We Can Do This

Yom Kippur is intense.  The fast, the biggest day of the year at shul, the year ahead at stake.  Yom Kippur is also called Shabbat Shabbaton, like Shabbat squared, uber holy.  A day focusing our hearts, minds, and spirits on the holy task of atonement—because we need it, and because we matter. 

“If we were able to survey at a glance all we have done in the course of our life, what would we feel?
We would be terrified at the extent of our own power.” 
– Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel 

What will you do with your power this year?  What will we all do?  

As Adam Lehman—a new friend and mentor—wrote in his Rosh Hashanah message to Hillel International, hope may not be a strategy, but it certainly is essential fuel.  So I want to offer you some hope – consider it a renewable fuel – as we head into this holy day.  I believe we have deep reason to hope, even to be in awe of the galvanizing forces growing across the Jewish world and beyond: 

• Just two weeks after our announcement of the Adamah Campus Network, we’ve heard from over 90 college campuses interested in forming Adamah chapters!  All this grows out of our burgeoning Jewish Youth Climate Movement, now closing in on 60 chapters nationwide!  
• Roughly 450 American Jewish organizations are taking steps towards climate action with Adamah’s Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition and related federal funding opportunities.  And we’ve already distributed close to $500k in climate action funds to Jewish organizations nationwide!  
• The Pearlstone Campus—Adamah headquarters—has been transformed through our master plan, thanks to the Associated Centennial Campaign and our generous donors—now offering expanded solar-powered retreat facilities, a high adventure ropes course, U-pick organic berries, forest bunkhouses, and coming soon—an awesome pondside amphitheater!  The place is poised for exponential impact in the years to come. 
• Isabella Freedman—the birthplace of our movement—is back in full swing this fall, as our epic cornerstone leadership development programs, the Teva Educator Fellowship and Adamah Farming Fellowship, are back with full cohorts for the first time since 2019.  Freedman and Pearlstone will both host beautiful SukkahFest celebrations next week, igniting the powerful communal joy and Torah of the Earth embodied in our Jewish heritage.
• Locally empowered Adamah leaders are activating our five Community Impact Hubs, sparking vibrant Jewish life in deep connection with the earth—in New York, Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta, and Southern California.  

The community we are building is real, it is powerful, and it is sparking a movement with profound potential, both for Jewish life and beyond. 

And in service of this movement and its potential, I ask for your support.  As you navigate the holy days ahead, please consider making Adamah a major beneficiary of your tzedakah this year.  

May we all recognize the power we have—each moment and each day—to help create the world we wish to live in.  And may we find a path, somehow, some way, to be at one. 

May you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life. G’mar Hatima Tova.