections between the environment and farm animal agriculture, and take action on the NYC Foodprint Campaign!
Hope to see you on September 25
Warmly,
Jasmin Singer
National Advocacy
Organizer Farm Sanctuary
http://www.kindgreenplanet.org/programs/presentations/general/workshopnscreenings_details.php?id=80
P.S. If you’re not yet a member of Farm Sanctuary’s Advocacy Campaign Team, please join your fellow New York advocate s and sign up today! It’s a great way to stay on top of our local outreach opportunities and NYC happenings.
Farm Sanctuary, PO Box 150, Watkins Glen, NY 14891
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12. Lantern Books Celebrating Tenth Anniversary
Forwarded message from Lantern Books:
[Full disclosure: Lantern is the publisher of my books “Judaism and Vegetarianism” and “Judaism and Global Survival” and many more books on vegetarianism, animal rights, environmentalism, spirituality and related issues. They are a very valuable asset to our movement. I wish them much continued success.]
Lantern is 10 Years Old!
We made it through the terrible twos, past the seven year itch, and this fall, Lantern Books will celebrate a full decade in the publishing business.
In those ten years, the "baby" of Gene Gollogly and Martin Rowe has employed, published, used the services of, provided services for, and sold to untold numbers of people, all who've helped step their vision of a more peaceful and sustainable planet forward.
We'll be celebrating our anniversary and launching an exciting, new book on Thursday, October 8th, 6:30 to 9 p.m., at Jivamukti Yoga, near Union Square in Manhattan.
PLEASE JOIN US while we toast our successes, launch this beautiful new book, and look forward to our next years in the publishing business.
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13. Article Challenges Non-Vegetarians on Diets
Thanks to JVNA Secretary/treasurer to forwarding this link to an important article, well worth reading.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-solomon/who-you-callin-vegangelic_b_290582.html?view=print
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14. New Website Has Powerful Material Advocating Vegetarianism as Solution to Global Warming
http://www.planetdiet.org/
I strongly recommend taking a look at some of this material, especially the VERY powerful powerpoint presentation, which is the best presentation of the arguments for a shift to veg diets being essential to avoid a pending climate catastrophe that I have seen. The=2 0material at this web site has the potential to really get vegetarianism onto society’s agenda, so please help spread the word about it.
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15. First New York City VegFest Scheduled
Forwarded message:
I am writing to inform you about the 1st edition of NYC VegFest taking place on Sunday, October 11, 2009 in Tompkins Square Park from 12-6 pm. There will be special guest speakers, yoga, meditation, vegan fashion show, and entertainment.
[This event occurs on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, but I am including it here as an example of what is happening and as a model for people to plan similar events.]
The 1st edition of NYC VegFest is an outdoor festival-come rain or shine from noon to 6pm, we will celebrate Vegetarianism and it is free to the public. There are so many reasons to choose a vegetarian diet: for health, the planet, and our precious animals. The NYC VegFest has something for everyone to enjoy, so please come w/your friends & family.
Peas & blessings,
Natalie P.
Event on Sunday, October 11, 2009
http://vegfest.webs.com
http://twitter.com/nycvegfest
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