As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks relates, this is what G-d is teaching us by inviting us to become His “partners in the work of creation.” Throughout the Torah, G-d is coaching people to care for the environment around us, to have an opinion and argue for justice, and take decisive action.

Through our adherence, our actions, our attentiveness to the implications of our actions, and the interconnected partnership between G-d, people and nature, we have the ability to bring the world closer to the perfection from which it was created. This is the essence of what we have come to know as "Tikkun Olam."

The first reference to "Tikkun Olam" comes from the Aleinu (Artscroll translation): It is our duty to praise the Master of all, to ascribe greatness to the Molder of primeval creation,… Therefore we put our hope in You, Hashem our G-d, that we may soon see Yourmighty splendor, to remove detestable idolatry from the earth, and false gods will be utterly cut off, to perfect the universe (le-takken olam) through the Almighty's sovereignty. … as it is written in Your Torah: Hashem shall reign for all eternity. And it is said: Hashem will be King over all the world – on that day Hashem will be One and His Name will be One.

The Aleinu prayer refers to a cosmic ideal, but little to do with human action. It is an expression of the prophetic vision of the end of days. It is describing a divine process rather than a human one, in that it is G-d, not us, who will perfect the world. It is a call to prayer, not a call to action.

However, we see that Tikkun Olam is referenced very differently in the Talmud. In Mishna Gittin(4:6), it states: Captives should not be redeemed for more than their value, for the sake of tikkun olam. Captives should not be helped to escape, for the sake of tikkun olam. Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel says [that the reason is] to prevent the ill-treatment of fellow captives.

This Talmudic section (Gittin 4:2, 4-9, 5:3, 9:4) includes explanation of certain laws relating, among other things, to divorce, the freeing of slaves, and the redemption of captives. Common to these provisions is that they address areas in which the law contains anomalies which, if not rectified, would have adverse consequences for individuals or for society as a whole. In a sense, the concept of tikkun olam is used as the rationale for a better ordering of society or “in the interest of public policy.” Here we see Tikkun Olam being used as a concept of limited scope, not a theory of the cosmos as it was in Aleinu.

We see these two views of Tikkun Olam developed and merged in Rabbi Isaac Luria's (the Ari) conception of “The Shattering of the Vessels” (shevirat ha-kelim), which creates the link between G-d’s perfection from creation of the world and what will be at the end of days (the messianic era) and the human action needed to get from one to the other:

At the beginning of time, God’s presence filled the universe. When God decided to bring this world into being, to make room for creation (God had to contract Himself – a process known as tzimtzum – in order to create a space)He first drew in His breath, contracting Himself. From that contraction darkness was created. And when God said, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), the light that came into being filled the darkness, and ten holy vessels came forth, each filled with primordial light. The vessels were too fragile to contain such a powerful, divine light. They broke open, shattered, and were scattered. The partnership G-d creates with us is designed to repair the broken vessels and through that process of tikkun olam,will restore the world to its original state of perfection. It takes action, reflection, and collective responsibility to gather the sparks of G-d, bringing the world closer to perfection.As Rabbi Sacks states: “We are here to make a difference, to mend the fractures of the world, a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make it a place of justice and compassion where the lonely are not alone, the poor not without help; where the cry of the vulnerable is heeded and those who are wronged are heard. ‘Someone else's physical needs are my spiritual obligation’, a Jewish mystic taught. The truths of religion are exalted, but its duties are close at hand. We know God less by contemplation than by emulation. The choice is not between ‘faith’ and ‘deeds’, for it is by our deeds that we express our faith and make it real in the life of others and the world.” [Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World] ]]> https://beta.jewcology.com/2013/05/partners-with-g-d-perfection-through-action/feed/ 1 https://beta.jewcology.com/2013/05/the-sabbath-of-the-feast-of-weeks/ https://beta.jewcology.com/2013/05/the-sabbath-of-the-feast-of-weeks/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 17:04:00 +0000 http://jewcology.org/2013/05/the-sabbath-of-the-feast-of-weeks/ Shavuot, “the feast of weeks”, unlike all of our other festivals, is given no calendrical date; rather, we arrive at this holiday by counting “seven full weeks” from a particular starting time. But even the starting time is ambiguous: “From the day after the Sabbath”. Which Sabbath? And why is there a reference to a Sabbath at all? The previous passage in the Torah described Pesach, not the Sabbath. There has been much historical debate over this issue where some understood “the Sabbath” to mean the first day of Pesach (15 Nisan) and others took the text literally and counted from Sunday, the day after the Sabbath. Today we follow the first calculation, starting the counting after the first day of Passover.

There is a strong Jewish tradition that ties Shavuot to “the time of the giving of the Torah” at Mount Sinai, and the covenant between the Israelites and G-d. But that connection is not made in the Torah itself. The only description in the Torah about Shavuot calls it the “Feast of the Harvest”, and the “Day of First Fruits”. The description of this event in the Torah includes the date “In the third month after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt…”(Ex. 19: 1). Since Shavuot is the only festival in the third month, the connection was made in the oral tradition.

So how do these two ideas merge into a lesson we can draw from. Let’s reflect, for a moment, on viewing Shavuot as the anniversary of the moment described in the book of Exodus when God revealed himself to the Israelites at Mount Sinai and made a covenant with them. The Torah was given “in the wilderness”, it was not tied to a particular place. Even though our homeland is eretz yisrael, the Torah was not given there, and from this we learn that the Torah can and should be applied anywhere and everywhere.

When Jews were stripped of their land, their homes, their liberties, Jewish communities still had a binding document of social responsibility. We did not wait for someone (or a government) to give rights and freedoms. Historically, we created our own: we built our own schools, our own welfare systems for the sick and poor, loan societies, and a myriad of communal support systems. G-d gave us the responsibility to build societies predicated on justice and compassion, to honor the image of G-d with which we were endowed. G-d gave us this mandate in the desert so that we would fundamentally understand that it had to apply anywhere and everywhere. In order for this to translate into reality, however, we had to agree to become partners with G-d, and apply this collective responsibility into all of our actions, fulfilling our end of the covenant from Mount Sinai.

A beautiful sentiment about how we have ascribed meaning to Shavuot, but how does it tie back to our Biblical connection to this holiday? “From the day after the Sabbath” we are commanded to count to reach the Feast of Weeks and Feast of First Fruits and of the harvest. What does Shabbat have to do with Shavuot? What does Shabbat commemorate? It is the remembrance, when we are commanded to keep the day that G-d rested from his creation of the world. When we reflect on the magnificence of G-d’s creations, how blessed we are to be a part of it, and to reflect on our role. Shabbat is the time when we connect with G-d on the purpose and meaning of creation. It is our connection to our past and our perspective for our future. How are we going to make a difference? What is our responsibility to ourselves, our families, our communities, the world? The process of transforming these thoughts into actions can be related to the “counting of the weeks” from being thrust into a wilderness from Pesach to the acceptance of a collective, social, responsibility at Shavuot, and how we fulfill our end of the Covenant from Sinai.

“We are here to make a difference, to mend the fractures of the world, a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make it a place of justice and compassion where the lonely are not alone, the poor not without help; where the cry of the vulnerable is heeded and those who are wronged are heard. ‘Someone else's physical needs are my spiritual obligation’, a Jewish mystic taught. The truths of religion are exalted, but its duties are close at hand. We know God less by contemplation than by emulation. The choice is not between ‘faith’ and ‘deeds’, for it is by our deeds that we express our faith and make it real in the life of others and the world.”

[Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, pg. 5].

Marketing professionals are not naive: they're quite savvy and tuned in to what will make products and merchandise sell. I'm sure they did their homework around Earth Day, and determined that – for the more eco-conscious consumer, if they created environmental justifications for making purchases, that it would actually sell more products. Or at least give people an excuse to hit the stores instead of the outdoors in search of an environmental improvement project.

I hope, though, that they were wrong. I hope that our eco-conscious peers saw right through that marketing scheme and took advantage of the myriads of opportunities taking place on and around Earth Day, to reconnect to their natural surroundings and recommit to improving the quality of our planet for us, our children, and future generations.

In Baltimore, we are celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Earth Week: a week-long series of programs focused on promoting environmental awareness and best sustainable practices in and around Baltimore. "The series offers the public a variety of educational workshops, lectures, films, tours, and hands-on projects where they have the chance to take part in discussions and begin offering solutions surrounding issues such as climate change, sustainable food and agriculture, water conservation, and energy efficiency within the home." An on-line program can be found here: http://baltimoregreenworks.com/events/baltimore-green-week/

I, for one, am taking part in activties every day, all week long – with the exception of Shabbat (to which a colleague of mine referred to as the "ultimate Earth day, which takes place every week" – if done with conscious practice, of course.) And I'm including my kids as well. Together with hundreds and hundreds of others in our community, we all took part in the annual Good Neighbor Day hosted by CHAI (Comprehensive Housing Assistance Inc.), which focused on storm drain stenciling and stream cleaning, as well as other home/yard clean up activities around the community. We're doing projects around the home, and I'm working with my kids' schools as well, on the global picture – so that we can raise our consciousness and action every day, not just one day or one week of the year.

But our actions need to be more than making eco-purchases and adding another sale day to the American calendar.

We need to believe that we can really make a difference – in our lifetime. We can reduce the impact on our environment, and create healthier living and working spaces, and reap financial benefits along the way. We can connect a sustainable lifestyle to Jewish values found in our mitzvot such as donations/charity (tzedakah), not wasting/destroying (ba’al tashchit), protecting our health (ush’martem et nafshotaichem) and our obligation to protect and cultivate the earth (l’ovdah u’l’shomrah).

There is a Jewish teaching of mitzvah goreret mitzvah, one mitzvah leads to another. Every positive action we take has a ripple effect and can inspire others to pitch in and make a difference for ourselves and our community as well.

One of the goals of spring cleaning is to decide what is valuable enough to keep and what we can do without. What will become of what we do not want? It is likely that some items can be reused or donated. Unfortunately, most of it will end up as trash. As a means to curb how much is trash is disposed of in landfills or incinerators – both of which have significant detrimental environmental impact – our modern, fast-paced and mechanized society has fixated on one solution that appears to be the quickest fix and easiest to implement: recycling. Yet, we continue to increase the amount of waste produced per person (closing in on 5 tons per person per year in the U.S.), so that even increased recycling rates put little dent on waste collected from our over-consumption.

Recycling programs have been around long enough for most of us to recognize the symbol that has become synonymous with the act: the triangle composed of three arrows that are moving in the same direction, creating a closed loop. What you may not know is that the graphic actually symbolizes the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Take note, the order is important as it is prioritized by the most desirable action first. Ideally, recycling should be the last resort, because it takes a substantial amount of energy to re-manufacture items from used materials. Additionally, because the other R’s (reduce and reuse) have largely been ignored, we find ourselves in a bigger predicament. The result of a successful 3-R program should demonstrate migration towards less waste. But the problem lies with the amount of “stuff” we purchase then throw away – or recycle. The question then remains, how can reduce our initial consumption and amount of “stuff” we own? By using the assessment we employ during spring cleaning about the worth of what we own, maybe we can improve upon the cycle of R’s to eliminate how much we have to begin with Maybe by adding a few more R’s to the cycle, we can begin to move closer to a reduced (or zero!) waste society:

• Refusewhat you do not need.
• Reducewhat you do need.
• Reusewhat is not disposable.
• Recyclewhat you cannot refuse, reduce or reuse.
• Rot(compost) the rest.

Not only would these actions reduce the negative impact on our environment, but they would provide a healthier living and working space and prove to be financially impactful as well. In addition to providing the means for creating a more sustainable lifestyle, spring cleaning projects can connect to Jewish values and mitzvot such as donations/charity (tzedakah), not wasting/destroying (ba’al tashchit), protecting our health (ush’martem et nafshotaichem) and our obligation to protect and cultivate the earth (l’ovdah u’l’shomrah).

Using spring cleaning to assess our purchasing, consumption and disposal habits can prove to be constructive, enriching and meaningful. In Judaism there is a concept called hiddur mitzvah which translates to embracing a mitzvah with complete enjoyment, fulfillment and devotion in order to experience its full beauty and meaning. Spring cleaning is not in itself a mitzvah, but by extension, if we consciously choose to connect mitzvot to this seasonal ritual, we can in turn, bring increased meaning and satisfaction to both.

But with our fast paced, more modern and mechanized society, we’ve focused on only one trait which we thought would be easiest to implement and institutionalize: recycling. Yet now we find ourselves in a bigger predicament, because as the other R’s (reduce and reuse) have been largely ignored, we’ve continued to increase the amount of waste produced per person (closing in on 5 tons per person per year in the U.S.). So even increased recycling rates put little dent on our over consumption, and do little to counter environmental impact issues, which continue to elevate every year.

I recently discovered this gem of a resource from YES Magazine, outlining 10 easy tips to help guide us closer towards zero waste. These tips could prove to be healthier as well as financially beneficial, all while reducing the negative impact we might have on our environment and community. This especially could be true when done as a group, such as at work or school.

Springtime and the Passover holiday season is often a time for starting anew, a rebirth. With this new season, let’s look to establishing a secondary meaning behind those 3 R’s that might prove meaningful:

• Renew our commitment to reducing our consumption and waste
• Restorewhat we have so that we can reuse it, and improve environmental impact
• Reclaim our land, our water and our overall environment by protecting and recycling our resources

More recent generations have become less frugal; we purchase products that make our lives simpler. It’s easy to throw things away and cheap to buy more. We have begun to recognize that our actions have far reaching impacts.

Conscious awareness of the scarcity of resources is ingrained into our Jewish DNA, but not only through our bubbes. Imbedded in our ancient texts and tradition are practices to protect and preserve our resources for future generations. Jewish law teaches us to avoid destruction and waste of natural and human-made resources. Specifically, the Talmud greatly expands on the biblical prohibition of baal tashchit, forbidding the destruction of fruit trees with an ax during wartime, to include other objects and methods of destruction—the rationale for this principle being that, if it is to be applied during the difficulties of a wartime situation, then how much more so should it apply during other times.

The anonymous work Sefer Ha-Chinuch, based on the writings of the famous 12th-century rabbi and Torah scholar Maimonides, describes the mitzvah of baal tashchit as “the way of the righteous and those who improve society,” of those who oppose all destruction and waste. Likewise, a prominent Orthodox leader of 19th-century Germany, Rabbi Hirsch, saw baal tashchit as the most basic Jewish principle of all, because it is an acknowledgment that the world is created by G-d and that its elements are lent to people to use wisely.

As stated in the Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah, G-d says to the first humans after their creation, “See My works, how beautiful and excellent they are! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it” (Ecclesiastes, 7:13). This Jewish tenet of preserving the earth for future generations resonates with modern concerns for sustainability, and frames the context for the Jewish value of tikkun olam, repairing the world. We should internalize this as a course of action to address the very viability of our own Jewish community. Protection of our resources must be a priority of and a shared responsibility within our community.

Previous generations whom we viewed as frugal were actually connecting to and espousing deeply rooted Jewish beliefs. We should acknowledge the wisdom and values of our bubbes as we work to repair and conserve for future generations. How will you make your connection? Some ideas:

1. Apply by the adage: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without
2. Replace your clothes dryer with: one sunny day, some rope or cord, and clothespins. No cost, no maintenance, no carbon footprint.
3. Rain is free. We pay for water. Collecting rainwater for landscaping and gardens will slash your water bill and help preserve infrastructure by reducing the stress on storm-water systems.

Whoever Ushers in (the month of) Adar, (Their) Joy Shall Increase!

In just a week and a half we look forward to the jubilant holiday of Purim. Megilah, costumes, groggers, skits/shpiels, Purim baskets/mishloach manot – Jewish kids and adults alike look forward to letting loose and having fun on this day.

And what a timely place for Adar in our secular calendar: engulfed in the short, cold days of the winter months, Adar arrives and beckons us to bring the light of remembrance for the miracles that occurred for our ancestors, and especially, the merit in which the miracles were deserved.

Perhaps the reason why we are told to be joyous in welcoming this month of Adar is because with it brings the holiday and miracles of Purim, marking the beginning of the season of hope and deliverance, which continues until Passover when we celebrate our redemption from slavery. Perhaps we can use this happy month of Adar and this holiday of Purim as a time for each of us to seek out our own redemption and deliverance. Perhaps it is an auspicious time to start something new – or to distance ourselves from some of the negative influences around us. May we all merit discovering increased joy and happiness in this – and every – month!

In my freshman year of high school, I remember this new sensation sweeping store shelves and crowding the airwaves and filling magazine ad space: Lunchables. Remember those? When every school kid who was “cool” toted one to the lunchroom. I never had one. Even before I kept kosher, my penny-pinching parents spit vitriol against the product because it was a bad value: paying for all that packaging, with almost no substance. For practically the same price you could buy a whole box of crackers, a pound of (unsliced) cheese and meat which would feed you for a week. Why pay all that money for a product that mostly ends up in the trash and isn’t even a satiating for one meal? Was it just my family (like it felt to me at the time), or were there others out there who’s families cared about a good value and keeping to a food budget? Yet it was such a successful product that Oscar Meyer has continued to increase production and expand the varieties steadily since the launch of in 1988.

I was recently reminded of the Lunchable sensation when tracing the fast paced track of our becoming a disposable society. I feel incredibly ancient when I start a sentence with “I remember when…”, but in the grand scheme of our time on Earth, it wasn’t THAT long ago that people would be embarrassed to serve a formal sit-down meal with paper goods (regardless of the design and color scheme). Now we have the “fancy paper” we take out for the holidays and when we have guests over. And maybe we use the forks that don’t break so easily when eating/slicing meat. And in the snack isle of the supermarkets, there are shelves and shelves of individually packaged single serving products to put into our kids lunches. If you’ve ever looked at how many ounces of crackers or cookies you get compared to buying by the box, and then looked to see how much you are paying for … it’s hard not to admit, even in our subconscious as we throw one into our cart because of convenience sake and saving a few more seconds in the morning when preparing the day’s lunches, that we aren’t getting a “good value.”

Polling working women to learn their biggest meal time hassles, Oscar Mayer in 1985 found that making bagged lunches topped the list. Recognizing that the prepared lunch category was a relatively untapped market, Oscar Mayer set out to create a product that would revolutionize the industry, create a solution for busy moms and help to boost company sales. Oscar Mayer developed a novel design to keep the three separate ingredients (meat, crackers and cheese) fresh, intact and appealing to consumers on its way to market. Using a “gift-wrapped” appearance, with compartmentalized, sealed plastic tray with viewing windows that allowed consumers to see the product inside, led to the Oscar Mayer innovation winning the Food & Drug Packaging magazine "Snack Food Package of the Year" for 1989.

Oscar Mayer started a consumer trend of increasing the amount of disposables, of waste, in our society. Whereas I still went to school with my reusable lunch bag and a reusable thermos, the tide was definitely changing with regards to what was considered "cool" and acceptable to spend money on for everyday lunches.

Maybe it’s time we take another look at our practices. Being critical of our consumption and our generated waste not only gives us added value for our pocketbook, but has rippling effects for our community vitality as well. Municipalities, businesses and organizations are adopting sustainable best practices for operations and management because of being able to more easily function in a volatile economic climate as well as repair/remediate the health of our environment by reducing impact and leaving a positive mark.

Did you know? One of the top categories of energy consumption in an office is from office equipment.

What can you do? Although you may not control what kind of equipment is on your desk or in your office space, there are several things
that you can do to reduce consumption and conserve resources. It’s as easy as changing a few settings!

Computer Intelligence

• Save energy by turning off your computer off when not in use and when you leave at the end of the day
• Set your hibernation and sleep settings to power down hardware but have quick easy access when you are in the office
• Adjust screen brightness and opt for no screen saver, which draws power to monitor
• Clean your computer case of clutter and dust to keep your computer cool and running efficiently

Print Wisely

• Choose “draft,” “fast mode” or “toner save” options to reduce ink. Printing in grayscale of 80% or less or changing resolution
  from 600 or 1200 DPI to 300 DPI will also save ink.
• Choose narrow fonts to save paper
• Shrink page margins to 0.75” or less: Shrinking margins could reduce paper consumption by 4.75% in the US according to a 2008 study at Penn State
• Print double-sided by changing printer preferences
• Print multiple pages per sheet of paper; works great for rough drafts!
• Buy recycled paper, with a higher percentage of postconsumer content (up to 100%): One ton of 100% postconsumer paper saves the equivalent of 24 trees compared to just 7 from a ton of 30%). These days, most cannot tell the difference between recycled and virgin paper!

Use these Technology Resources to Reduce your Impact:

Set Your Printer for Green-ficiency

Discover all kinds of environmentally conscious technology solutions in the Green Technology Guide

Use PC Magazine’s Seven Power-Saving Tips

Quantify benefits of better paper choices with the paper calculator

Find out What's in Your Paper

8 Tips for Greening your Print Jobs

But with our fast paced, more modern and mechanized society, we’ve focused on the one trait we thought would be easiest to implement and institutionalize and thus increase participation. But we find ourselves in a bigger predicament now, because the other R’s (reduce and reuse) have been largely ignored. We’ve increased the amount of waste produced per person (closing in on 5 tons per person per year in the U.S.), so even increased recycling rates put little dent on our over consumption, and thus increased environmental impact, issues, which are only complicated and compoundly exacerbated every year. When doing research for another article, I ran across this gem or a resource from YES Magazine from September 2011, outlining 10 tips to help the average person get on board and move closer towards zero waste. I would like to challenge that these tips require little effort, and when done as a group, say in an office space or for institutionalizing throughout a school or organization, could prove financially impactful as well as provide a healthier living/working space that reduces the negative impact we might have on our environment and community.

• Refusewhat you do not need.
• Reducewhat you do need.
• Reuseby using reusables.
• Recyclewhat you cannot refuse, reduce or reuse.
• Rot(compost) the rest.

Refuse

1. Fight junk mail. It’s not just a waste of resources, but also of time. Register to receive less at dmachoice.org, optoutprescreen.comand catalogchoice.org.

2. Turn down freebies from conferences, fairs, and parties. Every time you take one, you create a demand to make more. Do you really need another “free” pen?

Reduce

3. Declutter your home, and donate to your local thrift shop. You’ll lighten your load and make precious resources available to those looking to buy secondhand.

4. Reduce your shopping trips and keep a shopping list. The less you bring home, the less waste you’ll have to deal with.

Reuse

5. Swap disposables for reusables (start using handkerchiefs, refillable bottles, shopping totes, cloth napkins, rags, etc.). You might find that you don’t miss your paper towels, but rather enjoy the savings.

6. Avoid grocery shopping waste: Bring reusable totes, cloth bags (for bulk aisles), and jars (for wet items like cheese and deli foods) to the store and farmers market.

Recycle

7. Know your city’s recycling policies and locations—but think of recycling as a last resort. Have you refused, reduced, or reused first? Question the need and life-cycle of your purchases. Shopping is voting.

8. Buy primarily in bulk or secondhand, but if you must buy new, choose glass, metal, or cardboard. Avoid plastic: Much of it gets shipped across the world for recycling and often ends up in the landfill (or worse yet, the ocean).

Rot

9. Find a compost systemthat works for your home and get to know what it will digest (dryer lint, hair, and nails are all compostable).

10. Turn your home kitchen trash can into one large compost receptacle. The bigger the compost the more people will use it.

What will be your committments and contributions to your health and the health of our community and planet this year?

The mission-vision-values statements of our non-profit organizations focus on the necessity to provide for the welfare and needs of those in our community. Rarely do our organizations actively focus on the need to recruit and expand the internal talent to make the organization successful. The general misperception of donors is that low overhead costs maximize the effect of their donation (Pallotta, 2012). In order to make the case for “smart giving,” we need to invest in growing our own internal strength in order to role-model best practices.

Creating a strategic plan for pursuing sustainability focused operations is not intuitive: one must seek the most suitable resources and make changes in the most efficient manner. “Even if one has the desire, it takes time. With everything else that the members of our Jewish communal leadership have to do, they often don’t have time to learn this new discipline,” explains Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, founder and director of the Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network (BJEN). Addressing environmental and sustainable issues can seem overwhelming and insurmountable without knowledgeable and dedicated staff.

The benefits of employing a Sustainability Manager can have a far reaching positive impact. Sustainability management, used as the conduit for cross collaboration and communication both in and outside an organization, can address: benchmarking products used/purchased and evaluating their economic and environmental impact, educating and engaging employees to help the organization realize and achieve its sustainability goals, identifying community stakeholders and collecting their feedback about the effectiveness of initiatives, pinpointing key partners to collaborate on projects and share resources, creating sustainability metrics for evaluating and demonstrating progress and outcomes, and being innovative as new opportunities are discovered (Slafter, 2010).

The rise of executive level Sustainability positions, as tracked by analyst firm Verdantix, is directly related to operational improvement by decreasing environmental impact and business risks. Additionally, as 68% of consumers are becoming more energy and environmentally conscientious and are actively taking measures to reduce their own energy consumption, they expect that the businesses they work in and organizations they support to be doing the same. While most companies cite cost savings as the impetus for adopting more environmentally sound operations practices, 53% of the companies surveyed created sustainability best practices because it was “the right thing to do” (SustainableBusiness.com, 2011). Ultimately, these efforts are anticipated to bring about system wide savings which can be used to enhance programs and community services.

The September 2011 issue of CFO magazine states that despite a slumping economy, nearly 70% of businesses anticipate spending even more on sustainability initiatives this year. Contrary to the stereotype that people who embrace sustainability are “tree-huggers” or “die-hard” environmentalists, executives are not forgoing profits in favor of environmental initiatives; the majority report that their sustainability actions and decisions actually increased profits (O’Sullivan, 2011). Sustainability initiatives have been shown to create an influx of resources and a venue to share best management practices that improve company outcomes.

Yet according to a study published by IBM subsidiary TRIRIGA, of the 92% of organizations that have established environmental sustainability policies and goals, barely one third of these companies have bridged the “sustainability chasm” and actually achieved their sustainability objectives. The study identifies what separates the “achievers,” those companies who have successfully established environmental policies and goals, from the “planners” and “stragglers,” who have yet to do so: the ability to integrate sustainability throughout the organization. In order to successfully bridge this “sustainability chasm,” executive management must be involved and organization-wide internal teams must be used to evaluate and implement sustainability strategies. Additionally, sustainability, especially related to energy efficiency, needs to be ranked as a top priority with dedicated budgets to support the initiatives (IBM, 2011).

MITSloan Management Review identifies these successful organizations as “harvesters”, embracers of sustainable activities that directly result in operational benefits. These organizations have changed their business model to one that distinctively supports sustainability rather than attempting to impose sustainability into a pre-existing structure. A key component in this design shift is clearly articulating that the responsibility for sustainable initiatives is not marginalized to the sustainability manager alone, but rather is a collective process with support from CEOs and cross-functional senior management who all support the objectives of the sustainability plan. This collaborative approach with internal stakeholders often leads to successful collaboration and networking both inside and outside the organization (MIT, 2012).

Over time, sustainable business practices become standard best management practices. They address long-term profitability and vision by establishing procedure for routine evaluation and benchmarking to assess operations and behaviors. Through the focus of sustainability, we can implement objectives that will not just have cost saving benefits, but actually leave a positive mark on our environment. Through these added benefits, non-profit organizations have the ability to transform the way the public thinks about charity, about giving, and about how change gets made.

Being attuned towards social trends is particularly important in the non-profit world, as our organizations are lay-led, and attracting a healthy donor base is essential to continue providing services. In a customer opinion study published by The Nielson Company in 2011, 83% felt that it was important for companies to have an environmental program (MIT, 2011). Through sustainability, Jewish organizations can excite and inspire their donor base as well as identify other potential stewards through a hallmark of responsible and sustainable practices. Especially true in the non-profit sector, sources of revenue rely on generous donors and philanthropic funding. Sustainable operations have the ability to attract additional sources of funding through grants from government, local utilities and other organizations with a focus on environmental restoration and community revitalization and improvements. By acting upon and responding to sustainability issues, Jewish communal organizations can demonstrate excellence in operations, while emphasizing the Jewish values inherent in these sustainability best practices.

It is a ritual this time of year – I walk around the yard and pick up kindling that is strewn here and there. The ground is yielding a particularly rich harvest this year, what with the derecho and Sandy.

For most of the year, though, I ignore the fallen twigs, sticks and woody debris that lay scattered on my lawn. At best I would trip over them, or find them piled up at the edge of our woods, dumped there like so much waste by our lawn company. But this time of year, as the days get colder and the nights get longer, and my stove wants to be fired up, they become gold.

They are the bridge between the match and the blaze; the cold and the light.

And they teach me about how we measure "worth," and our prideful – or perhaps shameful – sense of waste.

As I seek out, and pick up these fallen limbs, one by one til my arms are full and my home secured with kindling for the next day, I wonder what else of value I miss in my daily wanderings.

What other gems have I overlooked because I have been too rushed, too focused elsewhere, too set on my narrow sense of what I needed now. Even more, what have I determined to be "waste," worthy of nothing more than to be swept aside, piled up and dumped somewhere out of sight.

I wonder about all the people I pass by throughout the days of my life, never giving them a second glance, never wondering about the gifts or wisdom or pain they may be harboring.

And I wonder about all the things we tend to throw away, or discount, that indeed may harbor the very answers we are seeking.

Can our stones and bricks and paints convert light into electricity? Can potatoes become energy packs? Can all the leaves we so noisily and annoyingly sweep up and discard be turned into compost for urban farms? Instead of selling chemical fertilizers, can our local hardware stores hire the homeless to collect restaurant and cafeteria food waste and churn it into a new black gold – healthy compost? Can the urban fruit the goes to waste in our yards and along highways be used to pay our homeless in return for their watering and tending to our street trees?

There is a precept in Judaism called bal tashkhit. It is alternately translated as "Do not waste" or "Do not destroy".

But I think for us it is best translated as: "there shall be no waste."

Nature knows no waste. Foods, plants, air, water, flesh, rocks and the very mountains themselves all cycle round.

We too need to build our human cycle of goods to match the natural cycle of goods.

And it must start with our awareness that we cannot afford to waste anything, whether it be twigs, time, money, goods or people.

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There are so many strands of discarded richness scattered around this world, strands that once gathered and saved may help ignite our own fires of imagination and help us build a better world. How good it would be to collect them.

If ever there were an opposite of Eden it would be the Wilderness – the desert of Sinai.

Eden is a world of lush greenery, radical abundance, food for the picking, a thousand-fold return for a modicum of work, good weather, beauty all around, unity of body and spirit in a bounded place.

Wilderness is barren landscape, scratchings of life, threat of hunger and thirst, soil that will not yield even with the greatest of toil, the fearsome vulnerability of boundlessness and exposure.

Yet all is not well in Eden and all is not bleak in the wilderness. For despite all the beauty and ease of Eden, it must have been a rather boring place. All was given – there was little to do beyond a bit of gardening. There were no questions for there was no questioning; no curiosity for there was no mystery. Ease yielded dullness. Which is why it couldn't last. In an endless world of boredom and dullness, life equals death. No wonder the snake, the slithering symbol of curiosity and knowledge, finally won the day.

Beyond Eden, though, is Wilderness. It demands alertness, creativity, living on the edge of survival and celebrating every success. It means struggle and disagreement, threats and vulnerability. But it just those things that yield the greatest rewards of vibrancy, achievement, pride in work and a sense of purpose.

So, the Torah tells us, humanity traded givenness and security for discovery and striving.

Still, trading ease for imagination and safety for exposure is not the kind of bargain most of us would choose. Which is where Sukkot comes in, mediating between these two extremes.

Wouldn't it be grand if there could be a melding of Eden and Wilderness: a bungee cord of sorts that holds us and retrieves us when we venture too far; a safety net that catches us when we fly too high; a pliable, porous spiritual skin that stretches as we grow, allowing us to touch and experience the world beyond ourselves without losing our own boundaries and the integrity that defines us.

Such is the symbol and meaning of the Sukkah.

“This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come;" Leviticus 23 tells us. "Celebrate it in the seventh month.Live in booths for seven days: All citizens in Israel are to live in such shelters so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

Rabbinic tradition tells us that it doesn't matter what the sides of the sukkah are made of. They can be wood or stone, woven grass or the side of an elephant. For any and all of those represent the true walls, the walls of peace, the wings of God, the cloud of glory, that surround and protect us as we make our way through the wilderness of life.

The sukkah reminds us that though we cannot still be in Eden, Eden in some sense can still be with us. We cannot and will not give up the vulnerability of a vibrant, questing life, but, Sukkot wants to teach us, God's presence will wrap itself around us to escort us as we wander in the wilderness beyond. No wonder one of the main traditions of Sukkot is the mitzvah of hospitality. Included in this divine, mobile embrace are our ancestors, our tradition, our family, our friends. We do not travel through life alone.

Still, the sukkah is not impregnable. It is not bullet-proof or weather-proof or pain-proof. It is not all ease and abundance. It is, in short, not Eden. But it is the next best thing: a buffer that helps blunt the worst we must weather, a comforting cloak that envelops us as we move. And while we are asked to dwell in it only seven days, its presence travels with us wherever we go.

Shocking statisticsA recent issue of National Geographic reports that only 1% of the world’s water is both fresh and accessible.
In the big picture, fresh water is a precious and finite resource.

WHY CONSERVE

Marylanders have access to an abundance of water much of the time, and we’re accustomed to having water available at the twist
of a faucet. U.S. citizens use approximately 205 billion gallons of water a day for household, industrial, and agricultural uses.
Unlike the dry western areas of the country, in this area we often overlook the importance of conserving water. It's important to
remember that water conservation is not just for times of water shortage. Conserving water reduces wear and tear on major
infrastructure such as water and wastewater treatment plants and the distribution systems that deliver water to consumers, and
can postpone or eliminate the need for making major investments in new infrastructure. As our population continues to grow,
demands on our precious water resources increase. In order to ensure adequate water resources for our future needs, we must put
conservation measures into effect now. Conserving water is simple and inexpensive!

The numbers add up!

You can find more ways to conserve on this fact sheet from the Maryland Department of the Environment. Here are some quick tips:

INDOORS

Find and fix leaks:Fixing leaks saves an average of 10 gallons per day per household!

Replace old toilets: WaterSense models saves an average household* almost 30 gallons per day, up to $260 a year!

Upgrade washers:saves an average household* 27 gallons per day. Also saves energy and uses less detergent!

*Based on a four-person household.

OUTDOORS

Right plant, right place:Match plants to the conditions in your yard – if plants are well-suited to their place in your yard, you won’t need to water so much.**

Cultivate your soil:Add compost and mulch to your beds to slow the weeds and hold water near plant roots, where it’s needed.**

Reduce water waste: Drip irrigation systems avoid shooting water up into the air, where much of it evaporates, and to the roots, where the plants need it.**

** Water savings vary depending on the size and design of your landscape.

How to save billions: Be a conservation practitioner in less than a minute!

A fellow colleague shared this fascinating and entertaining video about how to conserve resources when drying your hands. After watching this short 4 minute video, all you’ll have to remember is “Shake and Fold”. Will you join in this effort? We already have several practitioners in our buildings!

TED Talk: How to use ONE paper towel: http://davidwarlick.com/vidaday/?p=577

Bottle versus Tap – the facts!

For those of us looking to save money (and who isn’t, these days?), drinking tap water instead of bottled water is the smart choice. Bottled water costs up to 1,000% more than tap water. Add to that the environmental cost of the plastic, manufacturing, distribution and disposal of those bottles and we think you’ll agree: with tap water as clean and tasty as ours, why not save money and be green at the same time?

Here is my dilemma:

Today's economic engine is fired by stuff. It is the production, manufacturing, and distribution of stuff that keeps our marketplace humming. That is what this economic downturn is reminding us. When we stop buying, the economy starts tanking. But to buy more stuff degrades the environment. More stuff equals more mining, more manufacturing, more housing, more land development, more stores, more driving, more shopping, more throwing away, more waste.

To save the economy, then, we have to buy more stuff. To buy more stuff, though, is to harm our world.

Which forces the question: How do we break this cycle? If we wish to save the environment, ourselves, and our finances, what will drive tomorrow's economy?

There seem to be two possible solutions: (1) either we should make stuff more-efficiently, ie, more sustainably; or (2) we should build an economy not based on stuff. Or both.

Few of us want to envision a future built on "less." We live in a world that imagines that more is more, more is better. Almost everyone, from the most developed lands to the least 'emerging markets,' want more. And how can we say no to that? It would be both mean-spirited and fruitless for us Americans, who are but 5% of the world's population and yet consume 25% of the world's resources, to tell others they cannot aspire to the quality of life that we live here.

In this vision, then, if world consumption grew to match US consumption, we would need multiple earths to meet that demand. Since we don't carry around extra earths in our pockets, we will have to think of something else.

One suggestion is to make more stuff than we do now in better ways. Efficiency and recycling, cradle-to-cradle manufacturing, is one suggested solution. In this view, we dare to imagine that no matter how many of us there are, and no matter how big our appetites, if we can devise cyclical, sustainable, waste-free ways of manufacturing and consuming, all will be well. Done right, there will be enough money and resources for all.

I do not doubt that efficiency is a critical and necessary piece of the puzzle. Doing more with less is almost always advisable. And we know it is achievable to some extent. Years ago, California instituted energy efficiency procedures. In response, over the past 30 years, its energy consumption per capita has plateaued, remaining flat at just under 8,000 kwh per person, while the US average per capita usage has soared to 12,000 kwh. At the same time, California's average per capita GDP has surpassed the US average. (source: California Energy Commission; via Congressman Bartlett's power point).

And yet the question remains: is this sufficient?

First, there is the challenge by some that GDP is not an appropriate measure of a country's health, indeed that a country's quality of life can be sinking even as the economic indicators are rising . (For more information on this, and the alternative measure of GPI, check out Redefining Progress at www.rprogress.org. I will write more on this in another entry.) To be fair, the cradle-to-cradle view leans more to GPI than GDP. Still, is that enough?

Second, no matter how efficiently we live, no matter how creatively we stretch the natural laws of the earth's carrying capacity, we will eventually bump up against its limits, and be constrained by them.

And third, even if there were no natural limits to expansion and growth, are there not spiritual limits? Don't we need to ask at some point: Are we there yet? Isn't this enough? One quick example: over the last 30 years, America's average house doubled in size. Doubled. What was acceptable and sufficient, and perhaps even comfortable thirty years ago, is small and tight and unacceptable today. Yet today's households – the number of people living in these houses – are smaller. One report says: "As household size has decreased, the floor area per capita has increased by more than a factor of 3, from 286 square feet per capita in 1950 to 847 square feet per capita in 2000."

Of course, this trend may be temporarily reversing itself during this recession, as family and friends move in with family and friends. But that may be just the point: larger houses, representing our overall bloated consumer habits, didn't make us happier. In fact, one could argue that because we pursued more than we needed, we ended up with less than we had. And as the AIG bonus fiasco has shown us, those at the very top of the mess have developed a tin ear to the ethics of money. Do we really want people running our economy who only or mostly think of money and short-term profit, regardless of risk, rectitude, righteousness or social justice?

According to some happiness or satisfaction surveys, even before this recent economic downturn, Americans were no happier than we were decades ago (and perhaps a little less so). Nor are we the most satisfied nation on the planet.

Spiritually, then, even if we could have ever more, without cease, is that what we would want? Is that what would make us happy? Is that what our purpose in life is?

Once we pass a threshold of comfort, health and viability, how much do we need? At what point do we say, enough?

Which takes us back to our question: what will fire the enginen of our economy if not stuff?
Can we build another model?

Can it be driven by the services we provide one another: teaching, nursing, protecting, research, companionship, repairing, fixing, developing, curing, entertaining, transporting, etc. instead of making unnecessary stuff?

It is reported that Americans spend $2.6 billion on wrapping paper a year. What if we put our gifts in reusable bags (saving both the earth and our money) and instead, took the savings and with it, renovated our schools, and created community gardens, retrofitted old factories into green manufacturers, and increased and improved our social work, police and home aide work force?

Stuff will continue to be made to the extent that all these services, and our needs, require it. But wouldn't it be better if we didn't make stuff just so we can make a living but rather made a living with a minimum of unnecessary stuff. A quote in the Baltimore Sun business section on Tuesday, March 17, page 10, talking about the hard times an up-scale clothing store is going through, reads: "You have to try and encourage a 'wants'-based shopper in America and give people a reason to go out and make that purchase."

Is that really what we want to do? Waste our money on things we don't need so it can go to who-knows-where, instead of using that same money to do all the things we as a society say we need to do but can't afford? At what price is such a "want-based" society? What does it cost us in children who go to bed hungry, families without support systems and an environment that continues to degrade?

What would a healthy society, and a healthy economy, not based on wants and stuff really look like? I would love to know the answer.

We need to see this recession as a game-changer. It is not just something we need to get through so we can return to the good old days. We need to use this crisis to see the underlying ills that brought it on and build a new, renewable, economic model, to heal the earth, protect our bodies and enrich our souls.

Then, all the pain we are all going through will have been worth it.

Seaworld, Busch Gardens to Eliminate Plastic Bags

SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment is to eliminate plastic shopping bags from the 10 theme parks it operates by the end of the year. The move will make it the largest theme park operator to make this commitment, according to the company, whose parks include Busch Gardens, Discovery Cove, Adventure Island and Sesame Place.

When the initiative is fully implemented, park gift shops will offer paper bags made from 100 percent recycled paper, and give guests the option to buy reusable bags. SeaWorld hopes the move will keep an estimated four million plastic bags from entering landfills and the environment each year.

About 1.4 billion tons of trash, including plastic bags, enters the ocean annually. Wildlife such as endangered sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, one of their favorite foods, Seaworld says.

SeaWorld hopes the move will help these marine animals and act as a model for the amusement park industry.

The company began exploring the concept at SeaWorld San Diego in 2011, when the park discontinued the use of plastic gift bags to mark the opening of its new Turtle Reef attraction. SeaWorld Orlando is eliminating the bags this month in conjunction with the opening of its new attraction, TurtleTrek.

SeaWorld and Coca-Cola have also introduced paper cups for guests at the parks, under a 10-year partnership. The cups are made with 85 percent renewable resources. Guests use more than 13 million paper cups each year throughout the 10 parks.

In 2008 SeaWorld – then known as Busch Entertainment Corp. – introduced a raft of sustainability initiatives including using only plastic utensils from renewable sources, and feeding certain captive animals with only sustainably sourced fish.

Consumers should expect less access to single-use plastic carrier bags and bottles in 2012, according to Plastics Today. Curbs on shopping bag use, including taxes and outright bans, began to spring up in 2010 and continued through 2011.

Likewise plastic bottles came under fire in places such as the Grand Canyon, which enacted an outright ban on bottled water last year. The National Park Service spent nearly $290,000 to install 10 water refill stations inside the park. Park concessionaires can still sell other bottled beverages. Disposable bottles account for 20 percent of the park’s waste and 30 percent of its recyclables, according to the Park Service.

]]> https://beta.jewcology.com/2012/05/eliminating-plastic-bags-and-water-bottles/feed/ 0 https://beta.jewcology.com/2012/05/how-many-old-gadgets-do-you-have-in-your-drawers/ https://beta.jewcology.com/2012/05/how-many-old-gadgets-do-you-have-in-your-drawers/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 09:42:32 +0000 http://jewcology.org/2012/05/how-many-old-gadgets-do-you-have-in-your-drawers/ You’re not the only one eyeing the newest gadgets and looking to trade in last year’s model:

According to the latest data from Recon Analytics, Americans top the international charts in frequency of switching cell phones at every 21.7 months.
And in an on-line survey* from December 2011 by phonearena.com, when asked: “How often do you change your phone?” the responses indicate that
there is a significant population who don’t even wait that long before picking up the latest gadget:

23.4% Less than a year

31.77% Every year

32.04% Every two years

12.79% More than two years

*(out of 1876 votes)

Time to give them a new home!

If you’re like almost 75% of the population, chances are you’re storing some old small electronics like phones, chargers, and MP3 players in a drawer someplace. As technology becomes outdated with the newest market trends, we tend to store the old ones. Believe it or not, there is actually a lot of value in the parts of your old electronics, and they can be refurbished or recycled! As part of preserving the environment for future generations, donate your electronics to a meaningful program that promotes proper recycling and disposal of electronics devices.

Safety tips for electronic disposal:

• Permanently remove personal and sensitive information
• Dispose of only via designated electronic recycling/donation drop-off locations; the batteries and heavy metals found in electronics are toxic
• Click here for tips from the Federal Trade Commission and to find local disposal and donation locations

Did you know? Only 69% of households in the “Industrialized World” countries have one land line telephone. Whereas 96% of households in “Industrialized World” countries have at least one mobile phone account, and of those homes, the average number of phones per household is 2.7.

In the “Emerging World” countries, 52% of households have one land line telephone, whereas 59% of households have at least one mobile phone. Even in the poorest
regions (often beyond electricity) about 200 million households have one mobile phone shared as the family phone.

When added together, the total number of households that have at least one mobile phone is 1.25 Billion, with a total of 4.2 Billion connected mobile phones in use,
connecting over 4.4 Billion people!

Data courtesy of Household Penetration Rates for Technology Across the Digital Divide

Quote of the week:

"We are a Star Wars civilization [with] Stone Age emotions, … medieval institutions… and god-like technology. And this god-like technology is dragging us forward in ways that are totally unpredictable." E. O. Wilson in an interview with Grist.org.

Not a bad assessment. We know our emotions and our structures lag far behind our curiosity, imagination and scientific discoveries.

The question is how do we – and the world – stay safe while we build the future of our dreams?

My sense: stay with the basics -

* care for each other – remembering the legacy of the past, honoring those here today and protecting those to come tomorrow;

* pause a moment to think things through; then talk about it with those who might agree AND those who might not agree;

* be passionate but not impatient

* speak out boldly and often when necessary (E.O. Wilson also asked in that interview why the youth of today weren't on the streets protesting to protect the world that their leaders and parents are consuming before their eyes? Environmentalism was a cause of social protests in the '70's. Why not now?

Add your own wisdom and spread the word.

Below is the talk I had the privilege of delivering today at the Maryland Presbyterian Church on Providence Road, in honor of Earth Day.

Hope you all are celebrating – the earth is, with all this wonderful rain.

“Midrash” is the ancient rabbinic technique of taking tantalizing verses in the Bible and creatively unfolding and reshaping them, tucking them a bit here and tweaking them a bit there, until voila, a new meaning emerges that is deftly applied to the author’s rhetorical purpose.

The text this morning comes from such a midrash on Ecclesiastes 7:13.

“Consider all that God has done: Who can make straight what he has made crooked?”

The text’s meaning is clear. It proclaims: How powerful God is! No one and nothing can countermand his word. Yet, along came a rabbi of old who decided that he could tweak the verse just a touch – changing the meaning of just one word – and thus teach an important lesson. In doing so, he created the midrash that has become the anthem of the Jewish environmental movement today.

Why, this anonymous rabbi-of-old asked, would the God of goodness make something crooked, twisted, broken?

Rather, the verse must be referring at the end not to God, but to man: “Consider all that God has done: who will be able to straighten again that which he – mankind – makes crooked?”

With this one change in mind, from “he” meaning “God”, to “he” meaning man, the rabbi creates the following story:

"When the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first human, He took him by the hand and led him around the garden, showing him all the trees.

God said to the human, 'See all my works, how good and beautiful they are? Know that all I have created, I created for you. But be mindful that you do not spoil and destroy My world – for if you do, there will be no one after you to set it right."

This is a stunning sixth-century rabbinic warning that teaches us that as big and magnificent and divinely-wrought as the natural world is, it is not indestructible, not immune to degradation by human hands.

The midrash teaches us that all creation, in all its detail, in all its particularity, is God’s work, glorious but vulnerable. Like a proud artist giving a tour of their studio, God took the human by the hand and showed him each and every tree and animal and stream and hill and the ways they all fit together.

And the human was told, all this is for you! All this I did for you! Remember, it is not impervious to harm, or steeled against ruin. It is the work that I love. Be sure to treat it well.

Note that the midrash notably and I would argue intentionally does not say: “All this I give to you.” It rather says: “All this I made for you.” This world is here for us to cherish, and use, and even improve. The human is to acknowledge it, admire it, be humbled and grateful and awed by it. It is ours to live fully with, but it is not ours to possess.

As big and magnificent and important as we humans are, we need to be humble about our place in creation. We have been given great power, and great latitude in how we use that power. We need to be mindful and deliberate and discerning so that we use our knowledge, our appetites, our curiosity, and our power for good and not for evil, for growth and not destruction.

Along with this message, it seems to me that this story is pointing to yet something a bit deeper: that in the biblical imagination, nature is not just a gift, or commodity, or necessary accessory to the good life. It is the very currency, the language, that God uses to speak with humanity. And therefore, it is the currency and language that we should use to speak back to God.

In the Bible – if we are good and God is pleased, the rains are soft and timely and come in just the right amount. If we are good and God is pleased, the land is blessed and giving; the harvests are bountiful and filling.

If we are not good and God is not pleased, the rain is hard and damaging, or sparse or absent; the land is parched and unyielding; the harvests are meager.

Deuteronomy 11 says:

¹³ If you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— ¹⁴ then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. ¹⁵ I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

But if not, if ¹⁶ … you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. ¹⁷ Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. ¹⁸

We tend to dismiss these words as quaint, outdated theological beliefs of cause and affect. After all, we moderns don’t believe as the ancients did – we know droughts and floods, extreme weather and climate change don’t come as punishment from God in response to our bad moral behavior.

Perhaps not. But it is true that our behaviors affect the natural world, that how we manage and manipulate the environment determines the abundance, availability, health and distribution of the goodness of the natural world.

It’s true that hording and wasting, taking too much and returning too little, poisoning and trashing our waters, our land and our air upsets the ebb and flow of nature and the very systems we depend on.

So, while the Bible speaks of the necessity living in good relation to God, we can extrapolate that to mean living in good relation to God’s world. That is what the midrash is teaching. Whether through theology or natural law, failure to respect the vibrancy, integrity and moral laws of nature will bring havoc to the earth and all its inhabitants. And it is we humans who will be held responsible. And, as the midrash says, there will be no one after us to set it right. And it is in the way we treat nature that our devotion to God is measured and weighed.

The midrash continues with a haunting vision:

To what might this be likened, it asks:

To a woman who is pregnant and gives birth in jail. The child is raised in jail; grows up in jail, and his mother dies in jail. One day, the king was travelling by the jail, and as he passed by the son shouts out to him and says: Oh King: it was in this prison that I was born, and it is here that I was raised, and here I live: but I ask you, by what sin have I earned this punishment of being here? And the King answers, Because your mother gave birth to you here.”

If we destroy the world, if we create out of it a prison of destruction, we curse our children with living in that destruction. That is something we cannot do.

How do we avoid it? In the very first chapters of the Bible, we read a phrase, a formula, that helps guide us in the task of living well with God’s gift, and of avoiding the fate we dare not bring about.

In Chapter Two of Genesis, in the story of the creation of Adam, the Bible tells us that:

“The LORD God took the man he had made and put him in the Garden of Eden “to work it and care for it.”

It is in this pairing of verbs, this yin/yang of purpose, this balance of consumer and protector; manipulator and preserver, that the vision of how humans should and must relate to the earth is revealed and measured.

L’ovdah ul’shomrah. To till and to tend; to work and protect. These are not to be seen as two separate, sequential tasks, doing one now and the other later: mountaintop removal here and preserving the Tetons there. Our agriculture, manufacturing, energy production, recycling, waste disposal all must be a piece of preserving and not just consuming. That is the message of living right in the Bible. That is the message we in the faith community must know and speak.

This, then, is the task of the faith community:

· To live in sync with the flow and pulse and patterns of the world

· To live humbly and joyously with God’s awesome gift

· To advance and preserve the work of creation

· To be witness to the truth that living our lives this way is a most blessed and purposeful way to be.

· And to teach the lessons of the midrash to our neighbors and children, our businessmen and politicians, our farmers and bankers, and to ourselves, saying:

'See all God’s work, how good and beautiful it is? Know that all God created, he created for us. But we must be mindful that we do not spoil and destroy it – for if we do, there will be no one after us to set it right."

We often hear that hametz – the puffed up, leavened food that we banish from our homes on Passover – represents the less attractive parts of being, our puffed up egos that slowly bloat the boundaries of self and ooze onto the protected space of others. Or the encrusted coating of pride or psychological armor that builds up over time to protect our wounded, vulnerable inner core but that needs to be periodically scraped away so that our souls can breathe and be restored once more.

I like that view and have taught that in years past.

But I am thinking of hametz in a slightly different way this year. What if we thought of hametz not as bad, but as "dirt"?

Mary Douglas, the eminent anthropologist (of Purity and Danger fame), taught that "dirt" was not a thing but a concept, not an essence but an attribution. Dirt is not something that can be scientifically catalogued the way pathogens or bacteria are. You cannot put something under a microscope to see if it is "dirt" or not.

"Dirt" is stuff out of place, something existing where somebody thinks it shouldn't. Just as a weed is a plant growing where you don't want it, so dirt is something being where you don't want it.

This explains a lot. It explains why, for example, when there are clothes all over your son's bedroom floor, you may think the place is "dirty" while he thinks the clothes are just arrayed on the biggest shelf in the room. Or why a child's hair-clippings found in a mother's keepsake box are precious whereas that same hair found on the bathroom floor is a mess.

Which helps me – and challenges me – when I think of hametz.

What is the right place, and time, for things? Why are things that were perfectly good for us yesterday forbidden to us today? How did this thing that is a staple of life on other occasions become so virulent on Passover that it must be totally banished, or at least nullified and transformed?

Perhaps, as Avram suggests, it is a matter of degree. A bit of pride, a bit of ambition, a bit of selfishness is not bad. They are even essential. How else do we build and discover and push beyond contemporary limits without the urgings of ambition or pride, or genuine curiosity? But what dangers lie, as well, in uncontrolled pride, greed and voyeurism? And where do we draw the lines?

Perhaps Pesah is that annual season of line-drawing, re-setting the boundaries, of cleaning out the expanding, crusty accretions of too much pride, too much desire. Perhaps Pesah should be seen as a radical reboot, a cleansing that offers a stark exercise trimming back the excess and re-evaluating the value that guides these impulses. What, Pesah might be asking us, are all those urgings for? What service should we properly put them to?

Perhaps that, too, is why Pesah is a week long. We could not bear to strip ourselves of our protective coatings, rid ourselves of the armor of pride, and return, so exposed, to the unchanged rigors and dangers of the world. We need a week to live in this pristine world of the wilderness, in the company of each other, in a taste of a place where all is in balance, where manna comes with the dew, where the world protects us. We need a week to take in this gift of freedom, to bask unafraid in the presence of each other, to understand where – when we return to the world of hametz – we should direct the power of our urgings.

And then, with that as our armor, return to tangle, or tango, with hametz.

I had the privilege earlier this week of teaching at the Anacostia (DC) Watershed Stewards Academy. This version of the course is specifically designed for faith leaders. And I can tell you that there is no better place to study the first lines of the book of Genesis (describing the emergence of the world out of the primordial waters) than with a bunch of spirited, spiritual water activists.

We spoke about how, in the biblical view (as in other tales of creation), life begins in water. So it is with our modern story of evolution, life emerging from the seas. So it is with the story of each human being, each mammal and even each egg-born being. All emerge from a life-giving, life-protecting sac of liquid.

Water, we discussed, is the culture of all life and the world's great purifier. Fire is also a purifier, but it tends to destroy in the process. Though some things are purged and improved through fire, living things tend to perish in it. Water, though not without risk, cleanses and restores us, ridding us of our unwanted past and preparing us for a desired future. How awful, then, when we pollute the purifier.

But there was another insight that emerged in that discussion. About darkness. The scene of creation is set as follows:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God sweeping over the waters – God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day.

Why, someone asked, was only the light good, and not the darkness too?

Perhaps, it was suggested, because light was a new creation, something novel and unknown, something that had to be tested out, tried on for size, taken out for a spin to see how it felt. And the answer was, it felt good.

Darkness, on the other hand, was already present, a known quantity, and a conundrum. Was it a product of creation or the absence of creation? Was it part of life or the essence of nothingness?

And once light came along, why was there still darkness? Light, after all, infuses and banishes darkness. Once light was created, darkness was vanquished, destroyed, chased from every corner of creation. The rabbis emphasize this, saying the primordial light of the first day – unlike the light of the sun of the fourth day – filled the universe from one end to the other. And yet the text speaks of God separating the light from the darkness, reining in the light, and reintroducing darkness into the world of creation.

Even if this darkness is not "good," the text seems to be saying, it does have a purpose. It is not the same as the darkness that came before. That darkness was chaos, enveloping everything. This darkness is contained, sharing time and space with light. That darkness hovered over all, defined everything. This darkness is tamed, has boundaries and is part of the breathing of the universe, the rhythm of life. It is a relief, a rest, the incubator of life.

Most of all, this darkness is different because it has a name given by God. This darkness is Night.

As part of the divine cosmic scheme, no matter how deep the Night, it ultimately gives way to the light of Day.

So we hope, at the dawn of spring.

Green fairs. Composting. Community gardens. Choice parking spots for hybrid cars. It feels like the homepage of globalissues.org. It is the newest reality in Jewish Baltimore. THE ASSOCIATED: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore is spearheading the effort.

It started almost a decade ago, when a group of top ASSOCIATED lay leaders and professionals got together to see how they could reduce our environmental impact and make more efficient and sustainable the internal operations of THE ASSOCIATED itself, explains Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, head of the Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network (BJEN), who was one of the earliest greening pioneers in the Baltimore Jewish community. Those first steps focused on upgrading lighting in THE ASSOCIATED’s downtown Krieger Building to more energy-efficient products, establishing a recycling program, purchasing Energy Smart-compliant computers that use up to 40 percent less energy than other systems and cutting down on paper use. Those first steps won THE ASSOCIATED The Green Nonprofit of the Year award by The Baltimore Business Journal in 2008.

Today, says Cardin, "the program has blossomed to make sustainability a part of the mission and culture of THE ASSOCIATED."

No longer is the question, "should we?" but "how can we" reduce our carbon footprint. Today, nearly every ASSOCIATED and agency building – from the Jewish Community Centers to the Jewish Museum of Maryland – offers single-stream recycling. Last year, THE ASSOCIATED celebrated the establishment of its first LEED-certified building with the opening of the new Comprehensive Housing and Assistance, Inc. (CHAI) building on Park Heights Avenue. The addition to the Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center last summer was completed using sustainable design and construction practices. All buildings have gone through lighting upgrades and waste reduction programs are in place.

Earlier this year, THE ASSOCIATED officially launched a Sustainability Committee and hired a full-time professional, Aleeza Oshry (geologist by degree and former coordinator of the Going Green Campaign), to oversee the initiative under the auspices of THE ASSOCIATED’s Community Planning and Allocations Department.

"This movement has been years in the making," says Lee M. Hendler, a trustee of the Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Fund that gave one of the first grants to support Jewish Baltimore’s sustainability effort. "Movements, however, take years to develop momentum. … The Meyerhoff family has been invested in this issue and believed that seeding – every pun intended – a grant to jumpstart the process would perhaps enable the agenda to have a more prominent place." Hendler says she is excited to see the community embracing this priority.

Oshry’s new role, explains Cardin, is the necessary next step to making Jewish Baltimore a greener place. She says living an environmentally sustainable lifestyle and creating a sustainable operating style in business is not intuitive and it is not easy to educate one’s self, find the most suitable resources and make changes in the most efficient manner.

"Even if one has the desire, it takes time. With everything else that the members of our Jewish communal staff and lay leaders have to do, they don’t have time to learn this brand new discipline and field. This is where Aleeza comes in," says Cardin.

Oshry is focusing on creating more awareness of the benefits of sustainability and on building more resources around sustainability for our community. This includes working in conjunction with pre-existing ASSOCIATED programs – like Kayam Farm – and likewise pulling together key leaders and community stakeholders to respond to sustainability topics and move them forward. For example, under her guidance and that of Sustainability Committee chairs Cardin and Benjamin Greenwald, local synagogues and agencies are crafting their own sustainability goals and THE ASSOCIATED is assisting in their implementation. Through the committee, work groups have been established to focus on education, waste management and funding. There are plans for a sustainability web platform in the fall, which will enable individuals, non-profits and businesses to track their sustainability progress.

"We passionately believe that Baltimore can serve as a model for the Federation system and other Jewish communities," says Cardin.

Everyone can get involved. Everyone plays a role in the sustainability of our community. Oshry keeps a webpage, www.associated.org/sustainability, with a listing of select upcoming green-focused events in Jewish Baltimore. The page also houses "quick links," to help interested parties connect with local and relevant resources to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

"It is literally stated in the beginning of our Narrative – in the creation story in Genesis 2:15: "‘And G-d placed the human in the Garden of Eden to work it and protect it,’" says Hendler. Today, according to Rafi Rone, Director of Jewish and Israel Initiatives for the Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds and a member of THE ASSOCIATED’s new Sustainability Committee, that ancient precept has become a Baltimore reality – a permanent part of our community’s focus.

Says Rachel Siegal, Assistant Director of the Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center: "Due to the strength, wisdom and planning power of THE ASSOCIATED, Baltimore is uniquely positioned … to move an entire community forward on the sustainability agenda."

Right on time, the peepers have returned.

They greeted me after megillah reading last night, singing their chorus of longing into the soft, warm March air.

Well, one did at any rate. It was, as usual, a lonesome call of an avant-garde male, out before the rest, desperately hoping that at least one of the pond's she-frogs has emerged from her hibernation seeking a long-delayed, refreshing, gratifying tryst.

It is a daring audition. But then again, pioneers are, by definition, singular folk, carried aloft and ahead by their visions and passion, fueled by the same breath that gives wing to their song. If they are right, or lucky, or both, their solo turns into a rousing, transporting chorus that lifts the spirit and well-being of all. So it promises again to be for this little fellow, and his awakening cohort of lovers.

In 2008, they emerged around March 5. In 2009, around March 7. Last year, no doubt the same time (I came back from Cambridge around Purim-time and heard the peepers in full chorus then). I know because I mentioned them in this blog.

The cycles of the seasons are comforting, reassuring. It seems prudent to give up all expectations of a late-winter blistering blizzard (I will shelve that hope and dust it off next winter). But that disappointment is soothed by the peeking out of spring crocuses and daffodils, the heightening chatter of birds, the lengthening of daylight (growing by a hefty 2.5 minutes a day!) and the spring leap of the clock this weekend.

One more sign that spring is pressing hard to come: sunrise is no longer visible from my south-easterly-facing study. It is time, then, to retire my snow-starved boots, crank up the compost, clean out and close up the forlorn wood-burning stove, shed the pleasures of cozily hunkering down and ramp up for the joys of … Passover preparations.

Once upon a time, we knew, deep inside, the magic of fruit trees.

The trees of life and the knowledge of good and evil in the Book of Genesis were not pine or poplar or cypress. They were fruit trees. The dove did not bring back an ash leaf or elm bough but an olive branch.

The laws of the Torah that urge us to avoid waste and limit what we disturb in the process of building, come from the command not to destroy fruit trees in the pursuit of war. Other trees may be made into battlements and weapons of war, but not fruit trees. In a time of siege, in a time of such need, fruit trees may not be destroyed or harvested for their wood.

The lesson: we may not destroy what we will need tomorrow in response to the desperations of today.

The rabbis extended this preferential treatment of fruit trees.

They asked, why does the Torah (Exodus 26:15) require the pillars of the Tabernacle be made out of acacia wood? To teach us a lesson. Though God could have chosen any tree for the construction of the Tabernacle, God chose the acacia, a tree with no beneficial fruit or product save the wood itself.

So too, we humans, when selecting wood to build our homes, should not choose a fruit tree. To do otherwise would engage in discretionary, avoidable destruction.

It is not hard to extract a more global message: in the act of building civilization, we must uproot bits of nature. That is unavoidable. But we should do so only with the most efficient of materials, the least disruptive of methods, and in ways that allow us to be nurtured as much tomorrow as we are today.

When my son moved to NYC last summer, he took the furniture from his DC-sized area apartment to his Manhattan-sized apartment. And – unfortunately – discovered that it didn't all fit.

So, like the native New Yorker he is, he put the excess furniture out on the curb. Three hours later, it was gone. I had earlier seen a man on the street stop, set his briefcase down beside my son's flotsam (or more properly, jetsam), call someone to describe his find to, all the while assuming that protective, this-is-mine-don't-even-think-about-it stance.

When I went back outside a half hour later, the furniture, and the man, were gone. You gotta love New York.

It handily solves one of life's persistent questions: What to do with things we don't want, perfectly good things that too often find their way to the trash, or clutter up our otherwise perfectly fine homes, all because we don't know how to properly get rid of them.

Thankfully, more and more, across the world, we are re-creating the best of New York City's casual street trade in a more organized, yet equally robust recycling, re-using, and re-purposing marketplace.

I recently read about Bookcrossing.com, a way to recycle your books, track where they go and see who else reads them in a worldwide book-sharing community. (You go to the site, download bookcrossing ID labels, slap them on the books you want to give away, and then either release them into the wind or register them on the site for others to request).

There is of course the old standby, Freecycle.org, the local on-line neighbor-to-neighbor free marketplace that allows you to post stuff you want to give away and find stuff you want to get. It is, according to their website, made up of "5,022 groups with 8,878,732 members around the world." Pretty impressive. And you can get anything from open bags of kitty litter to living room suites.

Baltimore also has our very own Loading Dock, a national model for re-cycling and re-using building and construction materials. You can get or donate windows, appliances, flooring, paint, most anything that is still in good working order that you would otherwise have to pay to haul away. (Baltimore County, at least, does not collect construction debris in its trash or recycling rounds.)

And there are of course the old stand-bys: flea markets and garage sales.

There are some folks who worry about lost manufacturing jobs and a hit to the economy that such re-use might have. The truth is, as long as the population is still growing, we will need more – not just re-used – stuff. But we also know that we cannot keep digging things out of the earth for materials and energy and think that is the best way to give people jobs.

Re-cycling and re-purposing can also be a growing jobs sector. Someone has to drive the trucks and manage the inventory and keep the books and do the advertising; and someone has to demolish the old and rebuild the new.

What is wonderful about many, if not most, of these enterprises, is that they start out home-grown, work through the affordable services of the internet, and build community at the same time. They don't take an MBA or lots of start-up capital. They take passion, caring and faith in the goodwill of people.

I do have one question though: What do people do with their old, shabby clothes? Not the kind that you can give away to Goodwill or take to the Hadassah re-sale shop. And certainly not the kind that you can sell via a consignment shop.

I mean those socks with holes and t-shirts that are threadbare… those things that years ago might have been made into rag rugs or used to clean silver.

I have enough cleaning rags, thank you. And we have enough quilting squares to keep my daughter busy for years. So the question remains, how do we recycle fabric that otherwise just goes into the landfills? Old kitchen towels, underwear, totally unwearable and unsaleable stuff hanging in closets.

If you have an answer, or better, a vendor, who can solve this dilemma for me, please do let me know.

I will gladly share the advice.

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to Israel, which serendipitously coincided with the season of Tu B'shvat, the day that marks the new year of the trees. Since the times of the early rabbis, this holiday has been a sacred day on the Jewish calendar.

In modern Israel, it is a day of joy, when school children go out into the fields and countryside to plant trees, put on plays and celebrate the glories of a returning spring. Friends and family visit each other, exchanging gifts of dried figs and dates, almonds and apricots. Wherever we went, we were the recipients of the abundance of these baskets and platters of this vernal visiting.

Off a side road from Tel Aviv to Be'er Sheva, at the farm of Ariel Sharon, we saw that almond trees really do burst into blossom almost overnight. Adorned in white petals with a pinkish hue, almond trees stand, a bit demur yet all puffed up, looking like a shy but proud debutant being presented to the world in her poofy crinolined skirt. All around, the land just smiles, covered with a profusion of wildflowers.

What struck me throughout these quiet celebrations – though why it took me all this time to fully grasp this, I don't know – is that Tu B'shvat is not a holiday about trees. It is not like Arbor Day, a broad celebration of the gifts of all trees. It is, rather, a holiday pointedly about fruit trees. Non-fruiting trees are, technically, unconcerned with Tu B'shvat. For Tu B'shvat is an accounting tool, a way to determine how old a fruit tree is and which fruits are counted in which year's harvest.

Perhaps I am more sensitive this year to this fact given that I am the founder of a new organization called the Baltimore Orchard Project, which began last September and focuses on gleaning fruit from residential and other non-commercial trees and giving it to the hungry, as well as promoting the planting of more local fruit trees.

(By the way, we are looking for volunteers to help us build an inventory of all such fruit trees in the city and county, and to help us harvest and distribute the fruit in late summer and fall. If you would like to join us, please let me know! You can sign up on our website or send me a comment on this blog.)

What was stunning in Israel is the way so many people across the land (we went from Be'er Sheva in the south to Zichron Yaakov in the north) have fruit trees growing in their yards and along the sides of roadways. Teas were spiced with lemons and loquats plucked before the meal (and in one case, our host made it from fresh herbs growing in her garden).

Though Baltimore is not the climate for citrus, we are a great climate for other fruits like figs, peaches, pears, apples, nut trees, and much more. Once upon a time, here in Baltimore, it was all the rage to plant fruit and nut trees in one's yard. Somehow that fell out of favor for more exotic ornamentals.

How wonderful would it be if we could re-establish the norm of planting fruit trees in our yards. And orchards on empty city lots. How wonderful if our homes and cities were not simply sterile, ornamental landscapes but working land that enriched the beauty, the bounty and the health of our community.

"We used to teach technology as a subject. [Today,] it's no longer the 'something' that we teach; it's the platform on which we deliver information." Shaindle Braunstein-Cohen on iPads in Jewish Day Schools, by Rabbi Jason Miller (quoted from eJewish Philanthropy)

This is true with so many fundamental tasks of life: walking, reading, writing … The techniques that we once labored so hard to master ultimately become merely platforms upon which we build creative worlds.

So too with sustainability. We teach sustainability as a subject today. We will know we have arrived at a sustainable world when it is no longer something we teach but something that forms, quite naturally, the "platform", the given, upon which we build the production, consumption and "waste" of our society.

Below is Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin's presentation at the annual Maryland Legislative Environmental Summit, held January 24, 2012, in Annapolis, MD.

We live in the midst of a 4-billion year old mystery, an on-going miracle that we call Earth. For all we know, no such miracle exists anywhere else. Whatever we may be skilled enough to find out there, there is likely not to be another Planet Earth, or another you, or another me, or another Bay or the parade of moonrises and sunsets, or the cascade of creatures that have filled our air and seas and land and made our world what it is today.

We are the chosen ones, blessed with being alive at this awesomely rich and perilous time. We didn’t ask for this moment, we didn’t create it, we did not earn it, and we don’t even understand it.

What we do understand, however, is that something very dangerous – even wicked – is happening out there – and we are doing our share to cause it.

But the good news is, we can do our share to stop it.

We are Earth’s most aware beneficiaries and its most powerful stewards.

We are not its masters, we are not its owners. We are its tenders. We are called upon to use it, take care of it, and give it – healthy and robust – to our children, just as our ancestors gave it to us.

Thomas Berry, the Catholic theologian – taught that each generation has a Great Work. It is a work that we do not choose, but that we are dealt by the hand of history. It is a work that drives our ultimate purpose and inspires our days, a work that all future generations will judge us by, a work that is bound to “the larger destinies of the universe.”

Our generation’s Great Work is to learn to thrive within life’s sustaining cycles. Our Great Work is to build a world that is resilient, ever new and ever fresh to each generation, that matches our desires and consumption, our use and our waste, our progress and our joys, to the untransgressible bounds of nature.

We must do this and we can do this, for we are not alone.

It is crowded in here.

It is crowded with your passion and persistence, your hard work and hopes, your wisdom and commitment.

And it is crowded with the concern and confusion, the hunger and the worry, the needs and prayers of hundreds more, thousands more, millions more who have never heard of you, but who depend upon you, and who need you to pursue this sacred work.

For all of us work on behalf of everyone who takes a breath of air, who wants a sip of clean water, who works to put food on their table, who takes refuge from the cold, seeks a good day’s work today and tomorrow, anyone who relies upon this awesome, giving world for their manifold, mundane needs. And that is everyone.

The names we use to describe our work might be throwing people off. It seems to me that Senator Carter Conway’s and Delegate McIntosh’s committees might need to be renamed:

Perhaps something like the: Education, Health and Environment, Economy, Jobs, Energy, Equity, Life’s Well-being, Earth Stewardship and Children of Tomorrow Committees.

The world of tomorrow will not be the world of yesterday. It will take more than science and knowledge, more than money and regulations to get us from here to there. It will take our trust, it will take our will, and it will take our faith.

We are not engaged in an us-vs-them agenda. It is not about jobs vs the environment; enviros vs progress, government vs the people.

Our task can be stated simply:

It is about us taking care of nature so nature can take care of us.

There is a great future waiting for us; we must find the way, and we must all get there together.

That is our Great Work.

That is our sacred work.

And that is why you are here.

Thank you for what you do.

There is something odd, and instructive, about manna.

It was, by all accounts, miraculous. Accompanying the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land, it was not like other food. It did not grow from the earth and it did not fall from the sky (despite the poetic vision of Exodus 16:4) . It appeared after the dew of the morning had worn off on the ground and, if not harvested promptly, vanished into thin air.

It was to be collected and eaten everyday. Hoarding was not allowed. It rotted if left til the following morning, though it lasted two days, from Friday to Shabbat. (Shabbat, after all, was the day of rest and no collecting could be done.)

When first introduced after the miraculous events at the Red Sea, and the sweetening of the bitters waters, Moses instructed the Israelites in what it was and how to collect it:

“It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. ¹⁶ This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’”

In teaching this recently, I saw that this law could be confusing. If I take as much as I need, I might require more, or less, than an omer for each person. So I might not be able to gather as much as I need if I gather it by the count. How is the commandment to be fulfilled? By need or by set measure?

Then we are told:

¹⁷ The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little.

This just extends the dilemma. Does that mean the Israelites gathered only an omer for each person? And those with large households gathered their large share of manna and those with small households gathered their small share?

^{Or does that mean that they gathered according to need and not according to measure? It seems like – through some alchemy – both were true: the gathering was by measure and need.}

¹⁸ And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much

did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.

Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.

One possible solution is that the omer was a fluid, flexible amount here and not yet standardized. It might have referred to the amount each person needed to become sated daily, before it got ossified into a straitjacketed measure.

Or perhaps it meant that while a household of nine, say, consumed the total of nine omers, each person in the household ate what they needed, some more and some less. And it all evened out to nine.

Whatever the answer, the story of the manna is food for thought. It is an ethical tale of enoughness. It asks us to be grateful every day for the miracle of food; to guard against selfish hoarding, but know when to save; to count equitably for everyone's needs, but acknowledge our differences; to be mindful of earthly and divine gifts, and share them with each other.

^{So the question is: how many miracles do we count here? The manna itself? That the omer was a magical measure, bulking up like wheat in water, to fit the stomach it was destined for? That there was an omer for everyone? That there was always enough? That it defeated hoarding and required trust? Or that households, tribes, and the entire Jewish people were able to share, learning to gather just enough to satisfy their needs, and rejoice in this vision of enoughness?}

While the philosophers and rabbis of old lost themselves in labyrinths of logic like: "Can we have free will if there is an All-Knowing God," mothers of old (or so I imagine) struggled with the very real question: "How can I raise my child to reach for excellence but be content with their best?"

That is, how can we, how do we, hold together two sides of an irreconcilable coin: actively seeking perfection and being content with less?

How do we avoid feeling like failures, like we are living lesser lives, when we come up short? How do we not give up, slump in our chairs, be washed in despair, and set our sights lower next time so we are not so disappointed again?

This is hardly an idle question. It is one we must all grapple with throughout our lives. It is the question that determines the essence, and difference, of religious traditions, and the difference between a content life and a unsettled one.

Judaism answers in a pithy aphorism, and in the ways we are taught to live.

"Rabbi Tarfon said: You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to ignore it." (Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, 2:21) Our task is not to achieve perfection but simply strive for it.

Shabbat agrees, but teaches more sweetly. We learn from the ebb and flow of Shabbat and workweek that for six days we are to work, chasing perfection, never achieving it. Yet, once a week, we get Shabbat, a taste of perfection. The candles we kindle, a midrash tells us, are sparks from the primordial light of the first day of creation. A pure light, different from the sun (which was created on the fourth day), this first light was set aside for the end of time, but it dips into this work-a-day world once a week in the form of our Shabbat candles to inspire and refresh us.

So every seven days we get a taste of perfection, a respite, a balm that celebrates our good-enough workday achievements, soothes our sagging spirits and sends us stronger back into the frail, imperfect world to keep striving for better.

Hanukkah, too, offers us a way forward. We sing of the miracle of the oil, when what was enough for one day lasted for eight. The true miracle, though, was not the oil but the faith of those who bothered to light it. The work needed to restore the Temple was beyond the task of one day. Or one precious cruse of oil. To light it would be a waste at best and a folly at worst. Yet they lit.

So too we light our Hanukkiot in the midst of darkness for eight days, even though we know that when the week is over, the darkness again follow.

We know that when we start. But we light anyway. We must. For while the lights are burning, we are buoyed. And when they go out, we start our work again.

(My thoughts on this subject were stimulated by a conversation I had with Elicia Brown who is writing an article on this subject for Jewish Women International's Jewish Woman magazine. Check out JWI, their important work and their wonderful magazine.)