Our Mission

Implementing Our Mission

Ma'yan Tikvah holds regular informal outdoor Shabbat services, either song-filled services or meditative services, all of which include a Torah discussion designed to make some aspect of the weekly Torah portion meaningful to our lives. Holiday events or services are held on most holidays, and an on-going introductory Talmud study and discussion group allows for deeper study. These and other events center in Wayland, but may also take place in nearby communities. For information about current and upcoming events, visit our Services and Events page.

Even more uniquely to Ma'yan Tikvah are its Jewish spiritual environmental education and stewardship programs covering a range of topics including nature awareness, ecology, global systems, and sustainability. The emphasis is on outdoor programs and local ecology that help participants both dwell more deeply and harmoniously within the ecosystems that sustain us and understand that indwelling as a Jewish imperative. Interfaith environmental experiences held within local watersheds throughout the greater Boston area focus on working with both communities of every faith and secular communities. Programs are similar to those above, or more broadly linked to creating an interfaith ‘shochenet’ (indwelling) network focused on sacred encounters and stewardship. For information about current and upcoming events, visit our Nature and Spirituality Events and our Interfaith Events pages.

In the longer term, Ma’yan Tikvah envisions the creation of a center for nature and spirituality. The vision for the center and ideas for its long-term fiscal and ecological sustainability are in process. Included in this longer-term vision is the sense of the center as a sanctuary, a healing space for those who have become fractured from the natural world, our communities, or ourselves, to lead us back to Earth, so that we may once again choose life. 

More Specifically

The world around us, much as it is capable of giving healing, is also in need of healing for itself. In an effort to give back to the world that sustains and nurtures us, we operate with a conscious effort to keep to a minimum the impact of our activities on the natural world, with a sense of responsibility to constantly learn and teach about the preservation and conservation of the natural world, and with a remembrance of the poverty and injustice in the world. As we gather for services and other events, we keep this in mind through the use of sustainable, public, and shared transportation; maintaining a vegetarian diet that is as local, organic, and fair trade as possible; and keeping our waste production to a minimum. We have regular social justice or tzedakah efforts that range from pertinent teachings to collections for social justice organizations to more involved projects. 

Input from friends and members into on-going and new programing is part of the growing and shaping of our community. We are interested your creative contributions to all that happens at Ma'yan Tikvah, an open, welcoming, and participatory community built upon the concepts of shared responsibility and shared opportunity.

You can open this file to read a letter from Rabbi Katy Allen describing her journey to creating Ma'yan Tikvah.

May 2012 - A Summary of Our Year