Jewish Ecological Coalition (JECO) launch Shavu’a Tov: Good Week, Sustainable Week
Environment Victoria is proud to support an important new project from Melbourne’s Jewish community.
Shavu’a Tov (a Hebrew traditional greeting meaning ‘have a good week’) is a sustainable living guidebook created to inspire and give practical help for Jewish people to take everyday actions to help the environment.
The book’s contents link to its title and it is set out in six days of green action – saving energy, saving water, efficient transport, reducing waste, sustainable purchasing and tips for recycling. The seventh day is the Sabbath, the day of rest when – in the case of this ‘good week’ – readers can contemplate the efforts they’ve made to protect the environment.
Shavu’a Tov was launched at St Kilda Eco Centre on Sunday, 6 November with speeches from rabbis from Melbourne’s progressive and orthodox Jewish communities, and Nina Bailey from Environment Victoria. Rabbi Jonathan Keren-Black and Rabbi Shamir Caplan spoke about the inherent interconnection between Jewish faith and environmental stewardship, and that the path to living ethically comes from reading holy texts and from taking practical action. Shavu’a Tov, everyone was excited to announce, helps enable this practical, ethical action.
The guidebook has been mailed out to more than 7,000 households receiving the Jewish News and can be viewed below or downloaded here
Environment Victoria was able to support Shavu’a Tov with funds from the GreenTown program, itself funded by Sustainability Victoria. One of the aims of GreenTown and all our sustainable living programs is to produce sustainable living materials for Victoria’s diverse communities. This guidebook fits perfectly with our vision of seeing people from across all faith communities taking action for our environment.
Shavu’a Tov is a definite contender for leadership in multi-faith environmental action: the members of JECO were inspired to produce a Jewish sustainable living guidebook when they came across the Zamzam Greenbook produced by Mercy Mission for Muslims to practice sustainable living. Mercy Mission is a Muslim outreach organisation with a whole environmental Zamzam Program (named after a holy water well in Mecca) and again Environment Victoria was proud as punch to have assisted them to produce Zamzam in 2009.
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