To Till and to Tend

Over the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure of meeting over 500 high school students from across the country at the Religious Action Center’s Bernard and Audre Rapoport L’Taken social justice seminars. Each four-day intensive learning program brings students from across the country to D.C. to learn about social justice and Jewish values (read what some of the participants had to say about their experience). The program culminates with a visit to Capitol Hill, where students meet with their Senators, Representatives and their staff to discuss the issues that matter most to them. As my fellow RAC staff and I led the participants past the Capitol and Supreme Court to their meetings, I got several interesting questions about my experiences on the Hill: “Oh, you must be here all the time, what’s your favorite place to go eat?; Who is the most famous Senator/Member of Congress you have ever met?; Do you ever see the President??”

I answer honestly that visiting the Hill is only one of the many activities included in my job description. Even as full-time advocates, walking the halls of Congress and hobnobbing with the Hill crowd is not something I do on a daily basis. However, lately I’ve gotten to travel to the House and Senate more often, meeting with Hill staffers and members of the Obama transition team along with our partners at other faith groups. While these meetings are interesting and informative, it is often a challenge to translate our visits into the change we want (and need) to see on the issues that matter most to us.

During the holiday season we are often focused on spending time with friends and family, and intentionally disconnect from our ‘everyday’ lives. While this break is important and often necessary, we cannot forget our long-term goals and the steps we must take to achieve them. As the new administration and Congress prepare to take office in January, we have a unique opportunity to shape the agenda by making our voices heard on the climate and energy issues that matter so much to our community. We have an opportunity to act now, and must continue to raise our voices to keep the environment on the agenda, especially during these hard economic times. I encourage you to take break from your break this Chanukah and take action by urging the President-elect to make climate change a priority in the first 100 days of his administration, calling on Congress to pass a real, green stimulus, advocating for clean water, and more. It may be the best gift you can give to your loved ones this holiday season, and you don’t even have to travel to the Hill to do it.

Rachel is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant working on environment and energy issues at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC. She will be a regular guest blogger on To Till and To Tend this year, posting entries every other Thursday. This, and all of Rachel’s entries, can also be found on the Religious Action Center blog.

For the last four months, I have been training for the big day: preparing my body to run 26.2 miles in the ING NYC Marathon.  On many of my weekly long runs, I wondered whether I could use the marathon training analogy to inspire budding environmentalists.  Becoming an environmentalist, like a marathoner, doesn’t happen overnight.  Like all personal achievements, these take time.  One needs to decide that they are willing to put the physical and mental energy into the effort.  Sometimes, one even needs to commit a bit of money into the cause, like new shoes and wind-sourced electricity.   

One of the most frequent comments I get to my marathoning is “wow, I could never do that.”  I always respond in the same way: you start with one mile, then work your way up to three.  Soon enough, you’re comfortable doing 5, try for 6 – and you realize you have it.  It’s a gradual process, but anyone can do it.  So goes with environmentalism.  Start with a simple action – one that you could imagine getting used to doing on a regular basis.  Once you have that down, add another, then another.  It takes time, but soon enough you’ll start living in more eco-friendly ways. 

Surprisingly for some, marathoning can be a bit easier than becoming an environmentalist.  After all, I have spent only 4 months training and, after Sunday, I’ll be done.  A commitment to environmentalism is a commitment for life.  Hopefully, it will play a role in everyday actions and decisions. 

And then there are the fans – on Sunday, thousands of New Yorkers (and my friends and family whom I appreciate enormously) line the streets of the five boroughs to encourage us runners on.  Their cheers and support ease the challenge of the marathon.  Personal challenges are rarely so encouraged by our friends, let alone strangers.

This week, my “challenge” is to not overwork my body, carb-load, and wish for good weather (not so hard).  Sunday I put in my all for a few hours and then I rest, a satisfied person.

But our environmental challenge keeps going.  Though there is no finish line in sight, each environmental success is a great one.  And though you may not hear fans screaming your name as you recycle yesterday’s paper, we’re out there, cheering you on.

I recently returned from a camping trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and sadly put my tent away for the season.  I was inspired, though, by words at the end of the Yom Kippur service, “Open for us a gate, in this time of closing gates.”  As the season for camping ends, the time for Jewish outdoor activity begins. 

As the first full moon of autumn approaches, Jews everywhere are stepping outside and building temporary huts called Sukkot.  Traditionally, these huts (or may I even say tents) have a twofold meaning (like all biblical holidays, as I wrote for Shavuot) – they remind us of the temporary huts we made in the fields at the peak of harvest and the ones we lived in through our Exodus journey.

On Sukkot, Jews around the world go outside and face the elements of nature!  (If you know the same type of Jews I do, this is no small deal.)  If it’s cold, we put on more layers.  If there are bugs out, we light citronella candles and wish for the best.  Even if it rains, we stay outside long enough to say the blessings over the wine and bread, and to bless the act of sitting in the sukkah. 

In this modern world, it’s easy to move from your climate controlled house, to your climate controlled car, to your climate controlled office or to the shopping mall. 

But during Sukkot, we step back thousands of years to the tents of our ancestors, leaving many of our modern luxuries behind.  The funny thing is, most everybody enjoys it. 

Whether or not every Jew will use the experience of Sukkot to join America’s Jewish outdoor club or hike from the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) to the Mediterranean isn’t the point.  Still, every outdoorsman/woman knows that the first step to enjoying the outdoors is stepping outside.  At the beginning of this new year, I hope each of you finds pleasure in the beauty of the Sukkah and the curiosity to adventure in the wonders beyond.        

Chag Sameach!

“We’re gonna drill offshore!  We’re gonna drill here, and we’re gonna drill now!” 

 

These words, recently expressed by Senator McCain at a motorcycle rally in
South Dakota, represent a major component of Senator McCain’s response to rising gas prices.  Opinion polls show most Americans support an increase in offshore oil drilling.  Senator Obama, too, has recently softened his earlier resistance to offshore oil drilling, if necessary to enact Democratic-sponsored energy bills. And this past weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dropped her formerly vehement opposition to offshore drilling in order to get Congress to enact broad energy legislation. 

 

But hold on there prospectors—there is a minor detail that both candidates and the American public seem to be missing: expanding offshore drilling at the levels sought by McCain and Congressional Republicans will have zero short-term impact and negligible long-term impact on gas prices! If the 1981 federal ban on offshore drilling were to be immediately repealed, the Bush Administration’s own Energy Information Administration (EIA) has reported that it will take until 2017 before any oil whatsoever would be generated from new offshore oil leases, and maximum capacity from these new leases will not be realized until 2030.  And, even at maximum capacity, additional offshore drilling will net at best an additional 200,000 barrels of oil a day—in contrast to the world’s daily oil output of 85 million barrels.  Even those of us without advanced economics degrees can deduce that the total output from offshore drilling will have an infinitesimal impact on global oil prices.

 

So what we’ve got here is a case of “junk economics”, as Paul Krugman calls it or “snake oil salesmanship of the worst order,” in the words of John Kerry.

 

All this is juxtaposed by the clear environmental damage offshore drilling will cause, record profits for oil and gas corporations also receiving taxpayer subsidies, as well as the existing oil exploration licenses oil corporations have yet to act upon.  Politicians on both sides of the political aisle who are pushing for expanding offshore oil drilling as the solution to today’s high gas prices, therefore, ought to be ashamed of themselves for misleading the public in an effort to capitalize on a hot-button election-year issue.  And the American public, of whom 49% believe that increasing offshore drilling will immediately reduce the price at the pump, also ought to be embarrassed for allowing themselves to be misled.  In the cautionary words of the Book of Proverbs (1:22-28),

“How long, ye thoughtless, will ye love thoughtlessness?  And how long will scorners delight them in scorning, and fools hate knowledge?  Because I have called, and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand, and no one attended… I also, in your calamity, will laugh, I will mock when your dread cometh…Then will they call me, but I will not answer, they will seek me earnestly, but they shall not find me.” 

 

But this debate about offshore drilling is only the tip of the rapidly-melting iceberg.  The real problem is our continuing failure to formulate a comprehensive, effective energy policy that will reduce our energy costs and our dependence on foreign oil—laudable goals of the pro-drilling camp—but also do so in a way that addresses climate change and other environmental crises.  We need massive investment in wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources to increase their efficacy and reduce their costs.  And we need serious, national efforts to increase our energy efficiency and conservation.  What we don’t need are quixotic increases in offshore drilling.  It is high time we stopped acting like petroleum addicts looking for the next quick fix and started acting like informed, responsible citizens.

This weekend many excited Jewish summer campers will head off to wonderful experiences of Jewish community, friendship, and fun. Jewish camping has been around a longtime, and is one of the great success stories of American Jewish life. I myself am a proud grad, along with Bob Dylan (nee Zimmerman) of Herzl Camp in Webster, Wisconsin. While many Jewish camps have added explicity green eco-programming to their curricula, too many to highlight here, even – though we invite you to describe any great Jewish environmental experiences you are familiar with – I want to focus on some so-obvious-it’s-not-obvious aspects of Jewish camps.
Camping takes kids away from normal suburban/urban life, for a car-free, shopping-free, less materialistic summer. Some Jewish camps are pretty posh compared to the latrine/rustic sort, but still, they’re not resorts. Emphasis is on experience and community, not on consuming.
Camps are in the country, duh. Kids get a bigger sense of nature and the natural world than in their backyard or neighborhood park. This immersion is very scary for some, but for others, it’s a major turn on.
Camps provide a communal experience – some are explicitly socialist, but all emphasize the group. For kids growing up in privatistic American culture, this is a great corrective. One of my favorite aspects of my daughter’s experience at Camp Galil was Clothes Trading. Girls would bring clothes they didn’t wear with them to camp, and all summer they swapped outfits. If a friend got attached to a garment, or looked especially great in it, they often kept it.  No score-keeping – it was truly from each according to her style/size to each according to her mood.  One big floating  Clothing Swap. What you sent your kid off with was not what they came home with, and everyone was happy. Of course sometimes, swaps are often the unintended outcomes of camp laundry, so everyone learns not to get too attached to their stuff.
Camps assure kids they can cope without much technology. (Though some camps are being pressured to drop this.) This allows kids to establish natural rhythms, not mediated by 24/7 cell phones, texting, Ipod music, et al. It’s a good break, anyway.
For the spiritually inclined, being in nature surrounded by community is unparalleled in its power. Forty years later, I still think of Kabbalat Shabbat overlooking Devils Lake….

In a rash attempt to alleviate this discomfort, our political leaders have proposed a “gas tax holiday.”  For three months, we will (theoretically) spend about 18 cents less per gallon of fuel, or about 2 dollars each visit to the gas station.  Over the course of the summer holiday, the blog Autopia reports that this proposal will save the average American about $30.  Of course, it’s unlikely we’ll actually see this “tax break” at all, because oil companies will simply raise the price of gas by almost the size of the tax cut.  Americans will continue to pay roughly $3.61 a gallon – but now, our nation will lose billions in potential tax revenue, which could be used to maintain our nation’s infrastructure.   And at a time when unemployment rates are already rising, the proposed gas tax holiday could cost more than 300,000 jobs.

The flaws of this approach are clear.  Automobiles are the second largest contributor to US greenhouse gas emissions. Shouldn’t we be trying to reduce the amount Americans drive – rather than creating incentives for people to drive more?  And what better way to incentivize carpooling and public transportation than to raise the price of gas?  In fact, the market is already creating its own incentives, with AAA reporting a decline in miles traveled and sales of compact and subcompact cars reaching record highs last month – a trend Ford’s chief sales analyst has called “the most dramatic segment shift” in his 31-year career. And if we want to encourage the use of clean-burning alternatives to fossil fuels and coal, shouldn’t we give tax breaks for those alternatives?  Sadly, our leaders are painfully misdirected. They are offering a tax break on the behavior they hope to discourage – yet, as I described in my February 12 post, they have failed to extend tax breaks on activities they should reward. 

More than 2000 years ago, our ancestors fell victim to a similar scheme.  Left alone in the wilderness at the base of Mount Sinai, the Israelites built a golden calf in a desperate attempt to find security.  The calf, of course, did not offer any answers.  To the contrary, when Moses descended from the mountain, he rebuked the Israelites and repeated his journey to retrieve the Ten Commandments.  The calf was an exercise in futility – a false prophet that never brought its intended reward.

Today, it is our leaders who offer a false prophet – suggesting $30 could ease a troubled economy or eliminate our dependence on foreign extremists who control our oil markets.  Like the Israelites, we need strong leaders who can guide us through times of adversity.  We need leaders who will require our cars to drive farther on less fuel and who will support a growing transit system, who will invest in research on alternative energy and provide incentives for the people who use it.  In short, we need leaders who have the courage to introduce policies that will actually reduce our dependence on oil – so that it does not matter if prices rise. 

[For thoughtful commentary about ways to solve the fuel crisis, visit "Are Gasoline Prices Too High or Too Low" at the blog of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, "Greenlight on Washington."]
[Click here to read a letter from COEJL and a coalition of other faith organizations, businesses, construction companies, environmental organizations, investors, labor, nongovernmental organizations, public health organizations, states, trade associations and utilities seeking funding for tax breaks that matter]

American Judaism is defined by its extraordinary activism. When Jewish learning and identity needed bolstering, we organized schools, youth groups, JCC’s and Hillels to respond. When “continuity” was a concern, we mobilized to fund funky efforts engaging Jews who hang close to the edge. Whenever Jewish rights and liberties were restricted, we created a network of defense organizations, which helped not only Jews but others who suffered prejudice and exclusion.
In the last decade alone, the leadership of the Jewish community launched such remarkable and successful efforts as Taglit/birthright, designed to confer upon every Jew between the ages of 18 and 26 the right and ability to visit Israel; PEJE – The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education designed to increase enrollment in Jewish day schools; and the Foundation for Jewish Camping designed to increase the number of Jewish children “participating in transformative summers at Jewish camp.”

All of these efforts – powerful, valuable and successful – were launched because dynamic Jewish philanthropies and donors organized, studied, led, funded and inspired them. These Jewish leaders did not wait for the right combination of staff, ideas, capacity and programs to come to them. They saw a need, a vacuum in our capacity to respond to that need, and mobilized. They gathered the lay leaders, the professional staff, the thinkers and strategists and social scientists, and they put their money behind their commitment.

It is time we utilize that same formula, employ that same energy, engage that same wisdom and dynamics in the arena of Jewish environmentalism. The vibrancy of the environment and the well-being of the Jewish community need nothing less.

The facts are clear: the environment is being rapidly degraded by business-as-usual. We need to re-imagine and redesign the ways we mine, manufacture, build, power, use and dispose of the stuff of society. If we don’t, we will irrevocably deplete and so exhaust our available resources (both natural and monetary) that we will diminish the security, health, dreams and options we bequeath to our children. Thousands of young Jews see environmentalism as the defining issue of their lives. And they see organized Judaism making little to no significant contributions to the cause. Which means they see Judaism (or at least organized Judaism) as making little to no difference to them.   

We can respond to both needs in one comprehensive response. Here is what we must do:

1) Reclaim tending to the earth as a mitzvah. We must re-establish environmental ethics as a mitzvah, a sacred standard of Jewish practice, like tikkun olam, feeding the hungry, caring for the elderly, freeing the captive.

We must enfold it in the practices and policies of all that we do, from the paints we use in our classrooms and Section 202 housing, to the food we serve at our simchas to the flooring we choose for our JCCs, to the curricula we develop in our day schools and synagogues, to the investment policies of our Federations to the vans we buy to carry our seniors to the legislative policies we endorse on local, state and federal levels.

In short, environmental concerns must become part of the formula the guides the actions and decisions of the Jewish community in the basic conduct of our lives.

2) Offices of Sustainability. Every significant Jewish community should create an Office of Sustainability to assist in the “greening” of the buildings under local Jewish ownership or management. The American Jewish community controls millions of square feet of public space, from federation buildings to JCCs to synagogues to schools to senior homes and more. Our collective behavior can significantly reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases nationwide, create healthier indoor space for all those who work and visit our buildings, save money that can ultimately be used to bolster salaries of our communal workers and support greater programming from pre-school to senior centers, and serve as a model for others, both for-profit and not-for-profit concerns, in our communities.

But synagogues and schools and others cannot do this themselves. The learning curve, the options, and the financing to pursue greening strategies are often daunting to organizations that want to do the right thing (never mind those who are skeptical). Going green often requires the investment of human resources that these individual organizations do not possess. This can be easily remedied, however, if each sizable Jewish community created one centralized office that can assist all local Jewish organizations, encouraging them and guiding them in their green building efforts. This office could be based in the Federation, or the JCC. This would not only assist in our environmental agenda but also serve to strengthen the ties among a community’s various Jewish organizations.

Many of our communities are already blessed with Jews involved in the green building trade, green waste management, green consumer knowledge, green energy experience. And many of these Jews are not yet engaged in the Jewish community. We can both benefit from their knowledge and experience and, perhaps for the first time, make meaningful and potentially enduring connections with them.

3) Green Fund. We need a handful of influential funders and philanthropists to come together to use their moral and financial suasion to move this issue toward the top of the American Jewish agenda, and as importantly, to embed it in our contemporary Jewish identity. Just as we think of American Jewry as committed to supporting Israel, working toward tikkun olam, and protecting human life and dignity around the world, so we now need to add the protection, sustainable management, and attitude of awe toward this miraculous but fragile world of ours.

Through the leverage of a Green Fund, a group of philanthropists can inspire and enable the Jewish community to fully engage in this work. They can guide a national discussion on Jewish environmentalism so that every school, every federation and every synagogue embraces and explores this issue.  They can entice and grow the field with a call for RFPs (requests for proposals) for new or expandable programs, seeking out the most creative and most successful, They can fund Jewish environmental classes and programs to create more informed lay leaders, train and support Jewish environmental professionals, and build an educated and committed populace. They can assist in the initial funding of local Jewish Offices of Sustainability. They can support the pioneering and ground-breaking work of national Jewish environmental organizations such as COEJL, Teva, Isabella Friedman, Hazon  Kayam Farm, the Jewish Farm School and others that work on both ends of the learning continuum, teaching the teachers and the learners.

A Green Fund created and guided by Jewish philanthropists can bring welcome and beneficial energies, wisdom and freshness to our community.

With these three initiatives: restoring a sacred engagement with the environment to the status of a fundamental mitzvah that commands our attention and behavior; creating mechanisms to green our Jewish built-environment; and providing the social, moral and financial leadership to make this happen, we can pursue our sacred mission, substantively and spiritually re-connect with many Jews, and contribute to the healing of this wounded world.

Last night I stayed up much past my goal bedtime because I was gardening. You may be asking yourself: “who gardens at midnight?” The simple answer which, admittedly, leads to more questions is: someone who lives in a 3rd floor NYC apartment! How does one garden in a NYC studio apartment? Instead of a shovel I use a large spoon, instead of lush gardens that flow into each other I have potted plants (beautifully and lovingly made by my father), instead of a compost pile I have a mini bag of soil…. I think you get the point.

So there I was, past midnight, my fingers deep in soil and dirt all over the floor; throughout, an incredibly satisfied smile was planted on my face (sorry that I don’t have a picture for you).

There are some technical bonuses to my craziness: plants increase oxygen levels in a room and they are aesthetically beautiful.  But my excitement did not come from these secondary benefits. Real earth may have been three floors down, yet, in the simplest of ways I was connecting with the source of life. 

In Leviticus (19:23) we are told, “When you enter the land of Israel you shall plant all kinds of trees for food.” My apartment is not in Israel, nor are most of my plants edible. My own interpretation of this passage suggests that when you find your dwelling place, connect physically with your land and plant that which will sustain you. For those who may not have a green thumb – it’s hard to kill a cactus.

Every year, on the 15^th day of month of Shevat, we celebrate the annual renewal of trees. Just about now, in Israel , almond trees are blossoming, reminding us that there is always new life to come. 

Three weeks ago, I witnessed (not literally) a different type of renewal. I became an aunt and my grandfather (whose 85^th birthday is today, Tu B’Shvat) became a great-grandfather; our family genes will (if life works the way it should) live on longer than I will have the chance to experience. 

In the environmental field we talk in the context of generations: climate change, deforestation, species loss, pollution are all global problems that we are just beginning to understand and will take years to salve, let alone solve. All of us who recycle, who bring our own bags to the market and who change our energy-inefficient incandescent light bulbs to CFLs must have faith that our actions, at some future point in time, will matter.

Jewish traditions prompt us to believe that our actions matter and I have spent my aware life believing that what I do makes a difference in the world. Nonetheless, when I first saw my nephew, I couldn’t help but believe that my actions mattered even more now. There, in front of me, was a face of the future.  He will live in the world that we pass down.*

Years ago I learned a Talmudic tale (Ta’anit 23a), a teaching which I only recently appreciated with my eyes.  It tells of an old man planting a carob tree.  A passer-by, noting the age of the man, asked him, “Do you expect to live long enough to eat the fruits of the tree?”  The old man replied, “When I was born, this world was filled with carob trees planted by my ancestors.  Likewise, I shall plant trees for my descendants to enjoy.”

*A note of pride: the “organically grown” onesie in the picture was a gift from me to my nephew and is part of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) “Simple Steps to a Better World” initiative.  My brother and sister-in-law are working hard to raise their child in a sustainable manner, in hopes of creating a sustainable world for him to inherit. 

Every year, on the 15^th day of month of Shevat, we celebrate the annual renewal of trees. Just about now, in Israel , almond trees are blossoming, reminding us that there is always new life to come. 

 

Three weeks ago, I witnessed (not literally) a different type of renewal. I became an aunt and my grandfather (whose 85^th birthday is today, Tu B’Shvat) became a great-grandfather; our family genes will (if life works the way it should) live on longer than I will have the chance to experience. 

 

In the environmental field we talk in the context of generations: climate change, deforestation, species loss, pollution are all global problems that we are just beginning to understand and will take years to salve, let alone solve. All of us who recycle, who bring our own bags to the market and who change our energy-inefficient incandescent light bulbs to CFLs must have faith that our actions, at some future point in time, will matter.

 

Jewish traditions prompt us to believe that our actions matter and I have spent my aware life believing that what I do makes a difference in the world. Nonetheless, when I first saw my nephew, I couldn’t help but believe that my actions mattered even more now. There, in front of me, was a face of the future.  He will live in the world that we pass down.*

 

Years ago I learned a Talmudic tale (Ta’anit 23a), a teaching which I only recently appreciated with my eyes.  It tells of an old man planting a carob tree.  A passer-by, noting the age of the man, asked him, “Do you expect to live long enough to eat the fruits of the tree?”  The old man replied, “When I was born, this world was filled with carob trees planted by my ancestors.  Likewise, I shall plant trees for my descendants to enjoy.”

 

 

*A note of pride: the “organically grown” onesie in the picture was a gift from me to my nephew and is part of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) “Simple Steps to a Better World” initiative.  My brother and sister-in-law are working hard to raise their child in a sustainable manner, in hopes of creating a sustainable world for him to inherit.