Pesach, Marie Kondo, and Plastic Rain

Believe me, I had no intention to sit and write anything this morning, Tuesday, with the hours counting inexorably down until the first Seder this Friday night. I am busy purging my home of leavened products, which involves plenty of deep cleaning, particularly in my kitchen.

During the preparation for Passover, great attention is given to each item relating to the kitchen: the dishes, the cooking utensils, counter tops, stoves and ovens, it all gets a severe once over. According to tradition, everything that has come in contact with wheat or grain during the year must be cleaned in a way consistent with how it was used. It’s a labor of love and I’m grateful for it.

This morning, I was sitting enjoying my coffee and reading from my Facebook feed when I saw it – the last straw, as it were. An article in National Geographic about how microplastics are literally raining from the sky, and can now be found in measurable concentrations even in the remote reaches of the Pyrenees Mountains in Southern France. We are increasingly aware that plastic is in fact toxic at every stage of its “lifecycle,” and is building up in the oceans and in the food chain. New plans to turn America’s Rust Belt into a Plastics Belt fed by fracked natural gas mean that the pieces are being set in place to dramatically increase plastics production world wide, without any plan for managing the resulting waste stream.

Given that I am already holding each item in my kitchen up to scrutiny, it struck me that now is exactly the time to make a quantum leap towards dramatically reducing my use of plastic in the kitchen, especially single use plastics.

What if you don’t celebrate Passover? Maybe Spring Cleaning is a more  familiar tradition in your home; or maybe you find you are becoming an acolyte of Marie Kondo? Any of these practices can serve as a motivating impetus to make a big change.

But how does this relate to the central message of Passover – which is “freedom?” For me, that’s  easy. I do not feel “free” to act out my ethical values of leaving my children the beautiful and life-sustaining world of abundance that I want for them, and that I believe their Creator wants for them, as long as I am behaving like a slave to the petrochemical industry and a culture of waste for the sake of convenience.

This year, starting right now at Passover, I will focus on my freedom to honor the Divine gift of life in all of its myriad, beautiful, and interrelated forms by reducing my contribution to the world’s growing plastics nightmare. I trust that in doing so, I will join with millions and millions of other people the world over, a mixed multitude if you will, who are also seeking this sort of freedom. Please join me, and keep me posted on how it’s going!

The Gift of the Fruit Tree

Apple TreeIf you follow My laws and faithfully execute My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit. – Leviticus 26: 3 – 4.

You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.” The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.   – Khalil Gibran

Seattle is a city of indescribable abundance when it comes to fruiting trees. During late summer, the modest trees that you may not have even noticed standing along roadway medians and in city parks reveal their true nature, branches extended and fairly aching with the gift of heavy ripe fruit, the mercy of their abundance bestowed freely and without prejudice. Individuals fortunate enough to have a private fruit tree or two may wind up with hundreds of pounds of ripe pears, plums, quince, or figs in a season.

What to do with that abundance? How much of it can be harvested and enjoyed, and how much is destined to go unpicked and fall to the ground? How much is insect damaged? How many trees do not reach their full productivity for one reason or another?

The trees themselves are the spoken words of the Divine, and their meaning is clear. “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” they whisper. If only there were some way to care for these trees, to harvest this magnificent crop, and to enjoy what we can and distribute the rest freely to people who are hungry…

It turns out there is a way, and it is called City Fruit. City Fruit is a Seattle area nonprofit that cares for these trees, harvests their crop, and distributes it to food banks. If you’ve ever driven past an apple tree growing in the median of a road, or along a trail, or in a park, that has been draped in a fine white net, that’s the work of City Fruit, protecting the fruit from insect damage. At the end of the season, the undamaged fruit will be harvested.

City Fruit is truly Shmita in action, honoring the gift of the abundant fruit, and ensuring that it is put to its best and highest use. As importantly as all of that, City Fruit engages homeowners, volunteer harvesters, and a multitude of businesses and nonprofits across the city to build community around this gift. It engages each participant in the Divine project of nourishing human bodies; the project itself nourishes the soul of the individual, and of the community as a whole.

Here are some of the ways that City Fruit enriches our community:

  1. Netting public trees to protect the quality of the fruit produced
  2. Harvesting fruit in the fall
  3. Distributing fruit to food pantries
  4. Enabling homeowners to register their fruit trees and give permission to City Fruit to harvest and donate all or a portion of their crop
  5. Sponsoring classes to teach home owners to care for their trees
  6. Forming partnerships with different communities such as immigrants, refugees, and youth in growing, caring for, and harvesting fruit

Last year, City Fruit achieved the following remarkable statistics:

home-harvest-results-2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a world in which some seem to have so much and others have seem to have barely enough to survive, we are taught a lesson by each fruit tree. Each tree reminds us that we are all loved no matter who we are; that we are all worthy to be fed; and there can, indeed, be enough for all, if we will just take that lesson to heart.

Thanks to the groundwork laid by City Fruit, we can all take part immediately in fulfilling the Divine intention, which begins with the gift of the fruit tree.