Friday, November 20, 2:00 EST: Dekila Chungyalpa [Director of the Loka Initiative, Center for Healthy Minds and Healthy Minds Innovations, University of Wisconsin-Madison] Chungyalpa will be leading a Tonglen meditation exercise from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition to deal with eco-anxiety. Register here! Green Sabbath Gatherings is a series of Friday afternoon virtual get-togethers helping us transition from the work week to our day of rest and weekend. These loose-format, 60 min. gatherings are an opportunity for reflection, meditation, discussion, readings, melodies, short videos or prayer. Led by a diverse group of spiritual leaders, environmentalists, activists, and writers, the contents range from religious to spiritual to secular. We might take in the environmental news of the week, contemplate our workweek and leave it behind to focus on what we want from our day of rest, seeking to re-attune our attention and energy to the whole that is our spiritual-ecological home, what some call supernatureculture.

Last week I promised to research the question of the area of pe'ah (the 'corner' to be left for the poor) for a field of crops. I found the answer on this site: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/peah-the-corners-of-our-fields/ There is a whole tractate of Mishnah entitled Pe'ah. It begins: 'These are the things that have no definite quantity: The corners [of the field]. First-fruits; [The offerings brought] on appearing [at the Temple on the three pilgrimage festivals]. The performance of righteous deeds; And the study of the torah.' So, there is no prescribed size of pe'ah for a field. But that's too simple, it has to be more complex than that, right? Of course right! The passage continues: 'They should not leave peah of less than one- sixtieth [of the field]. But even though they said, “there is no measure for peah,” everything depends upon the size of the field, the number of poor people, and the extent of the yield.' So the final answer is ... it depends. But 1/60 is the absolute minimum gift of pe'ah. Where does this 1/60 figure come from? Mediaeval commentator R. Jacob b. Asher derives it by gematria.