Category Archives: Texts

Texts, The Land, The People

Tisha B’Av and Transformation

Summer is here and the burning time is upon us, as our air here in Seattle becomes thickened with smoke from the incineration of the Northwest’s forests.

Liturgically speaking, we are in the “three weeks” leading up to the Ninth of Av or Tisha B’Av. This period is a time of psychological preparation for the dramatic mourning  associated with the memory of the trauma of losing the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. In its day, the Holy Temple was experienced as the physical locus of connection to the divine. Practically, it was the site of virtually all (but not all) of the important ritual behaviors involved with maintaining our relationship with G-d.

I believe that we are standing on the brink of a rupture every bit as profound for the world as the loss of the Holy Temple was for the Jews, and that is the climate crisis. The Earth is manifestly a source of connection, a locus of relationship, with the divine forces which give us life and sustain us; and by us, I mean every person, and also every living being. The course that forced atmospheric warming would take has been foretold by scientists for decades. Now we are watching the details of the prophesy unfold; changes which began slowly, almost imperceptibly, now roll downhill with gathering speed and momentum. People born after 1985 have never experienced a year with lower than average global temperatures.

In the Talmud, the loss of the second Temple was not attributed to the aggression of the Romans, but to “senseless hatred” among the Jews themselves. The Romans are given no agency; the problem was understood to be in ourselves. I think that we can argue about where the fault for the climate crisis lies; likely the truth is complicated. I am unwilling to let the fossil fuel giants off the hook for the stumbling blocks they that they placed, and continue to place, before the blind. Also, I drive a minivan that gets about 16 miles per gallon, and will be flying across the country in an airplane this summer with my family.

I feel the need to sit with my feelings about the possibility of losing Earth in the form that all my human ancestors experienced it in my generation. I sense that these feelings are deeply connected to the experience of losing the Holy Temple. Future generations may well mourn by candlelight in the dark the events taking place today.

But something new was created out of the Judaism of yore. The religion was re-imagined, and miraculously has survived; the Temple itself survives in the liturgy and rituals; the connection to the Holy One, Blessed be the Name, was rebuilt.

Knowing what is coming for us, how can we, in our generation, turn the rupture and dislocation of today into a seed for those who will come after us, who will want and need to learn from our experiences to create something new? How can we draw on our sacred practices, our wisdom, and indeed the very lessons we are learning right now about the aching complexity of being human, of living together in society, to offer our gift to the future? What would you say to the people who will inherit the Earth of 100 years from today, 1000 yrs from today, 5000? How would you say it?

I would welcome your response in the comments.

Texts, The Land, The People

Shabbat Hazon – Shabbat of Vision

As we approach the weekend of July 21, 2018, Shabbat Hazon, Tisha B’Av, I am overwhelmed by many meanings and significances that seem to be converging onto this time. It is my deepest conviction that we need to build this world with love, Olam Chesed Yibaneh, and that to do that we require the courage that springs from simple awareness of the beauty, connection and love that surrounds and cares for us at all times.

However our Jewish calendar also brings us through the depth of sorrow. At Tisha B’Av, it is our tradition to allow ourselves to truly feel the impact of our ruptured connection with the Divine, symbolized as the destruction of the Holy Temple that once (twice, actually) stood in glory in the Holy City, Jerusalem. At Tisha B’Av, we enter our sanctuary without greeting one another. We light a small candle and find a place alone in darkness, and absorb the harrowing words of Eicha sung to us through darkness in a trope that weeps like a mother grieving for her lost children, and we fast.

This image cannot help but remind us of the present day mothers who weep in detention centers for children who were taken from them at the border of our country.

Equally as significant are the unfamiliar and uncomfortably high temperatures many of us are experiencing, which cannot help but remind us that Earth’s climate is warming quickly, and with no end in sight.

In response to this crisis, our children are rising up in Zero Hour Climate Marches in DC and across the country this weekend, and are taking our government to court to force it to ensure them a livable planet.

In doing this, these children are wading in the deep waters of our tradition on Shabbat Hazon – our Shabbat of Vision. Shabbat Hazon holds before us an image of our errors and their undeniably tragic consequences, while simultaneously pointing the way through them to a different, better future in which connections are restored. Today, these children are our prophets, crying out on behalf of the future, calling on us to restore our connection with the Divine Source of Life before it is too late. This connection can only be forged through love, and must pose a direct challenge to the sinat chinam, or senseless hatred, which is believed to have been the root of our problems.

This weekend, each of us in our own way, through contemplation, prayer, fasting, or marching, can respond to the call of Tisha B’Av: to open ourselves to grief for the destruction of our beautiful home and the values we cherish, which we believe came about because of our failure to live together in peace and justice. It is not and never was some foreign adversary, but our own shortcomings that lead ultimately to the destruction of our tranquility, our home, and the moral voice that once went forth from our holy place.

So while it may seem like there is enough to be sorrowful in our own time, it is striking that so many events of enduring significance converge on this one sorrowful midsummer weekend.

May we deeply absorb the weeping voices that we hear, including our own. And may the grief of the world open our hearts to a period of deep reflection and inner transformation that will bring healing and repair of the breaches that divide us from one another, from the future, and from the ineffable Divine. And may this healing come soon.

 

 

Actions, Texts, The Land, The People

Love at the Crossroads

These are (approximately) the words I shared as a member of the opening interfaith opening panel for the Love at the Crossroads conference produced by FACT (the Faith Action Climate Team) on October 28, 2017.

Love at the Crossroads

Good morning and thank you for inviting me to speak here today about Love at the Crossroads. I look forward to a day of learning with you about the connections between social justice, climate change, and love.

For a number of years, I have been studying the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish texts, looking within them for lessons about how human beings should relate to the Earth, and I have been writing and speaking and teaching about my reflections.

I do this in part because, as I’ve grown older I have seen that reason has not been very good at inducing so-called rational human beings to think differently, or make changes that are uncomfortable. I’ve seen that we live by the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, about what is real and important, and about what is expected of us. We can be motivated to change our behavior, but not, I believe, primarily by means of data. It is discomfort that does it. Spiritual discomfort changes us.

This discomfort can come from our own life experiences, or, from stories that work on us and change us from the inside. The Hebrew Bible is a rich source of stories; stories which play across not only our individual minds, but which are reflected across much of Western culture, and connect us to generations past and future. These stories, these “myths,” if you will, shape how we view ourselves, our roles and responsibilities in the world; and what values we are willing to sacrifice for. So, by taking hold of the coloration and meaning of these stories, and sharing them, we can change ourselves and the future – at least that is my hope.

 

The world the Hebrew Bible envisions for us is one in which we love one another. This is the central teaching of our faith.  Love your neighbor as yourself, and also, love “the stranger who lives within your gates.”  (Both commandments are found in Chapter 19 of the book of Leviticus.) But lest we think that love is just an abstract feeling, we are guided with very specific instructions about how to do this; about what our relationships are supposed to look like, with one another, with God, and with the land.

Here are some highlights:

  • Our system of justice should not favor the rich or the poor
  • We must take up the case of the vulnerable, the widow and the orphan, who have no one to advocate for them
  • We don’t take advantage of people’s ignorance – we don’t “place a stumbling block before the blind”
  • We don’t stand idly by our neighbor’s blood, we take responsibility for the welfare of others
  • The list could go on and on

Regarding the land:

  • It is through the medium of the land that God attends to all of our needs
  • We don’t own it. It belongs in perpetuity to God and must be used first to serve God: A portion of its produce must always be set aside for the needy.
  • Every seven years, the land must enjoy a complete rest, during which all of its produce is ownerless and may be used at subsistence levels by everyone, from the richest to the most vulnerable, including animals both wild and domestic.
  • Debts must be periodically forgiven.
  • The distribution of land, which is the ultimate source of all wealth, must be rebalanced in each generation so that it is not amassed by a few and used to exploit the many

In the words of Dr. Cornell West: “Justice is what love looks like in public.” And I would say as a corollary: “Exploitation is what happens when love is forgotten.”

 

We are told that if we follow these laws (and more) then we will be rewarded with rains that fall in their season, and the land will be productive and feed us; but if we do not, that God will “break our fierce pride! The heavens will be like iron, the earth like bronze; your land will not give forth its yield, its trees will not give forth fruit; our cities will become a wasteland.”

Will this come about as a result of “miracles” or “natural consequences?”

It would be interesting to write a long essay on this subject that probes all the possible connections between social justice and environmental sustainability, but let me raise just one.

 

What if we took seriously the lesson that the land is God’s, and that we are meant to benefit from the natural abundance that springs from it. The gifts that spring up from the land we are to experience as a gift, part of a relationship, that links us with God and with generations past and future. We may make use of them, but only with reverence. The buzzword is “sustainability,” but it’s even more precious than that if we treat it as a gift.

Well, attached to this “land,” along with its potential for agricultural, there is wind, there is sunlight. These can be converted to energy. The dignity to using them in this way comes from the fact that they connect the individual not to the marketplace, but to God and the land.

 

My interpretation of the text leads me to believe that there is something powerful about people being connected as directly as possible to this source of natural abundance. Because it is there that we “feel” the love of our Creator for us, and “see” it as part of what connects us to our children and parents, and feel motivated by our own love for all of this, to care for it and tend it lovingly for the future. In this sacred and loving connection lies our hope that we can save the planet and one another. So let’s do everything we can do deepen and enrich our sense of our dependence on, and our ability to enter into sacred relationship with the land.

 

When I read stories about how vigorously fossil fuel interests and private utility companies are trying to delay or prevent the deployment of liberating renewable energy technologies, I am reminded of the story of Pharaoh. If you recall this story, Pharaoh took ownership of the produce of Egypt during seven years of plenty, and then when seven years of famine came, he sold the life-saving grain back to his people. At first this was very helpful. But as the famine wore on, this market for grain became exploitative. People were forced to pay for it by selling first their draft animals, then their land, and finally they sold themselves into slavery to Pharaoh.

It seems to me that there is a similarity here with the fossil fuel giants taking control of the millions of years of “plenty,” during which carbon was stored in the ground and became oil and gas, then selling them back to us. At first it was very helpful (and saved a lot of whales), but we have turned the corner and understand now that the environmental costs are too high.

 

We can and must throw off this Carbon Pharaoh, even though, just like with the first Pharaoh, despite warnings of disaster, he seems to be only hardening his heart against us. In the Bible, deliverance began with prayer, and was accomplished with a lot of help from God. Today our prophets are climate scientists, and the increasingly unmistakable drumroll of catastrophes, from widespread and devastating wild fires, droughts, and famines, to inundation of coastal cities along with more and more powerful hurricanes and storms, are feeling like modern day “plagues.”

 

In the Jewish tradition, we look at time as something like an ascending spiral, that advances, hopefully, even as it revisits the same stories year in and year out. Our texts give us keys and clues to living honorably on the land. Can we take these images and ideals and use them to build a new model of relationship between human beings and the sustaining and loving landscape we have been given, before it is too late?

 

When we do this, then the struggle will be over, and we will truly be able to say that our soul has returned from a very profound exile and found rest. Because isn’t this what we long for: the repose of the soul, in peace, in justice and with love, upon the good land that we have been given, in a world in which each person is able to rest in the shade of their own fig tree and vine, knowing that each other person rests securely under their own?

 

Shabbat Shalom

Actions, Texts

Beliefs and Practices of Judaism that Help Me Respond to Climate Change

These are the notes for my remarks at the Faith & Climate Action Conference held on October 8 in Seattle WA:

I am here to talk to you about the beliefs and practices of my faith that help me prepare to respond to climate change. And also, to learn from each of you, make new friends here, and bring your wisdom back into my community.

First, my tradition categorically accepts, and explicitly teaches, that our actions can set in motion a chain of events that will ultimately disrupt the climate to the point of the land becoming inhospitable to human life, and that if we let this process run its course we will “perish quickly from the good land that the Lord has given us.” We recite these words as part of the Sh’ma, our foundational affirmation of faith, morning and evening; we bind them to our bodies when we pray, and we write them on our doorposts and our gates – that’s what’s written inside the mezuzot that Jews affix to their doorposts. And yet still we can forget them, or not fully engage with their meaning.

To avoid this fate, we are told to adhere to the laws we have been given in Torah: to build a society upon justice with compassion, supporting the vulnerable as a community, welcoming the stranger, and deeply cognizant that the Earth does not belong to us, but that we are sojourners upon it, that it belongs to God. Indeed we are invited in Psalm 145 to imagine it as the very hand of God, extended, and supporting the needs of all life, including future generations.

These are the beliefs that provide the color and form of my response to climate change.

There are many practices that my faith tradition offers, that I am actively studying. Let me name a few of the highlights:

First we have Shabbat, the day of rest. To fully observe Shabbat according to Jewish custom, there is no driving; no money exchanged; no electricity used. Imagine: the whole community living within walking distance of friends and places of worship; imagine a world that uses 1/7 or about 15% less electricity, that spends a day free of the habit of consumer culture. Imagine what our communities would look like if they were designed for a Shabbat culture.

Next we have Kashrut, a detailed system of dietary laws that fundamentally restrict what creatures we may consume and require their ethical treatment. Products are labeled with a Heksher if they adhere to our community’s ethical norms. The Heksher may be the first system of food product labeling for this purpose in history. Imagine a system of product labeling that fully encompasses our social justice and environmental concerns, and people rigidly adhering to a system of food consumption that met the highest standards for worker and animal and environmental sustainability.

Next, there is Shmita – a seven year cycle which gives a year of complete rest to the land itself. No agriculture is permitted; people may eat only what grows without human intervention, grown locally, and only while it is in season (I guarantee you all of those requirements are there in Torah law!). During Shmita, all the fields opened to everyone, animals wild and domestic, and all people from rich to poor. Hording of food beyond one’s true need is not permitted! Imagine an agricultural system designed around a Shmita-aware permaculture, interwoven throughout our communities, with food accessible to all.

Finally, since I know I am running out of time, I want to say just a few words about self-reflection and Tikkun Olam. Today is Shabbat Shuvah. Jews around the world are in the liturgical period known as the Days of Awe, the Yamim Nora’im, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, during which we reflect on and seek to repair relationships in our lives, with one another and with God. In our tradition, true repentance comes from realizing and understanding what we have done wrong, expressing a sincere regret and asking forgiveness, and working to heal the damage we have caused, and to never return to the actions that caused the harm.

We can use this period to look at our relationship with God – with God’s outstretched and generous hand – as in need of repair, and form a strategy for restoring what has been damaged and changing the habits and behaviors that ruptured this relationship in the first place.

My tradition teaches that human beings are, in fact, partners in the work of repairing Creation.  We call this work Tikkun Olam – Repairing the World. We are taught that each person has their own part of Creation to repair, and we are taught by Rabbi Tarfon, a sage who lived during the time of the destruction of the second temple, who put it this way: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but you are not free to desist from it either” (2:16).

 

Together, our faith traditions are like trees in a forest that draw from roots that are very deep. It is so meaningful that we have assembled here together to strengthen our resolve, and to join our wisdom sources together. May we go from strength to strength as we work together to heal and repair the world.

Actions, Texts, The Food System, The Land, The People

Sabbath of the Land – Foraging in the Wild

“Now the Sabbath-yield of the land (is) for you, for eating, for you, for your servant and for your handmaid, for your hired-hand and for your resident-settler who sojourn with you; and for your domestic-animal and the wild-beast that (are) in your land shall be all its produce, to eat. ” – Leviticus 25: 6-7

IMG_20140814_192156138

The shmita year invites us to explore and rediscover our relationship of interdependence with the plants and animals that inhabit the margins of our lands and our hearts.

As we shift from eating commercial harvests purchased at market to what we gather for ourselves, we may find ourselves looking beyond the planted fields and cultivated gardens into the wilderness, the marginal lands, and the forests that border our communities.

When we are asked to join with those whom we may, in other years, consider “other,” those who work “for” us, animals, and wildlife, to share the Sabbath-yield of the land, with all of us as equals, we are invited to get to know one another. What tender herbs does the “resident sojourner” use? What insights, what recipes, what medicines? What are the names of his children? By learning and teaching one another, and by sharing our knowledge and culture with one another, how will the web of relationships within our community grow and change?

How will our perception of wildlife change (and let’s include all wildlife, mammals, but also birds, fish, and insects)? As we see with our own eyes their ways of life, their needs, their relationships with the land and one another, how will we respond? If we are asked to share with them, this surely implies that we will not begrudge them their portion with netting, or try to eradicate them with poisons. Maybe we will even look to our own marginal spaces, the edges of our property, public spaces near us, and feel moved to choose plants and shrubs for those spaces that will meet the needs of these new friends of ours for shelter and food.

During this shmita year, we should learn about and surround ourselves with the richness and abundance that we may otherwise fail to notice or appreciate, but which is all around us. Here are a few suggestions as to how to do this.

Please share your thoughts on other ways of responding to the text above.

Texts, The Land

Sabbath of the Land

“The Lord spoke to Moshe at Mount Sinai, saying: Speak to the Children of Israel, and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land is to cease, a Sabbath-ceasing to the Lord.

“For six years you are to sow your field, for six years you are to prune your vineyard, then you are to gather in its produce, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of Sabbath-ceasing for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord: your field you are not to sow, your vineyard you are not to prune, the aftergrowth of your harvest you are not to harvest, the grapes of your consecrated-vines you are not to amass; a Sabbath of Sabbath-ceasing shall there be for the land!

“Now the Sabbath-yield of the land is for you, for eating: for you, for your servant, and for your handmaid, for your hired-hand and for your resident-settler who sojourn with you; and for your domestic-animal and the wild-beast that are in your land shall be all its produce, to eat.” (Leviticus 25:1-7)

Texts

Shmita and Exile

“Exile comes to the world on account of idol-worship, sexual promiscuity, murder and the failure to leave the land fallow on the sabbatical year.” – Pirkei Avot

What do idol-worship, sexual promiscuity, murder, and failure to leave the land fallow in the sabbatical year have in common?

Why is exile a punishment/consequence?

What is “exile”?

Texts, The Land

Whose Sabbath is it?

“The Lord spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying: Speak to the Children of Israel, and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land is to cease, a Sabbath-ceasing to the Lord.

“For six years you are to sow your field, for six years you are to prune your vineyard, then you are to gather in its produce, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of Sabbath-ceasing for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord: your field you are not to sow, your vineyard you are not to prune, the aftergrowth of your harvest you are not to harvest, the grapes of your consecrated-vines you are not to amass; a Sabbath of Sabbath-ceasing shall there be for the land!”  – Leviticus 25:1-5

Whose Sabbath is it? (Hint: what is a “Sabbath”?)

Whom is it “to”? Whom is it “for”? (Note: in Hebrew these are both indicated by the same preposition in this text.)

Who (or what) is to do the resting?

How would you describe the role of the people in fulfilling this period of rest?