Shalom everyone,
This special Jewish Vegetarians of North America(JVNA) Online Newsletter focuses on the madness of current dietary habits and agricultural practices and the need to respond effectively, applying the “moral madness of the biblical prophets.” It summarizes our key JVNA arguments and indicates why it is so important that they be raised effectively.
We hope that the release next month of our documentary A SACRED DUTY: APPLYING JEWISH VALUES TO HELP HEAL THE WORLD and the major campaign we are planning will help apply the principles in this special JVNA Newsletter. Please stay tuned.
The newsletter has the following items:
1. The World Today: Madness and Sheer Insanity
2. How to Respond: The Moral Madness of the Biblical Prophets
3. The World Threatened today as Perhaps Never Before
4. Vegetarianism as a Societal Imperative
5. Vegetarianism as a Spiritual Imperative
6. Getting Vegetarianism Onto the Jewish Agenda
7. Avoiding Criticism of our Views
8. Final Thoughts and Action Ideas
Appendix: Some Jewish Teachings On Involvement and Protest
[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.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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1. The World Today: Madness and Sheer Insanity
In order to properly consider how to be most effective, we should first consider what we are dealing with. We should call the production and consumption of meat today what it is: madness and sheer insanity. While people can be properly nourished and healthier on vegetarian/vegan diets, consider the many negative effects of the production and consumption of animal products.
* The production of animal products is a major contributor to global warming, soil depletion and erosion, extensive pesticide use, air and water pollution, the rapid destruction of tropical rain forests and other habitats and rapid species extinction.
*A meat-based diet requires up to 20 times more land, 14 times more water and 10 times more energy than a vegetarian diet. Non-vegetarian diets also require vast amounts of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, and other resources.
* Over 70% of the grain grown in the United States and over 40% of the grain grown worldwide is fed to animals destined for slaughter, while 20 million people die annually due to hunger and its effects. The US is also a major importer of beef and fish, and these imports are generally from countries where people are starving.
* Over 10 billion farm animals are killed for their flesh annually in the United States. Most have suffered a lifetime of extreme confinement in filthy, overcrowded sheds without sunlight, fresh air or normal activity and stimulation.
As a person with many problems and shortcomings in my life, I generally refrain from advising others on how to live their lives. However, because of their many threats to the planet and so many people, and the horrible ways that animals are raised on "factory farms," I think it has to be said that animal-based diets and agriculture today constitute madness and sheer insanity and that it is essential that there be a shift toward plant-based diets. It is scandalous that the Jewish community (and other communities) are not protesting about the many violations of religious mandates, and that environmentalists are generally not speaking out about the devastating environmental consequences of annually raising over 10 billion farmed animals in the US and over 50 billion worldwide.
I could give many more examples of the madness and sheer insanity of modern intensive "livestock" agriculture(and other aspects of society today, such as the failure to adequately address global warming and other societal threatsm, but I hope the following eloquent brief excerpt from "Beyond Beef" by Jeremy Rifkin will suffice for now:
"The ever-increasing cattle population is wreaking havoc on the earth's ecosystems, destroying habitats on six continents. Cattle raising is a primary factor in the destruction of the world's remaining tropical rain forests. Millions of acres of ancient forests in Central and South America are being felled and cleared to make room for pastureland to graze cattle. Cattle herding is responsible for much of the spreading desertification in the sub-Sahara of Africa and the western range land of the United States and Australia. The overgrazing of semiarid and arid lands has left parched and barren deserts on four continents. Organic runoff from feedlots is now a major source of organic pollution in our nation's ground water. Cattle are also a major cause of global warming... The devastating environmental, economic, and human toll of maintaining a worldwide cattle complex is little discussed in public policy circles... Yet, cattle production and beef consumption now rank among the gravest threats to the future well being of the earth and its human population."
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2. How to Respond: The Moral Madness of the Biblical Prophets
If current animal-based diets and modern intensive livestock agriculture constitute madness and sheer insanity, how does one respond to this madness. As Robert McAfee Brown, former professor and theologian at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, stated in 1979 at Riverside Church, while referring to the "madness and sheer insanity" of the nuclear arms race, we need what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called "moral madness"-- the madness of the biblical prophets.
While there are no biblical prophets today, Jews are to be "b'nei nevi'im," descendants of the biblical prophets. So let us consider some of the challenging ideas of the prophets whom we are to take as our models. The statements below about the prophets and related issues are from the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of my great heroes.
Here are some of Rabbi Heschel's writings about the prophets:
The prophets were some of the most disturbing people who ever lived.
Their task was to convey a divine view.
Their words are onslaughts, scuttling illusions of false security, challenging evasions, calling faith to account, questioning prudence and impartiality.
The prophet was a person who said no to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency, waywardness, syncretism.
The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. His ear is attuned to a cry imperceptible to others.
The prophet is an iconoclast, challenging the apparently holy, revered and awesome.
The prophets knew that man could distort what the Lord demanded of man...
Behind his austerity is love and compassion for mankind.
The prophet disdains those for whom God's presence is comfort and security; to him it is a challenge, an incessant demand.
The prophets' great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful.
The prophet is a person who suffers the harms done to others. Wherever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey. The prophet's angry words cry. The wrath of God is a lamentation. All prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil! He is always concerned, He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos.
The prophets passionately proclaim that God himself is concerned with "the transitory social problems," with the blights of society, with the affairs of the market place.
What is the essence of being a prophet? A prophet is a person who holds God and men in one thought at one time, at all times. Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and sacred. We worry more about the purity of dogma than about the integrity of love. We think of God in the past tense and refuse to realize that God is always present and never, never past; that God may be more intimately present in slums than in mansions, with those who are smarting under the abuse of the callous. (From "Religion and Race," in The Insecurity of Freedom , pp. 110-111.)
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Inspired by the words of the prophets, Rabbi Heschel wrote: "Our civilization is in need of redemption. The evil, the falsehood, the vulgarity of our way of living cry to high heaven. There is a war to be waged against the vulgar, against the glorification of power, a war that is incessant, universal. There is much purification that needs to be done, ought to be done, and could be done through bringing to bear the radical wisdom, the sacrificial devotion, the uncompromising loyalty of our forefathers upon the issues of our daily living."
I hope that we will also be inspired by the teachings of the biblical prophets as we respectfully challenge the religious establishments re vegetarianism and related issues.
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3. The World Threatened today as Perhaps Never Before
The world is arguably threatened as never before today, in terms of global climate change (with the respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting an average temperature increase of 3 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 100 years), species disappearing at the fastest rate in history, the destruction of tropical rain forests, widening droughts, and many other environmental threats, all of which have strong connections of animal-based diets. When we try to feed not only the world's 6.6 billion people, but also over 50 billion farmed animals, it requires far more land, water, fuel, and other resources than plant-based diets would, and contributes to many environmental threats and widespread hunger (seventy percent of the grain produced in North America is fed to animals destined for slaughter). Although ignored by many, animal-based diets are also contributing to an epidemic of chronic, degenerative diseases, and attempts to cure these diseases has required huge expenditures which has resulted in major changes in our health care systems.
There is a need for major changes if the world is to avoid increasingly severe threats. In 1992, over 1,670 scientists, including 104 Nobel laureates -- a majority of the living recipients of the Prizes in the sciences -- signed a "World Scientists' Warning To Humanity." Their introduction states: "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.
The scientists' analysis discussed threats to the atmosphere, rivers and streams, oceans, soil, living species, and forests. Their warning: "We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated."
The recent reports re the very severe wildfires in California, the unprecedented droughts in the U.S. southeast and other areas, the floods in many states and countries and much more are indications that the world is rapidly approaching an unprecedented catastrophe.
I believe that it is essential to help make people aware of the many threats to humanity as we continue to promote a shift toward vegetarian/vegan diets as an essential part of the necessary changes. When we consider all of the negative environmental and climate-change effects, and then add the harmful effects of animal-based diets on human health and global hunger, it is clear that animal-centered diets and the livestock agriculture needed to sustain them pose tremendous threats to global survival. It is not surprising that the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) ranks the consumption of meat and poultry as the second most harmful consumer activity (surpassed only by the use of cars and light trucks). We should also make people aware of the UN FAO's report “Livestock's Lengthening Shadow,” which reported that livestock agriculture emits more greenhouse gases )in CO2 equivalents) that all the world's cars and other means of transportation, and the number of farmed animals is projected to at least double in 50 years.
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4. Vegetarianism as a Societal Imperative
Because of the many great threats to humanity, and the major role that animal-based agriculture plays in many of these threats (as discussed in many previous messages), a shift toward a plant-based diet is not only an important individual choice today -- it is a societal imperative, essential for global sustainability and fiscal solvency.
A shift toward vegetarianism is arguably the most effective way to:
1) reduce disease rates sharply;
2) halt soaring medical costs;
3) reduce the mistreatment of animals;
4) protect the environment;
5) conserve resources;
6) help hungry people;
7) reduce violence.
The aims of vegetarians and environmental activists are similar: simplify our life styles, have regard for the earth and all forms of life, and apply the knowledge that "the earth is the Lord's." In view of the many negative effects of animal-based agriculture on the earth's environment, resources, and climate, it is becoming increasingly clear that a shift toward vegetarianism is imperative to move our precious but imperiled planet away from its present catastrophic path and to a sustainable path.
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5. Vegetarianism as a Spiritual Imperative
There are many violations of Jewish teachings associated with the production and consumption of animal products:
* While Judaism mandates that people should be very careful about preserving their health and their lives, numerous scientific studies have linked animal-based diets directly to heart disease, stroke, many forms of cancer, and other chronic degenerative diseases.
While Judaism emphasizes tsa'ar ba'alei chayim, the prohibition against causing needless suffering for animals, animals are raised for food today under cruel conditions, in crowded, confined cells, where they are denied fresh air, exercise, and any natural existence.
* While Judaism teaches that "the earth is the Lord's" (Psalm 24:1) and that we are to be God's partners and co-workers in preserving the world, modern intensive livestock agriculture contributes substantially to soil erosion and depletion, air and water pollution, overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the destruction of tropical rain forests and other habitats, global climate change, and other environmental damages.
* While Judaism mandates bal tashchit, not to waste or unnecessarily destroy anything of value, or use more than is needed to accomplish a purpose, animal agriculture requires the wasteful use of land, water, fuel, grain, and other resources.
* While Judaism stresses that we are to assist the poor and share our bread with hungry people, an estimated twenty million human beings worldwide die each year because of hunger and its effects, over 70% of the grain grown in the U.S. is fed to animals destined for slaughter. It takes up to sixteen pounds of grain to produce just one pound of feedlot-finished beef.
* While Judaism stresses that we must seek and pursue peace and that violence results from unjust conditions, animal-centered diets, by wasting valuable resources, perpetuate the widespread hunger and poverty that often lead to instability and war.
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6. Getting Vegetarianism Onto the Jewish Agenda
Based on the contradictions between the realities of the production and consumption of animals and basic Jewish values discussed above, we should very respectfully raise the following question In discussions:
In view of Judaism's strong teachings with regard to preserving human health, treating animals with compassion, protecting the environment, conserving resources, and helping the hungry, and the very negative effects that the production and consumption of meat has in each of these areas, shouldn't Jews eliminate or sharply reduce their consumption of animal products?
Some other questions and arguments that we should use to respectfully challenge the establishment are:
* Since Jews can only mistreat or kill animals to meet an essential human need that can't easily be met in any other way, and it is not necessary to consume animal products in order to maintain good health (the contrary is the case), how can we justify the slaughtering of animals for food?
* Could G-d possibly prefer us to have an animal-based diet when the production and consumption of animal products harm our health, mistreat animals, threaten ecosystems, waste resources, and make war and violence more likely? In fact, doesn't the Torah only allow the consumption of meat under numerous restrictions, as a concession to human desire?
* Why is it that while some Jews are building fences around some ritual mitzvot, other mitzvot such as tikkun olam (repair the world), bal tashchit (do not waste resources), bakesh shalom v'rodef shalom (seek peace and pursue it), and tsa'ar ba'alei chayim (do not cause "pain to living creatures") are often ignored?
* Can we justify the force-feeding of ducks and geese to create pate de foie gras? Can we justify taking day-old calves from their mothers so that they can be raised for veal in very cramped conditions? Can we justify the killing of over 250 million male chicks immediately after birth at egg-laying hatcheries because they cannot produce eggs and have not been genetically programmed to be able to have much flesh? Can we justify artificially impregnating cows every year so that they will be able to continue to produce milk? Can we justify the many other horrors of factory farming?
As b'nei nevi'im, with a mandate to be "a light onto the nations" and G-d's witnesses, can we remain silent when so many basic Jewish values are being violated and while present policies are leading the world to an unsustainable future?
Since we are to be "rachmanim b'nei rachmanim" (compassionate children of compassionate ancestors), we worship a G-d who is "Harachamon" (the compassionate One) and "Av Harachamim' (the Father of mercies), and "the soul of all living beings shall praise G-d's name", can we continue to partake so heavily in a diet that involves so much cruelty to animals?
I have been thinking about how we can express the case for Jewish vegetarianism in the simplest way. Here is my "first draft", and I would welcome input very much.
a. Judaism teaches that we may not harm animals unless an essential human need will be met that cannot easily be met in any other way.
b. It is NOT NECESSARY to eat meat (or to consume any animal product. We can sustain our lives completely on plant foods. As a matter of fact, animal-centered diets have very negative effects on human health, on the environment, on hungry people, and on animals, and are very wasteful of resources.
c. Conclusion: Consuming animal products seems to be contrary to halacha (Jewish law).
Perhaps, we should adapt the song, "It ain't necessarily so", and make our message to the Jewish community, "It ain't necessary, and SO?" The SO is meant to question the Jewish community as to why animal-centered diets are continuing, when they appear to violate basic Jewish mandates.
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7. Avoiding Criticism of our Views
We have an extremely powerful case for vegetarianism based on Jewish teachings and the realities of the widespread production and consumption of animal products, and we should take every opportunity to engage as many people as possible in dialogues about it, while striving to avoid arguments and comparisons that will turn people off and/or give them a chance to shift the focus of the discussion.
Here are some considerations:
* We should always be respectful.
* We should stress that we are trying to start respectful dialogues, not to assert that we have the complete truth.
* We should also stress that we are not arguing that Jews are forbidden from eating meat, but, rather that Jews have a choice in their diets, but we believe that this choice should be based on a consideration of the realities of producing and consuming animal products and how they impinge on Jewish values. We should stress our belief that Jews should eat meat, based on contradictions between realities of animal-centered diets and basic Jewish values, but we are not arguing that they must.
* We should acknowledge that Judaism teaches that people have been given dominion over animals, but we should also indicate that our sages interpret this as "responsible stewardship," so our "dominion" obligates us to treat the earth and the animals on it with reverence and care.
* We should also acknowledge that Judaism teaches that only human beings are created in G-d's image, but this too is positive, if properly interpreted, for our causes, because it mandates that we imitate G-d's positive attributes of compassion, justice, and concern for the earth and its inhabitants.
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8. Final Thoughts and Action Ideas
It is urgent that vegetarianism be put squarely on the Jewish agenda, and on other agendas, because the revitalization of Judaism and the sustainability of the global environment depend on a shift to plant-based diets.
In trying to get the issue of vegetarianism onto the Jewish agenda (and other agendas), we are willing, ready, and able to discuss or respectfully debate "Should Jews (and everyone else) Be Vegetarians?" We are also calling for the formation of a commission of rabbis, other Jewish scholars, health experts, nutritionists, environmentalists, and other objective experts to investigate the realities of the production and consumption of animal products and how they impinge on basic Jewish values.
We should also point out that additional information may be obtained at JewishVeg.com, from my over 130 articles at JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, from my book Judaism and Vegetarianism, and from books by Roberta Kalechofsky, including Vegetarian Judaism.
ACTION IDEAS As indicated above, vegetarianism is increasingly a societal imperative because of the many negative environmental and economic effects of the mass production and widespread consumption of animal products. Hence, since it is essential that people shift toward vegetarianism, here are some suggestions to promote plant-based diets:
1) Become well informed. Learn the facts about vegetarianism from the JVNA web site (JewishVeg.com), including my over 100 articles at JewishVeg.com/schwartz and other Internet and printed sources. Learn how to effectively answer questions about vegetarianism, and use such questions as an opportunity to inform others.
2) Help educate others about vegetarianism. Wear a button. Put a bumper sticker on your car. Make up and display posters. Write timely letters to the editors of your local newspapers. Set up programs and discussions. There are a wide variety of interesting vegetarian slogans on buttons, bumper sticker s, and T-shirts and sweat shirts. For example:
Love animals. Don't eat them.
Vegetarianism is good for life.
Happiness is reverence for life. Be vegetarian.Use the world vegetarian symbol on correspondence. This will help the vegetarian movement obtain publicity that it badly needs and, because of prohibitive costs, cannot be easily obtained otherwise. Stickers and rubber stamps with the world vegetarian symbol can be obtained from the International Jewish Vegetarian Society.
3) Use the material in this message and other vegetarian sources in discussions with doctors. Help increase their knowledge of the many health benefits of a vegetarian diet
4) Ask the rabbi of your synagogue if Jews should eliminate or at least sharply reduce their consumption of meat today because of important Jewish principles such as bal tashchit, tsa'ar ba'alei chayim, and pikuach nefesh that are being violated. Ask if these concepts can be included in sermons and classes.
5) Request that meat or fish not be served at synagogue and Jewish organizational functions and celebrations. Ask school principals and school directors to provide students with nutritious vegetarian options.
6) Ask the rabbi and/or head of a Hebrew school to organize a trip to a slaughterhouse so that people can observe for themselves how animals are slaughtered. A trip to a factory farm to see how cattle, chickens, and other animals are raised would also be very instructive.
7) Arrange synagogue and Jewish organizational sessions where vegetarian dishes are sampled and recipes exchanged.
8) Speak or organize an event with a guest speaker on the advantages of vegetarianism and how vegetarianism relates to Judaism.
9) Get vegetarian books into public and synagogue libraries by donating duplicates, requesting that libraries purchase such books, and, if you can afford it, by buying some and donating them. Ask local librarians to set up special exhibits about vegetarian foods and vegetarian-related issues. I am offering complimentary copies of my book "Judaism and Vegetarianism" and a related tape cassette to anyone who contacts me and indicates how he or she would use it to help increase awareness of Jewish teachings on vegetarianism.
10) Work with others to set up a vegetarian food co-op or restaurant or help support such places if they already exist. Encourage people to patronize such establishments.
11) Register yourself with a community, library, or school speakers' bureau. Take advantage of your increased knowledge and awareness to start speaking out.
12) Contact the food editor of your local newspaper and ask that more vegetarian recipes be included.
13) When applicable, raise awareness by showing how values of the Sabbath and festivals are consistent with vegetarian concepts. For example: Point out that the kiddush recited before lunch on the Sabbath indicates that animals are also to be able to rest on the Sabbath day; on Sukkot, note that the sukkah (temporary dwelling place) is decorated with pictures and replicas of fruits and vegetables (never with animal products); on Yom Kippur, consider the mandate expressed in the prophetic reading of Isaiah to "share your bread with the hungry," which can be carried out best by not having a diet that wastes large amounts of land, grain, water, fuel, and other agricultural resources.
14) Join the International Jewish Vegetarian Society, the Jewish Vegetarians of North America (www.JewishVeg.com) and local vegetarian groups.
15) Support groups that are working to reduce world hunger, especially, these groups that generally go beyond merely providing charitable aid to the needy, but rather strive, in accordance with Maimonides' concept of the highest form of charity, to make people self-reliant in producing their own food.
16) If people are not willing to become vegetarians, encourage them to at least make a start by giving up red meat and having one or two meatless meals a week (perhaps Mondays and Thursdays, which were traditional Jewish fast days).
17) Do not concentrate only on vegetarianism. It is only part of the pursuit of justice, compassion, and peace. Become aware and try to affect public policy with regard to vegetarian-related issues: preserving health, showing compassion for animals, saving human lives, conserving resources, helping hungry people, and see king and pursuing peace. If you ever feel overwhelmed by the many crises facing the world today and the difficulties of trying to move people toward vegetarian diets, please consider the following: Jewish tradition teaches, "It is not for you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it" We must make a start and do whatever we can to improve the world. Judaism teaches that a person is obligated to protest when there is evil and to proceed from protest to action Each person should imagine that the world is evenly balanced between good and evil and that his or her actions can determine the destiny of the entire world. Even if little is accomplished, trying to make improvements will prevent the hardening of your heart and will affirm that you accept moral responsibility. The very act of consciousness raising is important because it may lead to future changes.
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Appendix: Some Jewish Teachings On Involvement and Protest
The following is from the initial chapter of my book, "Judaism and Global Survival."
INVOLVEMENT AND PROTEST
Whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of his own family and does not do so is punished [liable, held responsible] for the transgressions of his family. Whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of the people of his community and does not do so is punished for the transgressions of his community. Whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of the entire world and does not do so is punished for the transgressions of the entire world. (Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 54b) Judaism urges active involvement in issues facing society. A Jew must not be concerned only about his or her own personal affairs when the community is in trouble:
If a person of learning participates in public affairs and serves as judge or
arbiter, he gives stability to the land. But if he sits in his home and says to himself, "What have the affairs of society to do with me? ... Why should I trouble myself with the people's voices of protest? Let my soul dwell in peace!" -- if he does this, he overthrows the world.
Judaism teaches that people must struggle to create a better society. The Torah frequently admonishes: "And you shall eradicate the evil from your midst" (Deuteronomy 13:6, 17:7, 21:21, 24:7). Injustice can not be passively accepted; it must be actively resisted and, ultimately, eliminated. The Talmudic sages teach that one reason Jerusalem was destroyed was because its citizens failed in their responsibility to constructively criticize one another's improper behavior. They indicate that "Love which does not contain the element of criticism is not really love."
The essential elements of Jewish practice include devotion to Torah, study, prayer, performing good deeds and other mitzvot (Commandments), and cultivating a life of piety. But, as indicated in the following Midrash (a rabbinic story or teaching based on Biblical events or concepts), in order to be considered pious, a person must protest against injustice. Even God is challenged to apply this standard in judging people:
R. Acha ben R. Chanina said: Never did a favorable decree go forth from the mouth of the Holy One which He withdrew and changed into an unfavorable judgment, except the following: "And the Lord said to His angel: 'Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed there"' (Ezekiel 9:4). (Thus, they will be protected from the angels who are slaying the wicked.)
At that moment, the indignant prosecutor came forward in the Heavenly Court.
Prosecutor: Lord, wherein are these (marked ones) different from those (the rest)?
God: These are wholly righteous men, while those are wholly wicked.
Prosecutor: But Lord, they had the power to protest, but did not.
God: I knew that had they protested, they would not have been heeded.
Prosecutor: But Lord, if it was revealed to You, was it revealed to them? Accordingly, they should have protested and incurred scorn for thy holy Name, and have been ready to suffer blows... as the prophets of Israel suffered.
God revoked his original order, and the righteous were found guilty, because of their failure to protest. (Shabbat 55a, Tanchuma Tazria 9)
Hence, it is not sufficient merely to do mitzvot while acquiescing in unjust conditions. The Maharal of Prague, a sixteenth-century sage, states that individual piety pales in the face of the sin of not protesting against an emerging communal evil, and a person will be held accountable for not preventing wickedness when capable of doing so. One of the most important dangers of silence in the face of evil is that it implies acceptance or possibly even support. According to Rabbeinu Yonah, a medieval sage, sinners may think to themselves, "Since others are neither reproving nor contending against us, our deeds are permissible."
Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a refugee from pre-World War II Nazi Germany and former president of the American Jewish Congress, spoke to the 250,000 people who took part in the "March on Washington" organized by the Reverend Martin Luther King and others in 1963 on behalf of Civil Rights. He stated that under Hitler's rule, he had learned about the problem of apathy toward fellow human beings: "Bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and most tragic problem is silence."
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a leading twentieth century philosopher, believed that apathy toward injustice results in greater wickedness. He writes that "indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself " and that silent acquiescence leads to evil being accepted and becoming the rule.
Jews are required to protest against injustice and to try to agitate for change even when successful implementation appears very difficult. The Talmudic sage Rabbi Zera states, "Even though people will not accept it, you should rebuke them." We can never be sure that our words and actions will be ineffective. Thus the only responsible approach is to try our best. In Rabbi Tarfon's famous formulation in the Mishna:
It is not your obligation to complete the task. But neither are you free to desist from it. Just as many drops of water can eventually carve a hole in a rock, many small efforts can eventually have a major impact.
There are times when a person must continue to protest in order to avoid being corrupted: A man stood at the entrance of Sodom crying out against the injustice and evil in that city. Someone passed by and said to him, "For years you have been urging the people to repent, and yet no one has changed. Why do you continue?" He responded: "When I first came, I protested because I hoped to change the people of Sodom. Now I continue to cry out, because if I don't, they will have changed me." In his article "The Rabbinic Ethics of Protest," Rabbi Reuven Kimelman observes that the means of protest must be consistent with responsibility to the community. He states that protest must involve both love and truth since love implies the willingness to suffer, and truth, the willingness to resist. Together, he concludes, they encompass an approach of nonviolent resistance, toward the ends of justice and peace. The Talmud teaches that controversy and protest must be "for the sake of Heaven". The protest of Korach against the rule of Moses in the wilderness (Numbers 16:1-35) is considered negatively by the Jewish tradition because it was based on jealousy and personal motives.
The result of failing to speak out against injustice is well expressed by the following statement by the German theologian Martin Niemoller:
In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the gypsies, and I didn't speak up because I was not a gypsy. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me ... and by that time, there was no one to speak up for me.
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The time to speak out and get actively involved is now. Please join us in our efforts to get vegetarianism and related issues onto the Jewish agendas and other agendas.
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October 24, 2007
October 22, 2007
10/21/2007 JVNA Online Newsletter
Shalom everyone,
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
Note: Please stay tuned for an update re our documentary A SACRED DUTY: APPLYING JEWISH VALUES TO HELP HEAL THE WORLD and some strategy ideas related to it, to be sent out soon. Thanks.
1. L.A. Times Editorial Powerfully Connects Meat to Global Warming/My Letter and Two Others
2. My Recent Widely-Published Letters Relate Meat-Eating to Global Warming
3. Latest Annual Farmed Animals Death Toll Report
4. Future Consequences of Failure to Address Global Warming Soon
5. JVNA Advisor’s Novel Released
6. World Food Day Report
7. How Meat Consumption Increases Global Food Insecurity
8. Challenging Personal Statement From Israel Vegetarian Activist Steve (Shaya) Kelter
9. Southeastern U.S. Facing Unprecedented Drought
10. My Article in Austrian Vegetarian Publication
11. Article Re Repairing World in Chasidic Publication
12. Dramatic Change in Global Meat Production Projected
13. World Vegan Day Approaching
14. JVNA Advisor/Author Has Article on Animal Rights Published
15. Animal Rights Proclamation to Be Unveiled in Nation’s Capital
16. My Article With Dan Brook Is Cover Article in “The Animals’ Voice” Magazine
17. Canfei Nesharim Environmental Dvar Torah for Vayera
18. Roberta Kalechofsky Featured in “Lilith” Magazine Article
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. L.A. Times Editorial Powerfully Connects Meat to Global Warming/My Letter and Two Others
[This is an incredible editorial and we should try to see that it is widely read. Please consider sending a letter to the editor. Please note my letter and letters from JVNA advisors Dan Brook and Rina Deych after the editorial.
BTW, After our demonstration in August against the OU's "Halachic Adventure” in L.A. and their failure to mention our protest in their article, they printed my letter which made the basic points in their editorial. I wonder if there is any connection?]
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-methane15oct15,0,1365993.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail
From the Los Angeles Times
Killer cow emissions
Livestock are a leading source of greenhouse gases. Why isn't anyone raising a stink?
October 15, 2007
It's a silent but deadly source of greenhouse gases that contributes more to global warming than the entire world transportation sector, yet politicians almost never discuss it, and environmental lobbyists and other green activist groups seem unaware of its existence.
That may be because it's tough to take cow flatulence seriously. But livestock emissions are no joke.
Most of the national debate about global warming centers on carbon dioxide, the world's most abundant greenhouse gas, and its major sources -- fossil fuels. Seldom mentioned is that cows and other ruminants, such as sheep and goats, are walking gas factories that take in fodder and put out methane and nitrous oxide, two greenhouse gases that are far more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Methane, with 21 times the warming potential of CO2, comes from both ends of a cow, but mostly the front. Frat boys have nothing on bovines, as it's estimated that a single cow can belch out anywhere from 25 to 130 gallons of methane a day.
It isn't just the gas they pass that makes livestock troublesome. A report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization identified livestock as one of the two or three top contributors to the world's most serious environmental problems, including water pollution and species loss. In terms of climate change, livestock are a threat not only because of the gases coming from their stomachs and manure but because of deforestation, as land is cleared to make way for pastures, and the amount of energy needed to produce the crops that feed the animals.
All told, livestock are responsible for 18% of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide, according to the U.N. -- more than all the planes, trains and automobiles on the planet. And it's going to get a lot worse. As living standards rise in the developing world, so does its fondness for meat and dairy. Annual per-capita meat consumption in developing countries doubled from 31 pounds in 1980 to 62 pounds in 2002, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, which expects global meat production to more than double by 2050. That means the environmental damage of ranching would have to be cut in half just to keep emissions at their current, dangerous level.
It isn't enough to improve mileage standards or crack down on diesel truck emissions, as politicians at both the state and national levels are working to do. Eventually, the United States and other countries are going to have to clean up their agricultural practices, while consumers can do their part by cutting back on red meat.
Manure, methane and McGovern
In a Web forum for presidential candidates in September, TV talk-show host Bill Maher asked former Sen. John Edwards a snarky question: Because Edwards had suggested that people trade in their SUVs to benefit the environment, and cattle generate more greenhouse gases than SUVs, "You want to take a shot at meat?" Maher asked.
Edwards wisely dodged the question. It is extremely hazardous for politicians to take on the U.S. beef industry, a lesson learned by Sen. George McGovern in the late 1970s when his Select Committee on Nutrition dared to recommend that Americans cut down on red meat and fatty dairy products for health reasons. After a ferocious lobbying blitz from meat and dairy interests, the committee rewrote its guidelines to suggest diners simply choose lean meats that "will reduce saturated fat intake." McGovern was voted out of office in 1980, in part because of opposition from cattlemen in his home state of South Dakota.
Beyond the dangers of taking on the beef bloc, legislating food choices is an unpopular and nearly impossible task, so it's unlikely any candidate will endorse a national vegetarian movement to fight global warming any time soon. There are other approaches, though.
Cows and other ruminants have four stomachs, the first of which, called the rumen, is where the trouble lies; bacteria in the rumen produce methane. Scientists -- mostly in Australia, New Zealand and Britain, where the problem is taken a lot more seriously than it is here -- are working on a variety of technical solutions, including a kind of bovine Alka-Seltzer. Scientists are also trying to develop new varieties of feed grasses that are more energy efficient and thus generate less methane, and they are experimenting with targeted breeding to produce a less-gassy strain of cattle.
But it's not just about the belching. Livestock manure also emits methane (especially when it's stored in lagoons) and nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas. There's nothing funny about this gas: It has 296 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, and livestock are its leading anthropogenic (human-caused) source. The best way to reduce these gases is to better manage the manure; storage methods and temperature can make a big difference. The California Air Resources Board is studying manure-management practices as part of a sweeping effort to identify ways of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, work that by the end of next year might lead to regulation of the state's ranches and dairies. Other states should do the same.
There are also smart ways of treating or converting animal waste. Manure lagoons can be covered, capturing gases that can be used to generate power or simply be burned away (burning the gases converts most of the emissions to CO2, which is far less destructive than methane). That's the strategy being pursued by American Electric Power Co., a gigantic utility based in Columbus, Ohio, whose coal-fired power plants make it the nation's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. This summer, the company began putting tarps on waste lagoons at farms and ranches and sending the gases they capture to flares.
American Electric is under heavy regulatory pressure. Last week, it was on the wrong end of the biggest environmental settlement in U.S. history and agreed to spend up to $4.6 billion to clean up its smokestacks. Its work on manure is part of an experiment in carbon offsets; the company anticipates that someday Congress will cap the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted and allow polluters to trade pollution credits. As a previous installment of this series noted, that's a less effective way to combat global warming than carbon taxes, but the American Electric example shows that it would also direct the economic might of industrial polluters toward solving off-the-beaten-path problems such as livestock waste.
Other possible solutions include providing more aid to ranchers in places like Brazil, where forests are rapidly disappearing, to make cattle operations more efficient and thus decrease the need to cut down trees. Changes in farming practices on fields used to grow livestock feed could help capture more carbon. And U.S. agricultural policy is overdue for changes. Subsidies on crops such as corn and soybeans have traditionally kept the price of meat artificially low because these are key feedstocks.
Broccoli: It's what's for dinner
Such policy shifts and new technologies would help, but probably not enough. A recent report in the Lancet led by Australian National University professor Anthony J. McMichael posits that available technologies applied universally could reduce non-carbon dioxide emissions from livestock by less than 20%. The authors advocate another, fringe approach that has long been embraced by dietitians and vegans but is a long way from going mainstream in the United States: eating less meat.
Americans love beef. According to the 2000 census, the U.S. ranks No. 3 in the world in per-capita consumption of beef and veal (after Argentina and Uruguay), gorging on 100 pounds per year. We're also among the leaders in obesity, heart disease and colorectal cancer, and there is a connection -- fatty red meat has been linked to all of these conditions.
McMichael's idea isn't likely to gain much traction outside Australia; he proposes that developed countries lower their daily intake of meat from about 250 grams to 90 grams, with no more than 50 grams coming from ruminant animals -- that's less than 2 ounces, or half a McDonald's Quarter-Pounder.
Still, as evidence mounts that cutting back on beef would both improve our health and help stave off global warming, a campaign urging people to do so is clearly in order. It's understandable why political candidates are wary of bashing beef, but less understandable why environmental leaders with nothing to lose are reluctant to raise the issue. They would be more credible in targeting polluters if they were equally assertive in pointing out what all Americans can do to fight global warming, and at the very top of that list -- way ahead of more commonly mentioned approaches such as buying fluorescent lightbulbs or energy-efficient appliances -- would be eating less red meat.
A University of Chicago study examined the average American diet and found that all the various energy inputs and livestock emissions involved in its production pump an extra 1.5 tons of CO2 into the air over the course of a year, which would be avoided by a vegetarian diet. Thus, the researchers found, cutting out meat would do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than trading in a gas guzzler for a hybrid car.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture assesses ranchers, dairymen and producers of other commodities to pay for marketing campaigns to promote their products, raising millions of dollars a year and turning such slogans as "Got Milk?" and "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" into national catchphrases. This isn't quite tantamount to a government-mandated campaign to promote cigarette smoking, but it's close. The government should not only get out of the business of promoting unhealthful and environmentally destructive foods, it should be actively discouraging them.
Three letters in response to the editorial from me, Dan Brook and Rina Deych
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October 16, 2007
Editor, Los Angeles Times
letters@latimes.com
Dear editor,
Kudos on your wonderful, challenging October 15 editorial “Killer cow emissions,” about the inconvenient truth of dietary connections to global climate change. With almost daily reports of severe heat waves, storms, floods, droughts and wildfires, with glaciers and polar ice caps melting at alarming rates and with many other indicators of global warming, it is increasingly apparent that the world is rapidly approaching an unprecedented catastrophe, and major changes are necessary o avoid it. Hence, it is scandalous that environmental groups and others are generally ignoring the UN FAO report indicating that animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all of the world's transportation vehicles, and that these emissions are projected to double by 2050. I hope that your excellent editorial awakens people so that we will take actions necessary to move our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.
Very truly yours,
Richard H. Schwartz
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I very much appreciate your “Killer Cow Emissions” editorial (10/15), saying what needs to be said because it’s true even if inconvenient. Global warming is the biggest crisis for life on Earth, yet we still treat it like it’s a minor issue. While we’re waiting form our government and the corporations to step up, we need to make personal steps to fight global warming with our forks.
Vegetarianism, as you indicate, is a powerful antidote. Vegetarianism is literally about life and death - for each of us individually and for all of us together. Eating animals simultaneously contributes to: their suffering and death; the ill-health and early death of people; the unsustainable overuse of oil, water, land, topsoil, grain, labor, and other vital resources; environmental destruction, including deforestation, species extinction, and global warming; the legitimacy of force and violence; the mis-allocation of capital, skills, land, and resources; vast inefficiencies in the economy; tremendous waste; massive inequalities in the world; the transmission and spread of dangerous diseases; and moral failure in so-called civilized societies.
For more information, there’s a great collection of “Meat Eating and Global Warming” links at www.ivu.org/members/globalwarming.html.
Dan Brook, Ph.D.
Eco-Eating
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Thank you for your excellent October 15th editorial entitled "Killer Cow Emissions." It's mind-boggling that major environmental groups are conspicuously avoiding the UN report (and others) showing that animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. As a registered nurse, humanitarian, and environmentalist, I strongly feel that anyone who purports to be concerned about the environment must "go green" inside and out. A switch to a plant-based diet is healthier for everyone - humans, the planet, and, of course the animals.
Rina Deych, RN
Brooklyn, NY 11219
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2. My Recent Widely-Published Letters Relate Meat-Eating to Global Warming
Message from JVNA activist Judy Lipson:
CONGRATULATIONS...........I just received my Moment Magazine and was
thrilled to find your letter to the editor on page 10. It was the
very first letter to the editor at the very top of the page under the
heading SHADES OF GREEN - ANOTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTH.
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In the last few months, I have had letters re meat/global warming connections in the NAVS “Vegetarian Voice,” “VegNews,” “Animal People,” Newsweek and my local Staten Island Advance. I think consciousness is increasing and A SACRED DUTY and our accompanying campaign can accelerate it.
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3. Latest Annual Farmed Animals Death Toll Report
Forwarded message from FARM (Farm Animal Reform Movement):
[US] Annual Farm Animal Death Toll Drops for First Time
Posted by: "FARM" farm-usa@verizon.net farmfarmusa
Tue Oct 16, 2007 7:34 pm (PST)
FOR RELEASE ON 10/17/07
CONTACT: Alex Hershaft 301-530-5683
ANNUAL FARM ANIMAL DEATH TOLL DROPS
The total number of land-based animals killed for food in the U.S. this year is projected to reach 10,378 million, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. This represents no significant change from the 2005/2006 mean of 10,381 million, and a 1% drop in the per capita figure, in light of the 1% annual U.S. population growth.
The number of fishes and other aquatic organisms killed for human and animal consumption is not reported by any agency, but is likely to exceed that number.
The 10,357 million land-based animals killed for food in 2006 includes both the 9,432 million animals reported as slaughtered by USDA and an additional 925 million, or 9% of the total, who died lingering deaths from disease, malnutrition, injury, suffocation, stress, or other deadly factory farming practices. The more egregious example are the 266 million laying hens (62% of those hatched), including 213 million males dumped to suffocate slowly in plastic garbage bags upon hatching and 53 million “spent” females dumped on the waste pile, dead or alive, after a lifetime of laying eggs.
The 2007 total of 10,378 million includes 39 million cattle and calves (about even with the 38.7 million in 2006), 121 million pigs (up 2.6% from 118 million), 4 million sheep and goats, 10 million rabbits, 317 million turkeys (up 5% from 302 million), 28 million ducks (down 7% from 30 million), 9,409 million “broilers” (down slightly from 9,428 million) and 450 million laying hens (up 5% from $426 million).
In more personal terms, during a 75-year life span, a typical U.S. resident is responsible for the suffering and death of 10 cows, 34 pigs, and other small mammals, 2,535 turkeys, chickens and ducks, and uncounted numbers of fishes and other aquatic animals.
The 10,357 million animals raised and killed for food in 2006 accounted for 98% of land-based animals abused and killed annually in the U.S. Another 250 million animals were killed for “sport,” in biomedical laboratories, in pounds, or as “pests.”
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The report on the number of victims of animal agriculture is compiled each year by FARM, a public interest organization, in connection with the annual observance of World Farm Animals Day, launched in 1983 to expose and memorialize the suffering and deaths of animals in the world’s factory farms and slaughterhouses. This 25th annual observance was co-sponsored by In Defense of Animals and PETA. (www.WFAD.org)
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4. Future Consequences of Failure to Address Global Warming Soon
Climate Change-US: Delay Now, Pay Dearly Later
By Stephen Leahy
Inter Press Service
Tuesday 16 October 2007
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101707EC.shtml
Brooklin, Canada - The United States is facing hundreds of billions of dollars in weather-related damages in coming years if it does not act urgently on climate change, the first-ever comprehensive economic assessment of the problem has found.
The costs of inaction on climate change on U.S. infrastructure, and its agricultural, manufacturing and public service sectors, will far outweigh the costs involved in making the needed reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report, "The U.S. Economic Impacts of Climate Change and the Costs of Inaction", released Tuesday.
"We're making billions of dollars of infrastructure investments every year and often without taking impacts of climate change into account," said report co-author Matthias Ruth, director of the University of Maryland's Centre for Integrative Environmental Research.
"Climate change will affect every American economically in significant, dramatic ways, and the longer it takes to respond, the greater the damage and the higher the costs," Ruth told IPS.
"The true economic impact of climate change is fraught with 'hidden' costs," the report concludes. It adds that these costs will vary regionally and will put a strain on public sector budgets. For example, the combined impacts of storms on the U.S. since 1980 have surpassed 560 billion dollars. Hurricane Katrina alone accounted for nearly 200 billion dollars in economic losses.
More frequent and intense storms - a virtual certainty, many climate scientists warn - will raise the price-tag even higher.
Storm damage is just one factor in what is fast becoming a cascade of costs amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, the report documents.
In the U.S. west and northwest, the cost of fire suppression and property damages will run in the billions due to changes in precipitation patterns and snow pack. The Great Plains will experience increased frequency and severity of flooding and drought, resulting in additional billions of dollars in damages to crops and property.
The already sinking water levels will go lower in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River system, driving up shipping costs and producing major impacts on the midwest manufacturing sector. Sea level rise and storm surges will eat away valuable property along the Atlantic coast - a single storm surge event can cost 2.0 billion to 6.5 billion dollars.
Drought will take firmer hold of the south and southwest, with costly impacts on agriculture, industry and households. For the Central Valley in California alone, the economy-wide loss during the driest years is predicted to be around 6.0 billion dollars.
The "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change" by Sir Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank, cautioned last year that the global economy could shrink by 20 percent in the worst-case scenario of inaction and a 5 degree C. rise in temperatures. It would be far, far cheaper - costing just one percent of global GDP - to avoid these worst-case scenarios.
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5. JVNA Advisor’s Novel Released
We wish author and JVNA advisor Charles Patterson much success with his recently published novel LAST RITES. His message is below.
LAST RIGHTS is a novel I wrote many years ago. After not getting
published and sitting for 25 years in my closet, it's now out and in
print.
It's about a disgruntled young cleric who is vegetarian and animal
friendly among other things. Although he's a Christian minister, he has
a Jewish soul (reads Hebrew, quotes the Talmud, reveres the prophets of
ancient Israel, etc.) that causes him to rebel against his family and
church. The book is partly autobiographical.
Here's its epigraph:
I hate, I despise your feasts,
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
--Amos 5:21
http://www.booklocker.com/books/3128.html
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6. World Food Day Report
Published on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
World Food Day
by Yifat Susskind
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/16/4570/
The Globalization of Hunger
At first, the numbers don’t seem to add up. The world produces more food than ever-enough to feed twice the global population. Yet, more people than ever suffer from hunger; and their numbers are rising. Today, 854 million people, most of them women and girls, are chronically hungry, up from 800 million in 1996. Another paradox: the majority of the world’s hungry people live in rural areas, where nearly all food is grown.
World Food Day on October 16 is a good time to try and understand the conundrum of world hunger. The root of the problem is the inequitable distribution of the resources needed to either grow or buy food (also known as poverty). World Food Day is an equally good time to call out one of the main culprits of the crisis: industrial agriculture, the very type enshrined in the Farm Bill that’s currently before the US Senate.
The Farm Bill has far-reaching implications for farmers and food systems the world over. It is set to perpetuate a process whereby heavily subsidized US factory farms overproduce grains that are dumped in poor countries, bankrupting local farmers, who can’t compete with subsidized prices. We’ve begun to hear a bit about the plight of these farmers, but few people know that most of them are women. In fact, women produce most of the world’s food. They do so on small plots of land, working hard to feed their families and generate enough income for things like school fees and children’s shoes.
US Agribusiness: Swallowing Up Lands and Livelihoods
Visit the websites of corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, who together control 65 percent of the global grain trade, and you will read that their mission is to “feed a growing world.” The reality is starkly different. Big Farming is part of a larger corporate economic model that prioritizes profit-making over all else, even the basic right to food. Around the world, agribusiness bankrupts and displaces small farmers, and directs farmers to grow export crops instead of staple foods.
Not long ago, most farm inputs came from farmers themselves. Seeds were saved from the last harvest and fertilizer was recycled from animal and plant wastes. Farmers found innovative ways to control pests by harnessing local biodiversity, such as cultivating insect-repelling plants alongside food crops. While these techniques can produce enough food to feed the world and sustain its ecosystems, they don’t turn a profit for agribusiness. That’s why corporations developed genetically modified seeds, chemical fertilizers, and synthetic pesticides.
These inputs are both expensive for farmers and highly damaging to the natural systems on which sustainable farming and, ultimately, all life depends. As the cost of farming has gone up, farmers’ incomes have gone down due to trade rules that favor large-scale agribusiness over small farmers. For example, the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture forbids governments in the Global South from providing farmers with low-cost seeds and other farm inputs, turning farmers into a “market” for international agribusiness.
Over the past 50 years, as much of the world’s farmland has been consolidated in fewer and fewer hands, millions of people have been forced to abandon their rural homes. In fact, this year, for the first time ever, the number of people living in cities around the world exceeded the number living in rural areas. Most of this urban population boom is due to rural migration.
Cash Crops and Climate Change
The same practices that have devastated women farmers and their communities worldwide have contributed to environmental destruction that impacts us all.
Export agriculture is a major contributor to global warming because it requires huge inputs of petroleum: it takes 100 gallons of oil to grow just one acre of US corn. It also requires a massive global transportation infrastructure, including ports, railways, fuel pipelines, and superhighways, often built at the expense of local people and ecosystems. In many places, 40 percent of truck traffic is from hauling food over long distances. Today, food that could be grown locally is shipped, trucked, or flown half way around the planet.
Trade rules have so distorted agricultural markets that almost anywhere you go, food from the other side of the world costs less than food grown locally. So people in Kenya buy Dutch butter, while those in the Big Apple buy apples from Chile. In the US, the average bite of food travels 1,300 miles from farm to fork. The system is so wasteful that many countries import the very same foods that they export. For example, last year the US exported-and imported-900,000 tons of beef.
Asserting the Right to Food
The good news is that our global food systems may be on the verge of a great transition. Although agribusiness has unprecedented control over the world’s farmers and food supply, the realities of climate change, resource depletion, and the human suffering caused by industrialized farming have led more people to start thinking about the links between food, the environment, and social justice. Around the world, demands for food sovereignty-peoples’ right to control their own food systems-is at an all-time high. Even in the US, where much of the population thinks of farming as a quaint and remote activity, more and more people are realizing that if you eat, you’re involved in agriculture.
The theme of this year’s World Food Day is the right to food. Securing this basic human right for all people, including future generations, will require fundamental changes in the way we use the Earth’s natural resources to grow and distribute food. As we face rising temperatures and declining supplies of cheap energy, change will come of necessity. It’s up to us-working in partnership with small-scale farmers around the world-to demand a change for the better.
Yifat Susskind is communications director of MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization.
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My response to the above article, seeking to build on their strong, eloquent message:
In a world with so much hunger with millions dying annually from insufficient food, how can we justify animal-based diets that involve the feeding of 70% of the grain grown in the US and over 40% of the grain grown worldwide to animals? In a world with so much thirst, how can we justify animal-centered diets that can use up to 14 times as much water per person that vegan diets? In a world rapidly heading toward disaster from global warming, how can we justify 'livestock' agriculture which emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) that all the world's transport, according to the UN FAO's 2006 report, "Livestock's Long Shadow."
For further information, please see my over 130 articles at JewishVeg.com/schwartz.
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7. How Meat Consumption Increases Global Food Insecurity
EUROPEAN VEGETARIAN UNION
Press Release - World Food Day, Tuesday 16 October
Meat, the hidden reason for growing food insecurity
16 October 2007
This World Food Day was preceded by a series of FAO-warnings "Wheat prices hit record-high level", "28 countries face food shortages", "Climate change disaster is upon us", etc., and also the European Union cautioned that "2007 total cereal harvest will be ...1,6% below the average of the last five years", and that cereal intervention stocks "have shrunk from 14 million tonnes at the beginning of 2006/2007 to around 1 million tonnes now".
Environmental changes are given as a major cause for failing harvests, and
the FAO even names the culprits, pointing to future disasters by informing that livestock's environmental impact "will worsen dramatically...".
So it's official: It's the beef!
What vegetarians have tried to get across for decades has finally become
official wisdom: 'Livestock's Long Shadow' puts a dramatic pressure on the environment, contributes critically to climate change and global warming, leads to failing harvests and threatens the global food supply. But that's not all: Even in times of dwindling resources, enormous harvest shares continue to be requisitioned for farm animals.
The result is obvious: Food is getting scarce and expensive for everyone
and, as always, the poor are the first to suffer and suffer the most.
Stop meat-business as usual
Since animal husbandry is one of the most prominent reasons for the world's greenhouse pollution which threatens the food supply of billions of people, more sustainable lifestyles have to be adopted urgently. There is absolutely no need for the citizens of some countries to continue eating roughly their own weight in meat every year! Reason and solidarity must bring about lighter ecological footprints of the individual, and vegetarianism is the prime choice in this quest.
On the occasion of World Food Day 2007, the European Vegetarian Union
appeals to all people of good will, and especially to national and
international decision makers, to accept and promote the vegetarian
alternative. The present terrifying crossroad shows clearly that for us and
all future generations, new ethical alternatives have to replace old
destructive habits - today.
Renato Pichler
President
European Vegetarian Union
Bahnhofstrasse 52
CH-9315 Neukirch (Egnach)
Fax: +41 (0)71 477 33 78
www.euroveg.eu / president@euroveg.eu
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8. Challenging Personal Statement From Israel Vegetarian Activist Steve (Shaya) Kelter
Dear family and friends,
In the past week Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his trailblazing advocacy of environmental sanity. Thanks to his work, hundreds of millions of people around the world are more aware of the catastrophic danger to our planet of our devil-may-care burning off of our irreplaceable petroleum reserves. What took nature hundreds of millions of years to produce is being depleted in a matter of decades. In the process our atmosphere is being heated to such a point that the world's climate and ocean levels are being affected very rapidly. A large portion of the world's future population is being threatened. Already hurricanes have become more frequent and more severe. Coastal lands will be flooded. Fresh water will be threatened. Rain will decrease.
What has not been so well known to the general public, what Al Gore doesn't tell you, is that the greatest single cause of global warming, more than all forms of motorized transportation combined is – livestock!
I personally stopped eating meat altogether in 1991 and later gradually reduced my dairy intake. I stopped my remaining dairy consumption in November, 2006 when the U.N. Food and Agriculture report of November, 2006 was published showing that livestock was the single greatest cause of global warming.
The L.A. Times in a ground breaking editorial explains how this works in layman's language. This article is worth reading and re-reading and ruminating over.
I urge you to think again before you take that extra slice of roast beef or steak. You do have an alternative. Vegetarian options are tastier than ever. You can make a significant difference in saving our world for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Granted not everyone is going to stop eating meat "cold turkey." Food habits are deeply ingrained. But I believe that every one of us can gradually reduce our intake of meat and dairy and move to a more vegetarian diet. Not only will you be helping to save the world, but you will be contributing to your own health. You are also helping the poor because livestock production is much more energy, water and pesticide-intensive than vegetarian options and helps to drive up agriculture prices which especially affects the poor.
From a Torah perspective, we just read in the Torah portion Bereishit, at the beginning of the book of Genesis, one of the first commandments to Man, regarding the earth: "work it and preserve it." To my mind, protecting the environment of our world is a key mitzvah.
The L.A. Editorial [is in item #1 above.] It was sent to me by my friend, Richard H. Schwartz, President of the Jewish Vegetarians of North America, in my capacity as one of the advisors of JVNA. You have my permission and encouragement to pass this message and the following to all.
With love from Jerusalem,
Steven "Shaya" Kelter
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9. Southeastern U.S. Facing Unprecedented Drought
Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices
NY Times 10/16/07
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/us/16drought.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
ATLANTA, Oct. 15 — For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought, climatologists said Monday, creating an emergency so serious that some cities are just months away from running out of water.
In North Carolina, Gov. Michael F. Easley asked residents Monday to stop using water for any purpose “not essential to public health and safety.” He warned that he would soon have to declare a state of emergency if voluntary efforts fell short.
“Now I don’t want to have to use these powers,” Mr. Easley told a meeting of mayors and other city officials. “As leaders of your communities, you know what works best at the local level. I am asking for your help.”
Officials in the central North Carolina town of Siler City estimate that without rain, they are 80 days from draining the Lower Rocky River Reservoir, which supplies water for the town’s 8,200 people.
In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days.
The hard numbers have shocked the Southeast into action, even as many people wonder why things seem to have gotten so bad so quickly.
SNIP
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10. My Article in Austrian Vegetarian Publication
Forwarded message From Herma Caelen, a European vegetarian activist:
You remember certainly that I have translated your '10 steps [toward a vegetarian-conscious world]' into German
http://www.evana.org/index.php?id=22633&lang=de.
Well, the Austrian Veg Organisation has now printed the complete text in
their Autumn issue of 'anima'. Congratulations!
The president, Dr. Erwin Lauppert, is someone with whom you would certainly get on like a house in fire. Maybe you like to write him and ask for a copy?
anima@vegetarier.at
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11. Article Re Repairing World in Chasidic Publication
Here is a link to Lilith's eco-ushpizin, which discusses the environmental efforts of seven contemporary women, including our own Roberta Kalechosky. [I was unable to cut and paste the article.]
http://www.lilith.org/pdfs/EcoUshpizin.pdf
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12. Dramatic Change in Global Meat Production Projected
FAO newsroom. Dramatic changes in global meat production ahead, risk
Posted by: "Pamela Rice" pamela@vivavegie.org penelopeapod
Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:20 pm (PST)
[EXCERPT: Industrial pig and poultry production relies on a significant movement of live animals. In 2005, for example, nearly 25 million pigs, more than two million pigs per month, were traded internationally.]
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2007/1000660/index.html
Dramatic changes in global meat production could increase risk of diseases
Livestock producers should invest more in biosecurity and disease monitoring
17 September 2007, Rome - Global animal food production is undergoing
a major transformation that could lead to a higher risk of disease transmission from animals to humans, FAO warned today.
"The risk of disease transmission from animals to humans will increase in the future due to human and livestock population growth, dynamic changes in livestock production, the emergence of worldwide agro-food networks and a significant increase in the mobility of people and goods," FAO said in a policy brief (Industrial Livestock Production and Global Health Risks).
"There is no doubt that the world has to depend upon some of the technologies of intensive animal food production systems," said FAO livestock policy expert Joachim Otte.
"But excessive concentration of animals in large scale industrial production units should be avoided and adequate investments should be
made in heightened biosecurity and improved disease monitoring to safeguard public health," he added.
More affluence - higher meat consumption
As countries have become more affluent and the world's population continues to rise, demand for meat and other livestock products has
grown substantially, according to FAO.
To satisfy this higher demand for meat products, livestock production and densities have significantly increased, often close to urban centres. Industrial animal production has become more concentrated, using fewer but more productive livestock breeds.
"These developments have potentially serious consequences for local and global disease risks, which, so far, have not been widely recognized by policy makers," said FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech.
SNIP
Contact:
Erwin Northoff
Media Relations, FAO
erwin.northoff@fao.org
(+39) 06 570 53105
(+39) 348 252 361
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13. World Vegan Day Approaching
Forwarded message:
Just 2 weeks left until World Vegan Day - just about enough time to arrange a party or a press release to challenge the status quo. Lets make the finale of World Vegetarian Month a bit more spectacular than usual. So far there is * A Vegan fashion Show in Montreal, Canada * A Vegan festival In Melbourne, Australia * A Vegan dinner with prestigious speakers organised by AVS * A challenge by Lush Cosmetics to staff in all their 88 UK stores to go vegan for World Vegan Day supported by ViVA! UK * Various events around the UK organised by Animal Aid UK as part of Vegan Month. * Vegan food tastings and 'free food fayres' arranged all around the UK * A new initiative by CIWF to reduce meat and dairy consumption to save the environment. May I suggest at the very least vegetarian organisations around the world issue a Press Release or Letter to Editors with a World Vegan Day challenge to restaurants in their country to create a menu with vegan dishes that are not only delicious but help save the environment (as per UN Long Shadow Report) and help stop the spread of preventable chronic disease (as per WHO report). "Restaurants Weald Weapons of Mass Destruction" ? Best wishes for a successful and fruitful World Vegan Day! Tony Bishop-Weston – London
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14. JVNA Advisor/Author Has Article on Animal Rights Published
http://jtonline.us/main.asp?SectionID=43&subsectionID=100&articleID=875
Atlanta Jewish Times, chai inside magazine, Thursday, May 11, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judaism Requires Kindness to Animals
By Lewis Regenstein
The beginning of the spring season, with its renewal of life, is a good time to be reminded of a little-known fact: The Bible and Jewish law are full of admonitions and commandments to protect animals, nature and the environment. Indeed, such teachings are fundamental to Judaism and its traditions.
For example, God’s first commandment (Genesis 1:22) was to the birds, whales, fish and other creatures to “be fruitful and multiply” and fill the seas and the skies. His first commandment to humans (genesis 1:28) was to “replenish the earth … and have dominion” over other creatures.
These commandments concern the welfare and survival of animals and human-stewardship responsibilities toward them. So the Almighty must consider the care of animals an important thing.
Clearly, God was well pleased with the works of His creation. After He made each of the creatures, He blessed them, “saw” that each “was good,” and commanded them to “be fruitful and multiply.” And He pronounced the entire creation, when it was completed, “very good.”
Later, when God made his promise to Noah and generations to come never again to destroy the earth with a flood, He included in the covenant “every living creature … the fowl, the cattle and every beast of the earth” (genesis 9:12-17).
Psalm 104 extols the creatures of “this great and wide sea”: “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom thou hast made them all: The earth is full of thy riches. … The glory of the Lord shall endure forever.” And a well-known Jewish blessing states, “Blessed art thou, Lord our God, king of the universe, who created everything for His glory.”
Kindness to animals is stressed throughout the Bible and is even required in the Ten Commandments, wherein God forbids us to make our farm animals work on the Sabbath; we must give them, too, a day of rest (exodus 20:10, 23:12).
SNIP
Lewis Regenstein regenstein@mindspring.com is president of The Interfaith Council for the Protection of Animals and Nature, and author of “Replenish the Earth.” A copy of a new booklet on this subject is available upon request. Additional information on Judaism and animals can be found at www.jewishveg.com/schwartz/
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15. Animal Rights Proclamation to Be Unveiled in Nation’s Capital
Forwarded message: [Please consider attending, and please help inform others who might be interested. I was a member of the group that drafted the document, and I am one of the signers, but I am disappointed that vegetarianism is not a major focus. However, I think the proclamation is a very positive development, and I hope it has a significant impact.]
A Religious Proclamation For Animal Compassion
9:30 am - 12:30 pm ( EST )
Location: Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Cannon Caucus Room (3rd Fl)
Cannon House Office Building
Independence & New Jersey Avenues, S.E.
Washington, DC 20515
You are cordially invited to a signing ceremony of a religious proclamation in support of animal compassion. Presented by an alliance of religious leaders representing faith traditions worldwide.
Please join us in this groundbreaking event as religious leaders issue calls to action for people of faith to reject animal cruelty in all its forms and embrace kindness to animals as a core spiritual value.
Event sponsored by Best Friends Animal Society.
www.network.bestfriends.org/religion
Please RSVP to:
krish@bestfriends.org 435.691.0250
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16. My Article With Dan Brook Is Cover Article in “The Animals’ Voice” Magazine
Message from editor Veda Stram:
We featured your and Dan Brook's article in our current issue of The Animals Voice Magazine, "AnOTHER Inconvenient Truth.
Thank so very very much, as always, for all your work for animals... and particularly for the bazillions of animals who die to be food.
Bye for now,
Veda
For subscription information, go here:
The Animals Voice Magazine
<http://www.animalsvoice.com/PAGES/magazine.html>
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17. Canfei Nesharim Environmental Dvar Torah for Vayera
The Sin of Sodom and Its Impact on Creation
By Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Parshat Vayera
(translated from the original Hebrew by Ariel Shalem)
The Parsha of Vayera is dedicated by Shoshana Shinnar of the Bikkur Cholim of Westchester, to her dedicated volunteers throughout the years. May G-d bless you for your dedication.
The Sefer of Bereishis is dedicated in memory of Jacob Cohen by Marilyn and Herbert Smilowitz and family.
Two cosmic catastrophes unfold in the book of Genesis. The first, the flood, in which G-d brings waters down from the Heavens to destroy almost all life. The second, the utter devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which an area previously known as a fertile and lush “garden of Hashem” (Gen. 13:10) becomes a desolate land “that cannot be sown, nor sprout, and no grass shall rise up upon it, like the upheaval of Sodom and Gomorrah… which Hashem overturned in His anger, and His wrath” (Deut. 29:22). One of the connections we see between these two events is the word the Torah employs in both cases, lihachsheet – to destroy. When G-d relates to Noah that He will bring the flood He says, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with robbery through them; and, behold, I am about to destroy (mashkheetam) them from the earth” (Gen. 6:13).
In the case of Sodom we see the same word applied, “…when God destroyed (beshakhet) the cities of the plain…” (Gen. 19:29). The Torah did not elaborate on the sin of Sodom, but the underpinnings are expressed later in the prophecy of Ezekiel: “Behold this was the sin of Sodom…She and her daughters had pride, excess bread, and peaceful serenity, but she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy” (16:49). The prophet’s description combined with what the Torah reveals to us gives us the following picture: the people of Sodom insisted on preserving their high quality of living to such an extent they established a principle not to let the poor and homeless reside in their city. Consequently when a destitute person would come seeking help, they would revoke his right to any welfare – public or private! By doing this they figured they would preserve an elite upper class community who would monopolize the profits that the bountiful land offers without having to distribute any revenues to a “lower class” of people.
An opinion in the Mishna in Avot 5:10 further strengthens this picture of moral depravity when it defines the Sodomite as one who says, “What's mine is mine and what’s yours is yours.” The Mishna decries a man who wishes to remove himself from the social responsibility of welfare by closing himself and his wealth from others, even if he makes the claim that he is not taking away from anyone else.
Interestingly, the Sages of the Talmud did not merely draw attention to the relationship between the economic injustices of the generation of the flood and the social depravity of Sodom. The Torah narrative concerning Sodom reveals something deeper. “They called out to Lot, ‘Where are the men that came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them!’” (Gen. 19:5) Indeed, the men demanded to relate to Lot’s male guests sexually. According to the Midrash in Genesis Rabba 28:8, the destruction caused by the flood also shared a similar cause:
Until now, we have dealt with sins between people and God (sexual immorality) and between people and society (robbery, excluding the poor), yet our Torah portion even makes references to sins between man and his environment. The Torah again uses the verb hashkhata in relation to the wanton destruction of fruit trees: “When you besiege a city to seize it, do not destroy (tashkhit) its trees by swinging an axe against them, for from it you will eat, and you shall not cut it down; is the tree of the field a man that it should enter the siege before you?” (Deut. 20:19)
A final example: the same Hebrew verb hishkhit is used in regards to the widely accepted Law delineated in the Book of Mitzvoth not to destroy any part of our world. Under the above-stated commandment not to destroy fruit trees in a siege, comes a further negative commandment where we are forbidden to waste. For example, we must not tear or burn clothing or break or discard dishes for no reason. About all of these issues or any other issues of wanton destruction, the Sages of blessed memory said in the Talmud, “And he has transgressed the sin of being a wasteful man” (The Book of Mitzvoth #529).
What could be the connection between the corruption of the generation of the flood, the people of Sodom and environmental sins? There are three basic answers. The first and most simple reason is that humanity itself is part and parcel of its environment and is not separate from it. Having been created in the image of G-d we may think that we are detached from creation. Further, our Torah-given obligation to preserve the world that G-d gave us may suggest to us that we are above it. Nonetheless, we are bound to and part of creation. The Torah stresses this by including the creation of human beings in the six days of creation and creating us with the means to sustain ourselves like all other creatures, regardless of our unique stature of being created in the image of G-d. Consequently, when one sins against a fellow creature -- human or animal -- they are sinning against their environment.
The second connection between the flood, the people of Sodom and the destruction of our environment is that in those generations the people corrupted their sexual power. Sexual power can build worlds or destroy them. Statements by the Sages that the flood was a result of the inbreeding of species may be applied to our present era as a warning of possible destruction caused by various genetic experimentation, which although at times may be morally justified and halakhically permissible, in other situations can be destructive and wrong, and we must be careful in what we allow and what we do not.
The most central point in the connection between moral behavior and environmental behavior comes from the understanding that both behaviors go hand in hand. One without the other corrupts the Divine vision for human action. That is, a society may be passionate about preserving its natural environment while maintaining a complete disregard for the welfare of its citizens. Sodom is a perfect example of this, where they cared so much for their “garden of HaShem" that they refused to aid anyone in need.
In conclusion our Torah portion provides deep insights into living in balance with one’s environment. The people of Sodom’s perverted ways, in effect, were extremely unsustainable - causing God to turn one of the most fertile and lush ecosystems on Earth into what today is infamous for its barrenness and desolation. From the mistakes of the people of Sodom we can learn the essential character traits that allow one to live in balance with the Creator and creation. The moral human being is devoted to the holiness and purity of life, refrains from harming others, lives a sexually responsible lifestyle, and sacrifices their personal pleasure for an ethical and upright path. When we are capable of fulfilling this ideal we will naturally be triumphant in attaining the great spiritual task of infusing our religious/moral lifestyle with one that is also environmentally sustainable.
May we all be blessed to undertake the task.
Suggested Action Items:
1. Look for an opportunity to be generous to another human being this week. For example: give money to the poor, schedule a time to help out at a local shelter, or volunteer your time to help support community needs.
2. Learn about how our environmental choices can disproportionately impact the poor.
3. Focus your attention on living “in balance” with the Creator and creation. One way to do this is by focusing on buying and preparing only as much food as you will eat. Clean out your refrigerator and note which food items have gone to waste, so that you will buy less next time.
Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Petach Tikva, is a graduate of Yeshivat Har Etzion and a retired major in the IDF. After obtaining his Rabbinic Semicha, Rabbi Cherlow served as the Rav of Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi, and as a Rav at the Hesder Yeshiva in Chispin.
Rabbi Cherlow was amongst the founders of the Tzohar Foundation, a central Modern Orthodox foundation which works to build bridges between the religious and secular worlds. Rav Cherlow is a member of Governmental Ethical Committees, and of the Presidential Press Council of Israel.
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18. Roberta Kalechofsky Featured in “Lilith” Magazine Article
http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article.htm/aid/577727/jewish/Repairing-Our-World.html
Repairing Our World
By Jampa Williams
"If I wasn't involved in the political process," my young son said one morning, "there'd be a huge hole torn in the world." I was touched by the way my seven-year-old expressed his feelings, and by the passion in his declaration. Joyfully, I taught him the Hebrew phrase for the feeling he was expressing, "tikkun olam" – the repair or healing of the world. He was glad to learn that his religion has a sacred obligation mirroring his personal belief.
He has formally announced his plans to be a politician. I think my son, Noah, shall contribute more to tikkun olam when he is past the age of playground scuffles and shoving. My boy is far from perfect. Seeing him whipping around the field at school, shrieking with exuberance, it is evident that he is not of mild nature. If further evidence is needed of this, there are his visits to the principal's office after bouts of mischief. But in his heart, Noah comprehends the connections among beings; that a wrong done to one, is a wrong done to all. In his mind, he helps to repair the world by being part of the political process. Indeed, he has formally announced his plans to be a politician when he grows up.
The seeds of Noah's political ambition were sown this past school year when he began lobbying for legislation to decrease school bus pollution, and discovered a world of people as passionate as him about this issue.
How did Noah come to be a seven-year-old lobbyist? It certainly was not a school project. First graders, at least in public school, aren't taught about civics, except perhaps that two presidents, one of whom needlessly chopped down a tree, were born in February. For some reason, schools seem afraid of teaching the rudiments of democracy. Certainly, first-graders are told nothing of how presidents become presidents, never mind how bills become laws. And is civics ever taught as anything but a droning bore?
No, his lobbying career was the result of reacting with horror to the discovery of what diesel emissions on school buses do to the lungs, hearts and immune systems of children. To Noah, school bus pollution is a kind of violence that harms us all by damaging our health.
SNIP
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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:
Note: Please stay tuned for an update re our documentary A SACRED DUTY: APPLYING JEWISH VALUES TO HELP HEAL THE WORLD and some strategy ideas related to it, to be sent out soon. Thanks.
1. L.A. Times Editorial Powerfully Connects Meat to Global Warming/My Letter and Two Others
2. My Recent Widely-Published Letters Relate Meat-Eating to Global Warming
3. Latest Annual Farmed Animals Death Toll Report
4. Future Consequences of Failure to Address Global Warming Soon
5. JVNA Advisor’s Novel Released
6. World Food Day Report
7. How Meat Consumption Increases Global Food Insecurity
8. Challenging Personal Statement From Israel Vegetarian Activist Steve (Shaya) Kelter
9. Southeastern U.S. Facing Unprecedented Drought
10. My Article in Austrian Vegetarian Publication
11. Article Re Repairing World in Chasidic Publication
12. Dramatic Change in Global Meat Production Projected
13. World Vegan Day Approaching
14. JVNA Advisor/Author Has Article on Animal Rights Published
15. Animal Rights Proclamation to Be Unveiled in Nation’s Capital
16. My Article With Dan Brook Is Cover Article in “The Animals’ Voice” Magazine
17. Canfei Nesharim Environmental Dvar Torah for Vayera
18. Roberta Kalechofsky Featured in “Lilith” Magazine Article
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. L.A. Times Editorial Powerfully Connects Meat to Global Warming/My Letter and Two Others
[This is an incredible editorial and we should try to see that it is widely read. Please consider sending a letter to the editor. Please note my letter and letters from JVNA advisors Dan Brook and Rina Deych after the editorial.
BTW, After our demonstration in August against the OU's "Halachic Adventure” in L.A. and their failure to mention our protest in their article, they printed my letter which made the basic points in their editorial. I wonder if there is any connection?]
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-methane15oct15,0,1365993.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail
From the Los Angeles Times
Killer cow emissions
Livestock are a leading source of greenhouse gases. Why isn't anyone raising a stink?
October 15, 2007
It's a silent but deadly source of greenhouse gases that contributes more to global warming than the entire world transportation sector, yet politicians almost never discuss it, and environmental lobbyists and other green activist groups seem unaware of its existence.
That may be because it's tough to take cow flatulence seriously. But livestock emissions are no joke.
Most of the national debate about global warming centers on carbon dioxide, the world's most abundant greenhouse gas, and its major sources -- fossil fuels. Seldom mentioned is that cows and other ruminants, such as sheep and goats, are walking gas factories that take in fodder and put out methane and nitrous oxide, two greenhouse gases that are far more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Methane, with 21 times the warming potential of CO2, comes from both ends of a cow, but mostly the front. Frat boys have nothing on bovines, as it's estimated that a single cow can belch out anywhere from 25 to 130 gallons of methane a day.
It isn't just the gas they pass that makes livestock troublesome. A report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization identified livestock as one of the two or three top contributors to the world's most serious environmental problems, including water pollution and species loss. In terms of climate change, livestock are a threat not only because of the gases coming from their stomachs and manure but because of deforestation, as land is cleared to make way for pastures, and the amount of energy needed to produce the crops that feed the animals.
All told, livestock are responsible for 18% of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide, according to the U.N. -- more than all the planes, trains and automobiles on the planet. And it's going to get a lot worse. As living standards rise in the developing world, so does its fondness for meat and dairy. Annual per-capita meat consumption in developing countries doubled from 31 pounds in 1980 to 62 pounds in 2002, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, which expects global meat production to more than double by 2050. That means the environmental damage of ranching would have to be cut in half just to keep emissions at their current, dangerous level.
It isn't enough to improve mileage standards or crack down on diesel truck emissions, as politicians at both the state and national levels are working to do. Eventually, the United States and other countries are going to have to clean up their agricultural practices, while consumers can do their part by cutting back on red meat.
Manure, methane and McGovern
In a Web forum for presidential candidates in September, TV talk-show host Bill Maher asked former Sen. John Edwards a snarky question: Because Edwards had suggested that people trade in their SUVs to benefit the environment, and cattle generate more greenhouse gases than SUVs, "You want to take a shot at meat?" Maher asked.
Edwards wisely dodged the question. It is extremely hazardous for politicians to take on the U.S. beef industry, a lesson learned by Sen. George McGovern in the late 1970s when his Select Committee on Nutrition dared to recommend that Americans cut down on red meat and fatty dairy products for health reasons. After a ferocious lobbying blitz from meat and dairy interests, the committee rewrote its guidelines to suggest diners simply choose lean meats that "will reduce saturated fat intake." McGovern was voted out of office in 1980, in part because of opposition from cattlemen in his home state of South Dakota.
Beyond the dangers of taking on the beef bloc, legislating food choices is an unpopular and nearly impossible task, so it's unlikely any candidate will endorse a national vegetarian movement to fight global warming any time soon. There are other approaches, though.
Cows and other ruminants have four stomachs, the first of which, called the rumen, is where the trouble lies; bacteria in the rumen produce methane. Scientists -- mostly in Australia, New Zealand and Britain, where the problem is taken a lot more seriously than it is here -- are working on a variety of technical solutions, including a kind of bovine Alka-Seltzer. Scientists are also trying to develop new varieties of feed grasses that are more energy efficient and thus generate less methane, and they are experimenting with targeted breeding to produce a less-gassy strain of cattle.
But it's not just about the belching. Livestock manure also emits methane (especially when it's stored in lagoons) and nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas. There's nothing funny about this gas: It has 296 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, and livestock are its leading anthropogenic (human-caused) source. The best way to reduce these gases is to better manage the manure; storage methods and temperature can make a big difference. The California Air Resources Board is studying manure-management practices as part of a sweeping effort to identify ways of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, work that by the end of next year might lead to regulation of the state's ranches and dairies. Other states should do the same.
There are also smart ways of treating or converting animal waste. Manure lagoons can be covered, capturing gases that can be used to generate power or simply be burned away (burning the gases converts most of the emissions to CO2, which is far less destructive than methane). That's the strategy being pursued by American Electric Power Co., a gigantic utility based in Columbus, Ohio, whose coal-fired power plants make it the nation's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. This summer, the company began putting tarps on waste lagoons at farms and ranches and sending the gases they capture to flares.
American Electric is under heavy regulatory pressure. Last week, it was on the wrong end of the biggest environmental settlement in U.S. history and agreed to spend up to $4.6 billion to clean up its smokestacks. Its work on manure is part of an experiment in carbon offsets; the company anticipates that someday Congress will cap the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted and allow polluters to trade pollution credits. As a previous installment of this series noted, that's a less effective way to combat global warming than carbon taxes, but the American Electric example shows that it would also direct the economic might of industrial polluters toward solving off-the-beaten-path problems such as livestock waste.
Other possible solutions include providing more aid to ranchers in places like Brazil, where forests are rapidly disappearing, to make cattle operations more efficient and thus decrease the need to cut down trees. Changes in farming practices on fields used to grow livestock feed could help capture more carbon. And U.S. agricultural policy is overdue for changes. Subsidies on crops such as corn and soybeans have traditionally kept the price of meat artificially low because these are key feedstocks.
Broccoli: It's what's for dinner
Such policy shifts and new technologies would help, but probably not enough. A recent report in the Lancet led by Australian National University professor Anthony J. McMichael posits that available technologies applied universally could reduce non-carbon dioxide emissions from livestock by less than 20%. The authors advocate another, fringe approach that has long been embraced by dietitians and vegans but is a long way from going mainstream in the United States: eating less meat.
Americans love beef. According to the 2000 census, the U.S. ranks No. 3 in the world in per-capita consumption of beef and veal (after Argentina and Uruguay), gorging on 100 pounds per year. We're also among the leaders in obesity, heart disease and colorectal cancer, and there is a connection -- fatty red meat has been linked to all of these conditions.
McMichael's idea isn't likely to gain much traction outside Australia; he proposes that developed countries lower their daily intake of meat from about 250 grams to 90 grams, with no more than 50 grams coming from ruminant animals -- that's less than 2 ounces, or half a McDonald's Quarter-Pounder.
Still, as evidence mounts that cutting back on beef would both improve our health and help stave off global warming, a campaign urging people to do so is clearly in order. It's understandable why political candidates are wary of bashing beef, but less understandable why environmental leaders with nothing to lose are reluctant to raise the issue. They would be more credible in targeting polluters if they were equally assertive in pointing out what all Americans can do to fight global warming, and at the very top of that list -- way ahead of more commonly mentioned approaches such as buying fluorescent lightbulbs or energy-efficient appliances -- would be eating less red meat.
A University of Chicago study examined the average American diet and found that all the various energy inputs and livestock emissions involved in its production pump an extra 1.5 tons of CO2 into the air over the course of a year, which would be avoided by a vegetarian diet. Thus, the researchers found, cutting out meat would do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than trading in a gas guzzler for a hybrid car.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture assesses ranchers, dairymen and producers of other commodities to pay for marketing campaigns to promote their products, raising millions of dollars a year and turning such slogans as "Got Milk?" and "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" into national catchphrases. This isn't quite tantamount to a government-mandated campaign to promote cigarette smoking, but it's close. The government should not only get out of the business of promoting unhealthful and environmentally destructive foods, it should be actively discouraging them.
Three letters in response to the editorial from me, Dan Brook and Rina Deych
-------------------------------------------------------
October 16, 2007
Editor, Los Angeles Times
letters@latimes.com
Dear editor,
Kudos on your wonderful, challenging October 15 editorial “Killer cow emissions,” about the inconvenient truth of dietary connections to global climate change. With almost daily reports of severe heat waves, storms, floods, droughts and wildfires, with glaciers and polar ice caps melting at alarming rates and with many other indicators of global warming, it is increasingly apparent that the world is rapidly approaching an unprecedented catastrophe, and major changes are necessary o avoid it. Hence, it is scandalous that environmental groups and others are generally ignoring the UN FAO report indicating that animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all of the world's transportation vehicles, and that these emissions are projected to double by 2050. I hope that your excellent editorial awakens people so that we will take actions necessary to move our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.
Very truly yours,
Richard H. Schwartz
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I very much appreciate your “Killer Cow Emissions” editorial (10/15), saying what needs to be said because it’s true even if inconvenient. Global warming is the biggest crisis for life on Earth, yet we still treat it like it’s a minor issue. While we’re waiting form our government and the corporations to step up, we need to make personal steps to fight global warming with our forks.
Vegetarianism, as you indicate, is a powerful antidote. Vegetarianism is literally about life and death - for each of us individually and for all of us together. Eating animals simultaneously contributes to: their suffering and death; the ill-health and early death of people; the unsustainable overuse of oil, water, land, topsoil, grain, labor, and other vital resources; environmental destruction, including deforestation, species extinction, and global warming; the legitimacy of force and violence; the mis-allocation of capital, skills, land, and resources; vast inefficiencies in the economy; tremendous waste; massive inequalities in the world; the transmission and spread of dangerous diseases; and moral failure in so-called civilized societies.
For more information, there’s a great collection of “Meat Eating and Global Warming” links at www.ivu.org/members/globalwarming.html.
Dan Brook, Ph.D.
Eco-Eating
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Thank you for your excellent October 15th editorial entitled "Killer Cow Emissions." It's mind-boggling that major environmental groups are conspicuously avoiding the UN report (and others) showing that animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. As a registered nurse, humanitarian, and environmentalist, I strongly feel that anyone who purports to be concerned about the environment must "go green" inside and out. A switch to a plant-based diet is healthier for everyone - humans, the planet, and, of course the animals.
Rina Deych, RN
Brooklyn, NY 11219
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2. My Recent Widely-Published Letters Relate Meat-Eating to Global Warming
Message from JVNA activist Judy Lipson:
CONGRATULATIONS...........I just received my Moment Magazine and was
thrilled to find your letter to the editor on page 10. It was the
very first letter to the editor at the very top of the page under the
heading SHADES OF GREEN - ANOTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTH.
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In the last few months, I have had letters re meat/global warming connections in the NAVS “Vegetarian Voice,” “VegNews,” “Animal People,” Newsweek and my local Staten Island Advance. I think consciousness is increasing and A SACRED DUTY and our accompanying campaign can accelerate it.
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3. Latest Annual Farmed Animals Death Toll Report
Forwarded message from FARM (Farm Animal Reform Movement):
[US] Annual Farm Animal Death Toll Drops for First Time
Posted by: "FARM" farm-usa@verizon.net farmfarmusa
Tue Oct 16, 2007 7:34 pm (PST)
FOR RELEASE ON 10/17/07
CONTACT: Alex Hershaft 301-530-5683
ANNUAL FARM ANIMAL DEATH TOLL DROPS
The total number of land-based animals killed for food in the U.S. this year is projected to reach 10,378 million, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. This represents no significant change from the 2005/2006 mean of 10,381 million, and a 1% drop in the per capita figure, in light of the 1% annual U.S. population growth.
The number of fishes and other aquatic organisms killed for human and animal consumption is not reported by any agency, but is likely to exceed that number.
The 10,357 million land-based animals killed for food in 2006 includes both the 9,432 million animals reported as slaughtered by USDA and an additional 925 million, or 9% of the total, who died lingering deaths from disease, malnutrition, injury, suffocation, stress, or other deadly factory farming practices. The more egregious example are the 266 million laying hens (62% of those hatched), including 213 million males dumped to suffocate slowly in plastic garbage bags upon hatching and 53 million “spent” females dumped on the waste pile, dead or alive, after a lifetime of laying eggs.
The 2007 total of 10,378 million includes 39 million cattle and calves (about even with the 38.7 million in 2006), 121 million pigs (up 2.6% from 118 million), 4 million sheep and goats, 10 million rabbits, 317 million turkeys (up 5% from 302 million), 28 million ducks (down 7% from 30 million), 9,409 million “broilers” (down slightly from 9,428 million) and 450 million laying hens (up 5% from $426 million).
In more personal terms, during a 75-year life span, a typical U.S. resident is responsible for the suffering and death of 10 cows, 34 pigs, and other small mammals, 2,535 turkeys, chickens and ducks, and uncounted numbers of fishes and other aquatic animals.
The 10,357 million animals raised and killed for food in 2006 accounted for 98% of land-based animals abused and killed annually in the U.S. Another 250 million animals were killed for “sport,” in biomedical laboratories, in pounds, or as “pests.”
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The report on the number of victims of animal agriculture is compiled each year by FARM, a public interest organization, in connection with the annual observance of World Farm Animals Day, launched in 1983 to expose and memorialize the suffering and deaths of animals in the world’s factory farms and slaughterhouses. This 25th annual observance was co-sponsored by In Defense of Animals and PETA. (www.WFAD.org)
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4. Future Consequences of Failure to Address Global Warming Soon
Climate Change-US: Delay Now, Pay Dearly Later
By Stephen Leahy
Inter Press Service
Tuesday 16 October 2007
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101707EC.shtml
Brooklin, Canada - The United States is facing hundreds of billions of dollars in weather-related damages in coming years if it does not act urgently on climate change, the first-ever comprehensive economic assessment of the problem has found.
The costs of inaction on climate change on U.S. infrastructure, and its agricultural, manufacturing and public service sectors, will far outweigh the costs involved in making the needed reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report, "The U.S. Economic Impacts of Climate Change and the Costs of Inaction", released Tuesday.
"We're making billions of dollars of infrastructure investments every year and often without taking impacts of climate change into account," said report co-author Matthias Ruth, director of the University of Maryland's Centre for Integrative Environmental Research.
"Climate change will affect every American economically in significant, dramatic ways, and the longer it takes to respond, the greater the damage and the higher the costs," Ruth told IPS.
"The true economic impact of climate change is fraught with 'hidden' costs," the report concludes. It adds that these costs will vary regionally and will put a strain on public sector budgets. For example, the combined impacts of storms on the U.S. since 1980 have surpassed 560 billion dollars. Hurricane Katrina alone accounted for nearly 200 billion dollars in economic losses.
More frequent and intense storms - a virtual certainty, many climate scientists warn - will raise the price-tag even higher.
Storm damage is just one factor in what is fast becoming a cascade of costs amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, the report documents.
In the U.S. west and northwest, the cost of fire suppression and property damages will run in the billions due to changes in precipitation patterns and snow pack. The Great Plains will experience increased frequency and severity of flooding and drought, resulting in additional billions of dollars in damages to crops and property.
The already sinking water levels will go lower in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River system, driving up shipping costs and producing major impacts on the midwest manufacturing sector. Sea level rise and storm surges will eat away valuable property along the Atlantic coast - a single storm surge event can cost 2.0 billion to 6.5 billion dollars.
Drought will take firmer hold of the south and southwest, with costly impacts on agriculture, industry and households. For the Central Valley in California alone, the economy-wide loss during the driest years is predicted to be around 6.0 billion dollars.
The "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change" by Sir Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank, cautioned last year that the global economy could shrink by 20 percent in the worst-case scenario of inaction and a 5 degree C. rise in temperatures. It would be far, far cheaper - costing just one percent of global GDP - to avoid these worst-case scenarios.
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5. JVNA Advisor’s Novel Released
We wish author and JVNA advisor Charles Patterson much success with his recently published novel LAST RITES. His message is below.
LAST RIGHTS is a novel I wrote many years ago. After not getting
published and sitting for 25 years in my closet, it's now out and in
print.
It's about a disgruntled young cleric who is vegetarian and animal
friendly among other things. Although he's a Christian minister, he has
a Jewish soul (reads Hebrew, quotes the Talmud, reveres the prophets of
ancient Israel, etc.) that causes him to rebel against his family and
church. The book is partly autobiographical.
Here's its epigraph:
I hate, I despise your feasts,
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
--Amos 5:21
http://www.booklocker.com/books/3128.html
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6. World Food Day Report
Published on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
World Food Day
by Yifat Susskind
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/16/4570/
The Globalization of Hunger
At first, the numbers don’t seem to add up. The world produces more food than ever-enough to feed twice the global population. Yet, more people than ever suffer from hunger; and their numbers are rising. Today, 854 million people, most of them women and girls, are chronically hungry, up from 800 million in 1996. Another paradox: the majority of the world’s hungry people live in rural areas, where nearly all food is grown.
World Food Day on October 16 is a good time to try and understand the conundrum of world hunger. The root of the problem is the inequitable distribution of the resources needed to either grow or buy food (also known as poverty). World Food Day is an equally good time to call out one of the main culprits of the crisis: industrial agriculture, the very type enshrined in the Farm Bill that’s currently before the US Senate.
The Farm Bill has far-reaching implications for farmers and food systems the world over. It is set to perpetuate a process whereby heavily subsidized US factory farms overproduce grains that are dumped in poor countries, bankrupting local farmers, who can’t compete with subsidized prices. We’ve begun to hear a bit about the plight of these farmers, but few people know that most of them are women. In fact, women produce most of the world’s food. They do so on small plots of land, working hard to feed their families and generate enough income for things like school fees and children’s shoes.
US Agribusiness: Swallowing Up Lands and Livelihoods
Visit the websites of corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, who together control 65 percent of the global grain trade, and you will read that their mission is to “feed a growing world.” The reality is starkly different. Big Farming is part of a larger corporate economic model that prioritizes profit-making over all else, even the basic right to food. Around the world, agribusiness bankrupts and displaces small farmers, and directs farmers to grow export crops instead of staple foods.
Not long ago, most farm inputs came from farmers themselves. Seeds were saved from the last harvest and fertilizer was recycled from animal and plant wastes. Farmers found innovative ways to control pests by harnessing local biodiversity, such as cultivating insect-repelling plants alongside food crops. While these techniques can produce enough food to feed the world and sustain its ecosystems, they don’t turn a profit for agribusiness. That’s why corporations developed genetically modified seeds, chemical fertilizers, and synthetic pesticides.
These inputs are both expensive for farmers and highly damaging to the natural systems on which sustainable farming and, ultimately, all life depends. As the cost of farming has gone up, farmers’ incomes have gone down due to trade rules that favor large-scale agribusiness over small farmers. For example, the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture forbids governments in the Global South from providing farmers with low-cost seeds and other farm inputs, turning farmers into a “market” for international agribusiness.
Over the past 50 years, as much of the world’s farmland has been consolidated in fewer and fewer hands, millions of people have been forced to abandon their rural homes. In fact, this year, for the first time ever, the number of people living in cities around the world exceeded the number living in rural areas. Most of this urban population boom is due to rural migration.
Cash Crops and Climate Change
The same practices that have devastated women farmers and their communities worldwide have contributed to environmental destruction that impacts us all.
Export agriculture is a major contributor to global warming because it requires huge inputs of petroleum: it takes 100 gallons of oil to grow just one acre of US corn. It also requires a massive global transportation infrastructure, including ports, railways, fuel pipelines, and superhighways, often built at the expense of local people and ecosystems. In many places, 40 percent of truck traffic is from hauling food over long distances. Today, food that could be grown locally is shipped, trucked, or flown half way around the planet.
Trade rules have so distorted agricultural markets that almost anywhere you go, food from the other side of the world costs less than food grown locally. So people in Kenya buy Dutch butter, while those in the Big Apple buy apples from Chile. In the US, the average bite of food travels 1,300 miles from farm to fork. The system is so wasteful that many countries import the very same foods that they export. For example, last year the US exported-and imported-900,000 tons of beef.
Asserting the Right to Food
The good news is that our global food systems may be on the verge of a great transition. Although agribusiness has unprecedented control over the world’s farmers and food supply, the realities of climate change, resource depletion, and the human suffering caused by industrialized farming have led more people to start thinking about the links between food, the environment, and social justice. Around the world, demands for food sovereignty-peoples’ right to control their own food systems-is at an all-time high. Even in the US, where much of the population thinks of farming as a quaint and remote activity, more and more people are realizing that if you eat, you’re involved in agriculture.
The theme of this year’s World Food Day is the right to food. Securing this basic human right for all people, including future generations, will require fundamental changes in the way we use the Earth’s natural resources to grow and distribute food. As we face rising temperatures and declining supplies of cheap energy, change will come of necessity. It’s up to us-working in partnership with small-scale farmers around the world-to demand a change for the better.
Yifat Susskind is communications director of MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization.
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My response to the above article, seeking to build on their strong, eloquent message:
In a world with so much hunger with millions dying annually from insufficient food, how can we justify animal-based diets that involve the feeding of 70% of the grain grown in the US and over 40% of the grain grown worldwide to animals? In a world with so much thirst, how can we justify animal-centered diets that can use up to 14 times as much water per person that vegan diets? In a world rapidly heading toward disaster from global warming, how can we justify 'livestock' agriculture which emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) that all the world's transport, according to the UN FAO's 2006 report, "Livestock's Long Shadow."
For further information, please see my over 130 articles at JewishVeg.com/schwartz.
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7. How Meat Consumption Increases Global Food Insecurity
EUROPEAN VEGETARIAN UNION
Press Release - World Food Day, Tuesday 16 October
Meat, the hidden reason for growing food insecurity
16 October 2007
This World Food Day was preceded by a series of FAO-warnings "Wheat prices hit record-high level", "28 countries face food shortages", "Climate change disaster is upon us", etc., and also the European Union cautioned that "2007 total cereal harvest will be ...1,6% below the average of the last five years", and that cereal intervention stocks "have shrunk from 14 million tonnes at the beginning of 2006/2007 to around 1 million tonnes now".
Environmental changes are given as a major cause for failing harvests, and
the FAO even names the culprits, pointing to future disasters by informing that livestock's environmental impact "will worsen dramatically...".
So it's official: It's the beef!
What vegetarians have tried to get across for decades has finally become
official wisdom: 'Livestock's Long Shadow' puts a dramatic pressure on the environment, contributes critically to climate change and global warming, leads to failing harvests and threatens the global food supply. But that's not all: Even in times of dwindling resources, enormous harvest shares continue to be requisitioned for farm animals.
The result is obvious: Food is getting scarce and expensive for everyone
and, as always, the poor are the first to suffer and suffer the most.
Stop meat-business as usual
Since animal husbandry is one of the most prominent reasons for the world's greenhouse pollution which threatens the food supply of billions of people, more sustainable lifestyles have to be adopted urgently. There is absolutely no need for the citizens of some countries to continue eating roughly their own weight in meat every year! Reason and solidarity must bring about lighter ecological footprints of the individual, and vegetarianism is the prime choice in this quest.
On the occasion of World Food Day 2007, the European Vegetarian Union
appeals to all people of good will, and especially to national and
international decision makers, to accept and promote the vegetarian
alternative. The present terrifying crossroad shows clearly that for us and
all future generations, new ethical alternatives have to replace old
destructive habits - today.
Renato Pichler
President
European Vegetarian Union
Bahnhofstrasse 52
CH-9315 Neukirch (Egnach)
Fax: +41 (0)71 477 33 78
www.euroveg.eu / president@euroveg.eu
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8. Challenging Personal Statement From Israel Vegetarian Activist Steve (Shaya) Kelter
Dear family and friends,
In the past week Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his trailblazing advocacy of environmental sanity. Thanks to his work, hundreds of millions of people around the world are more aware of the catastrophic danger to our planet of our devil-may-care burning off of our irreplaceable petroleum reserves. What took nature hundreds of millions of years to produce is being depleted in a matter of decades. In the process our atmosphere is being heated to such a point that the world's climate and ocean levels are being affected very rapidly. A large portion of the world's future population is being threatened. Already hurricanes have become more frequent and more severe. Coastal lands will be flooded. Fresh water will be threatened. Rain will decrease.
What has not been so well known to the general public, what Al Gore doesn't tell you, is that the greatest single cause of global warming, more than all forms of motorized transportation combined is – livestock!
I personally stopped eating meat altogether in 1991 and later gradually reduced my dairy intake. I stopped my remaining dairy consumption in November, 2006 when the U.N. Food and Agriculture report of November, 2006 was published showing that livestock was the single greatest cause of global warming.
The L.A. Times in a ground breaking editorial explains how this works in layman's language. This article is worth reading and re-reading and ruminating over.
I urge you to think again before you take that extra slice of roast beef or steak. You do have an alternative. Vegetarian options are tastier than ever. You can make a significant difference in saving our world for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Granted not everyone is going to stop eating meat "cold turkey." Food habits are deeply ingrained. But I believe that every one of us can gradually reduce our intake of meat and dairy and move to a more vegetarian diet. Not only will you be helping to save the world, but you will be contributing to your own health. You are also helping the poor because livestock production is much more energy, water and pesticide-intensive than vegetarian options and helps to drive up agriculture prices which especially affects the poor.
From a Torah perspective, we just read in the Torah portion Bereishit, at the beginning of the book of Genesis, one of the first commandments to Man, regarding the earth: "work it and preserve it." To my mind, protecting the environment of our world is a key mitzvah.
The L.A. Editorial [is in item #1 above.] It was sent to me by my friend, Richard H. Schwartz, President of the Jewish Vegetarians of North America, in my capacity as one of the advisors of JVNA. You have my permission and encouragement to pass this message and the following to all.
With love from Jerusalem,
Steven "Shaya" Kelter
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9. Southeastern U.S. Facing Unprecedented Drought
Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices
NY Times 10/16/07
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/us/16drought.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
ATLANTA, Oct. 15 — For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought, climatologists said Monday, creating an emergency so serious that some cities are just months away from running out of water.
In North Carolina, Gov. Michael F. Easley asked residents Monday to stop using water for any purpose “not essential to public health and safety.” He warned that he would soon have to declare a state of emergency if voluntary efforts fell short.
“Now I don’t want to have to use these powers,” Mr. Easley told a meeting of mayors and other city officials. “As leaders of your communities, you know what works best at the local level. I am asking for your help.”
Officials in the central North Carolina town of Siler City estimate that without rain, they are 80 days from draining the Lower Rocky River Reservoir, which supplies water for the town’s 8,200 people.
In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days.
The hard numbers have shocked the Southeast into action, even as many people wonder why things seem to have gotten so bad so quickly.
SNIP
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10. My Article in Austrian Vegetarian Publication
Forwarded message From Herma Caelen, a European vegetarian activist:
You remember certainly that I have translated your '10 steps [toward a vegetarian-conscious world]' into German
http://www.evana.org/index.php?id=22633&lang=de.
Well, the Austrian Veg Organisation has now printed the complete text in
their Autumn issue of 'anima'. Congratulations!
The president, Dr. Erwin Lauppert, is someone with whom you would certainly get on like a house in fire. Maybe you like to write him and ask for a copy?
anima@vegetarier.at
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11. Article Re Repairing World in Chasidic Publication
Here is a link to Lilith's eco-ushpizin, which discusses the environmental efforts of seven contemporary women, including our own Roberta Kalechosky. [I was unable to cut and paste the article.]
http://www.lilith.org/pdfs/EcoUshpizin.pdf
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12. Dramatic Change in Global Meat Production Projected
FAO newsroom. Dramatic changes in global meat production ahead, risk
Posted by: "Pamela Rice" pamela@vivavegie.org penelopeapod
Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:20 pm (PST)
[EXCERPT: Industrial pig and poultry production relies on a significant movement of live animals. In 2005, for example, nearly 25 million pigs, more than two million pigs per month, were traded internationally.]
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2007/1000660/index.html
Dramatic changes in global meat production could increase risk of diseases
Livestock producers should invest more in biosecurity and disease monitoring
17 September 2007, Rome - Global animal food production is undergoing
a major transformation that could lead to a higher risk of disease transmission from animals to humans, FAO warned today.
"The risk of disease transmission from animals to humans will increase in the future due to human and livestock population growth, dynamic changes in livestock production, the emergence of worldwide agro-food networks and a significant increase in the mobility of people and goods," FAO said in a policy brief (Industrial Livestock Production and Global Health Risks).
"There is no doubt that the world has to depend upon some of the technologies of intensive animal food production systems," said FAO livestock policy expert Joachim Otte.
"But excessive concentration of animals in large scale industrial production units should be avoided and adequate investments should be
made in heightened biosecurity and improved disease monitoring to safeguard public health," he added.
More affluence - higher meat consumption
As countries have become more affluent and the world's population continues to rise, demand for meat and other livestock products has
grown substantially, according to FAO.
To satisfy this higher demand for meat products, livestock production and densities have significantly increased, often close to urban centres. Industrial animal production has become more concentrated, using fewer but more productive livestock breeds.
"These developments have potentially serious consequences for local and global disease risks, which, so far, have not been widely recognized by policy makers," said FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech.
SNIP
Contact:
Erwin Northoff
Media Relations, FAO
erwin.northoff@fao.org
(+39) 06 570 53105
(+39) 348 252 361
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13. World Vegan Day Approaching
Forwarded message:
Just 2 weeks left until World Vegan Day - just about enough time to arrange a party or a press release to challenge the status quo. Lets make the finale of World Vegetarian Month a bit more spectacular than usual. So far there is * A Vegan fashion Show in Montreal, Canada * A Vegan festival In Melbourne, Australia * A Vegan dinner with prestigious speakers organised by AVS * A challenge by Lush Cosmetics to staff in all their 88 UK stores to go vegan for World Vegan Day supported by ViVA! UK * Various events around the UK organised by Animal Aid UK as part of Vegan Month. * Vegan food tastings and 'free food fayres' arranged all around the UK * A new initiative by CIWF to reduce meat and dairy consumption to save the environment. May I suggest at the very least vegetarian organisations around the world issue a Press Release or Letter to Editors with a World Vegan Day challenge to restaurants in their country to create a menu with vegan dishes that are not only delicious but help save the environment (as per UN Long Shadow Report) and help stop the spread of preventable chronic disease (as per WHO report). "Restaurants Weald Weapons of Mass Destruction" ? Best wishes for a successful and fruitful World Vegan Day! Tony Bishop-Weston – London
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14. JVNA Advisor/Author Has Article on Animal Rights Published
http://jtonline.us/main.asp?SectionID=43&subsectionID=100&articleID=875
Atlanta Jewish Times, chai inside magazine, Thursday, May 11, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judaism Requires Kindness to Animals
By Lewis Regenstein
The beginning of the spring season, with its renewal of life, is a good time to be reminded of a little-known fact: The Bible and Jewish law are full of admonitions and commandments to protect animals, nature and the environment. Indeed, such teachings are fundamental to Judaism and its traditions.
For example, God’s first commandment (Genesis 1:22) was to the birds, whales, fish and other creatures to “be fruitful and multiply” and fill the seas and the skies. His first commandment to humans (genesis 1:28) was to “replenish the earth … and have dominion” over other creatures.
These commandments concern the welfare and survival of animals and human-stewardship responsibilities toward them. So the Almighty must consider the care of animals an important thing.
Clearly, God was well pleased with the works of His creation. After He made each of the creatures, He blessed them, “saw” that each “was good,” and commanded them to “be fruitful and multiply.” And He pronounced the entire creation, when it was completed, “very good.”
Later, when God made his promise to Noah and generations to come never again to destroy the earth with a flood, He included in the covenant “every living creature … the fowl, the cattle and every beast of the earth” (genesis 9:12-17).
Psalm 104 extols the creatures of “this great and wide sea”: “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom thou hast made them all: The earth is full of thy riches. … The glory of the Lord shall endure forever.” And a well-known Jewish blessing states, “Blessed art thou, Lord our God, king of the universe, who created everything for His glory.”
Kindness to animals is stressed throughout the Bible and is even required in the Ten Commandments, wherein God forbids us to make our farm animals work on the Sabbath; we must give them, too, a day of rest (exodus 20:10, 23:12).
SNIP
Lewis Regenstein regenstein@mindspring.com is president of The Interfaith Council for the Protection of Animals and Nature, and author of “Replenish the Earth.” A copy of a new booklet on this subject is available upon request. Additional information on Judaism and animals can be found at www.jewishveg.com/schwartz/
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15. Animal Rights Proclamation to Be Unveiled in Nation’s Capital
Forwarded message: [Please consider attending, and please help inform others who might be interested. I was a member of the group that drafted the document, and I am one of the signers, but I am disappointed that vegetarianism is not a major focus. However, I think the proclamation is a very positive development, and I hope it has a significant impact.]
A Religious Proclamation For Animal Compassion
9:30 am - 12:30 pm ( EST )
Location: Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Cannon Caucus Room (3rd Fl)
Cannon House Office Building
Independence & New Jersey Avenues, S.E.
Washington, DC 20515
You are cordially invited to a signing ceremony of a religious proclamation in support of animal compassion. Presented by an alliance of religious leaders representing faith traditions worldwide.
Please join us in this groundbreaking event as religious leaders issue calls to action for people of faith to reject animal cruelty in all its forms and embrace kindness to animals as a core spiritual value.
Event sponsored by Best Friends Animal Society.
www.network.bestfriends.org/religion
Please RSVP to:
krish@bestfriends.org 435.691.0250
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16. My Article With Dan Brook Is Cover Article in “The Animals’ Voice” Magazine
Message from editor Veda Stram:
We featured your and Dan Brook's article in our current issue of The Animals Voice Magazine, "AnOTHER Inconvenient Truth.
Thank so very very much, as always, for all your work for animals... and particularly for the bazillions of animals who die to be food.
Bye for now,
Veda
For subscription information, go here:
The Animals Voice Magazine
<http://www.animalsvoice.com/PAGES/magazine.html>
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17. Canfei Nesharim Environmental Dvar Torah for Vayera
The Sin of Sodom and Its Impact on Creation
By Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Parshat Vayera
(translated from the original Hebrew by Ariel Shalem)
The Parsha of Vayera is dedicated by Shoshana Shinnar of the Bikkur Cholim of Westchester, to her dedicated volunteers throughout the years. May G-d bless you for your dedication.
The Sefer of Bereishis is dedicated in memory of Jacob Cohen by Marilyn and Herbert Smilowitz and family.
Two cosmic catastrophes unfold in the book of Genesis. The first, the flood, in which G-d brings waters down from the Heavens to destroy almost all life. The second, the utter devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which an area previously known as a fertile and lush “garden of Hashem” (Gen. 13:10) becomes a desolate land “that cannot be sown, nor sprout, and no grass shall rise up upon it, like the upheaval of Sodom and Gomorrah… which Hashem overturned in His anger, and His wrath” (Deut. 29:22). One of the connections we see between these two events is the word the Torah employs in both cases, lihachsheet – to destroy. When G-d relates to Noah that He will bring the flood He says, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with robbery through them; and, behold, I am about to destroy (mashkheetam) them from the earth” (Gen. 6:13).
In the case of Sodom we see the same word applied, “…when God destroyed (beshakhet) the cities of the plain…” (Gen. 19:29). The Torah did not elaborate on the sin of Sodom, but the underpinnings are expressed later in the prophecy of Ezekiel: “Behold this was the sin of Sodom…She and her daughters had pride, excess bread, and peaceful serenity, but she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy” (16:49). The prophet’s description combined with what the Torah reveals to us gives us the following picture: the people of Sodom insisted on preserving their high quality of living to such an extent they established a principle not to let the poor and homeless reside in their city. Consequently when a destitute person would come seeking help, they would revoke his right to any welfare – public or private! By doing this they figured they would preserve an elite upper class community who would monopolize the profits that the bountiful land offers without having to distribute any revenues to a “lower class” of people.
An opinion in the Mishna in Avot 5:10 further strengthens this picture of moral depravity when it defines the Sodomite as one who says, “What's mine is mine and what’s yours is yours.” The Mishna decries a man who wishes to remove himself from the social responsibility of welfare by closing himself and his wealth from others, even if he makes the claim that he is not taking away from anyone else.
Interestingly, the Sages of the Talmud did not merely draw attention to the relationship between the economic injustices of the generation of the flood and the social depravity of Sodom. The Torah narrative concerning Sodom reveals something deeper. “They called out to Lot, ‘Where are the men that came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them!’” (Gen. 19:5) Indeed, the men demanded to relate to Lot’s male guests sexually. According to the Midrash in Genesis Rabba 28:8, the destruction caused by the flood also shared a similar cause:
Rabbi Azariyah said in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua son of Simon, every creature had been corrupted in the generation of the flood. The dog would mate with the wolf, the hen with the peacock. For it is written, ‘All flesh was corrupted.’ ‘All mankind was corrupted’ is not written, rather ‘All flesh was corrupted.’ (Thereby coming to include all flesh, both human and animal.) Rabbi Luliyani son of Tavrin said in the name of Rabbi Isaac, “Even the land became corrupt as they would sow wheat and the land would sprout degenerate wheat.”
Until now, we have dealt with sins between people and God (sexual immorality) and between people and society (robbery, excluding the poor), yet our Torah portion even makes references to sins between man and his environment. The Torah again uses the verb hashkhata in relation to the wanton destruction of fruit trees: “When you besiege a city to seize it, do not destroy (tashkhit) its trees by swinging an axe against them, for from it you will eat, and you shall not cut it down; is the tree of the field a man that it should enter the siege before you?” (Deut. 20:19)
A final example: the same Hebrew verb hishkhit is used in regards to the widely accepted Law delineated in the Book of Mitzvoth not to destroy any part of our world. Under the above-stated commandment not to destroy fruit trees in a siege, comes a further negative commandment where we are forbidden to waste. For example, we must not tear or burn clothing or break or discard dishes for no reason. About all of these issues or any other issues of wanton destruction, the Sages of blessed memory said in the Talmud, “And he has transgressed the sin of being a wasteful man” (The Book of Mitzvoth #529).
What could be the connection between the corruption of the generation of the flood, the people of Sodom and environmental sins? There are three basic answers. The first and most simple reason is that humanity itself is part and parcel of its environment and is not separate from it. Having been created in the image of G-d we may think that we are detached from creation. Further, our Torah-given obligation to preserve the world that G-d gave us may suggest to us that we are above it. Nonetheless, we are bound to and part of creation. The Torah stresses this by including the creation of human beings in the six days of creation and creating us with the means to sustain ourselves like all other creatures, regardless of our unique stature of being created in the image of G-d. Consequently, when one sins against a fellow creature -- human or animal -- they are sinning against their environment.
The second connection between the flood, the people of Sodom and the destruction of our environment is that in those generations the people corrupted their sexual power. Sexual power can build worlds or destroy them. Statements by the Sages that the flood was a result of the inbreeding of species may be applied to our present era as a warning of possible destruction caused by various genetic experimentation, which although at times may be morally justified and halakhically permissible, in other situations can be destructive and wrong, and we must be careful in what we allow and what we do not.
The most central point in the connection between moral behavior and environmental behavior comes from the understanding that both behaviors go hand in hand. One without the other corrupts the Divine vision for human action. That is, a society may be passionate about preserving its natural environment while maintaining a complete disregard for the welfare of its citizens. Sodom is a perfect example of this, where they cared so much for their “garden of HaShem" that they refused to aid anyone in need.
In conclusion our Torah portion provides deep insights into living in balance with one’s environment. The people of Sodom’s perverted ways, in effect, were extremely unsustainable - causing God to turn one of the most fertile and lush ecosystems on Earth into what today is infamous for its barrenness and desolation. From the mistakes of the people of Sodom we can learn the essential character traits that allow one to live in balance with the Creator and creation. The moral human being is devoted to the holiness and purity of life, refrains from harming others, lives a sexually responsible lifestyle, and sacrifices their personal pleasure for an ethical and upright path. When we are capable of fulfilling this ideal we will naturally be triumphant in attaining the great spiritual task of infusing our religious/moral lifestyle with one that is also environmentally sustainable.
May we all be blessed to undertake the task.
Suggested Action Items:
1. Look for an opportunity to be generous to another human being this week. For example: give money to the poor, schedule a time to help out at a local shelter, or volunteer your time to help support community needs.
2. Learn about how our environmental choices can disproportionately impact the poor.
3. Focus your attention on living “in balance” with the Creator and creation. One way to do this is by focusing on buying and preparing only as much food as you will eat. Clean out your refrigerator and note which food items have gone to waste, so that you will buy less next time.
Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Petach Tikva, is a graduate of Yeshivat Har Etzion and a retired major in the IDF. After obtaining his Rabbinic Semicha, Rabbi Cherlow served as the Rav of Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi, and as a Rav at the Hesder Yeshiva in Chispin.
Rabbi Cherlow was amongst the founders of the Tzohar Foundation, a central Modern Orthodox foundation which works to build bridges between the religious and secular worlds. Rav Cherlow is a member of Governmental Ethical Committees, and of the Presidential Press Council of Israel.
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18. Roberta Kalechofsky Featured in “Lilith” Magazine Article
http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article.htm/aid/577727/jewish/Repairing-Our-World.html
Repairing Our World
By Jampa Williams
"If I wasn't involved in the political process," my young son said one morning, "there'd be a huge hole torn in the world." I was touched by the way my seven-year-old expressed his feelings, and by the passion in his declaration. Joyfully, I taught him the Hebrew phrase for the feeling he was expressing, "tikkun olam" – the repair or healing of the world. He was glad to learn that his religion has a sacred obligation mirroring his personal belief.
He has formally announced his plans to be a politician. I think my son, Noah, shall contribute more to tikkun olam when he is past the age of playground scuffles and shoving. My boy is far from perfect. Seeing him whipping around the field at school, shrieking with exuberance, it is evident that he is not of mild nature. If further evidence is needed of this, there are his visits to the principal's office after bouts of mischief. But in his heart, Noah comprehends the connections among beings; that a wrong done to one, is a wrong done to all. In his mind, he helps to repair the world by being part of the political process. Indeed, he has formally announced his plans to be a politician when he grows up.
The seeds of Noah's political ambition were sown this past school year when he began lobbying for legislation to decrease school bus pollution, and discovered a world of people as passionate as him about this issue.
How did Noah come to be a seven-year-old lobbyist? It certainly was not a school project. First graders, at least in public school, aren't taught about civics, except perhaps that two presidents, one of whom needlessly chopped down a tree, were born in February. For some reason, schools seem afraid of teaching the rudiments of democracy. Certainly, first-graders are told nothing of how presidents become presidents, never mind how bills become laws. And is civics ever taught as anything but a droning bore?
No, his lobbying career was the result of reacting with horror to the discovery of what diesel emissions on school buses do to the lungs, hearts and immune systems of children. To Noah, school bus pollution is a kind of violence that harms us all by damaging our health.
SNIP
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