To Till and to Tend

Trees are the symbol of the Garden of Eden, the Paradise of creation. Among all the deeds that God did to bring forth life in Eden, we are explicitly told that God planted a garden there and the trees that grew there. But these weren’t just any trees. God planted fruit trees.

In Deuteronomy 20, we are told that Israelites laying siege to a city may not cut down trees to aid in their siege. But this injunction is not about just any trees. It expressly forbids the cutting of fruit trees. While this verse is taken as the founding law that has spawned an extensive legal category forbidding wanton destruction, we may also learn one other fundamental principle from it.

We may not destroy one Paradise to win another. No matter how attractive or compelling the city that we wish to occupy appears, no matter how compelling or attractive a world we wish to create seems to us in our imagination, we cannot and must not destroy the paradise that is before us for a chimera that plays within our mind. For in truth, when finally won or purchased or created, this chimera will sooner or later bore us or disappoint us, and we will ache to be off on another adventure, another siege, another conquest, another destruction.

The constancy of the fruit trees tells us that we can only build a future paradise in the midst of our present paradise. Else it can’t be built at all.  

When our newly elected government takes office in January, one of the top issues on the agenda will be energy and climate policy, and one of loudest voices for the environment will be the faith community. If you still need evidence that the environment has become a religious issue, look no further than the newly released Green Bible. A joint project of the Sierra Club, the Humane Society, and the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Program, the Green Bible aims to “equip and encourage people to see God’s vision for creation and help them engage in the work of healing and sustaining it.” 

More than a trendy spin on traditional religious text, the Green Bible is the basis for a plan of action for the Christian Creation Care movement. In addition to highlighting hundreds of passages related to the environment, the Green Bible includes essays from scholars and spiritual leaders including Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and advice on how to get more involved with the environmental movement. Practicing what it preaches, the Green Bible is printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink, with a cover made from natural cotton and linen fibers. The release is gaining wide attention, with mentions in the New York Times and ABCNews. With Bible sales between $400 and $600 MILLION annually in the U.S. alone, and specialized Bibles for everyone from couples to sports fans, this attention comes as no surprise.

I commend the National Council of Churches for taking part in this ground-breaking effort to incorporate care for the earth into the fabric of religious life. The environmental Bible sends a clear message about the interests and priorities of contemporary Christians. This effort is both a market- and faith-based push for environmentalism, combining two of the major greening forces at play today.

The Bible carries a powerful message about our responsibility to care for our planet. The Jewish community can look to this project as a model as we update our own liturgy for the twenty-first century. While some may be skeptical of a ‘new take’ on the text, it is not necessary to modify the Torah to use it as a teaching tool- the message is already there. As we are told in Genesis, “The human being was placed in the Garden of Eden to till it and to tend it.”  Jewish environmentalism is fundamentally based in our sacred texts, and the Green Bible serves as yet another reminder of how strong a message these texts send.

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.

Today is a very big day.  Like me, I suspect each of you has been anticipating today’s election for months.  For the past two weeks, I have awoken with the same eager anticipation I experienced as a child on the eve before a trip to Disneyland.  Each morning I wake up with the jittery, giddy feeling that something really big is about to happen.  And something big is about to happen: because no matter who wins today’s election, we can bet that our country’s historic indifference about climate change is about to end. 

 

Voting is at the heart of Jewish tradition.  More than 2000 years ago, Rabbi Yitzchak taught that a ruler cannot be appointed without consulting the community. (Talmud, B’rachot 55a).  As Al Gore explained in his inspirational webcast last week, voting gives each of us the power to help shape the future of our nation.  I hope each of you takes advantage of this opportunity.  But this power – and obligation – to guide our leaders does not end with the simple act of casting our ballots.  Unlike a trip to Disneyland, we can’t simply pack up and scrapbook our memories when the polls close tonight. To the contrary, as Liore and I have previously written, our fight for a sustainable future is “a marathon, not a sprint.”  And the election does not mark the finish line.

 

Rather, the real work begins after the final ballot is counted.  That’s when we need to work with the new President to ask him to follow through with his campaign promises and help secure a more sustainable future.  That’s why I recently joined hundreds of other leaders from a broad spectrum of American society to sign a “Letter to the Next President,” calling on our leaders to “take bold and rapid action to address the daunting challenge of global climate change.”  And that’s why Betsy Taylor, founder of the 1-Sky Coalition will be leading a national organizing call at 12:00 EST tomorrow (Wednesday November 5) to talk about how grassroots action in the first 100 days will be essential to move beyond gridlock. [Call in: 1-218-486-8700, passcode 020509]

 

In his Prayer for Voting, Rabbi David Seidenberg recognizes that our vote has implications long beyond election day.  Seidenberg asks G-d to empower “all the people of this country” (and presumably our elected leaders) for:

 

[T]he strength and the will
to pursue righteousness and to seek peace as a unified force
in order to cause to flourish, throughout the world, good life and peace

 

For those of you who have already voted this morning, congratulations – you have taken an important first step in shaping the climate policy for our nation.  For those of you who haven’t, stop reading – and Go Vote! And tomorrow, don’t forget to remind our new leaders why you voted for them.

 

[Click here to print Rabbi Seidenberg's Prayer for Voting, a moving prayer for the voting booth]

[Click here to read and sign the Letter to the Next President demanding decisive action to address climate change]

[Click here to find your polling place]

My father was not a particularly religious man.  Yet, growing up, my family was the first to arrive at synagogue on Kol Nidre, the evening before Yom Kippur.  The plaintive cry of the Kol Nidre prayer (performed here by Yo Yo Ma) spoke to my father as it speaks to Jews around the world; its heart-wrenching melody reminds each of us of human imperfection.  On this, the evening of the holiest day of the year, Jews join together and declare that any vows or promises they make in the coming year are “absolved, released, annulled, made void, and of none effect.”  It’s a powerful tool – a proactive apology that forgives broken promises before they are ever made.  This device has particular significance in an election year.

Certainly, what candidate wouldn’t be delighted to learn of an ancient formula explicitly designed to erase all promises that are made in order to curry favor or support?  Whoever our next president is, he will have made promises to the American people about addressing climate change, promoting energy independence and jump-starting our economy with green jobs. As citizens we must take these commitments seriously, holding our elected leaders to their promises on energy and climate, and not allowing other competing issues to detract from the importance of this initiative.  To ensure that our leading candidates hold true to their promises to address climate change in the next Administration, I recently joined hundreds of influential scientists, environmental activists and public policy in signing a “Letter to the Next President” as part of the Presidential Climate Action Project.  I encourage you to read the letter and add your signature.

Campaign promises are a serious matter – and the Kol Nidre prayer does not offer an easy out.  To the contrary, Kol Nidre only applies to vows made between G-d and man; it does not absolve promises made between two people.  “For transgressions between man and man, Yom Kippur brings no atonement, until the injured party is appeased.”  (Mishna Yoma, Chapter viii)  Such appeasal require an express apology.  An apology I, for one, will not be inclined to accept.

This Saturday, Jews around the world will read Moses’ challenge in Deuteronomy: “I place before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. … Choose life that you and your descendants shall live.”  (Deut. 30:15-20) These words are both our Biblical mandate to respond to the climate crisis – and instructions for the nature of that response.

People will die because of climate change.  Last year, the IPCC predicted declining rainfall could reduce agricultural yields in parts of Africa by 50% by 2020.  One third of the world is already considered “water scarce” – and the World Resources Institute projects that this number will double by 2040.  Indeed, the crisis in Darfur can be largely attributed to conflicts over scarce water resources – resources made scarcer because of climate change.  As Jews, we must “choose life” to avert these dangers.

But how?

The answer is in the same remarks.  A commentary in a well-known translation of the text notes that “life” actually refers to “livelihood.”  Thus, Moses exhorts the Jewish people to find employment so that they can sustain life.  But what if that employment itself both saved life – by averting the climate crisis – and sustained life by providing a livelihood?  Green jobs do exactly that.  By training American workers to retrofit buildings to make them more energy efficient, expand out transit system, and support an emerging system of wind, solar and advanced biofuels, we can build a green economy and lift millions of Americans out of poverty.

Last month, the Center for American Progress (in partnership with the University of Massachusetts-Amherst) released a report entitled “Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy,” finding that the United States could create two million jobs in only two years by investing in a rapid green economic recovery program.  This green stimulus plan would create nearly four times more jobs than spending the same amount of money within the oil industry and 300,000 more jobs than a similar amount of spending directed toward household consumption. Last week, in testimony before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Bracken Hendricks of CAP testified that August unemployment was at a five-year high, new housing construction continues to slow, and housing values have plummeted by nearly a third from the same time last year.  Clearly, the time couldn’t be better for investment in green technology. 

More than 3,000 years ago, Moses implored the Jewish people to “choose life.”  Today, we must make the same request of our government: help the American people choose a green, sustainable livelihood – so that we and our descendants may live.

[This weekend – on the very day when Jews around the world read Moses' command to "choose life," 1Sky, Green for All, the We Campaign, and tens of thousands of Americans are mobilizing for Green Jobs Now. People of all backgrounds will organize Green Jobs Now events, with a special focus on low-income communities and communities of color.  Click here to find an event in your community and to download an organizers toolkit. For more information, contact Josh Lynch (josh@greenforall.org/ 510-663-6500 x314) or Adi Nochur (adi@1sky.org/ 301-270-4550 x22)].

I have an exercise bike in my basement.  It has sat idle for months – years even.  It’s not that I don’t exercise – I go to the gym regularly. However, I find it difficult to motivate to ride a stationary bike in the solitude of my own home.  But take me to a gym – and I’m in the front row of my spinning class.  These “peer pressure” exercise classes appeal to my competitive nature, I suppose.  I work out better when surrounded by others who are also working out.  This same philosophy, I’m afraid, extends to more than just exercise.

My husband first noticed my “competitive environmentalism” when we bought our hybrid a few years ago.  For months, he refused to drive if I was in the passenger seat – because I would badger him incessantly about his mileage stats.  Whenever his fuel economy “plunged” from 45 to 44 miles per gallon, I’d tell him to slow down.  If we drove fewer than 550 miles on a full tank, I’d make him recount everywhere we drove that week to figure out where the missing gas had gone. 

A few months ago, a colleague referred me to a passage, which convinced me that I’m not alone.  In an article titled, “My Mileage is Better than Your Mileage,” Bill McKibben writes:

… [Do] I pay inordinate attention to the gas gauge? Absolutely. And is it because I’m obsessed with global warming? Not really. True, that’s why I bought the car in the first place…. But if you thought about global warming all the time, you’d be nuts. When I’m behind the wheel, I’m an American—competitive, score-keeping, out to win.

And this competitive streak does not stop with hybrid cars and fuel economy.  In fact, a recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research reports that only 37% of hotel guests choose to forego a fresh towel when their hotel bathroom simply urges them to “help save the environment,” while 49% of guests make the “green choice” when confronted with a customized sign indicating how many previous guests had done the same.  Another article in the New York Times reports that people dramatically reduced their electricity use when their electric bill listed the average consumption in the neighborhood – and included a frowning face on households with an above-average bill. 

Jewish tradition offers some insight for these behaviors.  As Ira Stone explains in A Responsible Life, human beings live in a constant struggle between the “evil inclination” (in Hebrew, yetzer hara) and the impulse to do good (yetzer hatov).  Humans are inherently competitive. We must strive, however, to transform the evil inclination to do good.  As Jeffrey Spitzer writes, “[w]hen properly controlled by the yetzer hatov, the yetzer hara leads to many socially desirable results.”

Herein lies the future of the American environmental movement: we must look at pride and vanity, competition and shame – and redirect these values to reduce our impact on the Earth.   Can peer pressure really be the answer to climate change?

I’d love your thoughts about ways public scrutiny can inspire green behavior.

[for more on the power of public opinion, read "On Dolly Parton and Climate Change" and "Visualizing a Changing Climate: How to Know when You've Used 'Enuff'"]

Jews – especially observant ones – are particular. Dietary laws of kashrut require that we eat certain foods prepared in certain ways, we require a quorum of ten adult Jews when we pray, and we send our children to special schools to receive Jewish education. This requires a lot from a community. As a result, Jews moved to live near Jews so that all of life’s essentials could be nearby. The shtetl was born.

Beyond the convenience, the rabbis understood the value of shared physical space. To this end (or so that’s how I’m interpreting it), they formed laws that essentially required Jews to settle within established communities. According to the 39 law of Shabbat, Jews are not supposed to carry outside their homes. For a variety of reasons, the rabbis established the eruv, a physical enclosure that extends the marks the entire community as “home.” Though challenging in a modern lifestyle, this rule can be understood to reinforce the spiritual community with physical proximity.

When I was younger, I observed the laws surrounding eruv – even when my family went camping over Shabbat, we enclosed our campsites with twine. Since, finding an apartment within an eruv has not been my priority. Rather than searching for a kosher butcher, I sought the local health food store. Rather than worrying about a mikva (ritual bath), I found a home close to Central Park. Still, I think the rabbis were on to something and they’re not the only ones.

Realtors, city planners and environmentalists are examining the “walkability” of a city. Walkscore.com just came out with a report that rates cities and neighborhoods by how easy it is to walk to the basic necessities of life. In other words, they’re rating whether a neighborhood’s eruv can sustain the community within. Though it’s so “easy” to hop in a car to drive the 10 miles to the grocery store or movie theater, functioning within a walkable eruv provides wonderful spiritual, environmental and health results.

Check the score for your neighborhood by putting in your address – I hope you “do well.” It’s ok if you didn’t – America wasn’t built with eruvs in mind. Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t start thinking about the wonders of 21^st century eco-shtetl.

I opened my inbox today to a flood of emails. Yesterday, President Bush issued a much- anticipated “global warming initiative” – but the big climate “splash,” left many angry in his wake. The spokeswomen for the White House claimed the President’s plan would “lay the groundwork” for the next Administration by providing a “realistic intermediate goal” for US reductions. Yet, far from “laying the groundwork” for future reductions, the President’s proposal has torn away at the foundation of the tremendous efforts of those on Capitol Hill and around the nation to respond to climate change.

The President’s “realistic” intermediate goal is only “realistic” because it requires virtually no action whatsoever. He hopes to halt US emissions – from the electric utility sector alone – by 2025. Yet, according to the Energy Blog, the Administration announced last week that US emissions had already fallen by 1% last year. Admittedly, this was likely a one-year blip, which can be attributed to high gas prices and mild temperatures, which reduced the need for heating and cooling – but it certainly underscores the inadequacy of the President’s proposal.

In fact, the Administration proposal flies in the face of scientific reality. Last year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared that emissions from industrialized nations must peak by 2015 – and decline by 20% by 2025. They won a Nobel Prize for this pronouncement. Yet, the Bush proposal does not require any reductions in that time frame. In fact, the “proposal” doesn’t require reductions at all. It merely asks for voluntary commitments. The President insists this approach is necessary to avoid an unnecessary strain on the US economy. Yet, as Environmental Defense explains, simply delaying US reductions until 2014 (from 2012) would double necessary reductions (and associated costs) for the decade to come. And, as I wrote in my March 25^th post, the US Environmental Protection Agency has found that the key climate change legislation being considered by the Senate could be implemented without significant harm to the US economy.

Ironically, the Administration claims that its plan will “inform” the Senate-scheduled debate on climate change legislation. But the Senate does not need the President’s assistance. To the contrary, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act provides for US emissions to fall by roughly 2% per year beginning in 2012, leading to 25% emission reductions by 2025 and 60-70% reductions by 2050. Reductions that will come from every sector of the economy. Bush’s plan – to continue the status quo for nearly two decades – can hardly be seen as “informing” the debate.

More than two thousand years ago, Rabbi Hillel challenged, “If not now, when?” Today, Bush declared that we would begin to answer that question in 2025. But that answer is inadequate. Climate change is real. And the time for action is now.

[Visit The Jewish Week to read my op ed on the Bush climate initiative]

[To read more about the need for US leadership on climate change, visit my December 26 post: Play Ball, US Needs to Join the Team.]

 

 

 

I just returned from Israel where I spent the week with family and friends, absorbing the realities of a Jewish state. Some aspects of a Jewish state elicited a guffaw (see articles on Mikvah ladies and chametz), but some I found to be insightful, meaningful and even useful. For now, I will focus on the commandment of shmita,which is taking place this year, 5768. Leviticus 25:3-4 explains the mitzvah of shmita.

Six years you may sow your field, and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.

Torah doesn’t talk science, but in this case, the spiritual tradition is right on target. The text continues with the ramifications of fulfilling and ignoring the law. If you fulfill: “then shall the land make up for its sabbath years (26:34).” But, “the land shall be forsaken of (those Israelites who did not practice shmita), making up for its sabbath years by being desolate of them (26:43).” This isn’t just God having fun with random laws.

Scientifically speaking, when one plot of land is used in the same fashion, year after year, the soil becomes depleted of its nutrients. Eventually, crop yields weaken until the land is so depleted that it must be deserted.* On the opposite end, when a farmer allows land to lay fallow, nutrient balance is naturally restored, allowing for endless use and production.

Science and Torah take it one step further. Though the owner is not allowed to work the land, the naturally growing fruit remains available to people, wild animals and livestock. By allowing animals in the fields, they naturally fertilize it (think feces), enabling greater yields.

Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, spotlights a modern farmer who, by using methods similar to those demanded in Leviticus, manages a model sustainable farm.

It’s rare when Jewish law and modern science lead to a uniform conclusion – hopefully we’ll eventually get the message.

* Today, many farmers “solve” this problem with intense (oil-based) fertilization, an energy-intensive endeavor that, due to chemical run-off, is the source of a whole range of other environmental problems.

The sustainable farming vision of the Torah is still alive:
Jewish Farm School
Adamah, The Jewish Environmental Fellowship

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.