In Memory of Eva Cowan Waskow

It's Not Just Abortion: Do Women Have Freedom of Conscience?

Or Are They Occasions of Sin?

Roman Catholic Bishops, the Supreme Court, & Women:

Is Religion Love or Compulsion?

[On September 15, 2021, an earlier version of this article below was published by Lilith, a lively and intelligent feminist Jewish magazine. A fuller critique of the Augustinian anti-sex and misogynist strand of Christian thought and its disastrous version of the Eden story is in my book Dancing in God's Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion (Orbis Books, 2020).]

 I was taught, as an historian and again as a rabbi, always to be clear what in my own life was pointing me in one or another direction, to allow others a chance to weigh my thoughts in light of that framework – rather than pretending I can be “neutral” about any serious issue. 

My brother Howard, alav hashalom, and I were adults and Roe v. Wade had been decided before my mother’s mother told us the circumstances of my father’s mother’s death  -- Eva Cowan Waskow, may her name be remembered along with the names of many   thousands of women and others of unconventional sexuality or gender,whose names have been buried with them, who were victims of male supremacy and especially  of an anti-woman theology that I want to address in this essay.

Having birthed five sons and begun rearing them, my grandmother Eva became pregnant again. Evidently feeling it impossible to raise a sixth child (we don’t know exactly what her thoughts and feelings were), she found someone willing to do an illegal abortion. A botched abortion. She died as a result. Her death sent my father to an orphanage for years, and cast a shadow over his life.

[This photograph of Eva Cowan Waskow's grave was taken by my son, David Waskow,  her great-grandson, on a pilgrimage to her grave in Washington DC]

By the time I learned this, not only had Roe v. Wade greatly  lessened the stigma of abortion, but I had learned enough Jewish tradition to know that the Torah taught that an abortion, even if against the mother’s will, could result in civil damages at the discretion of a court, but was certainly not murder.

Only once the fetus had been born, its head had appeared outside the mother and it could take a breath on its own, was it deemed a human life. And if the fetus was a threat to the mother’s life (and some rule, her psychological health), it is not merely permissible but obligatory to kill the fetus to save the woman. That is exactly the opposite of official Catholic law.

 And then I learned that one of my crucial rabbinic teachers, Rabbi Max Ticktin, before Roe v. Wade had been part of a secret network of “the Janes” who had arranged for illegal but safe abortions by qualified doctors. For years he could not enter the State of Michigan because of a warrant for his arrest.

And then I learned that another of my major teachers, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, knew that his mother had arranged an abortion in order to make it possible for the family to flee Vienna when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss in 1938. Reb Zalman said the abortion had “given new birth, new life to the whole family.”

So everything in my own family history and the history of my teachers accorded with Jewish law that understood Torah put the life and welfare of women higher than that of an unborn fetus. Yet the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical Christian movement, in both of which men make the decisions, ignored the clear biblical text (Exodus 21: 22-25) to come up with their description of abortion as murder.

 In fact, these two religious groupings have been able to organize enough political support from organizations that support other forms of subjugation (against Black and Latinx voters, GLBTQ communities, Muslims, immigrants, and Earth itself)  that the State of Texas has now legislated a system that turns everyone (not only Texas residents) into a potential paid informant like the Stasi network in Communist East Germany to imprison doctors and all others who assist in any way for an abortion later than about the sixth week of pregnancy? The Supreme Court, without a hearing or internal discussion, has three times refused to prevent the law from taking effect.

Why and how have these large religious bodies been able to mobilize such political power, and what should the rest of us – including many of their own members who disagree — do about it? 

 First of all, let’s be clear: Abortion is not the only issue, though the US press often reduces the public issue to abortion. The Conference of Catholic Bishops makes clear that what is at stake is much larger: “Shortly after Mr. Biden’s election in November, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced the unusual creation of a working group to address conflicts that could arise between his administration’s policies and church teaching,” the NYtimes reported.

“On Inauguration Day, Archbishop Gomez issued a statement criticizing Mr. Biden for policies “that would advance moral evils” especially “in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender” (emphasis mine).

So what is really at stake is a theology of sex, especially impressed on Christianity by the sex-obsessed Augustine of Hippo (I will not call him a saint) who died in the year 430 CE. What is this sin? 

Augustine powerfully affected many leaders of the Christianity of his time. They must have shared much of his tightened strum of sexual tension. Ever since, Christian thought –at least until the Protestant rebellion, and even in some Protestant churches –- has suggested that the mistake of Eden was sexual.

 According to this sexual hysteria, the sin has entered into all future humans because Adam and Eve passed it to their children through intercourse and procreation – like a permanent genetic defect carried not in the genes but by the very act of passing on the genes. Since then, most Christian dogma has seen pleasure in the sexual act as not only the bearer of Adam’s sin but the nature of the sin itself.

In this theology, Augustine’s “original” sin was original not only because it was the first, but because it was intimately involved in the origin of the human species and in the origin of every human being. It was and is indelibly imprinted in the human condition.  It was and is the “sin of all,” of the entire world. Since sex was necessary to keep the species alive, the dogma became that sex was acceptable if it led to procreation (though not as holy as "chastity" -- that is, abstention from sex.). So abortion, contraception, homosexuality, masturbation – all became sins. Hence Archbishop Gomez’ warning. It is especially interesting that this malinterpretation of the Eden story names the sin was Sex. Not the adolescent mistake of growing one's own identity by disobeying the parent. Not the Greed of wishing to gobble up the whole world. not leave even one Tree unsujugated. 

 Through the centuries, some Christian thought – today, a great deal of Christian thought — and most Jewish thought, has refused to believe that the sin of Eden (whatever it was), made sex or sexual desire or sexual pleasure in itself sinful, or that the mistake of Adam and Eve delivered that sin into all human souls and bodies.

My own understanding of the sin of Eden comes partly from the deep imprint still on me of 1968, of seeing Pharaoh in our own generation, and of the joyful alternative if we could only cross the Red Sea into the Promised Land, the milk-and-honey Garden. I am haunted by the Bomb and the Climate Crisis, and at the same time inspired by the vision of an ecologically delightful planet. And that brings me to look at the birth of humankind, and at this powerful mythic parable of our beginning.

 What should we do? We need to organize. 

1. Right away, in honor and emulation of Rabbi Ticktin and the other “Janes,” we should be organizing networks for “illegal” distribution of safe chemical means of inducing abortion, led by rabbis and other spiritual leaders, and prepare to support them financially, legally, and with nonviolent civil disobedience if the State of Texas (and other states that are exploring the same system) and its informers attack them.

2. In every synagogue and every church and religious order and department of theology where spiritual leaders teach, the Augustinian theology against sex and for the subordination of women should be stripped of its legitimacy and denounced for its destructive effects.

3. We need to lift up a theology of the Song of Songs as a vision of Eden for a grown-up humankind, not allegorized as meaning only love between God and the Jewish people or between Christ and the Church, but infusing love for God into love between human beings of all genders and sexualities, and of love between human earthlings and Earth.

 We are not used to mobilizing against the theology of any other tradition. Liberal and progressive religious traditions have customarily appealed to their own values and let others go their own way. But this is different. We are facing an attempt to impose a reactionary, retrogressive theology upon the whole American people. We need to name and oppose the pernicious anti-sex, anti-woman theology that distorts the Bible and perverts human society. This effort to impose an anti-woman, anti-sex theology is a national danger. 

We need to say that the real dangers to the human species are not women, not sex as a joyful union of Body and Spirit, but the H-Bomb, the burning of fossil fuels, the over-population that takes over all living-space for humankind and crowds other species to extinction. The obsession with subjugating women and punishing joyful, consensual sex distracts us from facing the powerful forces -- I call them the Corporate Carbon Pharaohs -- that are threatening Earth and Humanity. Bring more than Ten Plagues upon all Earth, out of Greed for still more money. That GREED is the real sin aginst the Holy Spirritt, the Interbreathing of animals and vegetation, of Oxyygen and CO2, that keeps all life alive. The build-up of far too much CO2 is choking Earth, choking Humankind.

It is important to note that despite the urgency of Pope Francis to speak against the Greed so dangerous it is destroying the web of life on Earth, the obsession of the American Catholic bishops with sexual sin plays into the hands of the Corporate Carbon Pharaohs whose addiction to the sin of Greed is forcing plagues upon all life-forms. It is also important to note that this theology oppresses not only women but those of  "unconventional" sexualities and genders. Even forbidding abortion may affect trans men who continue to have a uterus.

We need to look at the biblical passage that says, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill up the Earth, and subdue it,” and say ”DONE! Now what?”  

 And for me, the Song of Songs is the "now what." It is feminist, pro-sex, pro-love. pro-Earth, and ecological in its worldview, not hierarchical. It imagines Eden for a grown-up human race. It is heart and fountain of a Torah for the next epoch of Earth's history. 

I am writing to tell you about a new Passover Haggadah – a Telling of sorrow and transformation.  It is the multireligious Earth and Justice Freedom-Seder.  You can use it in your friends-and-family celebration, or in congregational, communal, or interfaith Seders.

Or - – the newest, bravest possibility – you can use it on the street, challenging the Pharaohs of our time.

So it’s time to Dance in God's Earthquake!

So it’s time to shape a life-giving Torah for the new Paradigm!

So it’s time for Humankind to --

“Make space for the foxes,

The quick little foxes,

That rush into our vineyards

Now, when the vines are in blossom!”

It’s time for the Song of Songs to be Eden for a grown-up human race.

And it’s time to learn how.

My newest book, Dancing in God's Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion is the harvest oof my life-work. Like any harvest, it grew from the past -- in order to feed the future. Here is how some folks responded tto reading it:

“A wonderful book! Before the hierarchies and divisions of religions, there was the all-inclusive circle of spirituality. In Dancing in God’s Earthquake, Rabbi Arthur Waskow helps us trace our path back to our spiritual home.” –Gloria Steinem

“Rabbi Waskow calls each of us to reach down deep in our moral and religious traditions and have a grownup conversation about the response our present crisis requires. I'm glad to lift up this invitation for all to join the divine dance of love and justice.” –William J. Barber, II, President of Repairers of the Breach and Co-Chair of the Poor People's Campaign.

“Like poetry on a cold day, this book warms the heart and mind both. A fierce look at religion, a willingness to question history, to see the connections between the world’s faiths, to suggest how we might move forward from today’s hard times.”—Ruth Messinger, American Jewish World Service

\

“We are in a moment of great crises and gathering travail, and so one thing we need to learn is how to steadily, joyfully, determinedly pass through these trials, not just intact, but in love with the world around us. There could be no better guide than Arthur Waskow.”—Bill McKibben, author, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out

“This is a delightful and refreshing book, full of wit, wisdom, and hope--all of which we so desperately need amid the perpetual upheaval and crisis of the world today. I'm deeply thankful for both Arthur and this book.”—Jim Wallis, Founder[ oof Sojourners

“The Jewish people's most revolutionary theologian is at it again, trying to waken us out of our moral slumber, before it is too late. The ancient prophet said: ‘A lion roars? Who will not fear?’ Waskow is our roaring lion.” –Rabbi Arthur Green, Rector of Rabbinical School at Hebrew College, author, Judaism for the World "

"Rabbi Arthur Waskow brings his many years of activism, thought, and creativity to bear on the most important question of our time: how do we respond to cataclysmic change?  How do we shift the patterns of the past rather than cling to them as they unravel? . -- Rabbi Jill Hammer, author of The Jewish Book of Days: A Companion for All Seasons

There are a number of other endorsements. They include Rabbi Jonah Pesner,  Marge Piercy, Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, and other notables from the Christian and Muslim worlds.  

Shalom, salaam, paz, peace, namaste! -- Arthur

You can order Dancing in three ways:

• By calling Orbis Books at 1-800-258-5838 to buy at $25 each one book, or perhaps a few for presents to strengthen your beloved friends who sing and want to dance for love and justice;
• Or to buy for your congregation or book club a minimum of ten copies at a huge discount --half off, only  $12.50 each;
• Or to do the communal buy plus arranging with The Shalom Center an evening of conversation with Reb Arthur about the book, by writing Office@theshalomcenter.org .

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[Robert Brand is a retired city planner and businessperson and is a Senior Fellow at The Shalom Center. He has spent the past 60 years trying to figure out how to work for a more just world, focusing on how to mobilize resources and redistribute them to address issues of exclusion, inequity, and democracy. His work as a planner has involved a career in public health and labor activism, as the developer of an online software as a service package that secured close to $3 billion of support for low and moderate income people, and as an activist.

[The title of this article refers to a commitment and motto of #ExodusAlliance that affirms our goal as not only ending the deadly investments of Chase Bank in the Corporate Carbon Pharaohs that bring plagues on Earth and Humanity, but moving that money to purposes of life. Please see ExodusAlliance.org for more information and to join in sacred action toward and during Passover.]

By Robert Brand

A central belief of faith communities is working to make a better world. It is not enough to remove money from Chase or other financial institutions that fund fossil fuels and the destruction of our planet. Resources must do something that creates a better world, addresses historic inequities, builds an inclusive and welcoming society.

The first need in such a process may be a place to park resources while figuring out how to invest wisely and justly. Community Development Financial Institutions can accept short term investments; credit unions and cooperative banks can create accounts; and investment funds can offer safe parking and potential partnerships.

Then look at some areas where good resources can make a difference. That may require experts to conduct quick feasibility studies to minimize risk of these new investments. Some possible life-affirming alternatives:

1. Repairing damage done by fossil fuel extraction. The damage done by coal, oil, and natural gas is pervasive. There are many thousands of abandoned oil wells and coal mines that continue to pollute groundwater, emit methane, and poison their immediate areas. Mountaintop removal for mining of coal has also created massive environmental hazards and constant threats of landslides. There is a major existing allocation of infrastructure funds to begin cleaning up these areas to prevent further harm and restore land for public use. Community-based enterprises that will do this work, and are committed to family sustaining wages and benefits, offering employment to workers in the fossil fuel industry, and social equity will need capital for equipment and startup costs. These enterprises will be profitable, whether they are incorporated as for-profit or nonprofit entities, and will be able to pay a modest dividend on investments or repayment of loans.

2. Investing in solar, wind and geothermal projects can help these initiatives move further faster. In some communities there are neighborhood solar cooperatives being formed. They often will need some assistance in getting established and they can repay investments through the savings on energy that they produce. There is increased interest in developing wind and solar farms in rural areas to help farmers and rural communities prosper and to create a stream of renewable energy to support homes that will cut their ties to the Carbon Pharaohs. There are also pilot geothermal projects that offer investment opportunities.

3. Work is being done to promote Deep Energy Retrofits (DERs). Nineteen percent of the greenhouse gases the United States produces is from single family homes. Moving to all electric houses supported by renewable sources of electricity can reduce the carbon footprint of the United States by at least 12%. There are projects being discussed, developed, piloted, and run in too few, but a growing number of communities. A recent paper proposes development of a financing pool that engages local stakeholders in each community whose business interests would benefit from DERs. The National Renewable Energy Lab has recently published a guide for community planning of these initiatives. This is in addition to a range of government funds that already exist or are in the pipeline. As these efforts begin there will be huge opportunities for employment, significant local or regional production of materials, and the creation of enterprises that seek to serve low and moderate income communities, where the largest energy savings will take place. These enterprises also provide opportunities for people who have been excluded from skilled, family sustaining jobs with career paths. Substantial investments can be made to support the development of enterprises that will do the work and produce the materials needed.

4. Trees, trees, and more trees. Trees are essential to renew land that has been clear-cut, sites of mountaintop removal, sites of abandoned oil and gas and coal extraction. Trees are also essential to create microclimates in cities that reduce summer heat. They also begin to restore some connection between people and nature through management of these trees. All of this requires a public commitment. We know that there are specific varieties of trees that work in specific climates. We also know that trees that are grown from seed in the areas in which they will mature adapt to air quality and climate in those areas and thrive much better than those that are transported from faraway nurseries. There are opportunities to invest in nurseries and employ people who will grow, plant, and tend trees throughout the nation. Government, utilities, developers, all will be eager customers for trees. Early investment can help the nurseries develop family sustaining wages and using environmentally sound practices.

5. All Wood Construction. While we are at trees, we should note that there is an increasing interest in all wood construction. Wood construction in modern days is fire resistant and is a carbon capture and storage system. In addition, all wood construction removes cement and concrete from the construction site, both of which are energy hogs. There are two architecture schools in North America that have departments devoted to all wood construction. Commercial architects have built all wooden buildings up to 14 stories. These buildings are sound and create huge opportunities for urban and rural partnerships to finance construction, proper management of forest lands and the development of a very green part of the construction sector.

6. Building networks of Green House Nursing Homes. These small community based homes (10 to 12 residents) offer improved quality service to residents, are popular with residents and staff, increased the hours of staff – resident contact, have had virtually no Covid problems, and are cost competitive with traditional nursing homes. Conventional nursing homes are not popular. People who need the service don’t want to go there. This is a significant alternative. There are about 150 Green House nursing homes in the United States now. Many communities have bonding authorities that could finance these homes. Just buying the bonds or partnering with nonprofits could significantly increase the number of these homes and, in some cases, reuse some traditional nursing home buildings.

7. Indoor, controlled environment agriculture is a growing need. Aeroponic production uses 5% of the water of traditional agriculture, uses no chemical fertilizers, and can move food production close to people consuming the food. Most of the aeroponic and hydroponic enterprises have confined themselves to a small set of crops, the easiest to grow. Yet there have been more than 50 crops successfully grown aeroponically or hydroponically. The availability of resources would encourage the creation of new enterprises that better serve our communities.

8. Fixing the supply chain increasingly means shortening and localizing the supply chain. Years ago, a Massachusetts nonprofit economic development agency built a simple model to help businesses identify suppliers in their local community. It was so widely used that the website crashed and had to be rebuilt to handle more robust traffic. Building such exchanges create opportunities for good investments.

Charlie Chaplin said, “You will never see the rainbow if you are always looking down.” We will never see the future until we move our money and resources from destruction to hope and opportunity.

We Speak Up against Destruction Despite the Odds

[Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman is a writer, mother, activist and song-leader in Boston. She serves as the Director of Professional Development at Hebrew College, and as a rabbinic adviser and ambassador for Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action. Her song The Tide Is Rising, which she co-wrote with her husband Yotam Schachter, has spread as an anthem in the climate movement. See her website at Rabbishoshana,com This sermon first appeared  in Hebrew College’s Speaking Torah Podcast episode, with Bill McKibben and Rabbi Friedman discussing it afterward. Click there to hear it in full voice. ]

By Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman.

It astounds me that Noah’s Ark is a classic children’s story. I’m sure you can see the image in your mind’s eye: Giraffes, lions, and zebras, packed side by side in a compact boat floating over a blue sea, with a rainbow and a white dove in the sky above. The scene signals that this is a lovely children’s story, perfect for the zero to five age group. Picture books about Noah abound. My son’s Hannukah menorah is Noah’s ark, the tiny charismatic African megafauna covered more and more each year by cheerfully colored wax.

 But if we look even a little deeper, Noah’s Ark is one of the darkest myths we have inherited. Not only do the world’s human beings, creatures and all terrestrial ecosystems perish mere generations after being created. Not only is this obliteration a direct result of the immorality of human beings. But the one person, the one adult in touch with God before the ordeal doesn’t say one word of protest. How is this a children’s story?!

 The Torah tells us that Noah was eesh tzaddik, a righteous man, and tamim, blameless or pure in his generation.

In his work The Kedushat Levi, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, an 18th century Hasidic master answers a question that Jewish sages have posed over the millennia. How can we call Noah righteous when he did nothing to try and prevent the flood? 

 He answers:  

There is a kind of tzaddik, a kind of righteous person, who serves God, but is so lowly in their own eyes that they think to themselves, "Who am I to pray for God to reverse the bad decree?" and therefore they don’t pray. Now even though Noah was a great and blameless righteous person, he was very small in his own eyes and did not have faith that he was a powerful righteous person with the ability to annul the decree of the Flood.

So, Noah was righteous, but not righteous enough. Not righteous enough to try to talk God out of sending the flood and destroying Creation. 

The Kedushat Levi’s answer about Noah speaks directly to us. Each of us alive today is witnessing rising seas, super storms, raging fires, and extinctions – the modern-day Flood of climate change. The upending, in fact, of the very promise God makes to Noah that seasons, seed time, and harvest time will never cease. 

And yet, like Noah, most of us stay in a place of inaction, or token actions. We see the global economic machinery at work. We know the entrenched political processes. We learn the grim science. And we are small in our own eyes. Who are we to even try? What can we possibly offer that is worth doing at this late moment? 

 But as sure as the flood waters recede, the ending of Noah’s story bears a stark warning against such paralysis. 

The Noah’s Ark children’s books end with the rainbow and the dove. But the Torah continues. Just three verses past God’s promise, we learn the personal cost of Noah’s behavior.

 Genesis 9:20 tells us, “Noah, eesh haAdamah, man of the Earth, planted a vineyard.” Why is Noah called man of the Earth here? What has changed since he was called eesh tzaddik, a righteous man, back in Genesis 6:9? 

The medieval Torah commentators suggest he was a master of the Earth, perhaps a skilled cultivator. But I read his new title in light of the second half of the verse, which reads: “[Noah] drank of the wine and became drunk and uncovered himself within his tent.” (Genesis 9:20b). 

 Why does Noah get drunk? Because as the flood recedes, he is flooded with the understanding that he is a man of the Earth, a man who loved the land and the people and animals he lived among – and yet a man who failed to speak up to God on their behalf. He gets drunk to drown out his feelings – not just the inevitable grief for the suffering of the drowned and all that was lost, but the perhaps more terrible personal anguish of his moral failure to even try to save it all. 

The 13th century mystical text, the Zohar Chadash, imagines just this moment before Noah plants the vineyard. We can imagine a stunned Noah, exiting the ark and confronting the magnitude of the destruction that has occurred beneath him and his family as they floated on the waves. 

The Zohar Chadash reads:

When Noah came out of the ark, he saw the world completely destroyed. He began crying and said, "God, how could you have done this? Why did you destroy your world?" God replied, "Now you ask me? And when I said, 'All flesh will end' you went into the house of study and didn't do anything to fix that generation of yours!" In contrast to that, [the Zohar Chadash continues], when God told Abraham that God would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham stood before God and tried to save the wicked people of the city. (Zohar Chadash, Noach:109-112)

In contrast to Noah – who was righteous only when compared to the rest of his corrupt generation – the ancient rabbis laud Abraham as one of the greatest righteous souls among all generations. The mystical tradition associates him with the divine quality of hesed, loving-kindness. Why? Because when God confides in Abraham that God plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham speaks up and challenges God: 

“Will you sweep away the righteous along with the evildoers?” he asks. “Shall not the Judge of All the Earth do justice?” (Genesis 18:26).

[PAUSE] 

When Noah was 892 years old, Abram-who-would-become-Abraham was born. Their lives overlapped 58 years. 

Imagine a young, curious Abram approaching the ancient Noah – as countless others must have done throughout the long 350 years Noah had to live with himself after the flood. 

Imagine that through his drunken, traumatized haze, Noah sees something in the young Abram. Something that reminds him of the days he himself walked with God. Noah flashes clairvoyant, seizes Abram’s arm, pulls him close and hisses desperately into his ear: “When the Judge of All the Earth comes to you and tells you He plans destruction, make Him act justly.”  

And so decades later, when Sodom and Gomorrah hang in the balance, Abraham asks God “What if there are fifty righteous souls among them? Will you save the cities for the sake of the fifty? What if there are forty-five?” 

And God says, “I will not destroy for the sake of those righteous souls. (Genesis 18:24-33).”

Abraham presses on: “What if there are only forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten?”

Each time, God agrees: “I will not destroy for the sake of those righteous souls.”

And we imagine - Noah’s spirit finally rests in peace.

But it turns out there weren’t ten righteous souls in Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities were destroyed. 

[PAUSE}

Just as Abraham did not know what would happen when he spoke up to God, we do not know the outcome of our efforts to prevent the worst of climate change. Millions of us can dedicate our bodies, our savings, our time, our lives to the fight for climate justice, and we may still not keep warming to livable levels. But we are descended from ancestors who knew how to redefine hope, how to redefine success. Loud as the thunder of forty nights, Jewish tradition calls to us. There is no ambiguity. Despite the odds, we are called to be Abraham and not Noah. 

And Abraham speaks to us, with the intimacy of myths that are never past, but only just behind the veil. Listen.

 “My beloved children,” he is saying. 

“If there is a fifty percent chance of averting the impending catastrophes, will you try? 

“My sweet blessings, what if your odds are forty percent? 

Will you put your money, your time, your political capital behind the climate movement then? 

“My shining stars of the night, my golden grains of sand, 

what if your chances are thirty percent? Or twenty? 

As the species fall to the fossil record, 

will you put your body in the way of this madness? 

Your money out of the banks that fund destruction?

 “As the storms come faster and more furious, 

if your odds are ten percent, five percent, one percent, 

will you still resist in the streets, in the voting booths, in the halls of power? 

 “Even as you adapt, even as you grieve, 

even as you witness Nature’s green resilience

as She turns again into something new, 

Even then, 

will you be among the righteous who challenge destruction, despite the odds?”

All the Jewish festivals have their roots in the natural spiral of the seasons, but Sukkot --  the fall harvest festival – is the earthiest of all. There are two central rituals of Sukkot:

• Building a sukkah, a hut with a leafy, leaky roof, vulnerable to all weather, all life-forms;  
• Uniting and waving Four Species of plant life: three branches (one of them a palm branch, in Hebrew the lulav) and one fruit, the lemony etrog or citron, in the seven directions of the universe.

 Seven? Not six? --- We’ll get to that. First I want to explain how this “ritual” waving can become a powerful consciousness-raiser for connection to Earth and the commitment to act to heal our planet from climate chaos. Two teachings that we can carry within us into public space to teach why we must act to heal our deeply wounded Earth.

 Lesson One of the lulav::

The traditional three branches are myrtle, palm, and willow held in the right hand, etrog in the left, bringing them together while blessing the Breath of Life that calls on us to do this -- then waving them to the right, left, front, behind, up, down, each time bringing them back to the heart. That heart-ward swipe is the seventh direction – inward. (If you can’t find or can’t afford the traditional Four Species, choose a lemon and two curvy and one stiff branch from native trees.) 

“Blessing the lulav,” as this ritual is called, lets us become a tree. We feel our own branches waving in the wind, we smell the lemony scent of our own fruit.

We become a Tree --  and as our newer science of forestry teaches us, trees communicate, feed each other in times of scarcity, cooperate rather than compete.

“Are the trees of the field human?” says the Torah. The sentence seems to be ironic, expecting the answer “No,” but our new understanding might call forth as answer “Hmmm. Good question!”

We do know this:

We breathe in what Trees breathe out;

Trees breathe in what we breathe out.

Animals and plants breathe each other into Life, exchanging oxygen and CO2. That deep truth of Interbreathing was encoded by our forebears in the Name of God that can be “pronounced” only by breathing --  YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh.

That Name frees us to celebrate the Interbreathing Spirit of the world, ruach ha’olam. Frees us from “King” and “Lord” in politics and in our understanding of God and universe -- while reminding us to take seriously our interwovenness with all the forms of life, all Creation. If we ignore or lord it over the Breath of Life, the Wind of Change, it can become a Hurricane of Destruction.

All life is crucial to human life, and how human beings behave is crucial to all other life-forms.

In our generation, the Interbreathing has been disrupted by huge human institutions – government and corporations – pouring so much CO2 and methane into the air that all the plants on Earth cannot transmute these gases back to Oxygen. That imbalance heats, it scorches, Earth. Earth is choking. Earth can’t breathe. The climate crisis is both a physical and a  spiritual crisis -- a crisis in God’s Name. 

What must we learn? Stop burning fossil fuels. No coal, no oil, no gas. No oil and gas pipelines. No coal-based warmth or electric power. Sun, wind, tides instead. Fewer gadgets, more delight. More story-telling, art, song, prayer together. Becoming trees together.

Lesson Two of the lulav:

We learn from the seven directions of the universe: Up, Down; Right, Left; Front, Back;  Inward, the seventh direction, the Shabbat direction.

Seventh direction in space, seventh year in time. This Bible passage (Lev 25-26) teaches us to pause from organized agriculture every seventh year. Pause from making Earth work so that Earth can rest and breathe. And end all personal debt so the poor, the overworked, can rest and breathe. 

This very year, the year that began this just-past Rosh Hashanah, is the 7^th year. The Bible calls it  Shabbat shabbaton – Shabbat to the exponential power of Shabbat. The year of rest and restoration for Earth and Humanity. Earth is not crushed by overwork, Humanity is not crushed by debt.

Our lesson: Eco/ Social Justice. They are intertwined. Make sure that marginalized Americans, whether pockets of poverty in great cities or depths of despair where the factories are shut and there are no jobs, have democratic access to sun and wind. No only co-ops where families join to own their own solar and wind arrays, but learn the work and have the jobs that revitalize the marginalized.

We are here to demand that Congress act to heal Earth and save human earthlings from despair and death

How? By passing with great strength the Reconciliation Act that will make for a true reconciliation between Adamah & adam, Mother Earth and her human children.

Before we unite and wave the Four Species, we unite the Four Worlds of politics, emotion, intellect, and Spirit by affirming two blessings:

Blessed are You, our Creative Energy, Breath of life, Interbreathing Spirit of the world, Who makes us holy by connecting us with all beings in One Being, and teaches us to connect by lifting the lulav.

Baruch attah Yahh

elohenu ruach ha’olam.

Asher kidshanau b’mitzvot

Vitzivanu n’tilat lulav 

And then the blessing Sheh’hekhianu, since we are doing this for the first time in at least a year, a year we have survived in life when that was risky:

 You, O Breath of Life,

O Wind of Change

Who blows the Breath of Life into us

Carries us in the Wind of Change,

And brings us to this moment.

Or as Rabbi Shefa Gold translates and chants it:

Sheh’hekhianu v’kimanu

V’higi’anu lazman hazeh

O Mystery, Grace Unfolding,

O Miracle, It’s You Alone.

O Mystery, Grace Unfolding,

O Miracle, Who brings us home.

Since we live in a society that brandishes Splitness as a sword, we will learn better how to unite political change with spiritual insight through a Webinar:

From 7:30 to 9 pm this Wednesday evening, September 22,  The Shalom Center and COEJ:L -– the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life – are holding a Webinar to ”Share Sukkot – Green and Grow the Vote.” Among speakers and singers will be Rabbi Dan Swartz of COEJL, Mirele Goldsmith of Jewish Earth Alliance,, Rabbi David Shneyer of Am Kolrrl, me, and more. 

The Webinar is free. To take part, please register so we know how many people to expect.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkc-ugrDItGNfYri4VBnlfgqrGW34jdqAy

We look forward to meeting with you there.

Sukkot shalom!  --  Arthur