Society Working Together

"Earth Hour" is a global project designed to raise awareness among people and communities as to what they can do to help benefit Planet Earth. The main activity of "Earth Hour" is at 8:30 PM on the designated day everyone turns off their lights for 10 minutes, as per a set schedule - each city in a country or region turns off for 10 minutes, then it moves to the next city, the next, etc.

This year, Earth Hour will be happening on Saturday March 26 at 8:30 PM.

Because it is a motzei shabbos, Israel has decided to participate but not on the scheduled day. Rather, Israel will treat Earth Hour like many other holidays that fall out on Shabbos or Motzei Shabbos - by pushing it up to Thursday to avoid chilul shabbos. While one might wonder what the big deal is to flip off the lights for 10 minutes that this needs to be pushed up, the reason is because many large organizations and companies, even municipalities and government institutions plan to participate, and for them it is much more than just flipping off the lights.

Who in Israel made this decision, and why they decided to do so, I dont know. However, according to Ladaat, because Israel decided to participate while ensuring that Shabbos would not be violated in the process, there has been a push in the haredi communities by haredi environmentalist activists to have the haredi community participate in Earth Hour this year.

I think that is a very nice gesture. Besides for the participation itself, as the damage to earth affects everyone equally, the gesture in participating to note the fact that the Israeli community took their sensitivities into account. Without fighting, without protesting, without threatening.

Simply society working together.

This should happen more regularly.