To Till and to Tend

Please check out these links:  Hillel Flyer and My Adaptation to Unetaneh Tokef

We again approach the New Year and the holiest time in our Jewish calendar.  We are also one year closer to the year 2015 when scientists say we need to have curbed our carbon emissions substantially and limit our temperature increase to 2 degrees C.  Otherwise the implications, according to the Chairman of the IPCC, are “grave and disastrous.” 

I heard a famous rabbi in Jerusalem say: “We Jews know how to do tikkun olam.”  Do we?  We try and provide food and shelter to homeless people here in Seattle – but “olam” is the world.  What are we doing to curb global warming in our own lives and to engage others?  What are we doing to curb the climate crisis that will see hundreds of millions of “environmental refugees”  like we’ve never seen before.  I still see people in our community purchasing cars for fashion, flying as if fuel were cheap and benevolent, and eating beef unaware that the carbon footprint is greater than all transportation combined.  These are caring, progressive people.

Reb Nachman of Braslov said: “People often say ‘Seeing is believing.’  I say ‘believing is seeing.’”  I think this speaks perfectly to the crisis we face.  How many of us “see” the effects of global warming?  Sure, maybe the weather is different, but we’ve gone through changes before.  We realize hurricanes like Katrina are getting more and more extreme, but we understand there are other factors involved too.  So, unlike natural disasters of the past, we are left with “believing” the scientists, with their complex theories and projections.  And if we do believe them – and we should because there has never been such enormous consensus across a huge array of disciplines – then we can “see” what we need to do.

Occasionally we do “see” the impact of global warming.  I recently attended a house concert for PaBobo Jobarteh, an African musician from Gambia playing the Kora.  I was quite taken when this outstanding musician spoke about devoting his talents to purchasing mosquito nets for his people.  He commented how the changing climate was causing malarial mosquitoes to come year round, whereas before they would come only in summer.  The IPCC predicts tens to hundreds of millions of people at risk of increased water stress and increased spread of malaria in Africa. 

Maybe our community is waiting for our government to take action, and hopefully it will.  But one study at Vanderbilt University showed that one third of US emissions – or 8% of the world’s emissions – is from private individuals.  That’s more than any other country aside from the US and China!

What is the value of deeply personal work of teshuvah if it does not include tikkun olam?  This theme is explored in the Hillel Flyer. Every Yom Kippur we recite a profound poem – Unetaneh Tokef.  This poem is both powerful and problematic, as it portrays G-d as Judge and determining the fate of individuals.  The poem states that G-d does not desire these fates for the “deserved.”  To say that a horrible or untimely death is “deserved” is inconceivable to most of us.  Yet there is empowerment and hope in the knowledge that we can remove “evil” and “temper the harshness of the decree.”  In my adaptation,  teshuvah, tefilah, and tzedakah can “remove the evil of indifference and may lessen the severity of our common fate.” 

I am grateful for the Jewish efforts, like at COEJL, that do exist. I hope these linked fliers will provide some useful “tools” for the HH’days.  Consider sharing them with your rabbi and Social Action Committee. May the rabbi’s pronouncement that we Jews “know tikkun olam” ultimately ring true, and may we see the shift that we believe must happen.

L’Shannah tovah!

Barak Gale

COEJL Speaker; Member, Temple Beth Am and Eitz Or; Vice President, Washington Wilderness Coalition