Our next guest blogger is Rabbi Katy Allen. She is founder and rabbi of Ma’yan Tivken—A Wellspring of Hope, the facilitator of OneEarth Collaborative and the president of the Jewish Climate Action Network. Prior to that she was a chaplain at Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston. She studied with me at the Academy for Jewish Religion and we would commute together where we would celebrate dawn somewhere on the MassPike.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community and covenant.

Rabbi Avi Olitzky defines community as “a circle to which you feel you belong that will miss your presence; it reaches out to you when you’re absent, and you long for it when you’re not there.”

Covenant, berit, is a promise, generally bilateral, requiring the participation of both parties that are bound by the covenant.

In the Torah, G!d enacts three covenants. First is G!d’s promise to all humanity after the Flood, never again to wreak such destruction. The sign of this covenant – actually a one-way agreement, because G!d promises, but humanity is not obligated – is the rainbow.

The second is G!’d’s covenant with Abraham, promising to make numerous his descendants and to give them the Land of Israel for their possession. (Gen. 17) Circumcision, brit milah, is the sign of Abraham’s acceptance of and loyalty to G!d.

The enactment of the third covenant takes place at Mt. Sinai, when G!d gives the Torah to the Israelites and outlines the terms of the covenant. Shabbat is the sign of this covenant.

Rabbi Katy Z. Allen