2/24/2010 JVNA Online Newsletter

Shalom everyone,

This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:

1. Happy Purim!

2. Relating Passover to Vegetarianism

3. NY Times Op-Ed Article on “Global Weirding”

4. Videos Based on Some of My Writings

5. Major Heat Wave in Israel

6. Teens Start Vegetarian Group

7. Update on Attempts to Ban Fur in Israel

8. Religious Groups Battling Hunger/I Am Quoted

9. Insightful Article by JVNA Advisor Dan Brook

10. Extensive List of Vegan and Animal Rights Shows and Podcasts

11. Vegetarian Singles Site Improved

12. Job Openings for Vegan/Vegetarian Cooks

13. Jerusalem Post article on A Sacred Duty

14. Shalom Center Produces Environmentally-Orientated Passover Haggadah

15. Extremely Powerful Video relates Climate Change to National Security

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. Happy Purim!

The joyous Jewish festival of Purim begins immediately after Shabbat (on Saturday evening, March 27). For ideas about vegetarian connections, please see my article “Purim and Vegetarianism” at the holidays section at JewishVeg.com/Schwartz. And please use the material in that article to promote vegetarianism. Thanks.

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2. Relating Passover to Vegetarianism

Passover occurs 30 days after Purim. So, I plan to send my articles relating Passover to vegetarianism to the Jewish media soon. So, if you get a chance, please take a look at these articles also in the holidays section at JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, and please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvements. Even better, please use my articles as a basis of your own articles, letters to editors and talking points. Thanks.

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3. NY Times Op-Ed Article on “Global Weirding”

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Global Weirding Is Here

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: February 17, 2010

cOP-ED COLUMNIST

Global Weirding Is Here

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: February 17, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/opinion/17friedman.html?ref=opinion

Of the festivals of nonsense that periodically overtake American politics, surely the silliest is the argument that because Washington is having a particularly snowy winter it proves that climate change is a hoax and, therefore, we need not bother with all this girly-man stuff like renewable energy, solar panels and carbon taxes. Just drill, baby, drill.

When you see lawmakers like Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeting that “it is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries ‘uncle,’ ” or news that the grandchildren of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma are building an igloo next to the Capitol with a big sign that says “Al Gore’s New Home,” you really wonder if we can have a serious discussion about the climate-energy issue anymore.

The climate-science community is not blameless. It knew it was up against formidable forces — from the oil and coal companies that finance the studies skeptical of climate change to conservatives who hate anything that will lead to more government regulations to the Chamber of Commerce that will resist any energy taxes. Therefore, climate experts can’t leave themselves vulnerable by citing non-peer-reviewed research or failing to respond to legitimate questions, some of which happened with both the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Although there remains a mountain of research from multiple institutions about the reality of climate change, the public has grown uneasy. What’s real? In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.

At the same time, they should add a summary of all the errors and wild exaggerations made by the climate skeptics — and where they get their funding. It is time the climate scientists stopped just playing defense. The physicist Joseph Romm, a leading climate writer, is posting on his Web site, climateprogress.org, his own listing of the best scientific papers on every aspect of climate change for anyone who wants a quick summary now.

Here are the points I like to stress:

1) Avoid the term “global warming.” I prefer the term “global weirding,” because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.

The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever.

2) Historically, we know that the climate has warmed and cooled slowly, going from Ice Ages to warming periods, driven, in part, by changes in the earth’s orbit and hence the amount of sunlight different parts of the earth get. What the current debate is about is whether humans — by emitting so much carbon and thickening the greenhouse-gas blanket around the earth so that it traps more heat — are now rapidly exacerbating nature’s natural warming cycles to a degree that could lead to dangerous disruptions.

3) Those who favor taking action are saying: “Because the warming that humans are doing is irreversible and potentially catastrophic, let’s buy some insurance — by investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency and mass transit — because this insurance will also actually make us richer and more secure.” We will import less oil, invent and export more clean-tech products, send fewer dollars overseas to buy oil and, most importantly, diminish the dollars that are sustaining the worst petro-dictators in the world who indirectly fund terrorists and the schools that nurture them.

4) Even if climate change proves less catastrophic than some fear, in a world that is forecast to grow from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion people between now and 2050, more and more of whom will live like Americans, demand for renewable energy and clean water is going to soar. It is obviously going to be the next great global industry.

China, of course, understands that, which is why it is investing heavily in clean-tech, efficiency and high-speed rail. It sees the future trends and is betting on them. Indeed, I suspect China is quietly laughing at us right now. And Iran, Russia, Venezuela and the whole OPEC gang are high-fiving each other. Nothing better serves their interests than to see Americans becoming confused about climate change, and, therefore, less inclined to move toward clean-tech and, therefore, more certain to remain addicted to oil. Yes, sir, it is morning in Saudi Arabia.

-------------------------------------------------------

My post in response:

Kudos to Tom Friedman for this very insightful article.

I think we can best respond to global wierding by increasing awareness of the inconvenient truth that even Al Gore has been generally ignoring: the major impact that animal-based agriculture has on global warming at a time when the world is rapidly approaching an unprecedented climate catastrophe, A UN FAO 2006 report indicated that animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars, planes and other means of transportation worldwide combined. And a recent cover article by two environmentalists in World Watch magazine argues that the livestock' sector is responsible for over half of the human-caused greenhouse gases. Hence to avoid the impending climate disaster and shift our imperiled world to a sustainable path, a major societal shift to plant-based diets is essential.

Such a shift would also reduce the many other negative effects of animal-based diets: disease, increased hunger, water pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, rapid species extinction, desertification and many others.

As to global climate change naysayers, we should ask them to please explain why the glaciers and polar ice caps are melting faster than climate scientists' worst scenarios, why so many areas are experiencing such severe droughts, why there are more and larger wild fires, why the past decade is the warmest on record and much more.

In summary, by promoting plant-based diets we can do the most to help shift our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.

For further information, please visit JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, where I have over 140 articles and 25 podcasts of my talks and interviews and ASacredDuty.com, to see our acclaimed documentary “A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World .”

Of the festivals of nonsense that periodically overtake American politics, surely the silliest is the argument that because Washington is having a particularly snowy winter it proves that climate change is a hoax and, therefore, we need not bother with all this girly-man stuff like renewable energy, solar panels and carbon taxes. Just drill, baby, drill.

When you see lawmakers like Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeting that “it is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries ‘uncle,’ ” or news that the grandchildren of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma are building an igloo next to the Capitol with a big sign that says “Al Gore’s New Home,” you really wonder if we can have a serious discussion about the climate-energy issue anymore.

The climate-science community is not blameless. It knew it was up against formidable forces — from the oil and coal companies that finance the studies skeptical of climate change to conservatives who hate anything that will lead to more government regulations to the Chamber of Commerce that will resist any energy taxes. Therefore, climate experts can’t leave themselves vulnerable by citing non-peer-reviewed research or failing to respond to legitimate questions, some of which happened with both the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Although there remains a mountain of research from multiple institutions about the reality of climate change, the public has grown uneasy. What’s real? In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.

At the same time, they should add a summary of all the errors and wild exaggerations made by the climate skeptics — and where they get their funding. It is time the climate scientists stopped just playing defense. The physicist Joseph Romm, a leading climate writer, is posting on his Web site, climateprogress.org, his own listing of the best scientific papers on every aspect of climate change for anyone who wants a quick summary now.

Here are the points I like to stress:

1) Avoid the term “global warming.” I prefer the term “global weirding,” because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.

The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever.

2) Historically, we know that the climate has warmed and cooled slowly, going from Ice Ages to warming periods, driven, in part, by changes in the earth’s orbit and hence the amount of sunlight different parts of the earth get. What the current debate is about is whether humans — by emitting so much carbon and thickening the greenhouse-gas blanket around the earth so that it traps more heat — are now rapidly exacerbating nature’s natural warming cycles to a degree that could lead to dangerous disruptions.

3) Those who favor taking action are saying: “Because the warming that humans are doing is irreversible and potentially catastrophic, let’s buy some insurance — by investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency and mass transit — because this insurance will also actually make us richer and more secure.” We will import less oil, invent and export more clean-tech products, send fewer dollars overseas to buy oil and, most importantly, diminish the dollars that are sustaining the worst petro-dictators in the world who indirectly fund terrorists and the schools that nurture them.

4) Even if climate change proves less catastrophic than some fear, in a world that is forecast to grow from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion people between now and 2050, more and more of whom will live like Americans, demand for renewable energy and clean water is going to soar. It is obviously going to be the next great global industry.

China, of course, understands that, which is why it is investing heavily in clean-tech, efficiency and high-speed rail. It sees the future trends and is betting on them. Indeed, I suspect China is quietly laughing at us right now. And Iran, Russia, Venezuela and the whole OPEC gang are high-fiving each other. Nothing better serves their interests than to see Americans becoming confused about climate change, and, therefore, less inclined to move toward clean-tech and, therefore, more certain to remain addicted to oil. Yes, sir, it is morning in Saudi Arabia.

-------------------------------------------------------

My post in response:

Kudos to Tom Friedman for this very insightful article.

I think we can best respond to global wierding by increasing awareness of the inconvenient truth that even Al Gore has been generally ignoring: the major impact that animal-based agriculture has on global warming at a time when the world is rapidly approaching an unprecedented climate catastrophe, A UN FAO 2006 report indicated that animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars, planes and other means of transportation worldwide combined. And a recent cover article by two environmentalists in World Watch magazine argues that the livestock' sector is responsible for over half of the human-caused greenhouse gases. Hence to avoid the impending climate disaster and shift our imperiled world to a sustainable path, a major societal shift to plant-based diets is essential.

Such a shift would also reduce the many other negative effects of animal-based diets: disease, increased hunger, water pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, rapid species extinction, desertification and many others.

As to global climate change naysayers, we should ask them to please explain why the glaciers and polar ice caps are melting faster than climate scientists' worst scenarios, why so many areas are experiencing such severe droughts, why there are more and larger wild fires, why the past decade is the warmest on record and much more.

In summary, by promoting plant-based diets we can do the most to help shift our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.

For further information, please visit JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, where I have over 140 articles and 25 podcasts of my talks and interviews and ASacredDuty.com, to see our acclaimed documentary “A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World.”

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4. Videos Based on Some of My Writings

Forwarded message from JVNA advisor Catherine Manna )and many thanks to her for producing these videos):

My pleasure Richard. I am engaging in a respectful dialog in meat eating and the Torah..

Here are the videos..

first video www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ne80Bn730

Excerpts from , Dr Richard Schwartzs article postcast entitled, "What would a Vegan World Look like"

The following are Vegan/Vegetarian Shepherds of Today!

Dr Richard Schwartz, Lionel Friedburg, Dr Joel Furhman, Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen Rabbi David Rosen Rabbi Michael Cohen Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb Rabbi Adam Frank Rabbi Yonassan Gershom Rabbi Simchah Roth Rabbi Warren Stone Roberta Kalechofsky Jonathan Wolf

then a 3 part video

Essay part 1 of 3 was written by Dr Richard Schwartz, Judaism and Vegetarianism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3d75NVhUTU

part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPwDBxVsMZI

part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2q87mXvu8

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5. Major Heat Wave in Israel

Israel basks in longest winter heat wave in almost 40 years

By Zafrir Rinat

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1149816.html

The heat wave that has hit the entire country will reach its peak Monday, with temperatures up to 30 degrees Celsius expected in some areas.

Although this falls short of a record high for the season, meteorologists say this has been the longest warm period in February in 38 years.

Temperatures are expected to reach 29 degrees Celsius in Tel Aviv on Monday, and 27 degrees in Jerusalem, while Eilat will see temperatures of up to 30 degrees. The heat will be alleviated somewhat on Tuesday, with temperatures across the country dropping by at least two to three degrees.

Rosenfeld said some experts think the exceptionally warm spells this winter could also be linked to the El Nino climate pattern, which is characterized by high water temperatures in parts of the Pacific ocean near the equator.

"We've already had warm Februaries that ended with very cold and rainy days, so the winter is far from over," said Rosenfeld.

There is no indication when the next rainy spell will arrive.

The extreme swings between warm and cold temperatures this winter have already produced marked changes in the blossoming of wildflowers.

Ori Fragman-Sapir, director of the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, and Yuval Sapir, director of Tel Aviv University's Botanical Gardens, said that previous heat waves followed by prolonged rains results in the early sprouting and blooming of many wildflowers.

Blooming early

"We have seen plants like the lupine and the tulip blooming weeks too early," Fragman-Sapir said. He also noted the early blooming of chrysanthemums and poppies, but said he doesn't expect the heat wave to do too much damage to wild plants, since last week's rain has left the ground moist.

"If the heat goes on, though, without further meaningful rains, this could harm species at a critical developmental stage, and then there will be less fruits and seeds," said Fragman-Sapir.

On the other hand, he added, a warm winter could encourage desert flora and other plants better suited to dry weather.

Reptile researchers, meanwhile, said there were no changes in the behavior of hibernating reptiles like snakes.

Amos Bouskila, who teaches life sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, said there's a good chance that smaller reptiles, like lizards, will be more sensitive to the warming weather and might become active earlier this year.

He said it was difficult to pinpoint changes in reptile behavior since little research is done on reptiles in the winter, when they are usually inactive.

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6. Teens Start Vegetarian Group

Veguary - Teen Activists Take On Meat Consumption

Material from the Veguary Web Site:

Andrew Udell is a 16 year old student at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York City. Andrew is a co-founder of Veguary. I asked him a few questions about his plan to help save the world one month at a time.

What is Veguary and how did it start?

One day at shul, my Rabbi posed a question to our smaller minyan about our effect on the world. One thought led to the next, and I just started thinking about how eating meat affects the world. I decided to do some more research about vegetarianism, and I came across some really daunting facts that were difficult to handle, yet important to know. I wanted to try out being a vegetarian for a little while. I started doing some more thinking, one thing led to the next, and with the help of a few friends, we founded Veguary and built the site in a few months. Veguary refers to the second month of the year, in which those enthusiastic about fighting global warming, improving their health, or making a positive difference in the world commit to reducing or eliminating their meat intake by pledging on our website at www.veguary.org.

Why February? Was it for the name?

Continue reading...

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7. Update on Attempts to Ban Fur in Israel

Forwarded message:



This just in: the Israeli Government approved unanimously a bill that has brought Israel one step closer to becoming the first fur-free country!

 The ministerial committee for legislative affairs approved unanimously the expansion on MK Ronit Tirosh's bill, which originally prohibited only the trade of cat and dog fur. The bill was expanded by amendment to include all fur from all mammals. The ban includes an exception on specific fur hats worn by a few people for cultural identity, however. Even still, this bill is a global and historic precedent.

The total ban on all fur from all animals in addition circumvented the anticipated complexity that would have behooved the customs authority in distinguishing the animal of origin of each particular fur item.

Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon and Minister of Environmental Protection Gilad Arden addressed the Ministerial Committee with the assistance of Minister of Education, Gideon Saar. Jane Halevy of the International Anti-Fur Coalition (MARC is part of the coalition, by the way) and attorney Joshua Rotbert, legal adviser of Let the Animals Live are the ones that initiated the matter with the help of MK Nitzan Horowitz via bringing to the government's attention the cruel truth behind the needless fur trade.

Now that the legislative committee unanimously approved the amendment, the Education, Culture and Sports Ministry committee will hold a vote on the amendment later in the month and following their approval the bill will be put to a second and then third reading before finally being past into law. The vast majority are hopeful that the Israeli government will continue on the path to end needless animal cruelty.

 We will let you know how the vote goes.

Helen & Steve

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8. Religious Groups Battling Hunger/I Am Quoted

RELIGION: Fighting Hunger - A Matter of Faith

By Paul Virgo

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50276

Credit:Paul Virgo/IPS

IPS Inter Press Service - Global News Agency

ROME, Feb 10, 2010 (IPS) - The world's major religions might disagree on theology and matters like the foods we ought to eat and the days we should rest on, but when it comes to fighting hunger, they see eye to eye.

The holy books say that those who do not have enough to eat must be helped, which, if you are a believer, makes food insecurity a spiritual issue, not just a political or economic one.

"In every religion I know, the first or second most talked about issue [in their scriptures] is the number of verses that deal with the poor, the sick, the hungry," Tony P. Hall, director of the Alliance to End Hunger and former United States ambassador to the United Nations food agencies in Rome, told IPS.

"Over 2,500 Christian verses deal with this issue. Hunger is an issue that belongs to people of faith. God is very clear on this - we are supposed to take action."

Muslims agree.

"How can your spiritual state be in comfort when those around you are in need? Being a good Muslim is not just about locking yourself in a mosque in prayer," Mostafa Mahboob of the U.S. section of Islamic Relief told IPS.

"You also have responsibilities as a member of your community to those around you. There is definitely a connection between spirituality and hunger. By working to fight hunger, you are putting religious and spiritual teaching into practise."

Today 1.02 billion people are undernourished, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and believers are not the only ones to have allowed this to happen - the whole world has, agnostics and atheists included.

Furthermore, religious organisations are in the frontline in fighting hunger. The Catholic umbrella group Caritas International is one of the world's biggest aid agencies. Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs all have important organisations similar to Caritas and Islamic Relief.

Nevertheless, some commentators have reached the conclusion that, if the scourge of hunger now affects almost one in six in a world of adequate food supplies, millions of people of faith must be neglecting the religious principles they claim to adhere to.

"How high must be the pile of statistics of hungry people? How high must be the pile of dead people? How high must be the pile of Bible verses? What will awaken the people of God from their comatose state?," asked Craig L Nessan in his book ‘Give Us This Day, A Lutheran Proposal For Ending World Hunger’.

Prof. Shannon Jung of the Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City agrees that many believers frequently ignore an issue that should be a priority for them.

"I would say that people of faith are remarkably disposed to respond to crises such as that which Haiti is undergoing right now, but that we people of faith tend to miss a joyful opportunity to address systemic issues in the food supply system," Jung told IPS.

"Sharing with others is a gift that we can give, and one from which we also receive. God created human beings to share and we have a real need to share. We remain spiritually stunted if we do not."

Jung believes some religious leaders have a share of the blame because they give hunger less attention than other issues such as abortion or homosexuality.

"I do think hunger is a more immediate, obvious and demanding issue than abortion or homosexuality. Hunger penetrates every other issue and impacts the human family far more than abortion or homosexuality," he said.

"Sometimes I think churches in affluent nations deal with abortion and homosexuality as a way of avoiding the more serious and challenging issue of their complicity in hunger and poverty - a complicity that we the affluent all share in."

Similarly, Richard H. Schwartz, an emeritus mathematics professor of the College of Staten Island and a commentator on Judaism and social affairs, believes many of his fellow Jews are ignoring God's will by not doing more about hunger.

"Jews rightfully condemn the silence of the world when six million Jews and millions of other people were murdered by the Nazis," he commented in an essay on Judaism and Hunger. "Can we be silent when millions die agonising deaths because of lack of food? Can we acquiesce to the apathy of the world toward the fate of starving people?"

The religious exponents are also in sync about how people of faith should combat hunger, with three main forms of response advocated.

The first is financial support for, and personal involvement in, agencies and campaigns seeking to alleviate hunger.

"I think that Jews should be supporting a global Marshall-type plan to alleviate hunger, poverty, illiteracy, disease, pollution and other societal ills, by using some of the money now going for military purposes for this initiative," Schwartz told IPS.

George McGovern proposed that "every church member, every synagogue member, every Muslim, every Buddhist, ought to make sure that their church has an overseas arm and a domestic arm that reaches out to the hungry" in ‘Ending Hunger Now’, a book he wrote with Methodist theologian Donald Messer and fellow former U.S. Senator Bob Dole.

The second suggested way of responding is political activism to try to pressure decision-makers into doing more to promote food security.

"They (churches) can be very effective in lobbying - they could have a special section where they would organize and petition Congress or petition the state legislatures," said Dole. "It is pretty easy (for politicians) to forget about domestic or world hunger. I know from experience… but we’ve just got to keep pestering people until they get the message."

Mahboob backs this position.

"Hunger is a human rights issue and any peaceful means to promote it is good, so we should take advantage of political or advocacy channels," he said. "It's reasonable to say that greater pressure from constituencies could help remedy the lack of political force in addressing this issue."

The final form of response is via the individual believer's lifestyle - simpler living with less consumerism and waste.

"One of the things that Islam teaches us is to only put on your plate what you can finish. It's not good to waste food. It's disrespectful to God," said Mahboob.

"We should respect what we have and be thankful. We are always trying to catch up with what our neighbours have, what car they drive and so on. But Islam says we should not be excessive in our everyday lives and we should share with our neighbours, our fellow humans… If we cut down on waste, we would spend less and have more to devote to those in need."

Schwartz even encourages people of faith to convert to vegetarianism, arguing this would free up agricultural resources to feed the hungry because breeding livestock is an inefficient way of producing food.

"I believe it is scandalous that the world is currently feeding about 40 percent of its grain to animals, while so many people are chronically hungry and malnourished," he said.

"It is urgent that religious communities and individuals scrutinise their life style and turn from habits of waste, over-consumption and thoughtless acceptance of the standards propagated by advertisements and social pressures.

"God - reality itself - calls us to respond to the cry for food. And we hear it as a cry not only for aid but also for justice."

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9. Insightful Article by JVNA Advisor Dan Brook

Published on Monday, February 15, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Natural and Unnatural Disasters: Tsunamis, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Global Warming, and Poverty

by Dan Brook

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/15-4

Disasters come in many forms.

The 7.0 earthquake that turned the capital of Haiti into a pile of rubble hit on 12 January 2010, causing shocking devastation in an already devastated country. The combination of French colonialism, U.S. military occupation, dictatorial rule, overpopulation, deforestation, capitalist globalization, lack of education, and other factors already made Haiti one of the poorest countries.

On 29 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana, eventually breeching the levees surrounding New Orleans and drowning the city, especially the disproportionately poor and African-American Lower Ninth Ward.

The tsunami that erupted in the Indian Ocean from the massive 9.0 earthquake on 26 December 2004 was incredibly powerful, immensely destructive, and very deadly, perhaps killing a quarter of a million people or more.

I felt -- and continue to feel -- the pain of these events.

Though these were natural disasters, some of the causes and certainly the consequences were unnatural and not entirely random.

Generally, in Indonesia, the areas with the most destruction, with the possible exception of Banda Aceh, near the epicenter, were the areas where there had been the most economic growth, the most capitalist development, and therefore the most environmental degradation, e.g., primarily tourist infrastructure and shrimp farming that, among other things, destroyed the mangrove forests and coral reefs that serve as rich ecosystems and natural barriers against tidal waves.

My son asked if the people affected by the disaster were (are!) so poor, why didn't we help them before the disaster? A very good question indeed.

Poverty is a chronic tsunami, a constant hurricane, a never-ending earthquake, and the big wave of malnutrition, the fierce winds of hunger, and the planetary rumbling of starvation are ever present. With about a billion people -- approximately 1,000,000,000 people! -- with insecure and irregular access to enough food and clean water, millions of poor people die each year, tens of thousands of poor people each day, another poor person every few seconds of every day of every year. It boggles my mind and pains my heart. It should inspire us to action.

Food and water are the most basic necessities for all sentient beings, whether people, other animals, or plants. Yet, in most places of the world, food is a commodity for sale, an essential product in search of private profit, a privilege for those who can afford to pay the parasitic price. As basic and existential and material and requisite as it is, food is purposely withheld from those with physical need for those with economic demand regardless of physical condition. Sometimes food is freely given to those in desperate need; mostly it isn't.

It is wonderful that we have scientists and others researching and working on treatments and cures for various ailments and diseases. That should certainly continue. But we should also work on the treatments and cures for hunger, dysentery, gastroenteritis, and other very well-known, very easily-treated causes of suffering, starvation, and mass death. Treatment involves taking proper care of suffering people; cures imply removing, reforming, or revolutionizing the structures and systems that result in such massive yet unnecessary tragedies. It may be complex, but it is not complicated. Food must be an absolute right, not a privilege.

Natural disasters come in many forms. Climate change in the form of global warming is a slow tsunami, an ever-present earthquake. We are overheating the Earth, cooking the planet, slowly boiling ourselves and many other forms of life to death. We already know what happens when we overheat a car, when we overcook a meal, when our bodies are feverish; we can surmise what will happen if we continue to overheat the Earth. It isn't pretty and it will get much uglier.

Tepidly called global warming, some such as Rabbi Arthur Waskow call this type of climate change "global scorching". Regardless, global warming is a global warning. Apparently, reports for and from groups as disparate as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, Greenpeace, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Oxfam, the Pentagon, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the World Bank, the World Meteorological Organization, and a vast number of other scientists, political economic analysts, and environmentalists agree. The Pentagon report, for example, states that global warming "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern", higher even than terrorism, warning of riots and declaring that "future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology, or national honor".

The signs of an overheating Earth are clear and the evidence is rushing in and rising: hotter weather in many places, though colder weather in some places; more frequent and violent storms; mass species extinctions; spread of disease; eco-spasms; crop failures; melting glaciers and polar ice caps; earlier springs; rising water temperatures; rising ocean levels; acidification of the oceans; disturbed Atlantic Conveyor and Gulf Stream systems; submerged islands; loss of coastline; and the threat of submerged cities such as New York, Miami, New Orleans, Bangkok, Dhaka, Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Venice, and many, many other cities. As usual, the poor are being disproportionately affected.

Reducing consumption, reducing waste and emissions, recycling and using recycled goods, using renewable energies instead of fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal, protecting and replanting forests, reducing or eliminating meat consumption, and reducing or eliminating smoking are some of things that should be done. While we should do these things and more, we also need to pressure our governments and the corporations to do much more to be sustainable.

Disasters come in many forms. I mourn for those killed by the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Haitian earthquake. I mourn for those killed each day by the chronic disaster of poverty. I mourn for the current and future generations who will suffer from the slow disaster of global warming. We need to stop these disasters before they reach land and affect us with disastrous results. We can do it, but we need to be alert and aware, progressive and proactive, and we need to take immediate action.

© 2010 Dan Brook

Dan Brook, Ph.D., is a freelance instructor of sociology and political science, maintains Eco-Eating at www.brook.com/veg, and can be contacted via brook@brook.com.

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10. Extensive List of Vegan and Animal Rights Shows and Podcasts

http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/veganradio.html

Archive: http://www.jewishveg.com/schwartz/mp3.html

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11. Vegetarian Singles Site Improved

Forwarded message:

Hello Richard Schwartz,

As part of "Jewish Vegetarians of North America" listing in GreenPeople.org, we are bringing you the following announcement:

VeggieDate.org -- the vegetarian singles site has been totally revamped, with a simplified, beautified design and has been given added functionality.

VeggieDate still offers a free FULL two week trial and everyone can ALWAYS read and respond to personal contact messages.

Memberships for initiating personalized messages are nominally priced at $9.95 for 3 months. NO gimmicks!, NO autobilling, etc.

Please help promote this resource to the veg*n community in your newsletter, blog and social networking pages.

Thanks.

P.S. GreenPeople.org, the eco-friendly directory has a

"veg*n" owned businesses category. Adding a business listing

is free: http://www.greenpeople.org/addlisting.cfm

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12. Job Openings for Vegan/Vegetarian Cooks

Forwarded message:

Lots of openings throughout the country for vegan/vegetarian cooks:

http://www.vegnews.com/web/veg/jobs.do;jsessionid=EBFB308FD7730098918FFED96708DE3E=

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13. Jerusalem Post article on A Sacred Duty

http://www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=82344

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14. Shalom Center Produces Environmentally-Orientated Passover Haggadah

Forwarded message from Rabbi Arthur Waskow:

Dear Richard,

Below you will find a treasury of new resources for a transformative Passover, and Avi Katz' extraordinary full-color graphic for one of them.

First, some new doings at The Shalom Center :
 
Check out our newly refurbished Home Page here. New information on our work, more color, easier navigation into the website. 

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
For the largest number of Jews, Passover is the festival they most actively observe.
 
For me, it became the turning-point of my life. That came in the Passover of 1968, just a week after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. My city (Washington DC) was living through a Black uprising -- and then an occupation and curfew by the US Army.

The Pesach that leaped off the pages of the Haggadah into the streets and off the streets into my Seder turned me from a casually Jewish secular political activist into a person seriously committed to the renewal and transformation of Judaism as a spiritual exploration with a prophetic message to the world.
 
So it is with a strong passion, emotional and intellectual and spiritual, that I offer you this year The Shalom Center's resources for helping you achieve your own profound celebration of rebirth of your earth, your society, your self, and your freedom. 
 
Passover begins Monday evening March 29. Who and what are the pharaohs of this generation, this year, and how do we win our freedom from them?


1. You can download the PDF printable "Interfaith Freedom Seder for the Earth" with this extraordinary full-color graphic by Avi Katz.

For that haggadah, click here.

This haggadah follows the structure and lifts up the traditional symbols of a Pesach Seder while focusing on protection of the earth from the modern Ten Plagues that are being brought upon us by modern Pharaohs, and Ten Blessings we can bring to the earth. 
 
This haggadah is suitable either for a Seder of family and friends - perhaps on the second night of Pesach -- or for a communal interfaith Seder before Pesach or in connection with Earth Day.
 
If you decide to use this haggadah for a Seder, please make a (tax-deductible) donation to The Shalom Center of $18 plus $1 for every participant in your Seder.
 


2. Last year, The Shalom Center sponsored an Interfaith Seder for the Earth in Washington DC, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the original Freedom Seder. Music by an African-American church choir and by Cantor Linda Hirschhorn leading her own magnificent freedom songs; Torah teaching by Rabbis David Saperstein and David Shneyer; wisdom from Islam by Imam Abdul-Malik Johari of the Green Muslims of DC and from Christianity by the Reverend Wallace Charles Smith of the oldest African-American church in Washington; new understandings of the broken matzah, the egg, the charoset, and the orange on the Seder plate - are all contained in a professionally filmed DVD of the evening. 

That DVD and one from the original Freedom Seder of 1969 on the first anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King (a film made by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) are available in a two-DVD set from The Shalom Center when you click here to order your copy. 
 


3. "Sing Shalom," a CD of songs produced by The Shalom Center, has in it songs and stories ranging from Pete Seeger singing his own "Rainbow Race" for liberation of the earth to Reggie and Kim Harris with Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Jonathan Klingerman on tales and songs of working for freedom with Fannie Lou Hamer and Dr. King, to Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in a duet on ram's horn and flute with Paul Horn, to Peter Yarrow singing his own "Light One Candle" and two dozen other songs by varied singers. For this CD, you also click here.

4. I have been teaching a series of telephone seminars on preparing for a transformative Pesach. For example: Why do we chant the Song of Songs during Pesach? -- The seminar invites us to hear and explore each other's answers. One: "The Song of Songs brings us the springtime when flowers rise up against winter, the juices of love arise from the depths of depression, and the night-time of history gives way to the sunlight of a new Eden, the garden of delight for a grown-up human race." There will be two more seminars, from 8 to 9:30 pm Thursday February 25 and March 11. To register, click here.



5. I have just done a major revision of the chapter on Pesach from my book Seasons of Our Joy, including a new explanation of Maimouna, the day after Pesach celebrated by Moroccan Jews together with Muslims, and a new understanding of the passage from the last of the Prophets, Malachi, about the coming of Elijah to save the earth from utter destruction, traditionally read on the Shabbat before Pesach, and a great deal of other new material. To read this chapter, click here:
http://www.theshalomcenter.org/node/1687

6. Our Website has a whole section on Pesach which includes a number of essays and several different haggadot - 
e.g., the Seder for the Children of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah, on peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians; 
the texts of the first and second editions of the Freedom Seder as originally published in 1969 and then revised in 1970;essays on the meaning of charoset, the real story of the orange on the Seder plate, etc.

To browse this collection of essays, click here. 

I welcome your comments and your reports of your own ways of observing Passover this year. 
 
Meanwhile, blessings of effective action to prevent our global climate crisis from becoming a disastrous Plague for our own generation -- and blessings for a joyful trek these next weeks toward liberation and rebirth --- Arthur

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15. Extremely Powerful Video relates Climate Change to National Security

http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/pewclimatepatriots/d6gk7wrqjt5kxte?

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