Mourning the Destruction of Our Temple - Mother Earth

In 1954 Mordecai Kaplan the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism suggest that the Jews of New York mark Tisha B'av - the day Jews traditionally mourn the destruction of the Temple - by donning sack cloth and ashes, and fasting in front of the U.N. as a protest against nuclear proliferation and in support of nuclear dis-armament.

Continuing in this spirit, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of the Shalom Centre, spoke this year on Tisha B'av at a rally in Washington urging congress to finally do something to reduce fossil fuel emissions, and break the trend to global warming. And in truth, despite my own obsession with Israel/Palestine issues, the number one threat to both the Jewish People and the Palestinian People today, is not the conflict in the Middle East - but global warming. If the worst case scenarios are allowed to play out, in 100 years Israel/Palestine, like many places on Earth, will become virtually unlivable.

Rabbi Waskow's speech is at 1:51 of the video above.

Lets hope someone on Capitol Hill was listening. Let hope Jews in the U.S. begin to use some of their considerable influence to push this issue as much as they do re Israel/Palestine.