About Eden Village Camp: Eden Village Camp aims to be a living model of a thriving, sustainable Jewish community, grounded in social responsibility and inspired Jewish spiritual life. By bringing the wisdom of our tradition to the environmental, social, and personal issues important to today’s young people, we practice a Judaism that is substantive and relevant. Through our Jewish environmental and service-learning curricula, joyful Shabbat observance, pluralistic Jewish expression, and inspiring, diverse staff role models, we foster our campers’ positive Jewish identity and genuine commitment to tikkun olam (healing the world). Our 3 acre educational farm and orchard are based on principles of permaculture, sustainable and organic farming. We produce annual vegetables, perennials, and tend educational gardens as well as animals.

About the Farm Educator Apprenticeship: This is a paid six-month apprenticeship for young adults seeking hands-on experience. In the Spring build your knowledge based on agriculture, farm-based education and Jewish community. In the Summer, work at our 8-week intensive summer camp as Jewish Farm Educators. In the fall, take ownership and integrate your new skills by diving deeper into independent projects.  Live on-site at our beautiful camp, one hour north of New York City. By joining the farm staff at Eden Village, apprentices will hold two main responsibilities – tending our growing spaces and educating in our all of our programming through the spring, summer and fall. Apprentices will also have an opportunity to dive deeper into one of four focus areas: perennials, annuals, animals, and educational gardens. In these specialties apprentices will gain a deeper understanding of certain aspects of farming and will take on leadership and special projects to booster their learning and the learning of campers and program participants.

Details: April 14th, 2015 – October 22nd 2015, Apprentices receive full room and board at Eden Village, as well as a modest stipend. Extensive experience is not necessary but experiential curiosity is required. We recommend you explore our website thoroughly to get more information about our apprenticeship, farm, camp, and more at Eden Village Camp.

More questions? Explore the FAQ page. For all other questions, contact farm@edenvillagecamp.org

Just before Yom Kippur, I posted Al Chet – Confessional for the Earth. So many are the deeds, misdeeds, and non-deeds in relation to the Earth for which we must confess, and then, hopefully, do teshuvah. With this post I begin a series of suggestions for how to implement changes that can help to make our confessional meaningful beyond its words, into actions.

I begin with a response to this phrase:

For the sin we have committed against You by believing we are doing enough.

Do you believe you are doing enough? I think many of us feel we are not. Maybe we even have in our heads ideas of what we should be doing, but we have a hard time getting motivated. Maybe we are scared, or just stuck, or overwhelmed by the many options running through our heads or coming at us in email blasts and other social media.

How do we find our own path? For it is our own path we must follow – the on-going process teshuvah is a very individual one, and that is what we are talking about – re-turning to G!d in a way that really alters our actions.

So I offer for you a meditation to help you solidify your understanding of your way forward to a more complete relationship with the Holy One of Blessing and the Earth.

Meditation for a Stronger and More Active Earth Connection

• Step outside.
• Make yourself comfortable in a comfortable place. Give yourself a few minutes to settle in.
• Relax your breathing. Breathe in deeply. Breath out, slowly exhaling. Repeat, using the breathy word Yah - G!d – the Breath of Life.
• Now feel the Earth beneath your feet. Focus on the connection between your feet and the ground beneath. Feel your connection to Earth flowing up from below. Then feel the Earth’s connection to you flowing downward from yourself.
• Return to a few breaths of Yah.
• Look upward at the sky. Feel your connection to the heavens – the Sun, the stars, the Moon. Focus on that connection. Allow the energy of your connection to the heavens to flow down from above. Then feel the sky’s connection to you flowing upward from yourself.
• Breathe deeply.
• Close your eyes. Visualize your connection to beloved places, to important people in your life, to other living things. Allow their connection to you to flow inward to your heart. Allow your connection to them to flow outward in return.
• Breathe deeply.
• Use your own language and images. Feel a sense of gratitude. Ask G!d for strength and direction.
• Hold the silence. Hold the stillness. Hold the strength. Let the answers come.
• Breathe deeply.
• When you are ready, open your eyes.
• Feel yourself blessed and energized.
• When you are ready, move onward to what is next.

You may wish to repeat this, to modify and make it your own. Perhaps you want to add words – or a word – of prayer. Play with it until you feel a new sense of resolve and strength and courage to move forward.

Remember that the Confession for the Earth ends with these words:”we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

You can do it. I can do it. Together, we can do it.

And we will.

Rabbi Katy Z. Allen is the founder and leader of Ma’yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope in Wayland, MA, and a staff chaplain at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She is the co-convener of the Jewish Climate Action Network, a member of the Jewcology.org editorial board, a board member of Shomrei Bereishit: Rabbis and Cantors for the Earth, and the co-creator of Gathering in Grief: The Israel / Gaza Conflict.

 
Eternal God, You created earth and heavens with mercy, and blew the breath of life into animals and humans. We were created amidst a world of wholeness, a world called “very good,” pure and beautiful, but now your many works are being erased by us from the book of life.

Not by our righteousness do we plead our prayers before You, Holy One of All, for we have sinned, we have despoiled, we have destroyed.

And so we confess together our collective sins, and ask for forgiveness:

For the sin which we have committed before You intentionally or unintentionally;

And for the sin which we have committed before You inadvertently;

For the sin which we have committed before You openly or secretly,

And for the sin which we have committed before You knowingly or unknowingly;

For the sin which we have committed before You, and before our children and grandchildren, by desecrating the sacred Earth,

And for the sin which we have committed before You of going beyond being fruitful and multiplying to overfilling the planet;

For the sin which we have committed before You by putting comfort above conscience,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by putting convenience above compassion;

For the sin we have committed against You by believing we are doing enough,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by reaping the dividends of unsustainability;

For the sin which we have committed before You through fear of speaking out,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by eating and drinking without concern for Earth and its hungry and thirsty;

For the sin which we have committed before You by saying we don’t have time,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by staying alive beyond the boundaries of our allotted life span:

For all of these, God of pardon, pardon us, forgive us, atone for us.

For the sin which we have committed before You by not pressuring our elected officials,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by gaining wealth through fossil fuels;

For the sin which we have committed before You by denying the impact of our white privilege,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by closing our hearts and eyes to injustice;

For the sin which we have committed before You by filling land and ocean with filth, toxins and garbage,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by extinguishing forever species which You saved from the waters of the flood;

For the sin which we have committed before You by razing forests and trees, rivers and mountains,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by turning the atmosphere into a chastening rod;

For the sin which we have committed before You by making desolate habitats that give life to every living soul,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by a confused heart;

For all of these, God of pardon, pardon us, forgive us, atone for us.

For the sin which we have committed before You by thinking separately of US and THEM,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by using more than our share of Earth’s resources;

For the sin which we have committed before You by considering human life more important than other forms of life,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by being deceived by those with power;

For the sin which we have committed before You by not finding the courage to overcome the reality of the lobbies,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by wanting to act only in ways that will serve us economically;

For the sin which we have committed before You by failing to create sufficient local, green jobs,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by trying to convince people rather than drawing them in;

For the sin which we have committed before You by not thinking into the future when we act,

And for the sin which we have committed before You by living in relative safety and not being caring of others;

For all of these, God of pardon, pardon us, forgive us, atone for us.

And yet, we know that we can only achieve forgiveness from You, O G!d of All That Is after we have sought forgiveness from our fellow living beings, and so, in order to achieve atonement, forgiveness, and pardon,

Help us, Holy One, to enter into loving respectful conversation,

Help us to create deep conversations,

And help us to listen to people.

Help us, Merciful One, to become empowered to talk and to connect,

Help us to be creative in how we start the conversation,

And help us to use our sacred texts as a foundation for our conversations.

Help us, Compassionate One, to start where people are and transition to climate change,

Help us to use humor as a vehicle of engaging people,

Help us to start with experience of nature and end with responsibility of saving world.

In order to achieve atonement, forgiveness, and pardon,

Help us, Holy One, to acknowledge that we are all in this together,

Help us to celebrate the positives happening in the world.

Help us, Source of All, to build coalitions,

Help us to create partnerships where we see other people’s needs.

Help us, Eternal One, to organize local solutions,

And help us to recognize that ownership and collective action are important.

Open our eyes to see the majesty of Your creation! Then we will praise you as it is written: “How manifold are Your works, Holy One! You made them all with wisdom; the earth is filled with what you hold.”

Please, Source of All, protect all living beings, in the shade of your wings give us refuge. Renew the face of the earth, save the weave and fullness of life. Please, Mysterious One, remove the heart of stone from our flesh, and set within us a heart of flesh, that we may behold the Godly therein. Grant us wisdom and courage to heal and to watch over this garden of life, to make it thrive under the heavens.

Help us to realize that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Help us to realize that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Adapted from the traditional Jewish High Holiday liturgy and works by Rabbi Lawrence Troster, Rabbi Daniel Nevins (which I found at neohasid.org), and, at the suggestion of Rabbi Judy Weiss, material from the Jewish Climate Action Network of Boston created with the help of Gary Rucinski.

Note: Hyperlinks above are to organizations that work to help the environment in ways that bear some relationship to the selected text. This is a work in progress, and I hope to add more links. If you have suggestions, please email them to rabbikza@verizon.net.

Rabbi Katy Z. Allen is the founder and leader of Ma’yan Tikvah – A Wellspring of Hope in Wayland, MA, and a staff chaplain at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She is the co-convener of the Jewish Climate Action Network, a member of the Jewcology.org editorial board, a board member of Shomrei Bereishit: Rabbis and Cantors for the Earth, and the co-creator of Gathering in Grief: The Israel / Gaza Conflict.

Yet for many Jews, climate change is still not seen as a “Jewish issue”. Now, to me it seems obvious that the decimation of life on our planet is as fundamentally important to Jews and Judaism as any explicitly Jewish issue. And the possible extent of impoverishment, disaster, and famine that could be brought on by climate change must be a Jewish issue if justice is a Jewish issue, which it surely is. But in case that simple logic doesn’t work for you, let’s be absolutely clear about what the specific Jewish implications might be.

According to a Ben Gurion University study, if we enter an era of what scientists consider extreme climate change – meaning an increase in average global temperature of more than 2 degrees – the Negev desert will expand 200 km northward. That means the desert will stretch far beyond Beersheva, beyond Raanana and Haifa, all the way into Lebanon. Almost all of the sh’feilah – the agriculturally productive lowlands – could be gone. On top of that, Tel Aviv will be under water due to rising sea levels. If that’s not an existential threat to Israel than nothing is.

So if you’re a Zionist or you care about the Jewish people and you think that the issue of climate change is not as important as “energy independence”, you have your values upside down. If you think the natural gas boom caused by fracking is good for Israel, or tar sands oil is good for Israel, then your picture of the world is missing some essential facts. Protecting Israel doesn’t just mean getting off of Arab petroleum, it means getting off of all petroleum. If you’re not advocating for that, you might as well be calling for the destruction of the state.

This week we will be praying for another year of life. We will blow the shofar to recall God’s original act of creation, and to herald the yearly renewal of Creation. This week we will also be ushering in the next Sabbatical year, the Shmita, when debts are canceled, the land is released, and the power that comes from possessing the land is lifted. And yet we still live in a world where mountains, along with all their ecosystems, are torn off in order to tear out coal. We still live in a land where polluted water is not considered too high a price to pay in order to extract oil and gas that will pollute our atmosphere. Where the debt to nature we incur will be paid by future generations, or, to use the Torah’s expression, where “we eat the flesh of our sons and daughters”. (Lev. 26:29)

Let’s make this Rosh Hashanah, and this Shmita, the year when all of that changes. Let’s get our institutions and portfolios to divest from Big Oil. Let’s get our synagogues and communities to stand up for the Earth. Let’s repay our debt to the planet with blessings and gratitude and right actions. Let us listen to the wake up call of the shofar and respond: “Hayom harat olam!” – “today, a new world is conceived!”

Rabbi David Seidenberg is the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God’s Image in the More-Than-Human World, published by Cambridge University Press, and the creator and director of neohasid.org. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

I am in my favorite place at my favorite time: in the garden, in the morning, before the cars have started up, before the noise of lawnmowers and leaf blowers. The crickets are singing, the birds responding. The rising sun’s light filters through the leaves. A beginning.

It has been a tough year in the garden. An endless winter caused a late start and temperatures have been cooler than usual. A call from critter to critter that I cannot hear lets them know there is bounty on my corner. Maybe it’s because the peach tree lost its flowers in a hard spring rain, but squirrels have eaten a fair amount of my produce this year, taking a bit of a turnip and leaving the rest (yeah, I’m not surprised). Mice, too, have traversed here. I have never seen one, but my garden helpers have. Let’s not forget the birds.

At the same time, the blackberries went wild. Literally. I have cut them back and dug up new plants several times. Cucumbers abound. Arugula sings its symphony. The carrots are fat and rich. I could go on. But what hits me this year is the contrast between disappointment and satisfaction; the moments of wondering why I do this at all, pitched against the incredible feeling of gratitude when I bag up 4 bags of produce filled with veggies, fruits and herbs, for our local food pantry. When neighbors come by and tell me they’ve been feasting on the blackberries. Who wouldn’t?

This is the rhythm of the Elul and High Holy Day season, the time when we take stock. How many things did not turn out the way we wanted them to this year? How many grapes did we plant that turned sour? (Most have mine have been chomped on by critters.) What do we do? Do we become depressed or disheartened? Angry? Do we give up? Or do we plant more seeds?

Perhaps we do all of the above. Perhaps we need to feel the grief and disappointment of our losses and our failures. Perhaps we need to feel the frustration. But Elul and the High Holy Day season tell us this is only part of the process. For us to fulfill the essence of this time of year demands that we somehow find a way to get to the other side. Maybe that includes a change of project, or maybe it means finding a new way in the same project.

I sometimes think that it is all the difficulties involved in growing food that inspired our Jewish ancestry to move away from its agricultural roots. This was revived, however, with the kibbutz movement in Israel’s pioneer days, and is experiencing further revival all over the Jewish world today. As we demand more sustainable lifestyles and healthier, more affordable foods, we are revitalizing our synagogue and neighborhood networks to feed ourselves and the hungry around us.

Even as I write this I observe a critter that has found her way into the grapevines. I go over to see the culprit. A squirrel. She takes her time untangling herself from the vines, climbs up the adjacent telephone pole, and when far enough away from me to rest in safety, turns. I see the bulge in her mouth. She takes out her dessert – a nice, fat purple grape, and eats it in front of me.

Not all of our plans will fruit the way we hope or plan. But this is the season to harvest the best of our works this year, and to plan and plant again, for a fuller, richer, more bountiful harvest in the year to come.

May your Elul and the year to come be rich with new ideas and renewed energy to plant and see them bear fruit.

Robin Damsky is the rabbi of West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest, IL, (wsthz.org) where in the temple garden’s first year, congregants donated over 120 pounds of produce to the hungry. Rabbi Damsky educates others while cultivating and donating her own food as well from her organic, edible landscape. She is the mother of Sarah.

The book tells of the prophet Yonah’s flight from the word of God, culminating famously in the prophet’s being thrown overboard from a ship and swallowed by a large fish.  After the fish vomits him up on a beach, Yonah finally accepts his prophetic mission to the people of Nineveh.  The text tells us “Nineveh was a city great to God, a three-day’s walk across.  Yonah set out, came one-day’s walk into the city, and declared ‘In another forty days, Nineveh will be toppled!’”  (Yonah 3:3-4)  Then, in perhaps the most incredible part of the story (much more surprising than the business with the fish): the people of Nineveh immediately accept Yonah’s message and declare a public fast.  The king of Nineveh himself not only participates in this public mourning but issues a decree calling for real change: “let all turn from their evil ways and the violence which is in their hands.  Who knows, maybe God will turn and relent, turning from his anger so that we are not destroyed?” (Ibid. 3:8-9)  In the end, God does relent in response to Nineveh’s repentance, making Yonah the only prophet in the bible whose warnings of imminent destruction are heeded, and thus avoided.

On Sunday, September 21, along with about 200,000 other people, I will be participating in the People’s Climate March, a “one-day’s walk” into the heart of New York City to demand immediate action on climate change.  The march has been planned to coincide with a gathering of world leaders in New York for the 2014 UN Climate Summit.  I am marching because the experts agree that if we as a global society do not meaningfully cut our CO2 emissions, we can expect to see uncomfortable changes coming our way.  In recent years, as a New Yorker, I have seen first-hand the devastation wreaked by extreme weather events, the frequency and severity of which are expected to increase as atmospheric CO2 levels rise.  If our society continues along the path that we are on, then, if not in forty days, perhaps in forty years, or a hundred and forty, our Nineveh will be toppled.  That is why we must march, to demand that our leaders stand up to the powerful economic and political interests that would have them ignore or deny the very real threat of global climate change.

I have heard people ask whether a march in the streets to demand action by political leaders is a futile exercise.  If past experience is any indication, it certainly does not seem likely that the leaders gathered at the UN Climate Summit will react to the warnings of climate scientists and activists with the same alacrity exhibited by the king of Nineveh.  However, I don’t think that the answer is to give up and stay home.  It’s important to remember that in this story, we are not just Yonah.  We are also Nineveh.

Marching to the center of the city to deliver a prophetic warning of coming destruction is only one part of the mission of the People’s Climate March.  The other part is to hear the warning ourselves, and be inspired to turn back from our evil ways (to borrow a phrase from the king of Nineveh).  If, on September 21, 200,000 people march through the streets carrying signs and chanting slogans, and on the 22nd, we all go home again to business as usual, it’s safe to say we will have wasted our time.  But if those same 200,000 people, or even a fraction thereof, are inspired by the experience to become more active in the global climate movement and to take concrete steps to reduce their own carbon footprint (e.g., taking mass transit or biking to work instead of driving, avoiding air-travel as much as possible),  then the march will have been a success, whatever decisions are or are not made that day at the UN Climate Summit

In the story of Yonah, it was only after the people declared their fast and took action themselves that the king was moved to make the fast official and legislate the changes that would save their society. If we follow in the footsteps of the people of Nineveh, changing our behavior as a society from the ground up and building an ongoing mass movement to fight climate change, then our leaders will have no choice but to follow.  If that happens, then, to once again quote the king of Nineveh, “perhaps God will turn and relent, turning from his anger so that we are not destroyed.”

The book tells of the prophet Yonah’s flight from the word of God, culminating famously in the prophet’s being thrown overboard from a ship and swallowed by a large fish. After the fish vomits him up on a beach, Yonah finally accepts his prophetic mission to the people of Nineveh. The text tells us “Nineveh was a city great to God, a three-day’s walk across. Yonah set out, came one-day’s walk into the city, and declared ‘In another forty days, Nineveh will be toppled!’” (Yonah 3:3-4) Then, in perhaps the most incredible part of the story (much more surprising than the business with the fish): the people of Nineveh immediately accept Yonah’s message and declare a public fast. The king of Nineveh himself not only participates in this public mourning but issues a decree calling for real change: “let all turn from their evil ways and the violence which is in their hands. Who knows, maybe God will turn and relent, turning from his anger so that we are not destroyed?” (Ibid. 3:8-9) In the end, God does relent in response to Nineveh’s repentance, making Yonah the only prophet in the bible whose warnings of imminent destruction are heeded, and thus avoided.

On Sunday, September 21, along with about 200,000 other people, I will be participating in the People’s Climate March, a “one-day’s walk” into the heart of New York City to demand immediate action on climate change. The march has been planned to coincide with a gathering of world leaders in New York for the 2014 UN Climate Summit. I am marching because the experts agree that if we as a global society do not meaningfully cut our CO2 emissions, we can expect to see uncomfortable changes coming our way. In recent years, as a New Yorker, I have seen first-hand the devastation wreaked by extreme weather events, the frequency and severity of which are expected to increase as atmospheric CO2 levels rise. If our society continues along the path that we are on, then, if not in forty days, perhaps in forty years, or a hundred and forty, our Nineveh will be toppled. That is why we must march, to demand that our leaders stand up to the powerful economic and political interests that would have them ignore or deny the very real threat of global climate change.

I have heard people ask whether a march in the streets to demand action by political leaders is a futile exercise. If past experience is any indication, it certainly does not seem likely that the leaders gathered at the UN Climate Summit will react to the warnings of climate scientists and activists with the same alacrity exhibited by the king of Nineveh. However, I don’t think that the answer is to give up and stay home. It’s important to remember that in this story, we are not just Yonah. We are also Nineveh.

Marching to the center of the city to deliver a prophetic warning of coming destruction is only one part of the mission of the People’s Climate March. The other part is to hear the warning ourselves, and be inspired to turn back from our evil ways (to borrow a phrase from the king of Nineveh). If, on September 21, 200,000 people march through the streets carrying signs and chanting slogans, and on the 22nd, we all go home again to business as usual, it’s safe to say we will have wasted our time. But if those same 200,000 people, or even a fraction thereof, are inspired by the experience to become more active in the global climate movement and to take concrete steps to reduce their own carbon footprint (e.g., taking mass transit or biking to work instead of driving, avoiding air-travel as much as possible), then the march will have been a success, whatever decisions are or are not made that day at the UN Climate Summit

In the story of Yonah, it was only after the people declared their fast and took action themselves that the king was moved to make the fast official and legislate the changes that would save their society. If we follow in the footsteps of the people of Nineveh, changing our behavior as a society from the ground up and building an ongoing mass movement to fight climate change, then our leaders will have no choice but to follow. If that happens, then, to once again quote the king of Nineveh, “perhaps God will turn and relent, turning from his anger so that we are not destroyed.”

Use local and organic ingredients in your meals:  The healthiest foods for the holiday are foods that are grown locally without any pesticides.  Food purchased from local farmers or that you grow yourself will be fresher and have a higher nutritional content than food flown in from hundreds of miles or more away.  If you are planning to serve the traditional snack of apples and honey, consider that eating locally made honey has been shown to reduce the severity of allergies as well.

Turn off your gadgets:    Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are holidays that focus both on spending time in worship and spending time with friends and family.  Turning off your phone, tablet, iPod and other gadgets will keep you focused on what the holidays are about and reduce your energy use at the same time.

Decorate your holiday table naturally:   Head to your backyard or a local park and create a natural centerpiece for your holiday table.  A basket with acorns, pinecones and colorful leaves will make the holiday festive.  Avoid purchasing centerpiece items that will go right to the landfill when you are done using them.

Get to services more sustainably:  If your level of observance involves walking to services for the High Holidays, you are already doing what you can to have a transportation carbon footprint equal to zero.  If you don’t or can’t walk to services, carpool wherever possible with family, neighbors and friends.   Another option is to take public transportation if your synagogue is near a bus, train or light rail line.

Best wishes for a sweet and green New Year!   

This time of year always seems a hurricane of activity: coming back from vacation to reams of email, or starting school, or dealing with all the pent-up housework that went blissfully ignored during the easy summer months.

Traditionally, Jews see this time of year very differently. Like typical Americans, this period is for them both an ending and a beginning: a recognition of the waning of life and an invigorating harbinger of new possibilities. But in place of the chaotic hurricane that starts for us after Labor Day, many Jews launch a period of quiet, internal reconstruction four days earlier on the first day of Elul.

Leaving mental space and physical time for self-reflection—and doing it now, precisely because this is such a busy time of year—represents an excellent discipline that can preserve mental and physical health throughout the year.

The change of seasons also teaches about of the amazing balance in the Earth that gives us food, clean air, and all good things. We don’t need to lament the end of warm weather and the reminder that in a few months we will be buried in snow. Snow is one of the great blessings of God–not just because we enjoy winter sports, but because it forms the perfect storage medium that, when the climate works right, preserves the water coming from Heaven that is needed months later for the plants that sprang up on the third day of Creation.

We don’t have to approach Elul through the traditional obsession with the S-word (sin). We can look back at what we wanted to accomplish during the year, and measure how far we have come. We can recall what unanticipated challenges and woes came up, congratulate ourselves for making it through them, and give a thumb’s up to the greater force that might have helped. We can ask why it is (if so) we do more Jewish stuff during High Holidays than the rest of year, and consider incrementing our Jewish practice and thinking year-round. And most of all, we should take a vow to devote part of the year to the preservation of the Earth, so that our descendants can enjoy High Holidays three thousand years from now.

Andrew Oram is an editor and writer at the technology company O’Reilly Media, a member of Temple Shir Tikvah of Winchester, Massachusetts, and an activist in the Jewish Climate Action Network and other local
(This is adapted from an article originally published in the newsletter of Temple Shir Tivkvah, Winchester, Mass.)

As we enter the Shmita / Sabbatical Year, we may be asking what its content might be. We can begin, just a few days before Rosh Hashanah, joining the several dozen Jewish organizations that will take part in the People’s Climate March in New York City, Sunday Septembr 21, beginning at 11:30 am.

Then on Rosh Hashanah (which can mean “New Year” or “Start of Transformation”), we might celebrate what the tradition sees as the birthday of the world, or of the human species (adam) as we emerged from Mother Earth (adamah). On Yom Kippur, we might enrich the Avodah service by prostrating ourselves on the grass of Mother Earth as our forebears did at the Temple in Jerusalem, murmuring to ourselves the sacred name of YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh by simply breathing, as the High Priest did on that day when he emerged from the Holy of Holies.

And on Sukkot, the Festival of fullness (Full Moon of the sabbatical/ seventh month, the harvest time of full abundance), we might draw on a powerful line from our evening prayers: “Spread over all of us a sukkah of Your peace.”

What is a “sukkah”? It is a fragile hut, fragile in time and space. Its leafy, leaky roof must be open to the stars and the rain. It stands for only a week –– a festival week called by its name, Sukkot, to celebrate the harvest, to pray for the rain that will make the next harvest possible, and to implore God’s bounty not for Jews alone but for all the nations of the world.

This is our proposal for active hope, hopeful activism: On the Sunday and (Columbus Day holiday) Monday that fall during Sukkot this year — October 12 and 13 — let Jews invite into their sukkot, those leafy, leaky, vulnerable huts, the actual people and the explicit intent of celebrating peace, welcoming all peoples, and healing the Earth.

That intent calls us to merge the joy of Sukkot – which is called “The Festival,” “the season of our joy” – with determination to end the militarization of our lives and the extreme, quasi-military, exploitation of our Earth.

Examples of this militarization abound, but for Jewcology let us focus on :

• The quasi-military destruction of mountains, the creation of asthma epidemics, and the overheating of our planet for the sake of profit-hungry Big Coal.
• The quasi-military fracking and poisoning of our water, the burning of towns along the railroad tracks, the despoiling of land along the pipelines, and the overheating of our planet for the sake of profit-hungry Big Oil.
• The quasi-military forcefulness of global scorching that imposes on the Earth and on the human community – especially on the poor – the droughts that make for famine, turning poverty into hunger and hunger into starvation, and the superstorms and rising sea levels that flood our cities and our homes.

How do we make the sukkah into both a joyful affirmation of peace and a challenge to purveyors of such violence?

To begin with, why does the prayer not call for a Temple of peace, a Palace of peace, a Fortress of peace, even a House of peace — but instead for the most vulnerable of all dwellings, a Sukkah of peace? Precisely because it isvulnerable. The sukkah is in itself a teaching that peace cannot be achieved with steel walls, lead bullets, fiery bombs –- but only with a sense of welcome, of compassion, and of shared vulnerability

In fact, as the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11 showed, despite all our efforts to storm Heaven by building towers to scrape the sky, we all actually do live in sukkot, vulnerable to attack unless we turn our enemies into friends.

But that implicit quality of the sukkah is not sufficient to challenge the explicit forces of destruction that we face.

So — Jews who honor the traditions of Sukkot could invite those who are likeliest to be the targets and victims of this attack against the Earth — African-Americans, Hispanic immigrants, Appalachian poor whites — to join in sukkot on October 12 and 13 to sing, dance, tell each other stories of our different lives, pray, discuss the needs we all have for sustainable sustenance and equal justice, and make sure that we all vote in the elections that will come a few weeks later.

Besides hundreds of such peacemaking sukkot across our country and the world, perhaps a sukkah should be built during those days in Lafayette Park across from the White House, in the USA; in Independence Park, in Jerusalem.There we could challenge the US government –

• to end the heating and poisoning of our country and all Earth by Big Carbon,
• and to seek peace and pursue it in a myriad other contexts – our cities and our neighbors overseas.

And so may we ourselves “spread over all of us the sukkah of shalom, salaam, paz, peace”!

What might these seven be?

Already nominated: bread (like challah for Shabbat, should this be a “woven” bread? round, for the cycles, as is a traditional Rosh Hashanah challah? how about woven into seven spirals?), an apple, honey, wine, pomegranates.

What might the others be, and why?

I would add to this Shmita Seder plate charoset, on the grounds (as I have previously suggested) that it is the embodiment of Shir HaShirim which bears the recipe for charoset — nuts, apples, wine, apricots, spices.

I suggest that the whirling spirals of Shabbat => Seventh moonth/Tishrei => Shabbat shabbaton (Shmita) => Yovel, each one a whirl in the spiral of healing, are all aiming toward Shir HaShirim and its embodiment, charoset.

That, I suggest, is the fruitful fulfillment of all history, Gan Eden for grown-ups and a grown-up human race. No “mashiach” needed for these messianic days because we all, adam and adamah, women and men, anoint each other.

Shabbat first comes into human practice with manna. Why? I think, because the misdeed of Eden was about eating — gobbling up the Earth’s abundance without any self-restraint. (“From one tree you shall not eat….”) . This misdeed brings about the end of the abundance: “Every day of your life you shall toil with the sweat pouring down your face to barely eat, because the Earth will bring forth thorns and thistles. And women will be subordinated to men.”)

Shabbat comes with Manna precisely to begin the first stages of the reversal of the post-Edenic disaster. This food comes freely from YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh, the Interbreath of Life. It can only come after Pharaoh has been overthrown and slavery — the worst version of endless toil — has been dissolved.

And this manna comes with an intrinsic limit on over-eating — if you gather too much, the extra rots — and it comes with a built-in “operant conditioning” that you can’t work for it on Shabbat and don’t need to, because extra comes on the sixth day, it does not rot, and none comes on Shabbat. Abundance flowers again, and this time self-restraint is built in. The first step in reversing the post-Eden disaster.

The second step is the seventh moonth, in which we celebrate four festivals, one at each phase of the moon. The third and fourth steps are Shmita and Yovel. And then we glimpse Pardes, the free and joyful Garden of Shir HaShirim, in which we are playfully loving with and in the Earth, in which a woman leads the story and is not subordinate to men, and in which the Erotic — sexuality — is not shameful as in the adolescent Eden, but playful and joyful.

In Eden for grown-ups, the Parental God of Eden does not need to appear because we have grown up to spiritual maturity. Even “YHWH,” the Breath of Life, does not need to be specifically named, because the whole Song is the Name of God.

So this whole spiral of Shabbat => Tishrei => Shmita => Yovel aims toward => the Pardes of Yom sheh-Kulo Shabbat (the day that is fully Shabbat) == Shir HaShirim.

Charoset makes six on the Shmita Seder plate. We might say it is really the seventh, but if so it leaves open the question — What, dear chevra, might be the sixth?

This year, this summer, we are in the “sixth year” of the cycle, “Friday afternoon” of the week, yearning toward Shabbat. Perhaps we are experiencing the torments of that time, the frantic rush that so many of us experience as we try to be ready for Shabbat. For Shabbat shabbaton.

Shabbat shabbaton shalom,
Arthur

This ebook is the most comprehensive study in English of how Jewish traditional sources teach us to protect our natural resources and preserve the environment. From food to trees, energy to water, wealth to biodiversity, the book studies eighteen topics where Jewish tradition has a relevant lesson for today's environmental challenges. All materials were comprehensively studied and reviewed by scientists and rabbis before printing.

These materials were originally created for the Canfei Nesharim/Jewcology Year of Jewish Learning on the Environment in 2012, and were released between Tu b'Shevat 5772 and Tu b'Shevat 5773. The materials were shared widely throughout the Jewish community, reaching more than 50,000 people. Source sheets, podcasts and videos are also available separately for each topic.

The ebook can now be ordered for your Kindle or Ebook device.

Podcasts now available: Another exciting release from the Year of Jewish Learning on the Environment: all podcasts from our series are now available on iTunes! To see the full series, simply search “Canfei Nesharim” in the itunes store, or go to https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/canfei-nesharim/id646475293?mt=2. You can listen to the podcasts right there, or click "view in iTunes " and then click subscribe to have them appear in your iTunes podcast library.

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Check out all the materials, including source sheets and videos, at www.canfeinesharim.org/learning or www.jewcology.com/learning.

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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)

I suddenly found my silverware box unbearable.

It was the blue felt piece that it came in originally, the one that basically wrapped the silverware in a blue snuggy, with slots for the silverware to sit in, and a kind of zippered blanket covering and protecting it.

We didn’t have anywhere to put this particular silverware container, so it sat on the bookshelf shelf in our dining room, where it gathered lint and dust for the more than ten years since we got married.

I wanted one of those silverware boxes made of wood, that opens on a hinge, that looks like we are grown-ups, for goodness' sake, not college kids playing house! Thus I vented my sorrow on senseless things. I went to Amazon and searched for silverware boxes.

It turns out they are actually kind of expensive, and even in my state I wasn’t going to spend $100 to feel better about this thing. So I found one for about $30, and the reviews were decent, if not terrific, and so I bought it.

I tested it out for a couple of days before I decided to keep it, and it seemed to work OK, so I put my silverware into it.

Fast forward six months, and here’s what I’ve learned about the silverware box: the knives don’t stay in place. The rest of the silverware does fine, but the knives are always falling down (from the top where they are supposed to stand in a row) in a messy heap over the rest of the silverware. And so I have spent endless moments re-organizing the silverware box and putting the knives back in place. To return ten minutes later to find them back where they were before, in the lower part of the box.

Needless to say, this is not what I had in mind when I purchased it. I wanted everything to stay where it belongs! I wanted it to look like I had everything together!

Not exactly, says reality.

Life simply doesn’t stay together like that, does it? Like the laundry that constantly has to be done, like the dishes that are washed over and OVER again. In the same way, especially during this year of mourning, I have to just keep putting it back together. Again.

After a lot of testing, I’ve figured out that the knives are more likely to stay in place when I keep the box open. But when the box is open, all the pieces are more vulnerable. Another metaphor.

In this coming year, I hope I can keep my heart open – and also, worry less about having it all together. I hope to embrace the messy, sometimes beautiful, sometimes painful reality of life.

My family took on a shared focus of “ivdu et Hashem b’simcha” – to serve G-d with joy. I’m seeking simcha in 5774. What are you seeking?

Postscript: Please forgive me for any way that I may have hurt you during the course of 5773. I wish you only blessing!

But this birthday is not just one of celebration. The line we add after "Hayom Harat Olam" is "Today the world stands in judgment."

These two motifs alone should give us pause today to consider what we are doing to the planet, to how we can restore the balance of the atmosphere, the balance of the waters and the air, of the forests and plains, the ocean and the continents.

"Today the world is born" — so says the liturgy according to most translations. But let's look more closely at the words "Hayom Harat Olam" to see what they can teach us.

"Harah" or "Harat" means pregnancy, conception or gestation. Not birth, but the process which leads up to birth. If we wanted to say "the birth of the world" we would say "leidat ha'olam". And "olam" can mean world, but if we wanted to say "the conception of the world," we would add the definite article and say "harat ha-olam." "Olam" by itself really means eternity, from the root that means "hidden," or more precisely, the infinite that is hidden, that is beyond our limited perception.

So "Harat Olam" means very literally, "pregnant with eternity", or "eternally pregnant." The day of Rosh Hashanah is pregnant with eternity.

What deeper evocation could one find of this wondrous and miraculous creation than "eternally pregnant," always bringing forth new lives, new creatures, even new species? Always dynamic, growing; balanced not like a pillar on its foundation, but like a gyroscope, turning and turning. What higher praise of the Creator? What greater potential in this moment, than for it to be "pregnant with insights, with hopes, that are as great as eternity"?

Jeremiah said, "Let my mother be my grave and her womb be pregnant eternally / v'rachmah harat olam." (20:17) This is the scriptural source of the expression "harat olam." On a very personal level, this verse is an expression of Jeremiah's profound grief. In Job, however, our planet is imagined as a womb, as in, "when the sea gushed forth from the womb." (38:8) Jeremiah's lament, applied to the Earth, becomes one of the truest and most loving sentences in the Tanakh. This Earth is a mother to us and it is our grave; it is eternally pregnant, and from our deaths will come new life and new lives.

When we hear the shofar and call out, "Hayom harat olam!" may we find hope, may we find courage, may we find blessing, in this moment on this planet filled with birth and death, pregnant with eternity.

"Hayom harat olam." "Today," the day of Rosh Hashanah, we birth new intentions and conceive new possibilities. Today is our day, today we are alive on this planet, as we say in the liturgy, "All of you alive today / Chayim kulchem hayom." Today our choices will gestate the future, for our children, and for the children of every species upon the Earth.

We pronounce blessings on ourselves at the end of the Rosh Hashanah service, blessing about "today." We shout and sing: "Hayom t'amtzeinu." "Today you will find courage." "Hayom t'varcheinu." "Today you will be blessed."

And the Psalms say: "Hayom im b'kolo tishma'u." "Today, if you will listen to the Voice." Let us listen to all the voices crying out, the voice of the Earth, and the voices of every creature, and hear in them the divine Voice.

On Rosh Hashanah, as we really listen to the shofar, may new feelings and intentions be birthed within us. Then we will know what it means when we receive the blessing, finally: "Hayom ticht'veinu l'chayim tovim." "Today you will be inscribed into life."

1. On Yom Kippur, Jews pray to the "Living God", the "King Who delights in life," that they should be remembered for life, and inscribed in the "Book of Life" for the New Year. Yet, typical animal-based diets have been linked to heart disease, stroke, several types of cancer, and other chronic degenerative diseases, that shorten the lives of over a million Americans annually.

2. On Yom Kippur, Jews pray to a "compassionate God," who compassionately remembers His creatures for life. Yet, there is little compassion related to modern intensive livestock agriculture (factory farming), which involves the cruel treatment and slaughter of about 10 billion farm animals annually in the United States.

3. On Yom Kippur, Jews pray to God, "Who makes peace," to be inscribed into the "Book of Life, Blessing, and Peace." Yet, animal-centered diets, by requiring vast amounts of land, water, energy, and other resources, help to perpetuate the widespread hunger and poverty that often lead to instability, violence, and war.

4. On Yom Kippur, Jews are told through the words of Isaiah in the morning prophetic reading that the true purpose of fasting on that day is to sensitize them to the needs of the hungry and the oppressed, so that they will work to end oppression and "share thy bread with the hungry." (Isaiah 58:6,7) Yet, 70 percent of the grain produced in the United States is used to fatten up farm animals, while an estimated 20 million of the world's people die annually from lack of adequate food and nearly a billion of the world’s people are chronically malnourished.

5. One of the most important messages of Yom Kippur and the preceding days is the importance of teshuvah, of turning away from sinful ways, from apathy, from a lack of compassion and sensitivity, and returning to Jewish values, ideals, and mitzvot. Vegetarianism involves a significant turn, away from a diet that has many harmful effects to one that is consistent with Jewish mandates to take care of our health, treat animals compassionately, protect the environment, conserve natural resources, help the hungry, and seek and pursue peace.

6. On Yom Kippur, Jews ask for forgiveness for the sin of "casting off responsibility." Vegetarianism is a way to assume responsibility for our health, for animals, for the environment, and for the world's hungry people.

7. Yom Kippur is a time for reflection and soul searching, a time to consider changes in one's way of life, a time to make decisions for improvement, to break negative habits. Hence, it is an excellent time to switch to a diet that has so many personal and societal benefits.

8. The Yom Kippur liturgy has a prayer that includes the statement that "we are God's flock, and God is our shepherd." Since Judaism teaches that people are to imitate God in His acts of compassion and caring, we should be treating God's defenseless creatures in the ways that we want God to treat us.

9. According to the Jewish tradition, our fate is sealed on Yom Kippur for the coming year. But repentance, charity, and prayer can avert a negative decree. However, people have determined the fate of animals before they are born, and there is virtually no possibility of a change in the cruel treatment and early slaughter that awaits them.

10. Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, a day of being, in effect, at-one with God. One way to be more at-one with God is by adopting a plant-based diet, and thereby not harming animals, since "God's compassion is over all His works." (Psalm 145:9)

11 The afternoon service for Yom Kippur includes the reading from the book of Jonah, which tells how Jonah was sent to warn the people of Nineveh that they must do teshuvah, change their sinful ways in order to avoid destruction. Today, the whole world is like Nineveh, in need of redemption, and in danger as never before from a variety of environmental threats. In a sense, vegetarians are now playing the role of Jonah, pointing out that a shift away from an intensive animal agriculture that has significant negative effects on the environment and a shift toward vegetarian diets have become global imperatives, necessary to shift humanity from its current perilous path.

12. An important message of the book of Jonah is that God is concerned about the fate of all of the world's people. Vegetarianism is a way to show such concern and hence to imitate God's attributes of caring and compassion, since this diet requires far less land, grain, water, fuel, and other resources, and hence can contribute to a reduction of the widespread hunger that afflicts so much of humanity.

13. The book of Jonah also shows God's concern for animals. It ends with God's statement, "Should I not then spare the great city of Nineveh with more than one hundred and twenty thousand human beings . . . and much cattle?"

14. On Yom Kippur, one of the many sins that we ask forgiveness for is "the sin we committed before Thee in eating and drinking." This can be interpreted in terms of the harm that animal-based diets do with regard to human health, animals, the environment, and hungry people.

15. On Yom Kippur, Jews are forbidden to wear leather shoes. One reason is that it is not considered proper to plead for compassion when one has not shown compassion to the creatures of God, Whose compassion extends to all His works.

16. Rabbi Israel Salanter, one of the most distinguished Orthodox Rabbis of the nineteenth century, failed to appear one Yom Kippur eve in time for the sacred Kol Nidre Prayer. His congregation became concerned, for it was inconceivable that their saintly rabbi would be absent or late on this very holy day. They sent a search party to look for him. After much time, their rabbi was found in a Christian neighbor's barn. On his way to the synagogue, Rabbi Salanter had come upon one of the neighbor's calves, lost and tangled in the brush. Seeing the animal in distress, he freed him and led him home. His act of compassion represented the rabbi's prayers on that Yom Kippur evening.

In summary, a shift to vegetarianism is an important way to do teshuvah, to turn away from a diet that is harmful in many ways to one that is in accord with the many significant teachings and values that Yom Kippur represents.

Kapparot is a custom in which the sins of a person are symbolically transferred to a fowl. First, selections from Isaiah 11:9, Psalms 107:10, 14, and 17-21, and Job 33:23-24 are recited; then a rooster (for a male) or a hen (for a female) is held above the person’s head and swung in a circle three times, while the following is spoken: “This is my exchange, my substitute, my atonement; this rooster (or hen) shall go to its death, but I shall go to a good, long life, and to peace.” The hope is that the fowl, which is then supposed to be donated as charity to the poor for food, will take on any misfortune that might otherwise occur to the one who
has taken part in the ritual, in punishment for his or her sins. 
.

There seems to be an inconsistency here because of Judaism’s strong teachings about compassion to animals and because the rite can be carried out in a rabbinically approved way without using and then slaughtering chickens. The psalmist indicates God’s concern for animals, for “His compassion is over all His works” (Psalms 145:9). And there is a mitzvah-precept in the Torah to emulate the Divine compassion, as it is written: “And you shall walk in His ways” (Deuteronomy 28:9). Perhaps the Jewish attitude toward animals is best summarized by Proverbs 12:10: “The righteous person considers the soul (life) of his or her animal.” 



Moses and King David were considered worthy to be leaders of the Jewish people because of their compassionate treatment of animals when they were shepherds. Rebecca was judged suitable to be a wife of the patriarch Isaac because of her kindness in watering the ten thirsty camels of Abraham’s servant Eliezer. Many Torah laws involve proper treatment of animals. One may not muzzle an ox while it is working in the field nor yoke a strong and a weak animal together.

Animals, as well as people, must be permitted to rest on the Sabbath day. The importance of this concept is indicated by the fact that it is in the Ten Commandments and by its recitation every Sabbath morning by many Jews, as part of the kiddush ceremony. 
In summary, the Torah prohibits Jews from causing tsa’ar ba’alei chayim, any unnecessary pain to living creatures, even psychological pain. .

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, an outstanding 19th century philosopher, author, and Torah commentator, eloquently summarizes the Jewish view on treatment of animals: “Here you are faced with God’s teaching, which obliges you not only to refrain from inflicting unnecessary pain on any animal, but to help and, when you can, to lessen the pain whenever you see an animal suffering, even through no fault of yours.” (Horeb, Chapter 60, #416) 

.

In view of these strong Jewish teachings, fortunately there is a substitute kapparot ceremony that is widely practiced by many observant Jews. Money, perhaps equal to the monetary value of the fowl, is substituted for the rooster or hen. The money is put into a handkerchief which the person swings three times around his or her head while reciting a modified saying: “This money shall go to charity, and I shall go to a good, long life, and to peace.”

Hence, the heightened sense of repentance can be kept, and perhaps even enhanced, since no bird has to die or suffer for our sake. This substitution, which maintains the tradition of giving charity (the substituted money) to the poor, has been endorsed by many rabbis and is mentioned in many prayer books, including the Artscroll Siddur, which is used in many Orthodox synagogues. .

Kapparot is not mentioned in the Torah or in the Talmud. Jewish scholars first discuss the custom in the ninth century.

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica (Volume 10, pages 756-757), several Jewish sages strongly opposed kapparot. Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham Aderet, one of the foremost Jewish scholars during the 13th century, considered it a heathen superstition. This opinion was shared by the Ramban (Nachmanides) and Rabbi Joseph Caro, who called it “a foolish custom” that Jews should avoid. They felt that it was a pagan custom that mistakenly made its way into Jewish practice, perhaps because when Jews lived among pagans this rite seemed like a korban (sacrifice) to some extent. .

However, the Kabbalists (led by mystics such as Rabbi Isaac Luria and Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz) perceived in this custom mystical significance which strongly appealed to many people. This greatly enhanced the popularity of the kapparot ritual down to the present day. .

Some Jewish leaders opposed kapparot because they felt that people would misunderstand the significance of the ritual. The belief that the ceremony of kapparot can transfer a person’s sins to a bird, and that his or her sins would then be completely eradicated, is contrary to Jewish teachings. For, if the ritual could remove a person’s sins, what would be the need to observe Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement? .

The birds may suffer while they are handled. In some places in Israel and the United States, the birds are sold on street corners for this ceremony, and not every merchant takes sufficient care of the chickens during this period. The birds are frequently cooped up in baskets, and some merchants neglect to give them sufficient food or water. In recent years communal and rabbinic leaders were placed in the position of publicly apologizing for the mistreatment of chickens used for kapparot and the wastefulness of slaughtered chickens sometimes discarded on the eve of Yom Kippur. .

It should also be noted that the chickens have generally been raised under cruel conditions on modern factory farms. 

Hence, while the Jewish tradition is filled with concepts, prayers, and actions during the Rosh Hashanah-Yom Kippur period that relate to the importance of rachamim (compassion), the message of kapparot to those who take part and those who view it (including children) may be just the opposite in some cases, a lesson of insensitivity to the feelings of other living creatures.

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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.

1. While Jews ask God on Rosh Hashanah for a healthy year, non-vegetarian diets have been linked to heart disease, strokes, several forms of cancer, and other illnesses. While we implore "our Father, our King" on Rosh Hashanah to "keep the plague from thy people," high fat, meat-based diets are causing a plague of degenerative diseases that have led to soaring health care costs.

2. While Jews pray on the Jewish New Year that God "remove pestilence, sword, and famine," over 70% of the grain grown in the United States is fed to animals destined for slaughter, as 20 million people die annually because of hunger and its effects and almost a billion people worldwide lack sufficient food. Also, animal-centered diets, by wasting valuable resources, help to perpetuate the widespread hunger and poverty that often lead to instability and war.

3. While Jews commemorate the creation of the world on Rosh Hashanah, livestock agriculture is a major contributor to many global threats, such as climate change, soil erosion and depletion, air and water pollution related to the production and use of pesticides and chemical fertilizer, and the destruction of tropical rain forests and other habitats.

4. While Jews pray on Rosh Hashanah for God's compassion during the coming year, many Jews, as well as most other people, partake in a diet that involves animals being raised for food under cruel conditions, in crowded, confined cells, where they are denied fresh air, exercise, and any emotional stimulation.

5. While Judaism teaches that people's fate for the new year is written on Rosh Hashanah and sealed on Yom Kippur and that repentance, prayer, and charity can cancel a stern decree, the fate of farm animals is determined before they are born and there is no way they can change it. While the Torah and Prophetic readings on Rosh Hashanah describe the great joy of both Sarah and Hannah after they were blessed with sons after it seemed that both were destined to be barren, animal-based diets require the taking of animal babies from their mothers almost immediately after birth, to spend the rest of their lives in small, confined spaces where they are fattened up for slaughter.

6. While Rosh Hashanah is a time when we are to "awake from our slumber" and mend our ways, the consumption of meat on Rosh Hashanah means that we are continuing the habits that are so detrimental to our health, to animals, to hungry people, and to ecosystems. While we symbolically cast away our sins at tashlich during Rosh Hashanah, the eating of meat means a continuation of the "sins" associated with our diets, with regard to treatment of animals, protecting our health, polluting the environment, and wasting food and other resources. While Rosh Hashanah is meant to be a time of deep contemplation when we carefully examine our deeds, most meat eaters ignore the many moral issues related to their diets.

7. While we speak of God's ""delighting in life" on Rosh Hashanah, the standard American diet annually involves deaths of billions of animals, as well as many human deaths, due to insufficient food in poor countries and too much rich food in the wealthy countries.

8. While Rosh Hashanah has a universal message and involves the prayer that "all the world's people shall come to serve (God)," many of the world's people suffer from chronic hunger which denies them the necessary strength and will for devotion, while meat and fish from the choicest land and most bountiful waters of their countries are exported to meet dietary demands in the United States and other developed countries.

9. While Rosh Hashanah is a time of joy (along with sincere meditation), animals on factory farms never have a pleasant day, and millions of people throughout the world are too involved in worrying about their next meal to be able to experience many joyous moments.

I hope that Jews will enhance their celebrations of the beautiful and spiritually meaningful holiday of Rosh Hashanah by making it a time to begin striving even harder to live up to Judaism's highest moral values and teachings by moving toward a vegetarian (and preferably a vegan) diet.

by Rabbi David Seidenberg

On Rosh Hashanah we hear the shofar and call out, "Hayom Harat Olam"!

"Today is the birthday of the world; today the world is born."

So says the liturgy according to most readings. And this birthday is not just one of celebration: "Today the world stands in judgment." These two motifs alone should give us pause today to consider what we are doing to the planet, to how we can restore the balance of the atmosphere, the balance of the waters and the air, of the forests and plains, the ocean and the continents.

But let's look more closely at these words, to see what they can teach us.

'Harah' means pregnancy, conception or gestation. Not birth, but the process which leads up to birth. If we wanted to say "the birth of the world" we would say "leidat ha'olam". 'Olam' can mean world, but if we wanted to say "the conception of the world," we would say "harat ha-olam." 'Olam' really means eternity, from the root that means "hidden," or more precisely, the infinite that is hidden, that is beyond our limited perception.

So 'Harat Olam' means very literally, "pregnant with eternity", or "eternally pregnant." The day of Rosh Hashanah is pregnant with eternity.

What deeper evocation could one find of this wondrous and miraculous creation than "eternally pregnant," always bringing forth new lives, new creatures, even new species? Always dynamic, growing; balanced not like a pillar on its foundation, but like a gyroscope, turning and turning. What higher praise of the Creator? What greater potential in this moment, than for it to be "pregnant with insights, with hopes, that are as great as eternity"?

Jeremiah said, "Vat'hi li imi kivri v'rachmah harat olam / Let my mother be my grave and her womb be pregnant eternally." (20:17) This is the source of the expression "harat olam." On a very personal level, this verse is an expression of Jeremiah's profound grief. In Job, however, our planet is imagined as a womb, as in, "yam b'gicho meirechem yeitzei / when the sea gushed forth from the womb." (38:8) Jeremiah's lament, applied to the earth, becomes one of the truest and most loving sentences in the Tanakh. This earth is a mother to us and it is our grave; it is eternally pregnant, and from our deaths will come new life and new lives.

When we hear the shofar and call out, "Hayom harat olam!" may we find hope, may we find courage, may we find blessing, in this moment on this planet filled with birth and death, pregnant with eternity.

"Hayom harat olam." This day births new intentions, conceives new possibilities. Today is our day, today we are alive on this planet, "Chayim kulchem hayom." Today our choices will gestate the future, for our children, and for the children of every species upon the earth.

"Hayom t'amtzeinu." Today you will find courage. "Hayom t'varcheinu." Today you will be blessed. "Hayom ticht'veinu l'chayim tovim." Today you will be inscribed to live.

"Hayom im b'kolo tishma'u." Today, if you will listen to the Voice.

Rabbi David Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org, and a teacher of Jewish thought and spirituality. He is one of the foremost scholars in the world on Judaism and ecology, and his first book on ecology and Kabbalah is coming out this coming year. He has smikhah from both JTS and Reb Zalman.

by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen

The word makom in Hebrew means place, or space, but it has also come to be a name of G!d.

Some places take on more significance in our lives than others. They touch us more deeply, or are associated with significant memories. For me, one of these is a place I have come close to, but have not yet seen with my own eyes. Yet just through proximity, it has touched me deeply, shifting something in my soul.

The name of the place is Gamawakoosh, but you cannot find it on a map. Gamawakoosh is the name given to this place by my mother’s family.

Beginning in the early 1920s, my mother from a very young age, her older brother, their parents, friends of varied ages, their dog, and their nanny goat hiked for three days, with the men and boys doubling back for a second load, up the side of a mountain in the Adirondacks to a hidden pond. There, with permission from the landowner (at that time it was not public land) they built a small log cabin. They carried in all their provisions, including tools and rolls of roofing –- one year the collective weight of the packs was 512 pounds.

Several journals of trips to Gamawakoosh remain intact, providing clues to the travelers' route and insight into their experiences, and stored in my memory are the stories my mother told of Gamawakoosh, her most favorite place in all the world (and she travelled to many lands during her childhood and youth). For her it was a magical place of sheer delight, of good fellowship and long conversations, and of the wonders and awe of the wilderness. It was a place of healing and joy. August and Gamawakoosh provided a refuge from the father who at home in “civilization” was the source of emotional and spiritual pain that my mother carried with her all her life, for in the wilderness, away from societal norms, he was a different person, one she could respect, appreciate, and enjoy. Even at age 90, her eyes still twinkled when she spoke of Gamawakoosh, and it remained a place of respite for her mind and soul when her body no longer permitted her to explore the woods and fields in the way her spirit needed.

This summer, together with one of my brothers, a cousin and her husband, one of my sons and his wife and their dog, two descendants of another youthful 1933 Gamawakoosh participant, and a gem of a hiker who had been that man's good friend for many years, we went in search of this hidden spot. Although we tried, circumstances prevented us from reaching the site of the cabin, but in the process we walked where our families and their friends had walked and waded streams they had forded. Although we never laid eyes on Gamawakoosh, we touched its essence. We found it in the woods and beside the river. We found it in the colorful mushrooms of the damp forest and in the fairyland nooks and crannies of mosses, ferns, and tiny pine saplings. We found it in the decaying 1939 Chevy we stumbled upon, mysteriously abandoned far from any current road. We found it in our shared breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and in the preparation and clean up. We found it in the laughter and camaraderie that flowed among people who had never before met, and in the stories of family members long gone, whose spirits hovered among us. We found it in new definitions of family, in healing long held sadness, and in new-found joy. And now we find it in our shared memories of a sacred place as yet unseen by our eyes.

HaMakom – The Place. The gift, the sacredness, of Gamawakoosh is not inherent, but flows forth from what we do with it and what we make of it, and in the Presence that fills all space. May we all find places that become for us Places that bring healing, laughter, and new depths of love and relationship with those we know and with those we don’t know. As we journey through Elul, may our hearts and souls re-turn to The Place, HaMakom, and to the spaces It fills.

Rabbi Katy Z. Allen (AJR '05) is the founder and leader of Ma'yan Tikvah – A Wellspring of Hope in Wayland, MA (www.mayantikvah.org), a congregation that holds services outdoors all year long. She is also a staff chaplain at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA.

by Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein

“Red and yellow and pink and blue, purple and orange and green. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow tune.” There are many songs about rainbows. This is one that I learned at Girl Scout Camp many years ago. Since that summer rainbows have had a special place in my heart.

Learning the story of Noah in a parshat hashavua class in college was one of those moments. In order for there to be a rainbow, there has to be a perfect balance between sun and rain. Without that balance, no rainbow. Without G-d and a certain balance, no world. For me, in that instant G-d was perfection. So what would be more appropriate that G-d would choose a rainbow as the sign that G-d would never destroy the world again by flood. Rain is good. Too much rain leads to flooding and destruction.

Rainbows have appeared at my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah, my daughter’s high school graduation, my installation as rabbi. They are often a quiet, private reminder that the world is good and G-d is in charge. An almost private blessing, usually when I need that reassurance the most. What I have discovered is that you can’t go chasing them. You need to be surprised by them.

On Rosh Hodesh Av, a day when we begin to feel the sadness of the impending Tisha B’av, I was surprised by a rainbow. It was particularly surprising because the night before I had gone looking for one and didn’t find it. Remember it is about that perfect balance. This one was beautiful, exquisite, full, double rainbow over Lake Charlevoix, in northern Michigan. You could actually see both ends reflecting in the water. Now the slogan for Charlevoix is “Once in a blue moon there is a Charlevoix”. This was not a blue moon. This was even rarer. Cars stopped on both sides of the road to take pictures. Everyone said, “Wow.”

Sometimes you can capture such images on your camera. Other times you cannot. Each time they are a reminder of G-d’s covenant with us. Each time they are an opportunity to recite the blessing, “zocher habrit”, that G-d also remembers the covenant with us, is faithful and keeps G-d’s promise. Each time, I wonder how I keep my end of that covenant. How do I make good on the promise to be a partner in G-d’s creation, to never destroy the world. How do I leave this world better for my children and my children’s children? The rainbow while offering that reassurance of G-d’s love and promise also demands an answer to that essential question.

Baruch ata Ado-nai Elo-heinu melech ha'olam zocher ha'brit v'ne'eman bivrito v'kayam b'ma'amaro. Blessed are You, Adonai our G-d, Ruler of the universe, who remembers in faithfulness the covenant and the promise to keep the covenant forever.

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Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein is the rabbi of Congregation Kneseth Israel in Elgin IL. She blogs as the Energizer Rabbi, www.theenergizerrabbi.org and enjoys chasing rainbows in northern Michigan, in Ogunquit, Maine or wherever she can find them.

by Maxine Lyons

Being a passionate gardener, I have been tending several gardens in my yard as well as many flower pots on our large deck so my hands are in dirt quite often these days. I have been transplanting yellow primroses, succulents, day lilies and sunflowers, focusing on the integrity of the roots, noticing how each root system is different. For example, some plants require a full root for transplanting while others need a partial root to survive. Succulents do not need roots at all; pieces can be immersed in dirt and re-establish their roots in soil in a short time.

So as I begin the long internal process of preparing for the holidays, I am considering the meaning of roots in our lives–when we are transplanted (as I was from the west to the east coast), would roots remain intact, and I pondered, could I plant them deep and securely enough to thrive and not merely survive the changes? I moved with my husband and two young kids, truly uprooted from my family and age-old friends and all that was known and familiar. With a lot of determination, I found that the most tenacious roots assisted me in establishing my new grounding.

What are those elements that enhance the possibility of roots taking hold firmly in new ground? I believe that we need a full root base to nurture us. I was deeply rooted in my Jewish upbringing. I went to weekly Shabbat services with my family, I attended with great delight Hebrew school, confirmation classes, and the inspiring, call-to-action in the words of the prophets, which were reinforced by our Reform temple's explicit social justice emphasis (that led to my involvement in civil rights work and anti-war activities in college). As these roots spread out, I explored my options as a spiritual seeker, going from Reform to Conservative Judaism, learning and teaching yoga, then to Jewish Renewal, and now, a combination of JewBu(ddhism) and interfaith work. My underlying support was my father's influence on my growth and development as he modeled empathy, tikkun olam, and our responsibility to be charitable in word and deed to help others. Sharing common ground with my caring, loving and supportive husband and two creative children enabled me to establish the firmest of roots.

Reflecting on the meanings of roots brought me to teshuvah. I feel a connection with plant roots. Roots are anchors; they absorb and conduct water and nutrients, storing energy for later use. This is analogous to our human needs for roots; we also need to absorb and replenish spiritual sustenance to store for use with family and friends and in all meaningful pursuits in our lives. My intimate friendships are the other anchors that also energize my life, enabling the expanse and growth of my roots. This focused awareness of opening my heart and making regular contributions allows me to continue tikkun olam, which, returning to those core values of empathy, connections and helping others, are particularly important now. Teshuvah requires that I become ever more mindful of my behavior. With ample "fertilizers" of compassion, caring and open heartedness, I can start the annual journey preparing for the Yamim Noraim in my daily practices now and throughout the year.

My father was a humble person, and his expansive root system, like those of a sturdy tree, lay underground but the tree, his personhood, flourished, benefiting everyone who was blessed to know him. I pray that his legacy will continue to influence me to grow as I tend to my gardens and reap the benefits of the abundant colorful flowers– petunias cascading, and morning glories stretching heavenward, spiraling on tomato plant stakes. (This is dedicated to the memory of my dear dad, Alex Schoenbrun, on his fifth yahrzeit).

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Maxine Lyons, retired community educator, is currently CMM (Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries) board member and co-facilitator of CMM's RUAH Spirituality Programs,

active participant in the ALEPH prison pen pal program ("connecting Jews on the outside with Jews on the inside"), member of Temple Beth Zion, Brookline,

and joyful wife of 36 years and mother of two accomplished and wonderful thirty somethings.

We’re nearing a time when the Earth will not provide as bountifully as it has in the past. In exchange for a loss of resources, I believe the Earth is pleading for us humans to return to ourselves, our deep souls, so we recognize a bounty that lives within us. Could this lead to the feeling of fertility in the human spirit, we may extend the times of plenty.

Answering this call is not easy. We cannot stop deadlines so we may each have the time return to ourselves as a form of resiliency. It’s a necessary evil to take this time. We may feel that we’re missing out on other activities, events, or conversations, or that we are not getting done as much work as we need to do. Yet there are moments in each day that we can seek the quiet retreat and go a little deeper, find a little more space.

Since I received the Elul writing project, I've decided to practice coming back to myself and following my instincts around taking time to be alone. The result has been time after work dancing, painting, hanging art, swimming, hiking, and listening! Who knew I had so much to say to myself. Some hangouts have been hard; I haven’t been the best of company at those times. But I exit these periods of time alone with a better understanding of me and my method of interacting with the world. I tune in with what my body wants, my spirit and my tongue for speech…I react with kindness to my friends and family, and say what I mean, say what I need. As a wise woman once told me, me are always working to maintain our ‘neutral.’

I think our souls are like bread dough that needs warmth to rise: our souls desire the heat of our beings to nurture our internal culture. At some point we get punched down as a test to our abilities, and need to remind ourselves of our importance, kindness, and intelligence to rise back up, overflowing the bowl. We bake the loaf, swallow a chapter of life, and start another.

Let’s bake bread with those around us—encourage our friends to take space to nurture themselves and warm the internal culture that is their ‘soul bread.’ For this New Year, let us practice feeding ourselves, for we can only effectively exchange light with others when we do.

Molly Bajgot is a senior undergraduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst studying Sustainable Food and Farming with a concentration in Food Systems and Production. She is a strong believer in holistic systems and loves to cook, sing loudly, and live in the Pioneer Valley.

To help us along our journey, we at Ma'yan Tikvah will once again be posting Earth Etudes for Elul most evenings during the month. These reflections have been written by a variety of people and reflect many points of view and ways of looking at the world and the process of teshuvah. I hope you will find them meaningful and useful.

May your journey through Elul and the Days of Awe be rich and fulfilling, and may you find new wisdom, strength, and courage.

Shalom,

Rabbi Katy Z. Allen