Our Mission and Vision
In the face of the urgent environmental crises that the world faces, multiple solutions are necessary: technological, political, economic, ethical and behavioral.
Mission
The universe is the beloved.
- Rumi
Welcome to the Green Sabbath Project! Our main focus is education and advocacy. Our mission is to spark a mass movement of observance of a weekly day of rest -- shabbat, sabbath, a green sabbath or a weekly earth day -- on which impact on the environment is minimized as much as possible. We envision individuals and groups choosing whichever day is most meaningful to them. While inspired by ancient religious sources, the green sabbath is a self-consciously refashioned ritual practice aimed at addressing current realities. As taken up by individuals and communities, it may or may not be connected to organized religion or God.
Our website features readings, crowd-sourced liturgy, graphics for advocacy campaigns available for use, suggestions for sabbath activities, a global calendar regarding local (green) sabbath get-togethers and actions links to related campaigns and organizations, and more. Our materials and events span the range of approaches: religious, spiritual, pantheistic, agnostic and materialist.
Vision
The multidimensional nature of our environmental crises demands holistic responses. We believe that our sabbath days must become a time of active avoidance of environmental vandalism, a time for programmatic congregational and individual reflection on how we are undoing creation. We intend green sabbaths to be a radical ritual within which we can digest anew the biblical prophets’ warnings against the corruption of the rich and powerful, the oppression of the poor and the self-centered pursuit of short-sighted pleasures, understanding how relevant such warnings are to the ecological devastation wrought by hypercapitalism. Whether commemorated as a secular, spiritual or religious act, green sabbaths properly practiced offers a weekly investment in family and local community, a weekly interruption of the suicidal econometric fantasy of infinite growth, a weekly divestment from fossil fuels, a weekly moment of rewilding. As Greta Thunberg reminds us, we already know what the solutions are for our environmental crises. Green sabbaths provide a recurring weekly greenhouse for incubating the required collective consciousness and willpower — the ultimate renewable energies — to make the solutions reality. Green sabbaths will constitute both a model of the ecologically-sane world to come and an actual foretaste of it.
Testimonials :
“I am glad to learn of your sabbath project and think it is exactly what we need. [...] I heartily endorse this as an urgent and wise enterprise.” — Walter Brueggemann“
I am so excited by your vision and this project to create a peaceful revolution and a referendum on our lifestyles. If communities were doing this weekly and registering writings, notes, poems, liturgies, etc. it could begin to change the tide!!!” — Rev. Anita Amstutz
"I was so happy after reading your article “Sabbath in an era of Climate Change”. It made me realise how my own Sabbath keeping needs revising and I will be happily forwarding it on to as many as I can." —Winifred Fletcher
"Such an amazing and heart-warming initiative!" —Boróka Bó
“The idea of a green sabbath is so rejuvenating that I took a deep breath after looking at your website right now. I think the message is so needed and so integral to how we revision ourselves and our role on this planet.” —Dekila Chungyalpa
“I love this project! So important and needed!” —Sarah Jaquette Ray
"I’m really enjoying reading about the Green Sabbath Project, and appreciate your approach and articulation. My family is currently discussing our sabbath practices as a result. Thank you for your work." —Pastor Carmen Retzlaff
“I am really moved by the work you are doing. What I like about it is the combination of practical action with ritual response. There is alchemy in this approach that I think can be very potent.” -- Lisa Maria Madera
“Thank you so much for this initiative. I found you after searching to see whether there existed a Global Day of Rest, where people could stop and take a break to let the Earth breathe; who knew that a Green Sabbath was exactly what I was looking for!” —Siona van Dijk
Take Action / Embrace Inaction
Like breathing in and breathing out, we always face the dialectic of being still and taking action, stepping up and stepping back. Both are necessary. We envision a green sabbath pledge to involve a mutual influence between what you (don’t) do on sabbath and what you (don’t) do the rest of the week:
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush on fire with God.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Rest of the Week
Work. Action. Engagement.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Plant trees (the right way, which is not as straightforward as you might think).
Grow your own food, without petrochemicals.
Stop eating meat or eat much less of it. Promote organic, biodynamic and other sustainable methods of farming.
Campaign for divestment from fossil fuels.
Don’t fly or fly much less frequently.
Compost.
Campaign for better public transportation based on renewable energy. Stop driving or drive much less. Ride your bike a lot more.
Campaign for laws requiring energy efficiency in new buildings.
Etc.
Sabbath
Your day of rest.
Biblical and ancient rabbinic laws aimed to counter what were seen as out-of-balance anthropocentric world-changing behaviors. Israelite and Jewish sages suggested concrete shabbat practices:
Don’t work. Minimize your changing or manipulating of existence (for instance, by building, painting, planting, shearing, etc.).
Don’t use fire (in today’s terms: don’t do anything that creates carbon emissions).
Refrain from using money.
Spend time with your family and/or friends.
Take a walk around your neighborhood. Talk with your neighbors. Read. Study the wisdom texts of your religious or ethnic tradition. Meditate. Pray. Sing. Tell stories. Make love.
For clergy and spiritual leaders: make ecology the center of sabbath in your community, preach and teach about the sacred imperative to protect our environment.
Our Story
The Green Sabbath Project was founded in 2019 by Jonathan Schorsch, founder and director of the Jewish Activism Summer School (Berlin), and professor of Jewish Religious and Intellectual History, Universität Potsdam.