Envisioning sabbatical culturE

What the Shabbat achieves regarding the individual, the Shmita year achieves with regard to the nation as a whole.Rav Kook, Shabbat HaAretz

What the Shabbat achieves regarding the individual, the Shmita year achieves with regard to the nation as a whole.Rav Kook, Shabbat HaAretz

In every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the Seventh Generation.Great Law of the Iroquois

In the seventh year all are equal, and this is the real essence of peace.Kli Yakar, Devarim 31:12

7Six years you will sow your land, and gather in the lands produce; but the seventh year you will release it from work and abandon it, that the poor of your people may eat; and what remains shall be for the wild animals.

Shemot 23:10-11

At the end of seven years you shall celebrate the Shmita year. And this is the manner of the Shmita: every creditor shall release that which he has lent to his neighbor; he shall not exact it of his neighbor and his brother; because Gods Shmita

has been proclaimed. If there be among you a needy man, one of your brothers, within any of your gates, in your land which the lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, and you shall not shut your hand from your needy brother.

Devarim 15:1-2, 7

All of creation unfolds within a spiraling pattern of seven. Surrounded by the six directions, East, South, West, North, Up, Down, it is within the nexus of the seventh direction, the

sacred center, where all forces join together and sprout forth. This is the womb of unity, the seed of Shalom, the birthplace of Eden, the heart of creation.

For 6 days, this world was birthed into being. On the 7th day, the energy of rest, of completion, of calmness, reflection and celebration was seeded into the world.

This is the gift of Shabbat.

For 6 years, we entertain the reality of the marketplace, of agriculture. On the 7th year, we return to the collective commons, to the wild. We lay down our tools; we break loose the locks of separation.

The land is given rest, and together, in community, we, too, rest and share in abundance. This is the gift of Shmita.

These are the core principles of the Shmita year, as passed on from our ancestors:

There is no seeding or tilling of agricultural land. All agricultural lands are declared public and become community commons. All wild produce is declared public and shared equally. Fences surrounding agricultural land are left open or taken down. All people and animals are given equal access to

enter and harvest. Wild produce may only be picked at full ripeness. Wild produce can be harvested for nourishment & enjoyment, not for sale or profit. Harvesters may only collect as much as they can carry by hand from the field. Wild produce may only be eaten as long as it is in season, growing naturally in the field. Wild produce must be eaten locally. It cannot be exported. All harvests from the Shmita year have a special sanctity. Harvests cannot be sold, wasted or thrown away. All debts from previous years are canceled at the start of the Shmita year.

how would you meet this year? in scarcity or abundance?

how would your community celebrate this moment in time?what would this culture look like?

The request is bold. One year out of seven, your community is asked to collectively participate in a cultural shift. There will be no seeding in the soil, there will be no tilling of the soil, there will be no harvest beyond what you can carry in your hands, there will be no food sold at the market, all debts will be canceled, and all fences will be taken down. Everyone will share in widespread abundance and equality.

Can you envision this? Taken on its own, Shmita is a riddle with no answer. In order to begin to understand the intricate puzzle that is Shmita, we must first connect the 6 years to the 7th, the parts to the whole. Shmita is more than a calendar year; it is primarily a way of being, a blueprint for a sacred, whole-systems culture, one grounded in vibrant, healthy and diverse relations between community, ecology, economy & spirit.

Shmita is a cultural expression in which local resiliency is built upon community empowerment, communication, and exchange, not the pressures of market influences. Take out agribusiness, real estate, banking, food export-markets in todays world, and there would be an immediate systematic collapse. The only culture than can possibly pull this off is one that is completely designed on a local, perennial level, using sustainable ecological design, relying on people-power more than machine or capital power. A culture that can thrive abundantly in this regard is one that has a thriving social ecology, a vibrant web of interacting networks and relationships. The 6 years are those of cultural design. Shmita itself

is simply the indicator year, the ultimate check-in to see how we are collectively doing as a culture. We have journeyed very far from this gift. It will take many years, many cycles of sevens, until we may rebuild and heal our culture so that the values of Shmita can be celebrated in joy & abundance. This will be a very slow process. But the process is what we are working towards, as well as the destination. In the sacred space where ancient traditions and emerging visions meet, in loving embrace, we are reclaiming what we have forgotten but have not lost.

In order to hold this seed, to plant this seed and nourish her to full potential, to full beautiful expression, we must first reclaim our place within the ecology of

life, as a member of a sacred community of infinite relations. We must claim our unique gift, our unique voice and offer it freely, with vulnerability

and compassion, for the nourishment of our community, for the nourishment of our selves. We must reawaken our sense of design,

our role as cultural architect, our intuition and awareness of interaction. We are not consumer, we are not destroyer, we are not slave, we are not desperate, we are not alone, we are not accepting the story of fear. We are brothers, sisters, animals, lovers, parents, friends, sons, daughters, animals, air, water, earth, fire, ancestors, children, cosmic stars, bacteria, cells, atoms, breath. We are all this. And we are all together.

This is the message of Shmita, when celebrated as a universal value system. Design for a culture which allows you to be all this.

Design for a culture in which you see your sweetest reflection in all else and the sweetest reflection of others within you. Design for

resiliency, design for the seventh generation, design for the healing of your ancestors, design for the connectivity of all your relations.

The hopeful, and drastic, cultural changes called for by these visions starts with you, your gifts, your time, your dream. And you cannot do this alone. This begins at home, with family, with community, at the most local, grass-roots level. It needs to begin with baby steps that are easily digested and felt by all. It needs to be carried by a positive, bottom-up, solution-based momentum. This shift and reclamation begins with the courage to ask challenging questions and locally act upon them by creating the change you want to live. This journey continues through pulsing communal mycelia networks and webs of relationships, on the ripples of open sharing and collective empowerment, on the blossoming of education, justice, celebration, creativity, healing and hope.

literally translated as the year of release, is the focal point of Jewish earth-based traditions. Honoring the sacredness of land and her role in building community, this tradition resurfaces our collective ancient memories from a distant past, celebrating holistic relationships with earth and the village culture. Shmita is our mystery wisdom tradition; a celebration of cycles, community, faith and resiliency.

This is the riddle of the Shmita tradition. This is the pathway to abundance.These are the seeds of a timeless social ecology. These are the sacred questions to dance with:

How can a community invest, truly and fully, in local, perennial, sustainable & resilient designs, organized and maintained by grassroots governing and implementation strategies, for our ecological systems, food needs, and economic exchanges?

What creative solutions can a community implement so that networks of local, non-monetary peer-to-peer exchanges, based on core values of trust, generosity, and compassion, may become more widespread?

How can a community weave a web of communication and activation that honors and celebrates and invites forth the unique gifts and diversity within each of her members?

How might a community do this in a regenerative, multi-generational way, empowering authentic and holistic relationships between Self, Community, Nature and Spirit?

How can we weave this web in a way that our lives may also continue comfortably, evolving alongside technology, science and business, while also honoring a commitment towards a triple-bottom-line?

Over the following pages are outlined some of the most widespread grassroots, community-oriented solutions that will allow us to invest locally in Community-Supported Food Systems, Community Economic Systems, and Community Design Systems. These are the foundations of a thriving whole-systems culture. These designs are not theoretical or symbolic. They are actively being engaged and experimented with throughout the world. They are happening everywhere, even in your own community.

Spearheading the implementation of these ideas, planting the inspiration for community change, are 3 branches of the whole systems tree:

Permaculture DesignWith the intention of creating a permanent-culture, this design methodology looks to Nature for guidance. In the intricate web of ecology and all her relations, we can watch and understand the patterns of living whole-systems. Mimicking these patterns within our own social designs, we can create a healthy, vibrant social ecology.

Transition Town MovementRecognizing that change starts at home, in our own communities, Transition

Towns create the communication and organizational frameworks that allow for effective, efficient empowerment, from the bottom-up. This

energy awakens our powers of design and co-creation to begin relying on neighbors and implementing change together.

Cultural MentoringInspired by the timeless cultural patterns of indigenous cultures worldwide, the Cultural Mentoring movement is reweaving the web of relations between Self, Community, Nature & Spirit. Our ability to awaken our senses as cultural designers and mentors is rooted in our connection to the wild around and within us.

These 3 cultural design movements reconnect us to our deepest selves, to our place, and to the big picture we are a

part of. The designs which follow have been motivated by these branches. With these tools, we can begin manifesting a whole-

systems culture for our selves, for our children, for our friends and neighbors, for all of creation.

These design tools are mostly common-sense, or actually, native-sense. They come from within. The solutions are not loaded with science or technology, impossible mathematical formulas or complicated instructions. As we peel away the layers of fear, of learned-helplessness, we will realize these tools all on our own. As we reclaim our native senses and awareness, as we fully embody this moment, we will once again realize we are dancing in the web of life. And the answers will become clear. These tools, these timeless wisdoms, are so deeply interwoven into our identity. These are our precious gifts, the keys to a culture that nourishes and heals. They are ours to use; ours to live.

SHMITA CULTURE

CommunityFood Systems

Community Economic Systems

Community Design Systems

SHMITA Community Supported Food Systems

Wild Foods

Wild Land Trusts

Community Foraging

Plant Spirit

Medicine

Animals

Community Bees

Cow/Goat Sharing

Chicken Cooperatives

Scion Exchange

Community Fruit Tree PlantingLocal Fruit

Tree Mapping

TreeCrops

Perennial Foods

Neighbor-hood

Harvest

Guerilla GraftingTree

Care Teams

Community Orchards

Growing

FarmCollectives

Land Sharing

Educational Collectives

Agricultural Land Trusts

Farmer Incubators

FarmNetworks

Backyard Garden

Networks

Work Parties

Land Sharing

Community Mentoring

Community Garden

Collectives

Community Composting

Community Greenhouse

Seed Library & Exchange

Tool Lending Library

Shared Harvest

Celebrations

CSA

Farmers Market

Food Bank Farming

Community Buying Clubs

Community Gleaning

Community Kitchens

Community Meal

Sharing

Community Bread Oven

Community Pantry

CommunalRestaurants

Food Co-ops

Distribution Consumption

Envisioning Sabbatical Culturewww.7seedproject.com

7seedsproject@gmail.com

SHMITA Community Supported Economic Systems

Swap Meets

FreeBox

TradeBlankets Barter

Fairs

SeedLibrary

Local Currency

MicroFinancing

Community Credit Unions

Crowd Funding

Market Economy

Economic Commons

Gift Circles

Exchange Networks

Time Banks

Resource Sharing

Information Sharing

FreeSkool/Skill

Shares

MentoringNetorks

Community Energy Systems

Land Trusts

Agricultural Land Trust

Community Land Trust

Wildlands Trust

Dana (Donation

Based Giving)

Open Source

Technologies

ReUseCenters

Local Co-ops

Transparent Budgeting

BusinessAlliances

ToolLibrary

Book/MusicLibrary

Car/ BikeSharing

Community Gardens & Orchards

Community Water

Systems

GiftEconomy

SpaceSharing

Envisioning Sabbatical Culturewww.7seedproject.com

7seedsproject@gmail.com

SHMITA Community Design Systems

Ceremony/Ritual

CollaborativeEducation

Art/ Creativity

Work

Healing/Care

Celebration/Gathering

Shared Office/Work Spaces

CommunityWork

Parties

Member-Based

Collectives

Grief/Mourning

Skillshares/FreeSkool

Transition Town Groups

CommunityMentoring

Permaculture Guilds

Nature Awareness

Groups

Home-schoolingNetworks

Council of All Beings Sacred

Fire

Blessing Circle

Honoring Ancestors

Seasonal Cycles

Birth/Death

Rites of Passage

Moon Cycles

NonViolent

Communication

PeaceMaking/ Conflict

Resolution

Thanksgiving Address

Way ofCouncilConsensus Decision

Making

Vision Support

Circles

Mens/Womens

Circles

Storytelling Community Hearth

Nursery/Babysitting

Co-ops

Shared Elder Care

Re-Evaluation Counseling

Community Clinics

Community Health Coops

SongCircles

Block Parties

Harvest Celebrations

Music &

Movement

DeFencing

Land Trusts

& Parklands

Intersections &

Pathways

Healing Spaces

Sacred Spaces/Altars

Local Museums

Communal Lounge/

Teahouse

Community Theatre

Public Art

Art Walks/Open

Studios

Collective Studios

CommunityProcessing

FacilitationStrategies

SharedSpaces

Envisioning Sabbatical Culturewww.7seedproject.com

7seedsproject@gmail.com

SHMITA Community Networks

Elder Council

Vision Council

SacredFire

Environment

Communication

Visible Structures

Invisible Structures

Envisioning Sabbatical Culturewww.7seedproject.com

7seedsproject@gmail.com

Use your community gardens, orchards & parks for gathering, celebration, education & ceremony.

Plant fruit trees. Reclaim sidewalk green strips, park lands, street meridians, traffic circleslet your street trees gift you fruit, as well as shade, fresh air, rain flow management, and soil retention.

Locate & map the fruit trees growing in your areas.

Create Tree Care teams to help with tree pruning, fruit thinning, and fertility management.

Organize neighborhood harvest parties to gather all the ripe fruit hanging from your tree.

Try guerilla grafting! Take some fruit tree cuttings and graft them onto adaptable ornamental street trees.

Start a community composting project: one centralized location for everyones yard and kitchen wastes. Neighbors partake in the maintenance, and everyone shares in the fertile results.

Start saving seeds from your home gardens. Create a communal seed library and seed-saving garden. Find out which varieties work best for your climates, and start creating heirloom varieties by saving seeds from the same plants over multiple growing seasons.

Create an annual seed swap for your community. Exchange seeds, garden stories and growing advice.

Swap plants with friends from your home gardens or greenhouses, through transplants & cuttings.

Create an annual winter-season scion-wood exchange and freely spread the genetic materials of heritage fruit tree varieties.

Take cuttings of fruit trees & herbs around the local area and start a local perennial plant nursery.

Build a community greenhouse at a centrally located public school or park.

100+ Ways To ReNew Shmita CultureCOMMUNITY FOOD SYSTEMS Plant a bio-diverse garden with vegetables, flowers, herbs, and trees.

Focus primarily on perennial plant choices, with annuals filling in space between. Include native medicinal species as habitat for birds & insects. Create ecosystems for chickens, bees & goats.

Allow vegetables to go to seed & drop in your garden. See what plants you can naturalize as self-seeders right there in your garden.

Experiment growing in all sorts of places and within all sorts of vessels: rooftops, walls, bridges, steps, containers. Obtain a yield from these surface areas!

Become a guerrilla gardener, planting trees, herbs and vegetables on neglected or unused land in your neighborhood.

Start or join a yard sharing program. Share your open space; invite others to plant a garden in your yard. Find creative solutions to garden on someone elses land if you are landless.

Start or join a backyard mentoring program. Seek advice from neighbors or become a mentor to those who are new at growing their own plants.

Start a cooperative and collectively care for animals: harvest eggs from chickens, milk from goats, honey from bees. Collectively purchase a cow and buy your meat bulk, from local, free-range, grass-fed cattle.

Take down the fences between your backyard and your neighbors backyard. Share & integrate growing space, play space, open space.

Start a gardening collective with friends & neighbors. Use vacant land, park land, school land, private landwhatever may be available. Share seeds, tools, work responsibilities, budgeting & harvests.

Start a community orchardcollectively plant trees and share the harvests! This is also a great place to keep your community bees and chickens!

Start or help support a local land trust. Communally purchase wild lands and agricultural lands preserving them for future generations.

Get to know your wild edibles. Where they grow, which season, how to harvest the plants, what edible & medicinal qualities they posses. Start gathering in the local natural inventorywhat are wild edibles growing around you? Where do they come up? Which season?

Create communal foraging groups and go out gathering with friends.

Start experimenting with plants as sources of dyes for art, fiber for clothing, wood for basketry.

Volunteer on local farms. Get to know what it takes to fully grow food, get to know the seasons. Become friends with your farmers.

Buy local & organic from farmers markets or become a member of a Community-Supported-Agriculture farm.

Join together with friends and start a community buying club: Buy your food direct from producers, in bulk quantity, with minimal packaging and big savings.

Become a consumer-owner of a food cooperative and have direct choice and voting power over what food is sold, where you source it from & what price it is sold for.

Join together with friends and start a gleaning group. Harvest what would otherwise go to waste from local farms.

Start a food-rescue group in your area and gather unsold but perfectly edible food from farmers markets, restaurants, and grocery stores. Donate to food banks or directly to those in need.

Spread the abundance in your home garden and share with those in need. Donate to food banks or set up a free farm stand with other neighborhood growers.

Keep track of how much food you are wasting: are you overbuying/harvesting? Overcooking? Your eyes bigger than your belly?

Gather together with friends and start a community kitchen: Rent an industrial kitchen or join together rotating through neighborhood home kitchens. Create a space for nutrition/cooking education, and shared bulk

meal preparation. Cook with friends, share recipes, ingredients and kitchen appliances.

Gather together for weekly communal feastings: Rotate among the homes of friends and neighbors or host a meal each week in your own home. Come together for celebratory events or weekly sharings.

Start a community dinner co-op: Spread the responsibility of healthy home cooking amongst your neighbors.

Build a community bread & pizza oven in your yard, at a local park or community center. Spread the word for communal, weekly baking nights. Have everyone bring some special ingredients.

Start sharingv stories that go along with your favorite recipes, and stories about the ancestors who gifted you with such recipes.

Store the harvest: dry, ferment, jam & can, juice, preserve.

Create a community pantry and a homesteading circle. Start putting food away with friends and share the harvest during winter. Have food preservation parties and kraut pounds of cabbage at once!

Share in harvest celebrations. Think pumpkin pie baking, garlic braiding, strawberry jamming. With music, costumes, and whatever else.

Create a seasonal barter fair. Come together as community to trade your summer crop surpluses and homemade preserves as you prepare your winter pantry.

Experiment with new foods in your diet, especially foods coming from perennial, native & wild sources.

COMMUNITY ECONOMIC SYSTEMS

Think creatively about the goods and services you now pay forhow can you receive these for free, in a cooperative model with friends?

Join a local time bank and start sharing skills and time with neighbors, free of charge. Give whatever you can contribute. Receive whatever is available that meets your needs.

Openly share in a community gift circle. Step 1: Everyone shares their

gifts/skills. Step 2: Everyone shares their needs/wants. Step 3: Network!

Start a monthly exchange market and highlight plant, seed, clothing and book swaps.

Barter: Share or trade your resources (whatever is needed) and get some (whatever you need) in return.

Open a free store or Gmach in your community. Rather than let old, unused items go towards the waste stream or gather dust in your garage, drop the items off so neighbors can make good use of them. Rather than waste more of your money, pick these items up for free!

Collectively purchase bikes, cars, sports equipment, garden tools, and so much more and create a neighborhood sharing group.

Use public car & bike sharing programs to get around.

Carpool! Create a schedule amongst neighbors that travel to similar destinations.

Offer your services for Danadonation based giving. Give from a place of selfless service & generosity, and be amazed at what you receive in return!

Empower the gift culture. No gift is too small. Share your art, song, food, crafts, time, hugs with those around you simply for the sake of expressing the gift.

Keep your money circulating as close to home as possible. Buy from independent, locally-owned businesses, sustainably using local resources, whose profits can be reinvested in collective communal growth.

Organize your local micro-businesses as member-based collectives, either work-owned or consumer-owned.

Create a local currency. Trade in dollars that are meant to serve one particular region & population.

Invest your money with local, socially responsible community credit unions & public banks.

Create local community land trusts, keeping costs of housing affordable.

Share your financial needs with friends, be open and vulnerable. Ask for support when you need it.

Ask for financial transparency from businesses, from local governing councils, from CSA farms.

Create community mentoring networks to educate one another in how to best use and invest monetary assets while staying true to your values.

Create a communal fund, among trusted friends & family, for interest free loans and microfinancing, as well as for financial gifts when someone within the community is in need of extra help or in need of support to start a local initiative that will benefit the whole community.

Organize communal work teams. Help your friends with garden design & planting, home repair, and basic carpentry, electrician & plumbing work. Invite friends to help you meet your own needs. Do the same for them.

Start a communal tool lending library.

Designate garages or studios as communal work spaces for carpentry, pottery, sewing, metalworking, mechanical repair and more. Communally invest in shared tools & site maintenance.

Reuse. Retrofit. Recycle. Start a communal Rebuilding Center or ReStorewarehouses of used doors, windows, wood paneling, bathroom & kitchen fixtures, and more, reclaimed from construction and demolition sites, sold at minimal costs.

Start a babysitting co-op or nursery care co-op with other parents with children of similar age as yours.

Start a shared elder care team in your community.

Start a community health care cooperative, where everyones investment is pooled together locally for when the need is there.

Create a community supported health clinic where healers can join together to practice, while saving on rental & office costs.

Designate communal spaces as healing spaces for meditation, yoga, massage.

Create community energy co-ops, collectively designing local solar, wind or hydro power systems to charge your electrical needs.

Create community water co-ops, collectively designing rainwater catchment systems and biological water treatment systems, while also overseeing the health of your local watershed.

COMMUNITY DESIGN SYSTEMS

Reclaim the commonsrestore intersections, pathways, sidewalks as gathering spaces, not just byways. These are public spaces for interaction, not just for getting from one place to another. Add public art, benches and information kiosks to slow down foot traffic and make the spaces more inviting.

Design pathways with the intention of letting people and energy flow in easy circulation, with fluidity and lots of interaction.

Create or designate a town square for your neighborhood in neutral, free-access public spaces where community can easily and naturally come together.

Create communal common spaces for healing, feasting, lounging, movement, music, education. Make the most of public libraries, community centers, religious centers. Transform large, empty rooms in your homes, from living rooms to basements to garages, into communal resources!

Start a local teahouse and lounge, a communal living rooma place for healing, for drinking, for music & conversation.

Start a local museum. Celebrate local culture, shared stories, ancestral lineage.

Create a communal fire pit for gatheringlet the warmth & light pull people together for late night stories, snacks, music & more.

Reclaim rooftops, walls, sidewalks as art spaces & growing spaces

Convert a garage or warehouse into spaces for local artists and start-up businesses.

Convert apartment buildings and suburban blocks into cohousing communities.

Group up with a bunch of friends/families and share rent in one commons house to be used as a collective gathering space.

Create spaces for guests and travelers to feel comfortable in your home & community commons.

Make communal gatherings multi-generational friendly, especially for children & elders. Make every day experiences rich with multi-generational exchanges.

Dance together as a community. Dance your visions, your challenges, your joys. Models such as Ecstatic Dance, Sweat your Prayers, 5 Rhythm Dancing can be found most everywhere in North America.

Sing together. Share your spirit, your prayer, your ancestral lineage through music & spoken word performances. Create singing circles & song celebrations.

Create a community theatre. Invite all ages to participate.

Host community movie nights in the park during warm summer evenings.

Throw a block party. Close the streets to traffic and fill the space with laughter, food, music, and art.

Reclaim storytelling as entertainmentand not just for children. Gather together to share tales, dreams, myths, legends.

Make your community spaces beautiful with murals & public art. Have art days where everyone comes together with paintbrushes and creative visions.

Create monthly communal art celebration days. Close the streets to traffic and invite artists to set up stands, open galleries for freeturn the whole atmosphere into an art parade.

Start a visioning group, study group, work group around whole-systems cultures and how to integrate these principles, step by step, into your community.

Design with long-term goals in mind. Work with 7-year plans in business &

farm models.

Start or join your local transition town group or permaculture guild. Empower your selves to make the changes you hope to see in your community. Share resources, questions, information, advice.

Teach a skill with your local FreeSkool. Invite friends to start a skillsharing program. Do what you love, where you live, and teach others along the way.

Start homeschooling collectives amongst your neighbors. Start after-school program activities for your children. Bring on the teens and elders as mentors.

Share ideas and information publicly through Open Source technologies.

Create communal libraries of favorite books, music. Turn the space into a lounge, an art space, a reading room. Invite lectures and study groups.

Create a primitive skills practice group in your neighborhood. Reawaken your wild senses working with plant, fiber, animal, fire and earth.

Create a nature awareness group among neighbors & friends: head out into the wilderness together and play in animal form, identify & harvest wild edibles, track animal prints & birdcalls.

Choose a sit-spot and spend 15 minutes each day observing and participating in the ecology surrounding you. Carry field guides with you. Journal your findings. Introduce yourself to the extended community of Life you are a member of.

Take a medicine walk through the wilds. State an intention, sacred question or prayer before taking off. Wander & see what arrives for you.

Celebrate Rites of Passage among the children, teens, and adults of your community. Provide the support these individuals need and meet them as they transition from one stage of life to another.

Start a community men & womens circle, where members of each sex can gather together and deeply share about issues that is unique to the masculine & feminine bodied people.

Educate your friends, families, lovers & business partners in the values of This list is far from complete. Keep it living & growing! Send your ideas & stories to 7seedsproject@gmail.com

The renewal of a Shmita culture will only manifest as a communal dream. Participate in this journey.

This will be a collaborative creation, by community, for community. Here are our next steps, in partnership with Wilderness Torah & the Jewish Farm School:

THE SHMITA COMMUNITY HANDBOOK: an operating systems manual for communities to use as they implement Shmita designs, step by step. Sharing methodology from Permaculture Design, Cultural Mentoring & the Transition Town Movement, the handbook will guide communities in directly applying Shmita Design principles to communal relations with food, ecology, economy, health and education. The handbook will offer techniques for community organizational structures that allow for effective communication, swift and empowered decision making, and long-term visioning strategies.

7SEEDS SHMITA CURRICULUM: an educational interactive medium for college students, adults, and community organizations to fully explore the cultural context which birthed the Shmita practice. The curriculum will blend an in-depth study of Jewish earth-based traditions rooted in Biblical, Kabbalistic, Midrashic & Halachic teachings, as well as reflections of Whole Systems Culture from other indigenous cultures & wisdom traditions.

7SEEDS WEBSITE: an interactive web-based community for the exploration and renewal of the Sabbatical culture. The site will offer continuously updated educational resources, such as videos, audio recordings and written teachings of whole-system cultural design. This will be a space for community blogging, to highlight community design projects and lessons learned as we transition towards a more holistic shared future.

To find out more infoTo make a gift of time, skill or money

To share your passion, ideas, words, vision, questions, please email 7seedsproject@gmail.com