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Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System

This is an archive of prayers and song composed for, or relevant to, the Earth, our collective home and life support system.

If you have composed a prayer for the Earth, please share it here.

Sorted Chronologically (old to new). Sort most recent first?

תהלים כ״ט | Psalms 29, an interpretive translation by Avi Dolgin

Avi Dolgin’s translation of תהילים כט (Psalm 29) interweaves between the original Hebrew (הָב֣וּ לַֽ֭יהוָה בְּנֵ֣י אֵלִ֑ים | havu l’YHVH b’nei eilim) and an English language interpretation. The interpretation, while faithful to the original, leans heavily on environmental concerns, especially as seen from a North American West Coast perspective.

Categories:

Tehilim Book 1 (Psalms 1–41), Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System

Tags:

eco-conscious, interpretive translation, Psalms 29, West Coast

Contributor(s):

Avi Dolgin

הושׁענות | Hoshanot for Creation, by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

A supplemental Hoshanot liturgy for Sukkot confessing a selection of humanity’s crimes against creation.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, Sukkot, Hoshana Rabba, Ecotastrophes

Tags:

21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., acrostic, Alphabetic Acrostic, eco-conscious, ecoḥasid, הקפות haḳafot, Hoshana Rabbah, הושענות hoshanot, North America

Contributor(s):

Gabbai Seth Fishman (translation) and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Holy Places (CCAR 1923)

“Holy Places” is the thirty-sixth prayer found in ברכה ותהלה Blessing and Praise: A Book of Meditations and Prayers for Individual and Home Devotion (CCAR 1923), pp. 121-123.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, Homes & Community Centers, Well-being, health, and caregiving

Tags:

20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., dedications and consecrations, English vernacular prayer, synagogue consecration, teḥinot in English

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Unknown and Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR]

“A veritable universal pledge of allegiance to this planet and to its peoples,” by Adlai E. Stevenson Ⅱ (9 July 1965)

This is an excerpt from a speech given on 9 July 1965 by Adlai Ewing Stevenson Ⅱ (1900-1965), his final speech before the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. (The US ambassador to the UN passed away less than a week later in London on 14 July.) In 1971, the prominent environmental leader (and later executive director of Friends of the Earth) David Brower (1912-2000), described the quote as “A veritable universal pledge of allegiance to this planet and to its peoples” in his own speech, “What Organizations and Industry Should Do,” delivered at the First International Conference on Environmental Future, held in Finland from 27 June to 3 July 1971. The speech was published in the proceedings of the conference, The Environmental Future (ed. Nicholas Polunin, 1973), p. 478.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., Cold War (1962–1979), earth pledges, spaceship Earth, universalist

Contributor(s):

Adlai E. Stevenson Ⅱ and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Earth Pledge by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart in conclusion to his personal affirmation of awareness (11 May 1972)

This earth pledge can be found in the Church of All Worlds’s newsletter, Green Egg, vol. 5, issue 47 (11 May 1972), p. 28. The quote, appearing after a line break of asterisks, concludes an essay by the newsletter’s editor, Tim Zell (a/k/a Oberon Zell-Ravenheart), entitled “personal affirmation of awareness.”

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., אדם קדמון Adam Ḳadmon, Divine Feminine, earth pledges, eco-conscious, universalist

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Oberon Zell-Ravenheart

Earth Pledge, as included in an essay on Earth Day by Rev. Dr. Clarke D. Wells (1980)

This earth pledge can be found within “Earth Day” an essay by the writer and Unitarian Universalist minister Clarke D. Wells (1930-2006, and included in his collection Sunshine and Rain at Once (1981), p. 20. It is the only place we have so far located an earth pledge in the context of a prayer. Although published in 1981, the essay, including the prayer and pledge, was likely written the previous year in the lead up to Earth Day 1980.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., earth pledges, eco-conscious, universalist

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Clarke Dewey Wells

Earth Pledge, by Carol T. Gaddy and Marianne Wolfman-Dawn (25 April 1981)

This earth pledge by Carol T. Gaddy and Marianne Wolfman-Dawn is included in a short essay by Gaddy entitled “Our New Pledge of Allegiance.” The essay can be found in What Will It Take to Prevent Nuclear War: Grassroots Responses to Our Most Challenging Question (ed. Pat Farren 1983), p. 149. Carol Gaddy writes that the pledge “was composed spontaneously by me and Marianne Wolfman-Dawn as we marched on the road to Damascus, Arkansas, April 25, 1981, protesting the nuclear missile site where a Titan missile had exploded the previous November, endangering the people it was meant to protect.”

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion, 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., Anti-nuclear movement in the United States, Cold War (1979-1985), earth pledges, eco-conscious, interconnectedness, universalist

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Marianne Wolfman-Dawn and Carol Talbot Gaddy Graywing

Earth Pledge, included in a Catholic textbook for the Cleveland Diocese by Sister Louise Marie Prochaska (1983), illustrated by Sister Miriam MacGillis for Global Education Associates (1984)

This earth pledge appears without attribution in a justice, peace, and environmentally conscious Catholic textbook, Peace through Justice ((Diocese of Cleveland, 1983) by Louise Marie Prochaska. Sister Prochaska, however, does not recall composing it and it may have been circulating for some time in newsletters or other ephemeral works beforehand. On the page following the quoted pledge, the curricular resource recommends contacting the Union of Concerned Scientists for more information, but that recommendation may have more to do with the pedagogical theme of the section that included the text of the pledge. Among the earth pledges, it is unique. Instead of following the form of Bellamy’s Pledge of Allegiance, it uses an ABCB rhyme scheme.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., ABCB rhyming scheme, earth pledges, eco-conscious, eco-feminism, universalist

Contributor(s):

Unknown and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Earth Pledge by Maryann Shores for a colloquium in honor of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (26 September 1983)

This earth pledge by Maryann Shores was included in her published address of the first plenary session of Humanity’s Quest for Unity: a United Nations… colloquium in honour of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “proceedings of a colloquium held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, in conjunction with the opening of the 38th meeting of the [UN] General Assembly [26 Sepetember 1983]” (ed. by Leo Zonneveld, 1985), pp. 78-84. The pledge appears on page 78 of “A Positive Approach to Acceptable Peace: the Right Use of Human Energy.”

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., earth pledges, Humanist, universalist

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Maryann Shores

The Global Pledge of Allegiance, by Edna A. Maisner-Reitz (1988)

This “Global Pledge of Allegiance” was written by Edna A. Meisner-Reitz in reaction to the 1988 US Presidential Election between George W. Bush (R) and Michael Dukakis (D) and was first published a year afterward in The Quest, vol. 2, issue 4, Winter 1989 (Theosophical Society of America).

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, Cold War (1985–1991), earth pledges, eco-conscious, eco-feminism, United States General Election 1988, universalist

Contributor(s):

Edna A. Maisner-Reitz and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Pledge of Allegiance to the Family of Earth, by Bella Abzug & Mim Kelber (Women’s Foreign Policy Council, May 1989)

The “Pledge of Allegiance to the Family of Earth” was offered by the Women’s Foreign Policy Council (co-chaired by Bella Abzug and Mim Kelber). The earliest publication of the pledge that we were able to located is as found in the article, “Earthlings Unite” by Nina Combs in Ms. Magazine, vol. 18:1&2 (July/August 1989), p. 19.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, Cold War (1985–1991), earth pledges, eco-conscious, eco-feminism, universalist

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (translation), Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Mim Kelber and Bella Savitzky Abzug

Earth Pledge for the 20th Anniversary of Earth Day at Stanford University (22 April 1990)

This Earth Pledge is attested in The Earth Pledge Book: A Call for Commitment (1994), an environmentalist work compiled and introduced by John F. Ince. While Ince did not author this Earth pledge himself, on page 143 in his The Teacher’s Guide To The Earth Pledge, he includes the following detail: “On the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, the [following] Earth Pledge was introduced at Stanford University.”

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., earth pledges, eco-conscious, eco-feminism, universalist

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Unknown

Earth Pledge by Benjamin Ferencz at Kean College, New Jersey (16 April 1991)

This earth pledge was offered at the first of a series of lectures by Benjamin Ferencz at Kean College, New Jersey on 16 April 1991. Although the video recording of the lecture has not been digitized, the pledge was included in its description by the United States Holocaust Museum.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., earth pledges, eco-conscious, universalist

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Benjamin Ferencz

Earth Pledge by Yvonne Alden for 🇺🇸 National Space Week (15-24 July 1994)

This earth pledge appeared on a poster attributed to one “Yvonne Alden” that was found in a collection of memorabilia from [National] Space Week 1994 at Brooks Air Force Base, in San Antonio, Texas. Space Week 1994 was a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On the poster, the pledge appeared below an image of the planet Earth. The poster is mentioned by Jodi Dean in the introduction to her book, Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace (1998), on page 20.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, 🌐 Earth Day (22 April)

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., earth pledges, International Day of Human Space Flight, space science, spaceship Earth, universalist

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Yvonne Alden

Between the Fires: A Kavvanah for Lighting Candles of Commitment, by Rabbi Arthur Waskow (the Shalom Center)

“Between the Fires: A Prayer for lighting Candles of Commitment” was composed by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, drawing on traditional midrash about the danger of a Flood of Fire, and the passage from Malachi.

Categories:

Erev Shabbat, Shavuot, Erev Pesaḥ, Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, Rosh haShanah (l’Maaseh Bereshit), Sukkot, Yom Kippur, Ecotastrophes

Tags:

20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., candle lighting, eco-conscious, ecoḥasid, English vernacular prayer, כוונות kavvanot, kindling, North America

Contributor(s):

Arthur Waskow and the Shalom Center

שְׁמַע | Shema, an interpretive translation by Rabbi Arthur Waskow (2003)

Sh’sh’sh’ma Yisra’el —
Listen, You Godwrestlers!
Pause from your wrestling and hush’sh’sh
To hear —
YHWH/ Yahh

Hear in the stillness the still silent voice,
The silent breathing that intertwines life;

YHWH/ Yahh elohenu
Breath of life is our God,
What unites all the varied
forces creating
all worlds into one-ness,
Each breath unique,
And all unified;

YHWH / Yahh echad!
Yahh is One.
Listen, You Godwrestlers!
No one people alone
owns
this Unify-force;
YHWH / Yahh is One.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, the Shema

Tags:

21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., Deuteronomy 11:13-21, Deuteronomy 6:4, eco-conscious, interpretation as prayer, Numbers 15:37-41, paraliturgical shema, Philadelphia, Pnai Ohr, Prayers as poems, והיה אם שמע v'haya im shemo'a

Contributor(s):

Arthur Waskow and the Shalom Center

A Prayer for Renewal, by Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi (2004)

This is an untitled prayer by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, originally offered by him in an address given at the Roundtable Dialogue for the visit of the 14th Dalai Lama together with other Nobel Laureates in Vancouver, B.C., entitled “Balancing Educating the Mind with Educating the Heart.” The event was held at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, on Tuesday, April 20, 2004. While the video documenting the address is currently offline, thankfully the original text of the prayer is given in its transcription by Gabbai Seth Fishman. The prayer is presented here alongside an adaptation found in the High Holy Days Maḥzor of Congregation Nevei Kodesh: Jewish Renewal Community of Boulder (2018), p.36, Section 10: Prayers for Rosh haShanah. The prayer in this form, as revised by Netanel Miles-Yepez and Reb Zalman, can be found at Kol Aleph (2014) and the now defunct Sufi Hasidim website (2009).

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System

Tags:

21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, תקון tiqqun

Contributor(s):

Netanel Miles-Yépez and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Peas on Earth, a song by the Jewish environmental educators of the Teva Learning Center (Fall 2010)

A pun filled ditty by the Fall 2010 Jewish environmental educators of the Teva Learning Center.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, Rosh haShanah (l’Maaseh Bereshit)

Tags:

21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., eco-conscious, humor, peace, Prayers of Jewish Farmers, punning, Teva Learning Alliance, זמירות zemirot

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

תפלה על פרי אדמה | A Prayer for the Earth, by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid·org)

Rabbi Seidenberg’s Prayer for the Earth is focused on global climate disruption (aka “global warming”), healing the skies, and the original blessing of creation. The liturgy is closely based upon the sun-blessing liturgy we used April 8th 2009. It is partly based on the Sefaradi liturgy for the Ushpizin on Sukkot, and on “Pri Ets Hadar” (The Fruit of the Majestic Tree) — the first ever Tu biShvat seder, included in the 17th century mystical work, Ḥemdat Yamim (ed. Rabeinu Yakov Ben Yom Tov Algazi). The prayer was first posted at neohasid.org, here. The prayer is based on the Pri Ets Hadar, Birkat Hachodesh, Sefaradi liturgy for Sukkot, and Malakhi 4, Genesis 9:14; Psalms 36, 78, 146; Deuteronomy 32:11, 11:12.

Categories:

Rosh haShanah la-Melakhim, Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, Rosh haShanah la-Behemah, Rosh haShanah (l’Maaseh Bereshit), 🌐 Earth Day (22 April), Rosh haShanah la-Ilanot (Tu biShvat)

Tags:

21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., earth, eco-conscious, ecoḥasid, North America

Contributor(s):

David Seidenberg and Neohasid·org

כַּעֲבוֹר סוּפָה | After the Storm, a prayer to “choose life” in the face of climate disruption by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid·org)

The prayers for hurricane victims that are circulating through the Open Siddur Project and elsewhere are poignant and heartfelt, but they don’t speak an important piece of the truth that we need to hear. What about our collective responsibility for climate disruption that undoubtedly increases the harm caused by this and every major storm? And what about the Deuteronomic promise that God brings us recompense for our actions davka through the weather? Here’s an attempt at a prayer that incorporates a deeper understanding of our responsibility. For the final version of this prayer, I started with an anonymous Hebrew translation of my original English prayer, then I tweaked it and wove in scriptural references, and retranslated it back into English.

Categories:

Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, Dangerous Storms & Floods, Drought & Wildfire, Ecotastrophes

Tags:

21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., בקשות Baqashot, danger, eco-conscious, ecoḥasid, emergency, Hebrew translation, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Sandy, taking responsibility, תחינות teḥinot, weather

Contributor(s):

David Seidenberg and Neohasid·org

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sunset over earth (NASA)

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Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-commercial, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture.

ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו׃ (תהלים צ:יז) · "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." (Psalms 90:17)

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