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Celebrating the Holidays in a Time of Crisis

A few weeks ago, just before Rosh Hashanah, I had the honor of addressing a gathering in Tacoma on the subject of climate change, and the intersection between the environment and social justice. It was part of a worldwide day of rallies and marches in support of “climate, jobs and justice.” I spoke from my perspective as a person of faith to a hearty crowd of perhaps a few hundred. I do that quite often these days, and with great love.

Since this event was so close to Rosh Hashanah, it got me thinking seriously about how specifically our High Holiday season speaks to the central question of how we live on Earth now, in the early decades of the 21st Century, as the Earth transforms before our eyes as a result of relentlessly rising temperatures caused by the ever-thickening blanket of fossil fuel exhaust in our atmosphere, and the removal of the great forests that breathe it, cool it, and return oxygen. The Days of Awe must surely have something to say to us about this urgent crisis.

But I had a strong urge to open with the Hasidic tale of the Splendid Bird. I wanted to explain my interpretation of it. I didn’t have much time, and didn’t know my audience, so I boiled the story down to this observation: we live in a time of tremendous potential for holiness. We are facing a crisis of global proportion that will affect every person in the world as well as every non human being, truly the breath of all life. Never before has the need for us to get to know one another and to learn from one another, and to work together for a common sacred purpose been so great. Furthermore, none of us can solve this crisis alone. We are all called upon to respond in community. I cannot think of anything that is more spiritually bracing than this realization. That’s how I opened.

In the story of The Splendid Bird, we are told that a bird, more beautiful than any ever seen, has been sighted at the top of the tallest tree. The bird is so high that no person could ever hope to reach it on their own. Word of the bird has reached the king. The king has ordered that the bird be brought to him. The people are to stand on one another’s shoulders until the highest of them can reach it. But while they are standing, with people balanced on the shoulders of the ones below them, someone near the bottom wanders off. As soon as this first person moved, the chain above collapsed, injuring several of the people. The bird remained uncaptured. The people, we are told, had doubly failed the king. “For even greater than his desire to see the bird had been his wish to see his people so closely joined to one another.”

  • Rabbi Uri Feivel of Krystnopol, or Or HaHokhmah

This story is widely interpreted as referring to the power of prayer, and particularly the need for a community of prayer to draw humankind near to the Divine. However, to me the story poses the tantalizing question: what if there is an underlying purpose to this crisis that we are facing? What if our goal is the bird – saving our beautiful planet, but God’s goal is not the bird. What if the true challenge of this moment from God’s perspective is that we should forge new bonds of love, respect, care, and mutual responsibility across all the world’s cultures? Incidentally, we may save the world and capture the splendid bird we are looking at, but on a deeper level, we will transform our relationships and bring about a new age of mutual care, understanding, freedom from exploitation, and reciprocity of love.

So, returning to the question of the High Holidays: what specifically do they have to offer us as a community confronting this crisis?

In the Jewish tradition, the Days of Awe – the High Holy Days – begin with a celebration of the Act of Creation – the Birthday of the World – we call it Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year. We also call it “the Day of the Shofar Blast,” and “the Day of Remembrance.” The shofar blast is meant to wake us up from spiritual slumber; to pierce our consciousness.

Remembrance. Now that is an interesting one. On this day God remembers all of God’s creatures. Each creature is recalled by the Creator, who remembers whether it has lived up to its responsibilities. This imagery is extremely evocative for me, since it reminds me that it is not just human beings that God cares about. Each creature has its purpose, and God is intimately concerned with the welfare of all of life.

Also, memory is stored in the Earth. It’s where fossils reside. It is where we look to find signs of things past. The Earth itself contains the record of our deeds – it is memory itself. Yom HaZikaron, indeed! Our crimes are recorded in the Earth, and persist there, as well as the blessings we have brought about.

Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we account for the state of our souls within our community. We use this time to reflect deeply on the harm we have caused in the past year. We must openly apologize for it, seek to correct the damage to the best of our ability, and resolve to set a new course in the coming year. Then, when Yom Kippur arrives, we hope that any sense of separation, the pebbles of mis-steps in the gears that connect us with the Divine source of life, will be removed, and we will experience “atonement” – literally At One-ment, with Divine intention.

So I ask: can we take the occasion of the High Holidays to experience this season as a time to review our past year from the standpoint of how we have behaved as fellow creatures living among others on the Earth? Can we take this occasion to assess the health of our natural community, specifically the ecosystems which we are a part of, and take clear eyed stock of them through deepened awareness? For instance, reflecting on how our brethren, the Southern Resident Killer Whales are doing? Then can we reflect on our injuries to them, and adjust our behaviors to bring about an increase in their wellbeing in the coming year?

Can we enact our changes lovingly but also urgently, and with the resolve we would show if we knew that our very lives and souls depended on it, as we are asked to do during the these Days of Awe? And as they in fact do? What if we Jews suddenly did this, and took it as seriously as fasting and atoning in our personal lives? Before we fast, and don canvas shoes with our white clothes, have we asked if the world outside is suffering?

This is one way that we can interpret our Jewish traditions and practices in light of the crisis of the present day, and I would argue that we need to do this at a very deep and consistent level. We need to reflect on a set of ecological and communal “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” that will guide our relationship with the natural world going forward. We need to establish a community that will hold each other accountable to upholding these values. That will celebrate together, notice together, raise children together, sing songs together, share meals together.

We all know that there are Jews who would not eat certain foods unless they were literally at the point of starvation. Can we become a community that holds such sacred attachment to ethical behaviors that might save Creation? I put it forward that this is exactly the purpose of religion itself. It is exactly what we must do. It is exactly the only thing that can build the world with chesed going forward.

My call to each of us in the coming year is do this: find your group – your community – your tribe – and make it real. Discuss what is important to you, your values. Then start to build new traditions, or infuse old ones with new energy and significance. Draw up your own commandments – a list of behaviors that you must do, or aspire to, and a list of behaviors that you have collectively decided you will no longer do. Celebrate the beauty and abundance of the world you love!

Together we can and must change the culture by building the next culture right where we stand, right here and right now.

In closing, I offered the group this prayer:

“God and God of our Ancestors, and also, as I have learned to remember from listening to my brothers and sisters, the Indigenous men and women whom I have been honored to share these spaces with in the past: God of our children, and of our grandchildren, and of our great grandchildren:

“May this moment be the beginning for each of us of a life dedicated to establishing holy roots in your beloved earth, the sacred home of all life; a year dedicated to learning to live with wholeness, with peace, with justice, with shalom; a year in which we infuse every action with love; a year in which we dedicate ourselves with renewed commitment to nourishing and caring for, restoring, and protecting this beloved place that we call home.

“And let us say, Amen.”

L’Shana Tova

The Feast of Unleavened Bread

In Parshat Mishpatim, Torah refers to the shalosh regalim – the three times during the year that entail a mandatory pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The first of these is the Hag HaMatzot, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the second is the Feast of the Harvest, and the last is the Feast of Ingathering.

Jewish holidays can often be interpreted as a layering of three distinct components. At the base is an agricultural component which is governed by the relationship between human beings and the Earth. It is rooted, quite literally, in place and time. The land that they describe is holy – “The Holy Land,” if you will – and its very use is an invocation of blessings. The land is acknowledged as belonging to God, and our human use of it is conditional on our treating it according to God’s will for us.

On top of that foundation is layered a historical component. But not just any history – specifically, the history of God’s intervention in the lives of human beings and specifically the Jews through such events as Creation; Tsiat Mitzraim, the going forth from the land of Egypt; and the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai. Through these holidays, we remember these historical events through which God has entered history.

Finally, on top of both of these layers, our holidays are further adorned with spiritual and even mystical significance. Through an exploration of this path, we are invited to experience a renewed emotional connection with the world we live in – with God, with our fellow human beings, and with the more than human world. We experience not just freedom from  historical slavery in Egypt, for instance. We deepen our connection by reflecting on the meeting of freedom itself, the many expressions of freedom and slavery in the world, from the personal to the social, and on how to manifest freedom in our lives and in our world for the better.

But I would like to take one last backward look at the agricultural roots of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. According to Nahum Sarna, this holiday marks the beginning of the barley harvest – the very first harvest of the agricultural year. It is omers of barley that we will begin counting immediately as the holiday of Passover comes to an end, ultimately counting 49 days between Passover and Shavuot.

What happens at the beginning of a harvest? It’s time to clear out the old grain that has been festering for a year in the storage bins so as to make room for the new grain which will soon be arriving. Good bye, vermin and insects; hello clean, empty space that is ready to receive fresh blessings. Very practical.

So is that the basis for the household cleaning we are doing right now as we prepare for Hag HaMatzot?

If so, that is a lovely connection between the agricultural and the spiritual aspects of Hag HaMatzot. Both tangibly and metaphorically we prepare ourselves to receive fresh blessings, first by cleaning and emptying our space – whether our physical space, or our spiritual space. We ask: What holdovers from the past am I ready to clear aside to make room for new growth? And how will I receive the blessings which I hope will begin to flow in once the space has been made for them? Those are the questions I will be asking myself this week and during the week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Chag Kasher v’Sameach!

 

 

 

Celebrating First Fruits in Seattle

pear

If I had lived in the Holy Land in ancient times, I would have tied a tiny ribbon of reed around the stems of my budding fruit, my wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, dates or olives. And when they were ripe, at about this time of year, I would have packed them into baskets as ornate as I could afford, loaded onto the backs of animals with horn tips painted gold, and accompanied them in a stately but also joyful and musical procession, stopping every afternoon in towns large and small along the way to Jerusalem, where I would have offered them at the Holy Temple as First Fruits to the Lord.

A priest would have taken the basket from me, and I would have recited these words:

“An Aramean [sought to] destroy my forefather, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there with a small number of people, and there he became a great, mighty and numerous nation. The Egyptians treated us cruelly and afflicted us, and they imposed hard labor upon us. So we cried out to the Lord, God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out from Egypt with a strong hand an with an outstretched arm, with great awe, and with signs and wonders. And He brought us to this place, and He gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now, behold, I have brought the first of the fruit of the ground which You, O Lord, have given to me.

“Then, you shall lay it before the Lord, your God, and prostrate yourself before the Lord, your God. Then you shall rejoice with all the good that the Lord, your God, has granted you and your household – you, the Levite, and the stranger who is among you.” (Deuteronomy 26:5-12)

This was the honor shown to the gift of the fruit of the Earth by our ancestors.

But by drawing into the offering this remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt, perhaps more is implied here even than gratitude for the abundance of food, and even more than the “feeding” of this abundance to the holy priests, who were the ones who were alone permitted to eat the First Fruits, signifying, perhaps, the renewal of the holiness “cycle,” if you will.

For me, it is deeply meaningful that we are called to contemplate, through the insertion of this enigmatic text, the resonance between the narrative of slavery, exploitation, and exile brought about by the descent into Egypt, and the narrative of the ultimate destination of that journey of redemption, which is the land of First Fruits. The people who offer their First Fruits with beauty and joy reflect a holy and fully embodied relationship with the land, a land which they perceive and acknowledge as the medium through which God brings blessings into the world, a land in which exploitation is rejected, a land which is to be used in partnership with the Divine to sustain all life, the smallest and most vulnerable especially.

We have so much to learn from these texts about how to bring this sensitivity and these practices into our lives.  I love this season of Shavuot and First Fruits for reminding me of the beauty and generosity of the Earth and God, and for reconnecting me with the inspiration of our beautiful sacred texts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Stories We Tell

Recently I have been reflecting on the contrast between the rational side of the way our minds work and the more mythic or story-based side. While modernity strongly favors science and the rational mind as the primary source of worthwhile knowledge, I would like to spend some time reflecting on the power and relevance of stories.

While this topic may seem to be unrelated to the overarching subject of Shmita that is the focus of this blog, it is by means of stories that we transmit our values and the nature of our relationships with other people and the world around us. Shmita seeks to guide and shape those relationships, and so, uneasily, because there are few actual “stories” that include Shmita as an aspect, these two topics do intersect.

When we think of storytelling, what do we think of? What are some examples of the stories that animate our behavior? Depending on who we are, we may think of the stories we find in Torah (they are stories, after all. Clearly for the Author of Torah, storytelling was an important medium by which to communicate in a way that was sure to hold its relevance over a time frame that has so far extended thousands of years). We may think of fairy tales. We may think of the life stories of our political or social heroes.

I’d like to include some of the other forms of story that fade into myth. This week I read an article published in Indian Country Today that argues in favor of listening to the stories of indigenous peoples about their social norms, and particularly the stories they tell about how they should and should not relate to the wild world that surrounds them.  It focuses on indigenous Amazonian storytellers, whose wisdom guided social norms with respect to use of the area’s natural resources long before Europeans introduced different, exploitation-based economic models into their system. Their stories about how to fish from the enchanted lakes reflect values (such as take what you need for your family’s use and no more or you’ll be punished)  and what place is sacred and needs to be avoided completely to ensure long-lasting abundance of wildlife to sustain a healthy ecosystem (modern scientists have found this to be a biodiversity hotspot) that are nearly lost to modernity, and are only recently being re-discovered through modern biological study and resource management practices.

The resiliency of oral history and storytelling as a mode of transmission of important information can be gleaned from the almost incredible discovery that Australian aboriginals hold a 10,000 year long collective memory about the geography of the place they call home, recalling place names and locations of land that has long ago sunk below rising seas, but which can now be found and identified with modern methods of analyzing the sea floor.

What if we were to seek out this indigenous knowledge – not only about what exists, but also about how to transmit cultural norms that are deeply interwoven with these landscapes. What if we listened, really listened, and brought our scientific and our mythic minds to bear on addressing the questions of how to live on the earth and with one another? Will the stories of our day all be cautionary tales, about how this moment was used incorrectly, and the consequences? Or can we still take up the strands of knowledge that are around us and create resilient, enduring, and deeply “true” stories about the relationship of human beings and the earth, to guide our practices, and our deeper sense of who we are?  What would that type of storytelling look in the modern day? How can it be borne into existence?

As we develop experience living with Shmita and its conceptual offspring, the stories we tell to ourselves about what that experience has been will begin to form the basis of a new and enriched world, in which people long for and more deeply understand the meanings and possibilities of their own lives.