Participants’ travel costs to and from Rome, and your lodging and meals, will be covered beginning with dinner on Saturday, 27 June and ending with lunch on Wednesday, 1 July. Participants will be chosen through a competitive application process. For Jewish participants who require it, lodging will be available form Friday June 26 and kosher food will be also an option. For those arriving on Friday, there will be a Shabbat program planned.

To learn more about the Convergence conference and to download an application go to:

http://www.greenfaith.org/resource-center/coming-events.

Heschel had been living in Berlin for some years, acquiring his Ph.D. and a liberal rabbinic ordination (he had already gotten a traditional ordination when he was a teenager in Warsaw). During his years there, he was a witness to rise of Nazism even while he taught and began to publish his work.

In 1938, it was clear to many people that war in Europe was coming. In the very month that Heschel spoke came the Anschluss, the Nazi takeover of Austria. Heschel was arrested in October of 1938 and deported to Poland. Six weeks before the invasion of Poland in September 1939, Heschel was able to get to England and from there to the United States. In a speech given in 1965 called No Religion is an Island, he referred to himself as “a brand plucked from the fire in which my people was burned to death.” (He was alluding to Zechariah chapter 3 where the High Priest Joshua, who had been born during the exile in Babylon and was one of the first to return to Judea, was called by God, “a brand plucked from the fire.”)

Heschel warned of the coming cataclysm in vivid and forceful language, evoking images of the demonic. He said, “At no time has the earth been so soaked with blood. Fellowmen turned out to be evil ghosts, monstrous and weird.” He asked the question, “Who is responsible?” We are, he said, by not fighting for “right, for justice, for goodness.” He said that we should be ashamed, and after the war, when the full horror of the Holocaust was revealed, he said that we should not ask, “Where was God?” but “Where was man?”

While we are not facing another world war and I am usually loath to reference the Holocaust when dealing with contemporary issues, I could not but be struck by the urgency of Heschel’s speech when I think about the looming disaster of climate change. The meaning of this hour is that we are continuing to argue about the fact of climate change when it is already happening and millions of people are already feeling its effects. Droughts, floods, increases in forest fires, stronger earthquakes, seas rising and thousands of scientific indicators seem not to move us. Several years ago, CARE published report on climate refugees which conservatively estimated that by 2050 there would be 250 million climate change refugees. A long lasting drought in the Middle East was one of the factors which precipitated the civil war in Syria, just one more example of how climate change has and will cause unrest, strife and war.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a coalition of thousands of scientists worldwide who have been tracking and evaluating the research on climate change since 1988. Its fifth assessment report will be issued later this month. A draft of that report was leaked to reporters last month and it says that there it is “extremely likely” that human actions are the cause of most of the temperature increases of the last sixty years. “Extremely likely” is the way scientists say something is 99% certain. They wrote, “There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted snow and ice, raised global mean sea level and changed some climate extremes in the second half of the 20th century.” And things could get much worse. If carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to be emitted into the atmosphere at present rates, global temperatures will rise by more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit. This would cause large scale melting of ice, more extreme heat waves and flooding, disruptions in the world food supply and the massive extinction of plant and animals species.

The IPCC, because it is a collective group of scientists under the auspices of the United Nations, has always been a conservative in its assessments. Many climate scientists believe that the situation is even worse and some believe that we may in fact be too late to avoid a catastrophic change in the global climate. To some extent they are right. Even if we were to eliminate all the carbon emissions today, the CO2 already in the atmosphere will continue to have an effect for hundreds of years. But we can stop situation from getting more dangerous.

In the published version of his speech Heschel wrote, “The Almighty has not created the universe that we may have opportunities to satisfy our greed, envy and ambition. We have not survived that we may waste our years in vulgar vanities.” These words can easily apply to our lack of action on climate change. We often think that it is all a matter of technology; that we can somehow come up with some gadget that will make all the CO2 go away without our having to change anything about the way we live. The only way to prevent a disaster for future generations is to phase out carbon based energy as quickly as possible. And to do that, we need to act now.

In the Haphtarah for Yom Kippur morning, we read Isaiah 57:14-58:14. In this passage the prophet says that people don’t understand why God has not forgiven them even though they have fasted. God replies that their ritual is hypocritical because even while they fasted they have acted immorally by oppressing their workers. A true fast, says God, must be one that accompanies justice and the care of the poor and powerless. Only then, will God answer, Here I am, when you call.

Climate change is one of the greatest moral disasters of human history as the people who will suffer the most have been the least responsible for its cause. Those of us in the developed countries somehow think that we will escape its results, turning away from the hundreds of millions who will be caught in the whirlwind of misery that is coming.

The meaning of this hour is that we must recognize what we are doing, admit our fault and bring about the necessary changes to prevent further damage. Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the “fierce urgency of Now.” Once again, that is the meaning of this hour.

(This was originally published in the New Jersey Jewish Standard)

One of my favorite Science fiction authors, Kim Stanley Robinson, has utilized this theme in several of his books, the latest being, 2312 which won the 2012 Nebula award for best science fiction novel and has been nominated for the Hugo award for best science fiction novel of 2013.

2313 mostly takes place off Earth among colonies on Mercury and the moons of Saturn. Earth itself is still recovering from massive flooding due to climate change that took place starting in 2060: Florida is completely under water and New York is now like Venice with people going from skyscraper to skyscraper by boat. There are attempts alleviate the flooding through massive geo-engineering projects that will take more than a hundred years to complete. It is not a pretty picture of the future of this planet.

It was lack of action in the period from 2005 to 2060 that brought Earth to this state. In 2312 this period is known as “The Dithering.” Dithering is defined as “a state of indecisive agitation” and is a very good term to use to describe what is going in this country regarding climate change action. Scientists are growing increasing alarmed at the rise in CO₂ levels in the atmosphere and although many politicians know the dangers of climate change, they are afraid to take action. They are “dithering”: agitated by what they know is coming in the future but still indecisive as to how to proceed.

At the end of July, I attended the Climate Reality Project Leadership Corps training in Chicago. This was something I have wanted to do for a long time. It was a very exciting and stimulating experience. There were 1500 people from all 50 states as well as from 40 other countries. We had three days of training on how to spread the message of the necessity of action on climate change but the center of the training was an all-day session with Al Gore. He showed us his updated presentation that was shown the movie An Inconvenient Truth and showed us how to use it effectively. We were given the presentation at the end of the training and we all committed to carry out at least ten actions over the next twelve months.

It was exciting to be a room filled with people from all over the world so passionately committed to combating climate change denial and to press for real action by our governments. But there was also a real fear in what the future will bring if we don’t succeed.

I got into environmental activism almost thirty years ago primarily because I was the father of two young children and I was really concerned about the world that their children would live in. Now they are grown up, married and have given me three beautiful grandchildren. My fears for their future have only grown greater as we are living in the age of “The Dithering.”

In the Jewish calendar, we are in the middle of the month of Elul, the days before the High Holidays. This month is supposed to be time of reflection of what we have done in the previous year. We are especially supposed to consider our failings to others and to God and begin a process of teshuvah (repentance). One of the classical descriptions of teshuvah by Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) says that our teshuvah is not complete until we find ourselves in the same situation where we previously had sinned and we do not repeat it. It might be years later but our teshuvah is still not complete.

Einstein once famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That is what we are doing now and as much as we may know that we must act on climate change, we keep doing the same thing over and over, dithering, hoping it will go away. We are creating in the heavens a great sin that will literally hang over future generations for hundreds of years (the time it will take for the carbon we are producing now to naturally leave the atmosphere) and still we cannot even begin our teshuvah. Enough with dithering; it is time to act.

For most of history in many cultures and tradition including Judaism humans did see themselves as qualitatively different and “above” other forms of life. This was the “Great Chain of Being” which had non-life at the bottom, followed by plants, then animals, then humans, then angels and finally God at the top. With Darwin’s theory of evolution, this concept had to be abandoned. Since the decent of species showed that all living organisms came from a single ancient ancestor, humans could no longer claim that there was a qualitative difference between themselves and other forms of life; the difference could only be quantitative. The toppling of the sacred hierarchy was completed by the discovery of DNA. The DNA of every living thing (including plants and microbes) has a large share of commonality and humans, in particular share a large percentage of their DNA with other primates—in the case of chimpanzees around 96%.

In the face of this new science which our ancestors could not have conceived of, what can we do with our Jewish classic sources?

In the Hebrew Bible as usual has more than one voice coming from a variety of different authors from different time periods and ideologies. (It must be noted that the Hebrew words nefesh [life], neshamah [breath] and ruah [wind] which are often translated as “soul” which in later Jewish sources connotes a spiritual entity or self within the body do not have that meaning in the Hebrew Bible.) Here are a few examples:

In Genesis 1 all animals are created through the medium of the sea (fish and birds) or the earth (domesticated animals, “creeping things” and wild animals) and only humans are created directly by God and in the image of God. Humans therefore are given control over all the other animals as agents of God’s power over the earth (see also Psalm 8). This source is probably the basis for later beliefs about the ontological gap between humans and animals. The concept of the “image of God” was interpreted in various ways in later Jewish sources but it eventually was understood that humans had a qualitatively different “soul” than animals.

In Genesis 2 the animals created are separately from humans as aids or companions to the human (adam) but both come from the common source: adamah (earth) and both have a nefesh hayyah: an animating life-force or breath of life that comes from God. The human, while made of the same earthy material as animals and infused with the same animating force are nonetheless created first. The animals are created as adjuncts to the human. All life that moves and breathes have the nefesh hayyah which like the wind allows them to move but trees and plants do not since they do not breath or move.

In Ecclesiastes 3:18-21 the author believes that humans no different than beasts: they both have the ruah, the animating spirit. After death, they go the same place, the earth.. The author of Ecclesiastes which was probably written in the 3^rd century BCE when Greek ideas began to influence Jewish society, was aware of the idea that claimed that humans had a “soul” which survived after death and rises to the heavens to be with God. (The rejection of this idea is also probably found in Job 14:12-14)

In Psalm 148 all life is depicted as a community of worshippers and humans do not have pride of place. In Psalm 104 God seems to be equally concerned with both human and animal life. And in Job 38-41, the author describes a world without people and thereby claims that humans are not the center of God’s concern—God cares for all life of which humanity is only one part.

These biblical texts show a wide variety of ideas about the status of humans and animals in relation to each other and in relation to God. Only in Genesis 1 is there a significant gap between them.

In the second Temple period (500 BCE to 70 CE) many (but not all) Jews accepted the dualistic Greek idea of the body and soul, and the ontological space which separates humans from animals. This was also true in the Rabbinic period (post 70 CE) but the rabbis did not see this gap as a “hard dualism.” They also understood that human beings have both animal/ bodily characteristics and divine/spiritual characteristics (See for example: Midrash Genesis Rabbah 7:11 to Genesis 1:27). They reinterpreted Ecclesiastes 3:18-21to refer to the wicked who will have no place in heaven unlike the righteous (Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:18 §1).

In Medieval Jewish philosophy, the concept of the soul became influenced by Platonism and Aristotelianism and while there are a variety of views about the nature of soul in all life, the human soul was seen as qualitatively different. Human souls had a rational expression which connected humans to the ultimate rational soul of the universe—God. This rational expression was what would survive after death in communion with the divine. And although Saadiah Gaon (882-942) believed in the possibility of animal resurrection within limited circumstances (Book of Beliefs and Opinions 3:10), most Jewish thinkers like Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) rejected any idea that animals survive death (Guide for the Perplexed 3:17). For Maimonides animals existed under the general providence of God which meant that they were subject to natural law and its contingencies.

For many of us today, we are not believers in the Jewish ideas of the afterlife that become almost a dogma by the Middle Ages. And there is an environmental critique of the dualism of spirit/soul and matter/body which denigrates matter and can lead to a lack of concern for the natural world and its non-human life. Modern evolutionary science and genetics has also shown us how closely we are connected to all life and while there are individual species, the lines dividing them are not rigid and in many cases one species “blends” into another.

And many so-called unique “human” traits have been found to originate in animal behavior like tool making, language, altruism, cultural transmission, and social grouping. Recently there was a story in the New York Times of how it is possible that chimpanzees exhibit a kind of mourning and death ritual which throws an interesting light on the origin of human ritual behavior.

As an eco-theologian, I believe that we must return a more biblically based unified vision of life. All life (and now we can include plants) have the same basic characteristics: it seeks to survive individually and as a species. The differences between humans and animals is one of degree and is in degree not kind—human differences can be seen within context of each species being unique in its own way.

For us the question is one of value and responsibility: how much do we value non-human life? Are other creatures only valuable to us as resources to be exploited or do we see them as fellow members of the Creation choir of Psalm 148? I believe that the Jewish tradition asks us to exercise responsibility not arrogance. We are all part of the universe, formed out of the dust of stars and all part of that special expression of Creation which is life.

Climate change resulting from the use of fossil fuels poses a well-documented, grave threat to humanity and the ecosystems that support life. But in the United States, a real national response to climate change has been stymied by political inaction, cultural inertia, and the concerted effort of fossil fuel companies, which have funded propaganda and disinformation in opposition to limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Increasingly, environmental organizations have resorted to various actions meant to break this deadlock. One of these tactics is encouraging divestment from fossil fuel companies. 350.org, a leading climate advocacy group, has launched a nationwide campaign called Go Fossil Free (http://gofossilfree.org) which seeks to have institutions (like colleges, pension funds, cities, religious organizations) divest their stock holdings from fossil fuel companies.

GreenFaith (http://greenfaith.org/programs/divest-and-reinvest) is launching an effort to address these issues in a specifically religious context. With long ties to the Jewish community, GreenFaith is well aware that many Jews are very uncomfortable with the use of the term "divestment" because of its association with the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions) against the State of Israel. Even though Jewish organizations were in the forefront of previous divestment campaigns against South Africa for apartheid, Sudan for Darfur and even against companies that cut down old growth forests, today "divestment" is such a divisive word that its use in many Jewish circles would likely doom any associated effort from the start.

Ethical Investing and Traditional Jewish Ethics

However, the principle of ethical investing is already part of Jewish discourse and is part of traditional Jewish ethics. It is imperative that Jewish communities address the morality of investing in fossil fuel companies, whose fundamental operations imperil humanity and functional ecosystems. Even if it may not be possible to have a completely ethically pure investment portfolio, we should strive to have our investments reflect our Jewish values as much as possible.

There are sufficient Jewish sources to warrant our examining this complex issue. Two

particular issues bear closer examining.

• How does Judaism guide us to address products (like tobacco and fossil fuel) that are not illegal but are, clearly, harmful?
• To what degree is a shareholder morally responsible for the actions of a corporation in which they may have only a small share (or even more indirectly through shares in a mutual fund) which does not allow them to exercise any control on the actions of the company. Does this issue of indirect ownership distance us ethically from the actions of the corporation?

The following are Jewish teachings that address these questions and related issues.

The Theological Foundations of an Ethical Response

Ethics and Property Cannot be Separated

In Judaism one of the most fundamental concepts is that God created the universe and therefore one of its implications is that only God has absolute ownership over Creation (Gen. 1-2, Psalm 24:1, I Chron. 29:10-16). As such, humans do not have unrestricted freedom to misuse Creation, as it does not belong to them. We are in fact tenants and not owners. Since our ownership of any part of Creation is not absolute, we cannot divorce our use of our property from morality. Just because a product which we can purchase, own and use is legal does not make its use ethi

Creation's Structure and Order Serve God and Demand our Respect

Secondly, Creation is sufficient, structured, ordered, and harmonious (the rabbis called it Seder Bereshit, the Order of Creation). It exists to serve God (Psalm 148), and reflects God's wisdom (Psalm 104:24, Proverbs 3:19-20, 8:22-31). All of God's creations are part of this order, including humans.

Humanity as God's Agents

Thirdly, humans have a special place and role in the Order of Creation expressed in the concept of them being created in God's image, tzelem elohim (Genesis 1:28, Psalm 8). In its original sense, tzelem elohim means that humans are God's agents meant to actualize God's presence in Creation through godlike characteristics given to them, especially power over the other members of the created Order. Human beings are supposed to exercise this power to be wise stewards of Creation even as they are allowed to use it for their own benefit within the limits established by God (Genesis 2:14). This need for stewardship applies both to human society as well to the natural world.

Tzedek

Lastly, the concept of proper balance is expressed by the term tzedek, which means righteousness, justice and equity. The rules of tzedek, try to correct the imbalances, which humans create in society and in the natural world. The Torah has numerous laws which are concrete expressions of tzedek, which attempt to redress the power and economic imbalances in human society and Creation. (E.g. Exodus 22:24-26, Leviticus 25:36-37, Deuteronomy 23:20-1, 24:6, 10-13, 17). (For a more complete survey of these principles see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/10-teachings-on-judaism-a_b_844973.html)

Ethical principles and Their Legal Expressions

Judaism sees a need for justice/equity in all aspects of life which include government and economic activity. As such there is no separation of ownership and liability. It has been long recognized in Jewish law that investments make us property owners. In Judaism, property owners have rights but also many responsibilities about how they utilize their property. These responsibilities include not only preventing immediate harm from occurring to others but also potential harm.

Jewish Ethics on the Responsibility of Shareholders

While biblical and classic rabbinic sources about property owners' responsibilities usually deal with single owners or small partnerships, for the last 500 years when stock markets and shareholder-owned corporations (like the Dutch East India Company in 1602) began to proliferate, Jewish religious authorities began to address the issue of shareholder responsibility.

Since a corporation – "a legally constructed entity which is independent of the people who own it," (D.B. Bressler, "Ethical Investment: The Responsibility of Ownership in Jewish Law, in: Aaron Levine & Moses Pava, editors, Jewish Business Ethics: The Firm and Its Stakeholders,1999, p. 179) – is created to limit the liability of its shareholders, it became a matter of great discussion as to who is or are the owner(s) of the corporations and are therefore subject to the classical rules of ownership responsibility. The problem lay in the issue of corporate control. Since most shareholders do not have power over the company's actions or policies and are therefore not "owners" in the classic sense – they cannot be held morally responsible for its actions. In recent years, the creation of investment vehicles such as mutual funds has further weakened the traditional sense of ownership.

One way that ethicists deal with this weakening of traditional ownership roles is to hold directors and executives morally responsible for a company's actions. But while some ethicists asserted that shareholders did not bear ownership responsibility, another opinion also emerged. Because collective shareholder action can cause a change in a corporation's policies, it has argued that all shareholders (even those in mutual funds) must be considered owners and therefore subject to ethical responsibility. (Mordechai Liebling, "The Jewish Basis for Shareholder Activism, The Reconstructionist, 69:2, Spring, 2005, p. 33-4

Ethical Responsibilities of Property Owners

If we accept that there is some ownership dimension to shareholding, then it follows that we should explore the ethical responsibilities of property owners, and consider how these relate to the issue of fossil fuel companies.

The classic ethical responsibilities of a property owner include not making a profit from prohibited activities such as theft or causing harm to another person's health. Even though the production of energy from oil, coal, and gas are not illegal (as in tobacco) it could be considered immoral from a Jewish activity because of the immediate damage it causes to Creation and human health. One is also prohibited from the harmful use of one's assets by others.

But our ethical responsibility extends even further. The general principle of the obligation to save and preserve life is called in Jewish legal sources, <em>pikuah nefesh</em> (see Leviticus 18:5 and its rabbinic interpretation in Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 74a). The extension of this principle forbids us from knowingly harming ourselves (Leviticus 19:28), mandates the proper disposal of waste and that noxious products from industrial production must be kept far from human habitation (see for example, Deuteronomy 23:13-15, Mishnah <em>Baba Batra</em> 2:9). The law of the parapet (Deuteronomy 22:8) is also used as an example of a general principle which requires us to prevent potential harm not only immediate harm (Moses Maimonides, Mishnah Torah, Laws of Murder, 11:4).

One of the most relevant principles to shareholder responsibility is the application of the law in Leviticus 19:14: not putting a stumbling block before the blind. This law was not only to be taken literally but since ancient times also understood as a moral principle: not intentionally giving bad advice to someone and not to assist someone in a wrongdoing. Maimonides used this principle to forbid the sale of weapons to people who may use them for violence or robbery (Mishnah Torah, Laws of Murder, 12:12, 14). Some would utilize this principle to apply to investments; others see a more limited applicability. (See Liebling, p. 33 & Bressler, p. 185-190)

Beyond the Letter of the Law

Even if we were to accept only the limited view of shareholder responsibility and say that investing in carbon-based energy companies does not strictly violate Jewish law, there is another important principle which would call upon us to act. The principle is called Lifnim m'shurat ha-din, "[going] beyond the letter of the law." It is based primarily on Deuteronomy 6:18 (but also by some interpretations on Leviticus 19:2) which says: Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord. As Elliot Dorff has pointed out:

…Jewish law itself recognizes that justice sometimes demands more than the law does, that moral duties sometimes require reshaping the law itself so that in each new age it can continue to be the best approximation of justice. (Elliot Dorff, To Do the Right and the Good: A Jewish Approach to Modern Social Ethics, 2002, p. 118)

Therefore, even if we can claim that our investments are technically not immoral, the Jewish tradition calls upon us to go beyond technicalities and act in a higher moral capacity. We must not only act legally but also act right.

Final Thoughts

The philosopher Hans Jonas showed that one of the central problems in dealing with the environmental crisis was the inability of classical ethics to deal with issues that are distant in time and space. In pre-modern times one's ethical relationships were with people who were physically and temporally close. Our actions today, through the power of modern technology, have an impact on people and non-human life that may be on the other side of world and distant from us in time. Jonas says that we must create a new ethics of responsibility in response. (Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, 1984, p. ix-x, 1-24) The carbon we emit today will remain in the atmosphere for about a hundred years and future generations will be dealing with the results of climate change. More than ever, we must seek to reduce the ethical distance between our actions and their impact. One way we can do this is through the ethical investing in sustainable energy and divesting from carbon-based energy companies.

Lastly, there is a moral imperative not only to act but to speak out. A rabbinic text says:

All who can protest against [something wrong that] one of their family [is doing] and does not protest, is held accountable for their family.[All who can protest against something wrong that] a citizen of their city [is doing and does not protest], is held accountable for all citizens of the city.[All who can protest against something wrong that is being done] in the whole world, is accountable together with all citizens of the world. (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 54b)

(This originally appeared at: http://greenfaith.org/programs/divest-and-reinvest/religious-and-moral-resources-on-divestment-and-reinvestment)

There are many in the Jewish environmental movement who rightly say that Jewish institutions should be part of this campaign because of Jewish economic and environmental ethics. Since we believe that the Torah allows us to use Creation only in a careful and responsible way, then we should be investing in green energy and not energy that is undoing Creation.

There is also ample material in Jewish business and economic ethics that could be explored to deal with the issues of investing in a company that is creating and selling a product that is harmful to human health in both its manufacture and use. Since in Jewish ethics we are responsible for the harm we do others in both direct and indirect ways, we might conclude that investing in such companies makes us partners in the harm they perpetrate. I admit, however, that this is a very complex issue and to my knowledge there has not been much work done on the intersection of Jewish environmental ethics with Jewish economic and business ethics. Also, there is a strong case here that the production of carbon-based energy has created many situations of environmental injustice. This may be, in fact, a whole new area of Jewish environmental ethics. I am presently at work on this myself but I think that many other Jewish environmentalists should produce materials.

One of the biggest problems in getting involved in the 350.org campaign is the terminology. In the Jewish community today, many are very uncomfortable with the use of the term “divestment” because of its association with the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions of Israel). Even though Jewish organizations were in the forefront of previous divestment campaigns against South Africa for apartheid, Sudan for Darfur and even against companies that cut down old growth forests, today divestment is such a divisive word that its use in any environmental campaign would likely doom it from the start.

Thus we must seek other language in being part of one the most active and important environmental campaigns in the USA at the present time. We should perhaps instead emphasize the positive and talk about “green investing.” I think that it is time that Jewish environmentalism steps up and gets serious about challenging the way the Jewish community does business.

And while the present Jewish environment movement has been doing a very good job on educating and activating the Jewish community on the issues of food sustainability and energy conservation, there is still a great deal of work that needs to be done. I find that much of Jewish environmentalism is based on an underlying philosophy of what has been called “Light Green” environmentalism. This is an environmentalism that seeks to solve issues like sustainability and climate change through green consumerism, new technology and green job promotion. All of this is good but it will not solve climate change, environmental injustice or species extinction. It ignores the role of population and development in the environmental crisis; and it ignores the serious critiques the world economic system which is a major component in creating climate change and environmental injustice. Light Green environmentalism is based on a stewardship ethic which still privileges human needs and refuses to incorporate a more biocentrist approach to environmental ethics. In other words, a “Dark Green” environmentalism.

I believe that the Jewish community has been reluctant to enter into this “Dark Green” environmentalism for a number of reasons one of which is that we are afraid to face the kind of self-analysis that Dark Green requires, we have avidly embraced the new technology, and a lot of our community’s wealth comes from many of the industries and corporations that have come under this critique. Thinking Dark Green also means putting aside much of our anthropocentric ethics and create a new ethical system that incorporates the reality of modern technology.

The philosopher Hans Jonas was one of the leaders in creating such a new ethical system for the modern technological age. He created an environmental ethic which arose from his fear of the destruction of humanity and from the need to create a philosophical basis for humans’ responsibility to save themselves and the planet. His response to the environmental crisis is most fully elucidated in his book, The Imperative of Responsibility.

In this work, Jonas argued that the environmental crisis emerged from the human impact on the natural world, which is greater and more far-reaching than in any previous age. This unique and novel power comes from modern technology, which is also radically different from the technology of previous ages. Previous ethical systems, centered on interpersonal dealings within relatively narrow horizons of space and time, are no longer adequate to deal with the moral issues now raised. “Modern technology has introduced actions of such novel scale, objects, and consequences that the framework of former ethics can no longer contain them.” (Imperative of Responsibility, p. 6)

For Jonas, the lengthened reach of our deeds moves the principle of responsibility into the center of our ethical stage. His theory of responsibility, which he saw as the correlate of power, must therefore be proportionate to the range of modern power. Humans must also have greater foresight into the possible impact of new technology what Jonas called “scientific futurology.” Even with this greater foresight we will not be able to fully predict the effects of modern technological power; “As long as the danger is unknown, we do not know what to preserve and why.” (Ibid, p. 27) We can learn what to avoid from the “revulsion of feeling which acts ahead of knowledge, to apprehend the value whose antithesis so affects us. We know the thing at stake only when we know that it is at stake.” [Italics in original.] (Ibid)

Since we are so uncertain about the effects of our technology, and because it could have such far-reaching implications for the human race as well as the rest of life on earth, caution is now the “core of moral action.” (Ibid, p 38) This ethic of caution is also found in the Precautionary Principle, an ethical theory which states that an action, particularly one resulting from the introduction of a new technology, should not be carried out if the possible but as yet unknown results of that action are deemed by valid scientific opinion to have a high risk of being negative from an ethical point of view. The principle states that, when results cannot be determined with some kind of precision, actions which might lead to significant harm should be delayed or shunned. According to the Precautionary Principle, new technology should be assessed for indication of harm rather than proof of harm; a cost/benefit analysis of possible harm is not sufficient. The onus of proof of safety is on those who create the technology.

What are at stake are not only other forms of life but also the very survival of humanity and for Jonas the survival of humanity was a central ethical principle. In previous ages, human action might lead to the elimination of a tribe or a nation, but now all of humanity is at risk. Therefore any technology, which can put humanity at risk, is immoral. “Never must the existence or the essence of man as a whole be made a stake in the hazards of action.”

In many Jewish traditional texts, trees are often used as a powerful metaphor for life (seem Psalm 92:13-15) One of these metaphors is the Tree of Life which appears in Genesis 2-3 and in the book of Proverbs as a symbol of Wisdom. There are also a number of accounts of people being buried by trees (see for example Genesis35:8) which may express a desire that they participate in the eternity of the Tree of Life. This symbol reflects our belief that a tree which reaches up to heaven, lives a long time and can provide us with the sustenance that is given to us by God. It is an appropriate symbol for us to celebrate at this time of year and make us reflect on how we can preserve it.

Man sets his hand against the flinty rock and overturns mountains by the roots. He carves out channels through rock; his eyes behold every precious thing. He dams up the sources of the streams so that hidden things may be brought to light.

—Job 28:9-11

The poem is suggesting that the nature of humanity is to seek wisdom in all the wrong places, and to assume that human technology is somehow an expression of understanding. It asks rhetorically:

But where can wisdom be found; where is the source of understanding? No man can set a value on it; it cannot be found in the land of the living.

—Job 28:12-13

Real wisdom is not a commodity; it cannot be bought and sold. Only God knows where real wisdom lies: Fear of the Lordwhich is moral consciousness. From this basic moral foundation, the learning of true wisdom can begin.

The message strikes me as one that is particularly important and poignant in light of what is being done to the earth with hydraulic fracturing. Energy is the modern world’s most precious commodity on which we all depend. But it is like an addictive drug: We are willing to go to any lengths to find it and we constantly want more and more of it whatever the impact on the natural and human environments. And it is assumed that the search for new energy sources is the wisest course to take as a society. But this is false wisdom and has led to corruption, injustice and ecological degradation.

Where can real Wisdom be found? We must begin with understanding what is right and just and not try to tear apart the depths of the earth, overturn mountains and destroy the sources of precious water.

(This was originally published on Jews Against Hydrofracking: http://jewsagainsthydrofracking.org/jewish-perspectives/where-is-wisdom-to-be-found/ )

But our preparations are not only about shopping, cooking, invites and the changeover of dishes. Every year, we spend at least a little time considering what we should talk about at the seder table. We try to discuss something related to the theological and spiritual themes of the holiday. Usually, our discussion centers on the ethics of justice and liberation and how they apply to a some particular case in the world today.

The theme of justice is central to Passover and many of the texts in the Haggadah, Torah and Haftarah readings mention the connection between freedom and justice. The Haftarah for the last day of Passover is taken from the book of Isaiah (chapters 10-12). Chapter 11 contains the famous vision of the ideal ruler, descended from David, who will be filled with the spirit of God which will fill him with wisdom, valor and insight. This king will then rule with justice and will protect the poor of the land. At the same time, humanity and the rest of Creation will return to an Edenic state where there are no predators and no prey; where “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.” (v. 6) and “the land shall be filled with devotion to the Lord as water covers the sea.” (v. 9b)

This vision is on many levels profoundly unnatural and unsuitable for modern ecological and political sensibilities. For example, biologically there can be no life without death, and today we would demand that justice is participatory and does not depend on a single male royal authority. Nonetheless the vision still stirs us emotionally as a desire for peace, justice and harmony in the world.

I look at the vision as also one of sustainability: if we have a political system that is equitable only then can we begin to live within the rhythms of the natural world. Justice in the human world is intimately bound up with a more sustainable relationship with Creation. So I hope for such a world where peace and harmony result from justice and sustainability.

But there is another vision in the Hebrew Bible that warns us of what will happen if we don’t create such a world. In the Book of Amos (5:18-25) the prophet mocks those who wish for “the Day of the Lord,” thinking that the end of human history will be pleasant and good. He says that the end will be destruction: “It shall be darkness, not light! As if a man should run from a lion and be attacked by a bear!” (v. 18b-19a) Creation will not be benign but the instrument of God’s judgment over an unjust world. God does not want our festivals, our hymns or our sacrifices, “But let justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream.” (v. 24)

This last verse is often quoted in a positive way by both Jews and Christians but I think that they miss the point when it is not put in context. Amos is referring to a new Flood as in Noah’s day that will wipe the slate of Creation clean of the unjust. It will not be a time of harmony but of destruction. It will be a cleansing of the impurities of human injustice. Injustice leads to environmental degradation which leads to instability and violence.

Thomas Homer-Dixon is a political scientist whosehas focused on threats to global security and on how societies adapt to complex change. He is widely regarded as a central figure in the environment and security debate and has significantly shaped the discussions in this field. In his book, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (1999) he wrote:

…scarcity is often caused by a severe imbalance in the distribution of wealth and power that results in some groups in a society getting disproportionately large slices of the resource pie, whereas, others get slices that are too small to sustain their livelihoods. Such unequal distribution—or what I call structural scarcity—is a key factor in virtually every case of scarcity contributing to conflict…(p. 15)

The choice lies before us: we can work to create justice and stability now in a way that will bring equity, peace and harmony, or we can continue on the path to scarcity, conflict and environmental destruction.

Let use this time of Passover preparation to consider the real meaning of the festival and be provoked to take action.

The purpose of our trip was to give us, rabbis, educators and activists, a unique opportunity to delve further into the spiritual basis of our environmentalism. We went to Alaska because the wilderness experience would allow us to recharge our spiritual senses without the usual interruptions and distractions of modern technological civilization. While we were “out on the paddle,” we had no contact at all with anyone else and aside from an emergency radio, no means of communication with the rest of the world. We also spent a great deal of the trip in silence. We did not speak while we ate. We were silent much of the time while we were in the kayaks and sometimes we stopped paddling and just drifted with the currents listening to the wind, the water and the eagles. Every morning we prayed together, studied and meditated using a technique called “mindfulness training” adapted from Zen Buddhism which allowed us to live in the moment and to focus on where we were in the world at that moment.

Our guides taught us about the history and the ecology of Tebenkof Bay and the Tongas National forest that it is part of. While Tebenkof is a wilderness area with very strict rules as to its use, logging was still allowed in the Tongas National Forest and we could see large clear cuts as we flew in a sea plane from Petersburg to our first campsite. The trees in this old growth rain-forest are mostly Sitka spruce. They are hundreds of years old and yet they were mostly cut for pulp to be used in newsprint. We learned that the trees, the eagles, the bears and salmon are all linked in an incredibly complex ecological system. The trees drop needles into the waters providing nutrients for the insects which the salmon eat. The salmon are eaten by bears and eagles which then defecate the nutrients back into the soil and onto the tops of the trees. Scientists have found salmon isotopes in the needles of the Sitka spruce.

We also learned that the natives who used to inhabit Tebenkof Bay, the Tlingit (pronounced “Klingit”), lived there for 5,000 years and the only disturbances they left were an old totem pole in an overgrown burial site and a few indented areas in the middle of an island that had been a village for 800 years. The salmon was central to their diet and their culture and salmon fishing is still one the major activities of the whole region. The salmon were running while we were there and 24 hours a day they were jumping out of the water for reasons of their own. Tebenkof Bay was filled with sea otters, sea lions, mink, Sitka deer, black bears, bald eagles, hundreds of kinds of birds and whales. For several mornings a whale came by our campsite feeding on the small fish amongst the kelp and the sound of its breathing was a counterpoint to our morning prayers.

We learned in a way that we could not have understood before the tapestry of creation that interconnects us with every part of the world. This is a lesson that we may know intellectually but because of the barriers we erect, both physical and psychological, we live as if we are not part of creation but somehow separate and immune from the effects of our over consumption of its gifts.

This problem has been called by some environmentalists “biophobia” the fear of the natural world. Environmental educators see this fear in children at summer camps who are afraid to be outdoors; by teachers who find children coming to kindergartens who do not know how to use their bodies. Many children have spent so much time in front of the computer or the television set and so little playing outside that they cannot walk with any agility and don’t know how to cut paper. Biophobia is not confined to children. Many adults express their fear of the real world by retreating into the “virtual world” of the Internet. Biophobia is also is the disconnection from the real world of other human beings. It is an alienation from life with all its physicality and contingency.

Environmental spirituality tries to the awareness of our interconnection with each other and the rest of creation. When we achieve this awareness, we are more likely to look outside ourselves and truly understand how our actions affect the entire world. We will then know why we cannot continue to consume the world without consideration or restraint.

In order to begin this sense of awareness we must stop, listen and look and thereby be mindful of the world. We can then see and feel what Abraham Joshua Heschel called the sense of the ineffable, that awareness that creation is a mystery calling out to us in a soundless voice now blocked by the noise and business of our lives. We can sense the ineffable, in Alaska, in New Jersey or anywhere if we open up our spiritual eyes. Then we can respond with love, awe, humility, gratitude and blessing to each moment in our lives. We will then can find meaning in our actions, in the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the work that we do. We will understand that every action in life is in some ways an ethical choice that is not without consequence.

We will soon celebrate Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees. Every year on Tu B’Shevat, I try to remember the centers of the living web of creation that the great Sitka spruce in Tebenkof Bay. I will try to think about how a tree can tell us a lot about the history of its place and how humans have acted upon it. I will try to think about how much I really know about the place where I live and the kind of effect my life has upon it. I will try to see how a tree can show me my place in the Order of Creation. With the trees, the salmon, the deer, the whales, the bears and the eagles, we are voices in that great choir of life that with its every breath praises the Creator of the Universe.

You are clothed in glory and majesty,

Wrapped in a robe of light;

You spread the heavens like a tent cloth.

(Psalm 104:2)

Hanukkah which means “(re)dedication” has also been called the “Festival of Lights” at least since the 1^st Century CE as the earliest reference to this name is found in the historian Josephus:

And from that time [the purification of the Temple by the Maccabees] to the present time we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us; and that thence was the name given to that festival. (Antiquities of the Jews 12.7.325)

Josephus is referring to the fact that Hanukkah was by his time already celebrated by the lighting of lights which he sees as symbol for religious liberty. And while it is not known when or why Jews began to light lights in celebration of Hanukkah, it has always seemed to be an appropriate ritual for the season. It is the beginning of winter, the days are short, the ground will soon freeze and the animals start to hibernate. At this darkest time of the year we want to celebrate light and life and our desire to look towards the coming back of the sun and the springtime renewal of the earth. The oil or the candle wax which fuels the light of our hanukkiyyot is actually from the sun as all energy sources on the earth originate in the energy of the sun. This original energy is stored by plants and made possible the olive oil on which our ancestors depended for food and for light.

The harnessing of many other energy sources makes modern life possible. From the current that powers our lights and computers to the fuel that transports us in cars and planes to the equipment which builds our homes and manufactures the physical structure of our society, all our technology relies on energy. We must see energy as a blessing which precedes all other blessings in that it makes so much possible by magnifying our limited physical capacity. Despite the serious problems which it is creating in its current fossilized form – air pollution which kills millions annually along with climate change – the human harnessing of energy is a gift that cannot be replaced.

But what is energy? How should we really conceive of it? In everyday language energy is often spoken of as a substance that can be utilized for a variety of activities. For example, we often speak of our bodies as having “run out of energy” when we are tired. “Energy drinks” commercially available claim to fill us up with more energy in the way we fill our cars with gasoline.

In modern science, however, energy is viewed more as a transformative process than as a physical substance. Scientists know that the law of the conservation of energy is a mathematical description of a transformative process rather than a physical commodity, despite the popular use of the term.This concept of energy as transformative process and animating power is remarkably similar to the power of God as described in numerous biblical texts.

In these texts there are two animating forces in Creation which come from God: light and wind. Wind (ruah)is the animating force which produces movement which includes animal and human life in which God breaths “the breath of life” (nishmat hayyim). In Genesis 1:2 the ruah ‘elohim (“wind from God”) “moves” the primordial deep (Hebrew: tehom) which is the basic resource out of which all Creation (except for humanity) emerges. Ruah is not, however, an inherent force, it is “the power encountered in the breath and the wind, whose whence and whither remains mysterious.” (Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, editors., Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, p. 1203) [Ruah is also the source of wisdom (cf. Exodus 31:1-11) and prophecy (cf.1 Samuel 10:10) in that it “moves” people to achieve divine purposes in Creation.] As the biblical scholar Robert Alter wrote in his commentary to Psalm 104: “…it is God’s breath there that brings life into being.” (The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, p. 367.)

Light, and its first cousin fire, is the second animating force. God's physical manifestation or kabod (usually translated as “Glory” or “Presence”) is made up of a self-sustaining fire in a humanoid shape that gives off extraordinary brightness. As the late biblical scholar Moshe Greenberg once wrote about fire as the manifestation of God:

The choice of fire as a divine element (as in Gen. 15:17) flows from its manifold God-like characteristics. As burning and fire are used in similes of fury (Esther 1:12) and love (Song of Songs 8:6), so the passionate nature of Israel’s God (‘whose name is Impassioned’ [Exodus 34:13]) is often expressed in similes of fire (Jeremiah 4:4; Psalm 79:5; Zephaniah 3:8). The destructive power of fire provides an analogy to God’s dangerous holiness…Finally, the mysterious texture of fire—its reality yet insubstantiality, its ability to work at a distance—must have contributed to its aptness as a divine symbol. (Understanding Exodus, p. 71.)

From the kabod (which dwells in the Tabernacle/Temple) come the animating force that creates the growth and fertility of living things. Light is life while darkness, it’s polar opposite, is death. Thus in biblical sources light and wind which come directly from God are forces which create and animate the world, and which transform it from inert substance to a creation responsive to its Creator.

While in rabbinic sources the biblical images of light and wind continued to influence ideas about God’s creative powers, newer concepts derived from Hellenistic culture also came into play. In rabbinic literature there developed the idea of God's gevura (usually translated as “power”). This term corresponds to the Greek term dynamis. Aristotle used the word dynamis to mean "potential power" as opposed to energia which is "actual power" and from which we derive our modern word energy. Related to dynamis is the word “pneuma” which has the basic meaning of “breath” and is very similar to the concept of ruah in Hebrew. It eventually took on the connotation of “spirit” or “soul” which was then also applied to ruah. For the rabbis, gevura became the animating power of God that would resurrect the dead in the days of the Messiah. This is seen in the second blessing of the ‘Amidah prayer which is called the gevura blessing and deals with the resurrection of the dead. Unlike the Greek idea of an animating power or inherent animating property that neutrally exists in nature, the rabbis’ use of the term sees gevura as a quality that can only come from God. It can bring life and is also the source of revelation.

Jewish classical sources see energy as a gift, an animating force of Creation which comes only from God. Viewed in this way, energy is not a value-free commodity or natural process but an expression of divine design and will. It is a concrete expression of divine benevolence, given to enhance our lives in harmony with the rest of Creation. Just as light and wind are an manifestation of the constant creative process of God, so too the energy that powers society is intended to represent the will and power of the Holy One who constantly creates and maintains the universe. In the liturgy we speak of God “in His goodness forever renewing daily the work of creation.” Energy, since it is gift from God, cannot be misused or wasted. This theological understanding of the source and purpose of energy sets the current issues of climate change in even starker relief. If energy represents the gift of divine, transformative, life-giving power, then how can it be right to make use of energy in a way that tears creation apart?

A final homiletical point: From the consideration of the classical Jewish concepts of “light” and “wind” as the divine animating sources of life, we can see that solar and wind power are clean "godlike" energy sources that help to maintain the integrity of Creation even as they benefit humanity. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, come from ancient dead matter that must be exhumed from deep in the earth which in the Bible is the realm of the dead, Sheol. If we are people of faith who worship the Living God then we must act in a way that sustains life as responsible members of the choir of Creation. This is not an option; it is an imperative of responsibility that we cannot pass by. So when we light our hanukkiyyot this week, let us remember the ultimate Source of our light, our energy, and our lives and rededicate ourselves to the preservation of this beautiful Creation.

(The original version of this essay is from: http://greenfaith.org/success-stories/just-released-energy-conservation-resource )

After a while I found that I was walking along a path beside the large pond (or small lake) that was on the retreat center property. As I put down each foot the Hebrew word Hineni came into my mind. The word means “Here I am” and so with each step it was, “Here I am. Here I am. Here I am.” In each place and in each moment, “Here I am.”

In the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) the hineni is often used by people when they respond to a direct call from God. For example, in Genesis 22, Abraham is first called by God in verse 1 and he responds Hineni and then God gives him the command to sacrifice Isaac. Later in the chapter when Abraham is about to slay Isaac, the angel calls from heaven and Abraham answers Hineni. Jacob responds to a divine call twice with Hineni (Genesis 31:11 & Genesis 46:2). Moses responds to the voice from the Burning Bush with Hineni (Exodus 3:4) and Samuel also begins his prophetic mission with such a response to God’s call (1 Samuel 3:1-10). And the prophet Isaiah responds with Hineni when he experiences his inaugural vision of God and the seraphim in the Temple (Isaiah 6:8).

The one time in the Tanakh when it would be obvious for such a response is in the story of the Garden of Eden when God calls to Adam and Eve as they are hiding after eating the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:8-10). God asks, “Where are you” (in Hebrew: Ayyekkah?) but instead of answering “Here we are,” Adam can only give out a poor excuse for hiding. God being God, the question was not meant to imply that God could not know where Adam and Eve were but instead was a call to elicit a truthful response. As one biblical scholar pointed out “hineni” also has the force of “At your service!” To the divine call Adam especially failed as he immediately passed the buck of his disobedience to Eve.

About this episode Abraham Joshua Heschel remarked:

When Adam and Eve hid from His presence, the Lord called: Where art Thou (Genesis 3:9). It is a call that goes out again and again. It is a still small echo of a still small voice, not uttered in words, not conveyed in categories of the mind, but ineffable and mysterious, as ineffable and mysterious as the glory that fills whole world. It is wrapped in silence; concealed and subdued; yet it is as if all things were the frozen echo of the question: Where art thou? (God in Search of Man p. 137)

In other words, the divine “Where are you?” calls out every moment of our lives and most of the time, we refuse to hear it, we offer an excuse for not responding, we refuse to answer, “Here I am!” The voice is there but we do not listen. As Heschel said,

…When living true to the wonder of the steadily unfolding wisdom, we feel at times as if the echo of an echo of a voice were piercing the silence, trying in vain to reach our attention. We feel at times called upon, not knowing by whom, against our will, terrified at the power invested in our words, in our deeds, in our thoughts.

In our own lives, the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase. Those who know that this life of ours takes place in a world that is not all to be explained in human terms; that every moment is a carefully concealed act of His creation, cannot but ask: is there anything wherein His voice is not suppressed? Is there anything wherein His creation is not concealed? (God in Search of Man, p. 174)

This second passage from Heschel is one of my favorites from his work. It tells us that in all of Creation God is calling out to us even if we can only hear a fragment, a syllable at a time. But if we really listen we hear over the course of time a few syllables that eventually we may realize form a single phrase: “Ayyekkah?” “Where are you?”

On that walking meditation, I answered “Hineni,” To every moment when I heard “Where are you? I responded with “Here I am.” Here at this moment I am in this spot and in this time which will never be repeated in my life or in the history of the universe. Even if I were to return to that same spot, at the same time of year, it would not be the same. So I must try as much as I can to hear the divine question and respond, “Here I am in this precious moment of my life. Here I am in this sacred spot of Creation seeing the Glory of God filling the world. Here I am grateful for my life at this moment, grateful for the beauty all around me wherever I am. Here I am, ready to work to preserve this beauty for others in the future. At Your service!”

There is one more interesting use of the word Hineni in the Hebrew Bible. In the texts of the exilic prophet scholars call Second Isaiah, there are several passages where God says that there will come a time if we act ethically that we will call out and God will respond “Here I am!” (Isaiah 52:6; 58:6-9; 65:1). If we answer the call of God in Creation, then God will be with us as a partner in Tikkun ‘Olam.

All the seven days [of the festival of Sukkot] a man must make the Sukkah his permanent abode and his house his temporary abode. If rain fell, when may one be permitted to leave it? When the porridge would become spoilt. They propounded a parable: to what can this be compared? To a slave who comes to fill the cup for his master, and he [the master] poured a pitcher over his face.(Mishnah Sukkot 2:9)

Rain during Sukkot is a sign of divine disfavor since God seems to be preventing people from fulfilling a mitzvah. And that is why we only pray for rain on Shemini Atzeret, after we have been able to fulfill the mitzvah of “dwelling” in the sukkah.

Water is a major preoccupation in human civilization and for good reasons. Although water covers over 70 percent of the surface of the earth, clean freshwater is a precious substance, comprising only 3 percent of the total. Without water, life could not exist and the need for and the control of freshwater has been a major matter throughout human history. Today, there is a growing crisis over the access to freshwater as climate change is causing seawater to rise while the rapid increase in world population means that there is a lower per capita amount of available drinking water. There has also been an increase in contaminated water from human effluents, industrial agriculture, power generation, and industrial use. Climate change is also causing changes in weather patterns, which result in extended droughts in some areas of the world while causing floods and the rise of seawater in other parts, which then results in the contamination of agricultural areas (especially river deltas) by seawater; this will help to create a minimum of 250 million climate refugees by 2050. Water will continue to be one of the most important human issues during this century and will also be one of the primary sources of international insecurity.

When we look at water in the Jewish tradition we can see how the vocabulary of biblical Hebrew reflects the ancient Israelites’ concern for water. There are at least ten words for rain in biblical Hebrew, eight words for cloud, and numerous terms for springs, wells, cisterns, and aqueducts. Because there were no major river systems in the eco-regions y of the Land of Israel (unlike the neighboring civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt), the Israelites were almost completely dependent on rain for drinking water. The Land needed just the right amount of rain at just the right times for the soil to be fertile enough to grow crops and raise herd animals. But the average rate of rainfall in Israel is extremely variable from region to region. This variability results from the fact that Israel is at the junction of several different ecological domains, each with different amounts of annual rainfall. Anywhere from 16 to 40 inches of rain per year to 4 to 16 inches per year and in the desert areas less than 4 inches of rain per year.

This variability was encoded in the Torah’s view of divine action or Providence (in Hebrew: Hashgahah). For example, in Deuteronomy 11:10–17, (which includes what would later become the beginning of the second paragraph of the Sh’ma), the Torah explains the differences between Egypt and the Land of Israel. In Egypt, the rivers provided unlimited water at all times, thus allowing for human independence from any kind of divine constraints. But the Land of Israel is different: it gets its rain from heaven and therefore is under divine scrutiny and control. If the Israelites fulfill their covenant with God, the rain will come in its proper amount. The timing of the rain is also critical to the fertility of the Land. The early rain, called in this passage “yoreh,” comes in October and November and is intermittent and allows the dry hard soil to soften, thus allowing plowing and planting and the later rain to be absorbed. Seventy percent of the rain in the Land of Israel falls between December and February. The final or “late rain” mentioned (Hebrew: malkosh) comes in April or early May and is critical for the final stages of the crops’ growth. Fertility of the land is assured and prosperity for the community is granted. If they do not fulfill the covenant, God will “shut up the skies so there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce” and drought, sterility and poverty will plague the community. Ecology thus determined theology. The abundance or scarcity of rain is not a random natural occurrence dictated by changes in geography or climate, but a divine response to a human morality. Israel and the Land of Israel are bound together in one moral community under God’s direction.

In the ultimate redemption of the Messianic Age, as portrayed in the Prophets, water will never cease to flow in the Land of Israel and even those parts that are desert will become well watered. The variability of rain will no longer exist and Israel will contain a river (or rivers) as constant as the Nile. In Ezekiel 47, the prophet has a vision in which a great deep river will flow out of the restored Temple eastward down to the Dead Sea, which will become sweet. This river will be full of fish and the Judean desert will blossom with fruit trees and animal life. The redemption of the people and the redemption of the land are completely intertwined.

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s great poem, The Rime of the Ancient Marineris a rich tale of a sailor who is cursed for the sin of killing an albatross, a crime of cruelty against a fellow creature. The line which is the title of this post is from a section describing what happens when the ship is becalmed in the Doldrums—a zone of the oceans that encircles the Earth just north of the equator. Within this zone the winds are calm and sometimes are completely absent. The Doldrums are infamous for entrapping sailing ships for days or even weeks without enough wind to power the sails. As a result, many ships run out of water and the sailors suffer immensely because drinking seawater can be more deadly than thirst. This quote shows the great paradox of water: it is a necessary source of life but only a small amount of it in the world is useable. The sea is full of water but it cannot be drunk. Water can be a source of both life and death, an important idea that is also found in the Bible. And like the ancient mariner, humanity has cruelly ignored the morality of its relationship with Creation. Water is our need, but water can also be our punishment. This week, when we pray on Shemini Atzeret for rain in the Land of Israel, in the right amount and at the right time, let us also pray that this be so for the whole world.

The secular environment movement has often been criticized for presenting to the world only apocalyptic views of possible future environmental disasters. They have often failed to present a positive vision of what a sustainable world would look like. Environmental historian Steven Pyne once wrote: “The real future of environmentalism is in rehabilitation and restoration. Environmentalists have told the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall from grace over and over again. But we haven’t yet told the story of redemption. Now we need to tell that story.” Religious environmentalists, particularly those from the Abrahamic faiths, have rich traditional sources on redemption that may be drawn upon to create such an environmental vision of redemption.

However, in the Jewish environmental movement there have been few attempts to define our “perfected” world.” Too often, appeals to Tikkun ’Olam have been vague and are often in conflict with the way the actual workings of Creation. Jewish environmentalism needs a theology of redemption that is concordance with the modern scientific understanding of the natural world. Anything else would require a supernatural ending to the natural world, something modern theology in general and environmental theology in particular has rejected.

The traditional Jewish view of redemption or eschatology has been expressed on three different levels: the individual, the national and the universal. While there are many Jewish visions of redemption, before the modern age all of these concepts assumed that there will come a time when the Jewish people will be restored to their land and living under a Davidic sovereignty; that the individual’s soul will survive death and ultimately be restored to their resurrected body; and that there will a profound change in the course of the world politically as well as in the laws of nature themselves. This will bring about what my teacher Rabbi Neil Gillman has called “The Death of Death.” But the modern sciences of ecology and biology have shown us the necessity of death in the evolution of life and its ongoing dynamic existence.

A new vision of redemption needs to incorporate ‘Tikkun ‘Olam into an ecologically sound concept of Creation. One way to approach this problem is create what might be termed a “minimal” approach to redemption. The minimal approach may be summed by what J.R.R. Tolkien had Gandalf the wizard say about any future battles between good and evil (Yes, I am a very devoted Lord of the Rings fan):

“Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)

This minimal redemption is very similar to Moses Maimonides’ naturalistic messianism in which natural laws are not abrogated in the days of the Messiah. Human society does improve, but except for the resurrection of the dead, all life goes on as before but in peace, prosperity and harmony. A minimal approach thus seeks no grand vision, no final supernatural end of time, and no radical changes in the natural world. It seeks rather to solve the environmental crisis in a spirit of humility and modesty by the performance of pragmatic acts and policies which will bring about a sustainable world for future generations. This is a great enough task for us all.

We may never see the completion of our quest for a sustainable world but if I could go to my rest knowing that I have left “clean earth to till” for the next generation, then I will be at peace.

Rabbi Lawrence Troster is the Rabbinic Scholar-in-Residence for GreenFaith, the interfaith religious enivornmental coalition and is a regular contributor to the Huffinton Post. His articles there can be found at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster