Source: Hazon Omer Challenge
Hazon, America's largest Jewish environmental group, invites you to visit the 2013 Hazon Sustainable Omer Challenge. On each of the days of the Omer counting, Hazon invites you to challenge yourself to find ways to make your life healthier and more sustainable.
On this page Hazon has assembled a listing of 50 sustainability tips. Visitors are challenged to implement or discuss one of these points every day of the Omer counting, ultimately learning to live a healthier sustainable life.
Among the challenges:
- Skip the plastic water bottle. Bring a washable glass to work!
- Use a carpool to save on gas and fumes.
- Hang your laundry outside or in front of a fireplace or heater instead of using the dryer.
- Dedicate 5 minutes to reading a Jewish Environmental/Food Blog.
- Host a sustainable Shabbat dinner! Invite your friends and cook a meal featuring local, healthy, and sustainable ingredients.
- Host a discussion in your community about the intersections between contemporary food values and over 3000 years of Jewish tradition.
- Find a local food pantry or food bank that could use your help — or your surplus produce this year.
The Omer refers to the harvest-offering that was traditionally brought to the Temple on the second day of Passover. This marks the beginning of a counting period between Passover and Shavuot, which is 7 weeks or 49 days.
Ner L'Elef has created an online listing of online Omer counting resources, including articles, calendars, charts and online courses. Visit them here.
HuffPost Religion is live blogging the Omer Count. Here, throughout Sefirat HaOmer, as it's called in Hebrew, they offer the opportunity to ascend the 49 levels of renewal as part of a virtual Omer community. Each day, they update the liveblog with spiritual intentions, prayers, Scripture, poems, art and reflections from our bloggers and readers related to that day's spiritual energy.