A convenient truth

The Telegraph

By Ben Harris · March 30, 2009

This video has been sent to me by a bunch of folks over the past few weeks. It is footage of a lecture given by the late Lubaticher Rebbe in 1981, in which he says:

This country, with God’s help, can be self-sufficient in energy. The problem lies in the failure to utilize God’s gifts to their fullest ... There is one energy source which can be made available in a very short time. Solar energy is non-polluting, cheap, and inexhaustible ... it can power individual homes as well as giant factories. The United States has been blessed with plentiful sunshine, especially in the south … God has blessed this country richly, and it is our duty to use those riches to their fullest.

Full video here.

The lecture came just days after the last celebration of Birchat Hachamah, the blessing that commemorates the sun's return to its precise place in the sky as it was at its creation (and when that return happens on a Wednesday), an event that occurs once in 28 years (and is about to happen again, next week, on the eve of Passover.)