Books and Tzedakah - What Could Be Better?

I am so excited to have found this project that Skip to My Lou is doing. Sign me up!

From Skip To My Lou's post:
While we are encouraging our children to read this summer we can be helping poor families all over the world! Read to Feed is a reading motivation/service learning program from Heifer International. Children are inspired to read more books for pleasure, while raising money, through sponsored reading, to help end world hunger and improve the environment.

I am so in love with this idea for so many reasons.

1. I am always looking for cool ideas to encourage my son to love to read.
2. I am always looking for ways to help my kids learn about tikkun olam, our responsibility to repair the world.
3. I love Heifer International and all that they do. I think their concept is so simple and yet so amazing. I use their animals-as-gifts idea for so many things (including Father's Day....) and I'm always recommending them to Bar and Bat Mitzvah students.
4. How amazing to put these things all together into a summer project!

The Read to Feed site is not working quite yet, but you can go check out Heifer's site as well as Skip to My Lou's site and join in the reading-and-helping-others party!

(I'm actually drawing a link-blank on how I got to this project, so to the great blogger who sent me her way -- thank you! I'd also like to point out how things work out...I have been catching up on blog reading, trying desperately to think about what Wednesday's post would be...and then I found this! The blog-world works for me!)

Growing My Own...Tuesday Torah

It's amazing how people are impressed by something that you can grow on your own...

This was me, on Sunday morning (okay, the picture was taken Saturday night):

Thanks to some good genes, I have a lot of hair. And it's curly. And I like it...which is something of a change from high school and even college, when I hated it.

But, I digress.

Since I've arrived in Chicago, I have had 2 haircuts (the pulpit) of our synagogue. Each time, I did it with a group of kids and adults who were also donating 10 inches of their hair to Locks of Love.

This time, it was a little different, since we're out of our building.

There was still a group of kids and adults who were doing it with me. But it felt different, somehow, to be standing on the stage of Highland Park High School's auditorium, where we've been holding our Sunday School.

And yet, at that moment of the cut, the whole room felt holy to me.

(btw, my kippah says "ima" for you non-Hebrew readers out there)

Each time I say it's going to be my last haircut of that magnitude. But then I start to grow it...and it just feels so right. After all, how many of us can grow our own mitzvot? It seems almost a shame not to do it.

That's my Torah this week.
What's yours? (Leave your link in the comments)

P.S. Check out my newest crush.

Bloggers Unite for Human Rights...

Today is a day for bloggers to come together and stand on one issue, this time it's human rights.

What can I possibly say about human rights? It's overwhelming and unbelievable to me that while I sit comfortably on my couch, there are people around the world suffering from unbelievable abuse.

In Darfur.

In Myanmar.

Even in our own backyard.

Around the world, there is violence against women, violence against children, terror in the streets.

What can we do?

We can sign a petition.

We can vote.

We can make phone calls and write letters.

We can put bumper stickers on our cars. (We can drive our cars less!)

We can travel and help and support.

And we must do all these things.

Because we can't stand idly by.

The world can't wait.

See more posts here.
Are you blogging about human rights today?
Leave me your link and I'll update this post to include you.

MomGrind has something to say about homelessness.

Read Marci's post about Rabbis for Human Rights.

Deb, Momof3Girls, has this great Thursday 13.

Amy, the Crunchy Domestic Goddess, is rounding up all the posts (and she promises her own later)

Miriam wrote about her own personal and close-to-home fight for rights.

Keepin' It Green...Blog Action Day & BSM

Today is Blog Action Day, a day for bloggers to unite on one topic. This year's topic is the environment, a topic that I have blogged about before. Today, in order to increase the reach of my Blog Action Day post, I've decided to combine it with my Best Shot Monday...today's picture is of my kiddo enjoying our natural environment...and a few links to some of my other posts on environmental topics. (And yes, it's from the summer time. It's a little too cold around here for this kind of behavior now!)

Why save the world?

Because it's the only one we've got.

It is not ours to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from it. (Ethics of our Fathers)

Changing the World, One Post at a Time...

Change the World, One Sandwich at a Time

Bottled Water Challenge

Re-usable Grocery Bags

See more Best Shot Monday here.

Learn more about Blog Action Day here.

Are you participating in Blog Action Day? Why not give it a go?

The Bumpy Path...WE #6

This week's prompt up at Wrapped Emotions was a chance to feel our surroundings...to make crayon-rubbings of various textures in our lives.

I was so excited that I bought a new box of crayons and carried them around in my purse all week.

But it was in my office that I actually did the rubbings...because I was sitting at my desk and I noticed how a few of the books sitting right in front of me had nice textures in the covers. I am a big fan of books, and there are always some laying around my office (along with the bazillions on the shelves!). After I did the three books, I "felt up" every single cover in my office and didn't find any others with fun textures, so I started wandering around our offices, crayon in hand, hoping no one would notice me...I rubbed an etrog box (to hold the citron we use for the holiday of Sukkot), and I rubbed the sign on my door (hence my name) and I basically enjoyed the experience of looking at my office in a new way.

Here are my rubbings:

I do like the second picture, of the first book I rubbed: "How each of us can change the world." (Extra points if you can identify the book I rubbed....leave a comment) Such a powerful idea that we can all change the world. Judaism tells us that if we save one life, it is as if we have saved an entire world. I think this applies to all aspects of "saving the world." If we reuse one grocery bag, it's a start. If we save one bottle of water from a landfill, it's a start. If we blog on blog action day, it's a start. What can you do to save the world?

The whole world is full of texture. It's up to us to take care of it.

See more Wrapped Emotions participants here...and stay tuned for a big wrapped emotions surprise!

No more Bottled Water - can you take the challenge?

My family has begun to swear off bottled water. It all started when my husband purchased a relatively expensive water filtration system for our house last September. You spent the money on that, I thought, so we should stop spending the money on bottles.

Well, it turned out that we all love our water filter. So much so that we took the darn thing with us to camp. (It only worked for a week, though, before the filter conked out. Camp water, very much in need of filtering.) We bought a bunch of Nalgene bottles and Camelbak bottles and we seem to be all set.

Who knew we were on the cutting edge of environmentalism. Not me.

But we are. There are now articles about how bottled water isn't better. And how it's an example of our overconsumption and indulgence. There are campaigns to end bottled water consumption (see Think Outside the Bottle and Refill Not Landfill). And hey -- I'm all for it. I even put into both of our cars a stack of paper cups and straws so we can drink on the go from drinking fountains. (Straws make it all easier with the almost-2-year-old and more fun for all of us.)

Some facts to consider:

• Last year, Americans spent $15 billion on bottled water, even though bottled water isn’t healthier or safer than tap water.


• While the EPA regulates the quality of public water supplies, the agency has no authority over bottled water. Some studies indicate that certain brands of bottled water test positive for chemical and bacterial contamination at higher levels than tap water.


• One out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water. The global economy denies drinkable water to 1 billion people, while delivering to us an array of water “varieties” from around the globe, not one of which we actually need.


• Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person. We pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year - more than $1 billion worth of plastic (while the recycling rate for this particular kind of plastic is only 23%).


• We’re moving 1 billion bottles of unnecessary water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That’s a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (this one scares me!)
  

So...can you do it? Can you put an end to your bottled water consumption???
crossposted on rabbiphyllis.blogspot.com

Buy a CD for a great cause

A young lady studying for her Bat Mitzvah has undertaken a very cool project. She has created a cd of music -- her own piano playing and a little vocals, all written by this lovely teenager. Only one song was written by someone else -- Billy Joel! She contacted him and received permission to use his song Lullaby on her CD. Proceeds of the CD are going to the Susan G. Komen organization working for a cure for breast cancer.

Jessica's website describes her inspiration in detail and gives information on how to order the CD. It's a nice collection of music and a great cause.

Please pass this information on to others...she's already raised $1000 with sales of her CD. Let's help her out.

Change the world, one sandwich at a time

Did you know how much a peanut butter and jelly sandwich can change the world? Check this out!

From the website of the Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich Campaign:
A PB&J will slow global warming. Next time you have one you'll reduce your carbon footprint by saving the equivalent of 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions over an average animal-based lunch like a hamburger, a tuna sandwich, grilled cheese, or chicken nuggets. That's about forty percent of what you'd save driving around for the day in a hybrid instead of a standard sedan. If you were going to have a ham sandwich or a hamburger, you save the equivalent almost 3.5 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

Go to their site to read more.

And pack your lunch!