Global climate change, manifest in extreme weather events and staggering loss of biodiversity, is the greatest moral and existential crisis of our day. Responses grounded in starting points of liberal and market individualism have failed to generate the action necessitated by this challenge. Through a deep-dive into the teachings of Judaism, and Jewish mysticism in particular, this ten-week fellowship for high-school students offers participants a vocabulary for thinking beyond the values of carbon capitalism, the insular epistemologies of scientism, technological determinism, and the extractive approach to the non-human world that dominate our economic and social systems. "The ecological crisis,” writes Mary Evelyn Tucker, “is also a crisis of culture and of the human spirit. It is a moment of reconceptualizing the role of the human in nature.”  Apply here!

The core of our fellowship, sponsored by the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Society, will be weekly text-study sessions (on Zoom), each highlighting a range of Jewish mystical sources and spiritual practices on a particular theme. Participants will be expected to read these sources, supplied in both Hebrew and in English, and to prepare them in advance of our meetings. To that end, each student will participate in weekly paired (hevruta) study with another fellow. Students will also be expected to take part in a public-facing conference on ecology and Jewish spirituality in the Spring, serving as hosts, respondents, and organizers (date yet to-be-determined). Participants will also be given the resources to start a social action campaign in their community tackling a problem addressed by our sources. The class is set to launch in January 2023, and applications submitted by December 15th will receive priority. The weekly study-sessions are slated to take place on Wednesday at 5:00pm PT = 8:00pm.