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The Speech President Biden Needs to Give

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Imagined by Rabbi Arthur Waskow* 

 [This “speech” could be seen as simply a wistful, wishful expression of concern. But I think something like it could become far more important. - If there is any issue that has brought concern across the political spectrum beyond elected officials in Congress or state legislatures, it is the dangers imposed by the climate crisis.

 [And in the speech is a proposal for dealing with our deadly national deadlock that goes to the people in a way that while unprecedented as a national strategy is well-grounded in the political culture of many states.

 [Even if the President were to think it wiser to refrain from that approach, making climate the central issue of all election campaigns would, I think, be both the most profound way of signaling how important is this "issue," and be probably the only way out of the doldrums that have settled on the Administration. – AW]

 

My fellow Americans –- and my fellow human beings, of whatever country, religion, world-view, or social standing. 

 I come to the Presidency as a person of faith. One of the most powerful and important teachings of the Bible gives me the strength and the obligation to face the harshest and newest truth of all: After the great Flood, God says: “I now establish My covenant with you [Noah] and your offspring to come, and with every living being that lives with you – every living thing on Earth.” 

 We humans and all the rest of life are part of that covenant with God, and we must act within the covenant before we, not God, bring a Flood of heat, of fire, of water that destroys our partners in the covenant –- and us ourselves.

 So what I need to say tonight addresses the future of us all, not only every human but every life-form on the beautiful globe we share. The more-than-human life-forms will not understand what I say, but their lives and our own will be changed by what we do.

For the first time,  we humans are responsible for whether there is a future for us all, for any of us. We need to act now – not next decade or next year. I bring you a way to do that, despite the deadly deadlock in our national government.

First let me say what is both very hard for me to say, and relatively easy. Hard because it describes a reality far beyond what the framers and reframers of our Constitution faced, and easy because I have said it again and again. What will be new, and harder to work out and pursue, is a way beyond the lethal deadlock we are experiencing.

 What I know is true, and have often said, has been hard for me to live with. It is the truth of the greatest danger we have ever faced. (The hard part has given me some empathy with people who can’t bear to believe it.) Here it is, once again:

 -- What we have called the climate crisis is no joke, no hoax.  When we talk of “global warming,’ we really mean “global scorching.” Fires, floods, famines – floods not only of water but of refugees, millions of desperate human beings searching somewhere for food that is nourishing, air that is breathable, clothing that comforts, housing that is honorable. 

Whole species migrating from habitats gone haywire, hungering for the same sufficiency. 

 

We need to end the burning of fossil fuels and emission of noxious gases by 2030, not 2050, to make sure that our cities, towns, and farms can survive, We know how to do it. Do we have the political will? I don’t know. We can only find out by trying.

 

When a democracy faces a new precipice, we must create new ways to leap across the abyss to a new kind of safety. So here is the deeply new part:

This next November, we will submit to the people of the United States a referendum on a bill to heal Earth and Humanity. My administration will start writing this bill now – today! 

On Election Day in November, every American more than 18 years of age will be encouraged to vote. There will be no party affiliations attached to this vote, no political job, no official honor or perfumery.

 Each voter will receive an indelible hand stamp that will mean no one votes twice. If local or state officials anywhere refuse to accept or count this vote, Federal or state or local public servants – teachers, for example – will be asked to serve the public.

What will our people vote on? My administration will fashion a new proposal that transforms the sources and outputs of energy in three great life-arrangements  that nourish us: our homes, our transportation, and our agriculture

These crucial arrangements house us, feed us, move us from place to place. All three require energy. It can come by extracting coal, oil, gas, uranium from Earth, or from the sun, the wind, the tides. 

As of now, all three systems gobble up the space, the habitat, that other species need. Yet the survival of those other species is necessary to our own survival. 

And these three crucial aspects of our lives together each is pouring heat-trapping gases into our atmosphere, scorching our common home. Choking Earth so that the life-giving interchange by plants and animals of Oxygen and CO2 is broken. Earth can’t breathe.  

 And many of our neighborhoods can't breathe. The marginalized  and demoralized communities include those dying early from despair in the form of opioids and those dying early in the form of guns and heroin -- both dying early from the dearth of decent well-paid jobs and from the contempt they feel as "forgotten Americans." Giving a hand up to one kind of neighborhood does not mean pushing another down.

 When in the 1930s the Rural Electrification Act came to farms that had no electricity, it came not to impose a Federal stranglehold but to offer a hand up to neighbors whose ladders had been stolen from them. Our bill will sow the seeds of neighborly co-ops, not briefcased bureaucrats, to grow an economy rooted in renewables. And it will include jobs, good jobs, for those who are displaced by this life-giving transformation. 

My administration will consult scientists of every discipline, historians, clergy and spiritual leaders of every persuasion, artists and writers and singers, teachers, miners and refiners, officials and would-be officials of every party, to create the bill that we will submit to the people. The whole people. 

And we will make the bill utterly transparent. It will be written in words that everyone can understand. It will be made available everywhere.

We will find out in November whether the American people are willing to grow a new society that loves Earth and invites Earth to love us, or is committed to the path of domination.

And we will do what the people decide. If they vote for the bill, we will make it happen. If they don’t. we will stop pressing on this issue. The people will write the law, as they do now in many states by referendum and initiative.

 You might say, “This is unconstitutional!” In 1787, most Americans who could vote in what could hardly be described as a democracy thought that the Articles of Confederation –- the Constitution of our new nation – was not working. It had a constitutional process for amending itself. The voters thought that would not work either. 

So notables gathered by their own will in Philadelphia and wrote a new – and “unconstitutional” -- Constitution. After a vociferous debate, the voters of that day voted. 

They adopted the new Constitution. And because most of the people knew it was necessary, it worked.

We are not only a new nation, renewed by our history. We face a new situation, utterly unknown to any past government or nation.

The Bible teaches:”I. the Holy One, have set before you life and death. Choose life, that you and your children may live!” And the Bible also teaches: "I. the Holy One, will send you Elijah the Prophet to turn  the hearts of parents to the children and the hearts of children to the parents, lest I come [not as a gentle Breath of Spirit or as the Wind of change, but as a Hurricane of destruction,] shattering all Earth."

It is we, each of us, who must choose to be Elijah.

 --- Joe Biden, President of the United States

(Imagined by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph.D.) 

Climate Crisis & National Deadlock: Despair or Multi-Sacred April?

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Dear companions in the Great Turning,

We live in the midst of a planetary cataclysm that threatens human civilization and a national crisis of economic and racial inequality. We should be acting to release Earth from an overdose of gases that have scorched and choked the planet and release marginalized neighborhoods and towns from the fumes of coal and oil that have brought them epidemics of asthma and cancer.

Instead, in the most consequential country on Earth, in Earth, our national political system is in deadly deadlock.

It would be easy to plunge into despair. But at last the communities of faith have awakened to the crash and stink of wildfires beyond control, floods that have drowned people in their homes, heat so intense it kills our elders, famines that drive millions of hungry refugees out of their homes and countries.

And as if by miracle, our year of deadlock also bears a most astonishing April. One that can connect our different faith communities in awe and action.

For in this coming April tåçhere is an unusual confluence of holydays -- Jewish (Passover, starting April 15), Christian (Holy Week, starting April 10) , and Muslim (Ramadan, starting April 2).

And in the hearts if not the formal religious calendars of many people of faith are two other April dates: April 4 – the death-anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King and the date of his “Beyond Vietnam” speech a year earlier, in which he named racism, militarism, and materialism the dangerous triplets afflicting America –- and April 22, Earth Day.

In April, here in the United States we will be in the thick of primary elections. Faith communities in nonviolent action can lift the need to save Earth and Humanity beyond partisan politics not with “moderation” but with prophetic boldness. We can do it not just in Washington DC but everywhere there is a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, meetinghouse.

In all those places will be the campaigns and offices of incumbent and would-be Congresspeople. In all of them will be banks that invest in companies that burn all Earth and pour carbon-laced asthma into the throats of the children of their customers. In all of them are local governments that are – or could be – transforming our homes, our transport systems, our food and farms away from fossil fuels. –

We can transform each local debate into a sacred nonviolent crusade – not against each other but against the greed and cruelty of Corporate Carbon Pharaohs that are bringing Plagues upon all Earth.

We sense that the faith communities’ attention to climate/ fossil-fuel issues are a saturated solution that needs a crystal dropped to crystallize with a new intensity. Multireligious commitments to act in April could be the crystal of change.
T.S. Eliot, in The Wasteland, said that “April is the cruellest month, / breeding lilacs out of the dead land, / mixing memory and desire, /stirring dull roots with spring rain.” ----

But we can say that Next April is the holiest month, Breathing us to heal the dying Earth, Mixing sorrow with fierce urgency, Confronting dulled rulers with spring joy.

We do not mean that we abandon our sacred practices and symbols and ceremonies to take this action. No – we deepen them, we transform them.

• We might turn Palm Sunday back into what it was in the beginning -- the nonviolent march to face the puppet government of the Empire.
• We might deepen the fasts of Ramadan and of Lent and of the Jewish avoidance of swollen chametz (leavening) into boycotting the products that burn our people and our Earth.
• We might take a third-day Passover Seder into the streets, waving the Matzah and the Bitter Herb outside or inside the branches of the Chase Bank that is the #1 investor in destroying Earth, our common home. “Move Our Money – Protect Our Planet” becomes our slogan.
• We might shape the Quaker silence into silent marches against death to the campaign offices of candidates for Congress from every party ---silent till we shout the name of an elder killed by heat stroke, a child dying of famine, a family drowned in a flood that invades their own home.

And so forth, on dates carefully chosen during April to highlight and share the sacred practices of many different religious and spiritual communities.

These are my own imaginings of what we could do. But the decisions of a coalition of faith communities will have to work out an agreed repertoire of actions and demands. Perhaps a coalition body lists a number and range of possible demands and oleaves each participating group free to choose.

How do we begin?

Several weeks ago, we decided to try the idea out with Bill McKibben, and this is what he answered: “this is very smart indeed. shall i ask the people at greenfaith what they think?”

GreenFaith has been an effective center for multireligious action on climate. It was the managing organization of the October 11-13 rallies in Washington during which I was arrested. So of course I said to McKibben “Yes!” He wrote GreenFaith, and they wrote me, “We were intrigued by the idea! Maybe we can take some time to discuss while we're together in DC. I do think it could be the next course of action for our multi-faith crew.”

But of course a great movement of faith-filled Americans cannot depend on any one organization. What we can do is spread the idea. And by “we” here I mean not just us at the offices of The Shalom Center or GreenFaith but all of us who see the truth of danger and seek to transform it with the Truth of passion, compassion, love, and unity. The Truth of Shmita writ large, not just for the Jewish people or all the lifeforms and eco-systems crowded into the sliver of land on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean but to all life on this round planet.

Will you make five copies of this letter from me and send each one to a friend of yours, maybe a fellow-congregant who’s a go-getter, maybe your clergyperson or spiritual leader., maybe an activist nun. Add a note saying, “What do you think of this multi-faith April Action idea?”

And then ask them over for coffee and cookies. Talk about it. What could you-all do on April 4? Om the third day of Passover? For Palm Sunday? For the fast days of Ramadan? Let us know what you think. Write us!

And we will be creating some ideas and actions for you to choose from, that honor your religious life by drawing on it to heal our neighborhoods, our country and our planet.

With blessings for you to use well the sacred Truth that leads to sacred action – Arthur

[Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow founded (1983) and directs The Shalom Center, a prophetic voice in the Jewish, multireligious, and American worlds, for eco/ social justice, peace, and healing of our wounded Earth. His 28 books include The Limits of Defense, From Race Riot to Sit-in, The Freedom Seder, Seasons of our Joy, and Dancing in God's Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion. He has been arrested 28 times in protests against many forms of injustice and oppression. You can reach him by writing Office@theshalomcenter.org with “April Action” as the subject line.]

The Green New Deal -- From Below

Submitted by Editor on

[Jeremy Brecher has for decades worked to encourage American workers and the labor movement to work with the progressive transformation of Amercan society, and to integrate that vision with the more immediate need for jobs, health, food, etc. He has also consistently sought and taught "history from below," change created from the grass roots of society rather from official structures. Among his ten books are  Strike!, Against Doom, and Globalization from Below. --  AW, editor]

 

By Jeremy Brecher

The Green New Deal is a visionary program to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Its core principle is to use the necessity for climate protection as a basis for realizing full employment and social justice.

The Green New Deal first emerged as a proposal for national legislation, and the struggle to embody it in national legislation is ongoing. But there has also emerged a little-noticed wave of initiatives from community groups, unions, city and state governments, tribes, and other non-federal institutions designed to contribute to the climate protection and social justice goals of the Green New Deal. We will call these the Green New Deal from Below (GNDfB).

The purpose of this commentary is to provide an overview of Green New Deal from Below initiatives in many different arenas and locations. It provides an introduction to a series of commentaries that will delve more deeply into each aspect of the GNDfB. The purpose of the series is to reveal the rich diversity of GNDfB programs already underway and in development. The projects of Green New Dealers recounted here should provide inspiration for thousands more that can create the foundation for national mobilization–and reconstruction.

The original 2018 Green New Deal resolution submitted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a national 10-year mobilization to achieve 100% of national power generation from renewable sources; a national “smart grid”; energy efficiency upgrades for every residential and industrial building; decarbonizing manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and other infrastructure; and helping other countries achieve carbon neutral economies and a global Green New Deal. It proposed a job guarantee to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one; mitigation of income and wealth inequality; basic income programs; and universal health care. It advocated innovative financial structures including cooperative and public ownership and public banks. Since that time a wide-ranging discussion has extended and fleshed out the vision of the Green New Deal to include an even wider range of proposals to address climate, jobs, and justice.

The Green New Deal first emerged as a proposal for national mobilization, and national legislation has remained an essential element. But whether legislation embodying the Green New Deal will be passed, and how adequate it will be, continues to hang in the balance. Current “Build Back Better” legislation has already been downsized to less than half its original scale, and many of the crucial elements of the Green New Deal have been cut along the way. How much of the Green New Deal program will actually be passed now or in the future cannot currently be known.

But meanwhile, there are thousands of efforts to realize the goals of the Green New Deal at community, municipal, county, state, tribal, industry, and sectoral levels. While these cannot substitute for a national program, they can contribute enormously to the Green New Deal’s goals of climate protection and economic justice. Indeed, they may well turn out to be the tip of the Green New Deal spear, developing in the vacuum left by the limitations of national programs.

GNDfB programs can play a crucial role in realizing both the climate and the justice goals of the Green New Deal. They can build a constituency supporting a national Green New Deal. And they can serve as testing grounds and building blocks that can be linked together to form a Green New Deal that is more effective because it has strong local roots. Programs “from below” can reach out and coordinate with each other. They also can be coordinated with national level planning and investment. Some national Green New Deal proposals lay out policies and institutions through which such coordination can be promoted. For example, the Evergreen Action Plan proposes a White House Climate Council with formalized engagement with states and local governments–and with the U.S. Climate Alliance of 24 states and two territories that are together committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement.[1] A Green New Deal requires a federal and even a global role, but the Green New Deal from Below can start right at home.

Some of the commentaries in this series will describe GNDfB programs and proposals in a variety of economic sectors, ranging from energy production to agriculture to managed decline of fossil fuel infrastructure. Others will delineate some of the institutional forms GNDfB activities are taking, ranging from municipal programs to union initiatives to anchor institution consortiums to campaigns for just transition from fossil fuels. Some of these are explicitly self-described as Green New Deal programs; others don’t use the label but seek the same goals and apply similar principles.

The examples presented in this series are by no means comprehensive–they are just a small selection of the activities under way or being initiated. Nor is there any pretense that any of these represent ideal implementation of GND objectives–they are limited both by the inevitable problems of innovation conducted by imperfect human beings in the face of massive and destructive opposition, and by the absence of a concerted national program. They are offered not as perfect models to be followed but as inspiring examples of the possibilities for local action and the potentials for achieving both climate and justice objectives.

Sectors of the GND from Below

GNDfB programs have emerged in every arena of Green New Deal policy and in all the major sectors where a transition to clean energy is required, including energy production, energy efficiency, fossil fuel decline, transportation, and agriculture.

Climate-safe energy production

8th Fire Solar: Winona LaDuke Solve Climate by 2030 | Author: Honor the Earth | Watch the video »

Climate safety requires meeting the Green New Deal goal of 100% renewable energy. Hundreds of local initiatives are expanding renewable energy production. The city of Denver, Colo., for example, has set a target of 100% renewable electricity by 2030 and is now constructing community solar gardens on city-owned rooftops; 20% of the solar energy is designated for low income households and a portion of the jobs created are reserved for graduates of a paid training program. In Burlington, Vermont, the city-owned power company has converted to 100% renewable energy. The town of Swampscott, Mass., launched a Community Choice Aggregation program, Swampscott Community Power, which allows residents and businesses to bargain collectively with power companies for better rates and cleaner electricity. In the first year the small town reduced its carbon footprint by more than 9,700 tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to removing more than 2,000 passenger vehicles from the road.[2] Native American tribes throughout North America have initiated dozens of renewable energy projects.[3] Near Pine Point, Minn., Eighth Fire Solar, an enterprise operated by the Anishinaabe, has been manufacturing solar thermal panels for homes and small businesses not only on reservations but throughout North America.[4]

Energy efficiency/conservation

Meeting Green New Deal climate goals also requires cutting down the energy we need by “getting more bang for a kilowatt”–using less energy but using it more efficiently. Groups like Youthbuild, Emerald Cities, and Green Jobs for All have established local programs in many locations providing training and jobs for disadvantaged youth installing energy-efficiency retrofits for homes and other buildings. The National Nurses Union and the American Federation of Teachers have advanced energy efficiency and clean energy programs in their workplaces–hospitals and schools. Washington, D.C. railroad workers successfully pressured their employers to redesign their diesel locomotives to be more energy efficient, less polluting, and safer for workers.

Next April is the Holiest Month, Stirring ---

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

 Dear companions, I have already started circulating the essay and proposal below to various leaders of eco-religious organizations, asking for their thoughts about it. Beginning with Bill McKibben, many of the responses have been excited. I would be glad for you to share it with others, and I would be doubly glad to hear what you and they think of it, including criticisms and concerns. Please send the responses you receive to me. Warm regards, and Blessings of  shalom, salaam, paz, peace  -- Arthur  

Next April is the Holiest Month, Stirring ---

By Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow*

 April is the cruellest month, 

breeding lilacs out of the dead land, 

mixing memory and desire, 

stirring dull roots with spring rain.

----T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

 

Next April is the holiest month,

Breathing us to heal the dying Earth,

Mixing sorrow with fierce urgency, 

Confronting dulled rulers with spring joy.

Two weeks ago, a loose alliance of people from a wide spectrum of American faith communities proved we could come together in a strong act of civil disobedience. at the White House.

 While many Americans were agonizing over the Congressional collapse of the climate-healing programs of the Reconciliation/ Build Back Better Budget, we focused on what the President has power to do on his own – cancel not just one but all the pipelines that endanger sacred Native water and land, and all our planet.

 I am happy about the moment last week when a Native leader and an activist Rabbi could honor each other. Raymond Kingfisher has helped mobilize his peoples into a force capable of inspiring Americans who used to treat the Native wisdom with contempt. I have spent decades translating into policy for our own generation the ancient Earth-based biblical wisdom about how Earth-born humans could live in harmony with Mother Earth.

 I was happier about that meeting even than the moment of my arrest as the crowd sang me “Happy Birthday” for my 88th.

 Now what? Some climate—concerned organizations are preaching that it’s “Right now or never ever.” In trying to mobilize the US government to take a bold step before the Glasgow world-wide climate conference, they run the risk of turning frustration into despair. Instead, we propose to turn frustration into much stronger, broader, deeper action. It is true that every day lost makes the job harder. But every day "lost" can also inspire more commitment.

 We at The Shalom Center are looking six months ahead. Next April can be remarkable.

 First of all, our American government will have failed to take the bold actions necessary to end the climate crisis – and in Glasgow, the rest of the world will have dithered as well. 

 Yet we will still know the need. Uncontrollable wildfires, extreme heat waves, droughts, famines, urban and rural floods, asthma and cancer epidemics in Black, Native, and other communities subjected to coal dust and oil fumes and chemicalized fracking-water have taught us the need.

Our frustration can be met not by despair but by a great reservoir of active hope – from communities of faith. And that is why next April matters.  

 For in this coming April there is an unusual confluence of holydays -- Jewish (Passover, starting April 15),  Christian (Holy Week, starting April 10) , and Muslim (Ramadan, starting April2). 

 And in the hearts if not the formal religious calendars of many people of faith are two other April dates: April 4 – the death-anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King and the date of his “Beyond Vietnam” speech a year earlier, in which he named racism, militarism, and materialism the dangerous triplets afflicting America –- and April 22, Earth Day..

 In April, here in the United States we will be in the thick of primary elections. Faith communities in nonviolent action can lift the need to save Earth and Humanity beyond partisan politics not with “moderation” but with  prophetic boldness.  We can do it not just in Washington DCnbut everywhere there is a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, meeting-house.. – We can transform that debate into a sacred nonviolent crusade – not against each other but against the greed and cruelty of Corporate Carbon Pharaohs that  are bringing Plagues upon all Earth.

 We sense that the faith communities’ attention to climate/ fossil-fuel issues are a saturated solution that needs a crystal dropped to crystallize with a new intensity. Multireligious commitments to act in April could be the crystal of change.

 I do not mean that we abandon our sacred practices and symbols and ceremonies to take this action. No – we deepen them, we transform them. 

  • We might turn Palm Sunday back into what it was in the beginning -- the nonviolent march to face the pyramids of power in our cities. We wave the Palm branches as we walk.
  • We might deepen the fasts of Ramadan and of Lent and of the Jewish avoidance of swollen chametz (leavening) into boycotting the products that burn our people and our Earth. 
  • We might take a third-day Passover Seder into the streets, waving the Matzah and the Bitter Herb outside or inside the branches of the Chase Bank that is the #1 investor in destroying Earth, our common home. “Move Our Money – Protect Our Planet” becomes our slogan.
  • We might shape the Quaker silence into silent marches against death to the campaign offices of candidates for Congress from every party--  silent till we shout the name of  an elder killed by heat stroke, a child dying of famine, a family drowned in a flood that invades their own home. 

 And so forth, on dates carefully chosen during April to highlight and share the sacred practices of many different religious and spiritual communities.

 These are my own imaginings of what we could do. But the decisions of a coalition of faith communities will have to work out an agreed repertoire of actions and demands. Perhaps a coalition body lists a number and range of possible demands, and leaves each participating group free to choose. 

How do we begin?

 Several weeks ago, we decided to try the idea out with Bill McKibben, and this is what he answered: “this is very smart indeed. shall i ask the people at greenfaith what they think?”

 GreenFaith has been an effective center for multireligious action on climate. It was the managing organization of the October 11-13 rallies in Washington during which I was arrested. So of course I said to McKibben “Yes!” He wrote GreenFaith, and they wrote me, “We were intrigued by the idea! Maybe we can take some time to discuss while we're together in DC. I do think it could be the next course of action for our multi-faith crew.”

 But of course a great movement of faith-filled Americans cannot depend on any one organization. What we can do is spread the idea. And by “we” here I mean not just us at the offices of The Shalom Center or GreenFaith but all of us who see the truth of danger and seek to transform it with the Truth of passion, compassion, love, and unity.  

 Will you make five copies of this letter from me and send each one to a friend of yours, maybe a fellow-congregant who’s a go-getter, maybe your clergyperson or spiritual leader., maybe an activist nun. Add a note saying, “What do you think of this multi-faith April Action idea?” 

 And then ask them over for coffee and cookies. Talk about it. What could you-all do on April 4? Om the third day of Passover? For Palm Sunday? For the fast days of Ramadan? Let us know what you think.  Write us! 

 And we will be creating some ideas and actions for you to choose from, that honor your religious life by drawing on it to heal our neighborhoods, our country and our planet.

  With blessings for you to use well the sacred Truth that leads to sacred action –  Arthur

 (Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow founded (1983) and directs The Shalom Center, a prophetic voice in the Jewish, multireligious, and American worlds, for eco/ social justice, peace,  and healing of our wounded Earth. His 28 books include The Limits of Defense, From Race Riot to Sit-in, The Freedom Seder, Seasons of our Joy, and Dancing in God's Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion .He has been arrested 28 times in protests against many forms of injustice and oppression. You can reach him by writing Office@theshalomcenter.org  with “April Action” as the subject line and you can reach, read, subscribe, and support  The Shalom Center at <https://theshalomcenter.org>)

Why Hagar Left: This Week’s Torah

Submitted by Editor on

 By Rabbi Phyllis Berman

[Rabbi Phyllis Berman is a spiritual director. She has been the founder and director of a renowned English-language school for new adult immigrants and refugees; director of the summer program at Elat Chayyim; and co-author of several books on Jewish thought and practice.

[This story appears in a fuller version in the book Tales Of Tikkun: New Jewish Stories To Heal The Wounded World (republished by Ben Yehuda Press, 2021) written by Rabbis Phyllis Berman and Arthur Waskow.]

Long ago and far away is where most stories start; but this one begins in my own life.

One day when I was 16, I came home from school very upset. My mother asked me what was wrong. I told her that Danny, the-love-of-my-life, was spending a lot of time with my second-best-friend Tamar. And I was frightened. At the moment they were only friends, but I knew that Tamar really liked Danny, and I knew that he was also interested in her.

"So you're jealous of her?" said my mother.

 "Well, of course," I said. "What else can I feel? I’m worried I’ll lose him; in fact, I’ll lose them both."

"Where did you get the idea that two women have to compete over a man?" my mother asked with a sparkle in her eyes.

Incredulous, I blurted out, "Come on! From the time I was an infant, I’ve gone to shul; from the time I started Hebrew school, I’ve read the Chumash. We hear the story of the competition between Sarah and Hagar not just once but twice a year. It’s all about jealousy over Abraham’s affection! How can you ask me that question so innocently?”

"From your birth, I’ve been waiting to have this conversation with you. But I had to wait till you were ready. So at last it’s time.

"What you’ve been learning about Sarah and Hagar – it’s not the whole story. How do I know? My mother told me when I was about your age; she had heard it from her mother, who had heard it from her mother, all the way back through all the generations. What she told me is the real story of Sarah and Hagar ...

“I’m sure you know the story about how Avram pretended Sarai was his sister when they visited Egypt, and how she ended up in Pharaoh’s harem, and how Pharaoh was so upet when he discovered they were really married that he threw them out of Egypt altogether. But you don’t know that Hagar was in the harem too, that that she and Sarai became close friends, and Sarai insisted that the Pharaoh release her too.

“And that is how it happened that the companions Sarai and Hagar, and the couple Sarai and Avram became a family of three. The three settled in Hebron and peacefully went on with their lives.

"When Sarai learned she would be able to have a child, her name and Avram’s too were changed to affirm they would be life-bearers: Each of them added to their names a deep breathing sound, a hhhh, Breath of Life.

"Now you may think that everything was finally perfect, but I’m sorry to say that a strange shadow fell upon the family right before the birth of Sarah’s baby. Avraham awoke one morning full of dreams about a commanding transcendent lordly God. In his dreams he had heard this God demanded the circumcision of all the males in the family -- the adolescent Yishmael, the aging Avraham, and all future newborn boys to hallow the male genitals to create life for ongoing generations.

"Avraham told these words to Sarah and Hagar, and the women were outraged. 'You mean to say that you’d take our Yishmael --  a thirteen-year old just coming to terms with his body’s change from boyhood to manhood -- and you want to cut off the skin at the tip of his penis?' Hagar said incredulously.

 " 'Yes,' Avraham answered, ''I, and all the men of our clan and our village, and all the boy children, including our Yishmael, must be circumcised.'

"The women looked at each other in disbelief. They could barely tolerate the thought of maiming their male child, let alone the men in the community. It made no sense, they thought; and yet, Avraham was so certain that it was what God wanted. Finally and reluctantly, they agreed, and the circumcisions were done.

"But from that moment on, a gulf fell open between the two women and Avraham. If he could dream such weird dreams, such dangerous and outrageous dreams, who knew what might be next?

"And yet all this was put aside when Sarah delivered a healthy baby boy. To this son, the three of them gave the name 'Yitzhak, Laughing One,' because the news of his coming had caused all of them to laugh with delight.

"The family of five continued to grow in love and prosperity, until one morning Sarah awoke from a terrible night’s dream. She was so distressed that she told it to Hagar: In her nightmare, Avraham had had another dream. This time God had told him to take his first-born son to a nearby mountain, and, like so many of their neighbors who believed that sacrificing living beings insured continued fertility, sacrifice him. As Sarah told the dream, she began to cry. Her body shook and her voice broke.

"Hagar put her arms around Sarah. 'Beloved Sarah, it is just a dream,' said Hagar.

" 'Beloved Hagar, it is just a dream,' said Sarah.

"  'It is just a dream of a dream,' said each woman to the other.

"But the dream came to Sarah once again, and yet once more. 'Three times!' she said to Hagar. 'It will no longer leave me in the morning. Remember when Avraham dreamed that God wanted our oldest son circumcised? Is it so impossible that he might dream that God wants him to sacrifice our oldest son?'

"Sarah and Hagar didn’t know what to think; but, since the circumcision, they were not so confident about Avraham and the voices he chose to listen to. 'What can we do if Avraham decides to take our Yishmael to sacrifice him?' they cried. And so they sat and talked and planned and plotted through the day and into the night.

"The plan," my mother said, "is one we know well; it’s the one we read about in the Torah.

Noah or Abraham?

Submitted by Editor on

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?”


Is the Song of Songs "Happily Ever After"? --- Well, no

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

[One of the things I love about Rabbi Shefa Gold is that she loves the Song of Songs – as do I. I would guess she has loved the Song since before she knew it existed -- since she was born and opened her ears to the melodies and chants of the Song Beyond All Songs. Till. for her, when just this past year she led a year-long learning with the Song as text.

[In between her birth and those teachings, Rabbi Gold was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and again by Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and sang into being not only hundreds of Hebrew chants but a whole newway  of  prayer – chant services with few words but great depths. (You can hear many of them at

https://www.rabbishefagold.com/about/c-deep/

[Here is her latest song of love to the Song: -- AW, editor]

Happily Ever After? Well, no.

By Rabbi Shefa Gold

The Song of Songs is our great Love story. As with all great stories, you might wonder, “Well, how does it end?” I grew up with a bedtime story, a myth, a blueprint for how love was supposed to go, where it was supposed to take me, that can be summed up with the words, “And they lived happily ever after.”

The last note says, “Ta-da!” “The End.” And I’ve always been a sucker for those romantic comedies that warm my heart and lure me with their fantasies of “happily ever after.”

The Song of Songs ends on such a different note. The lover turns to her beloved in the Garden and says, “Go! Hurry, my Beloved! Flee! Be my gazelle, my young stag on the mountain of spices.” 

She turns to Love, Reality, God, the vastness of Being and says, “I will not domesticate you with my concepts; I will not limit you with my convenient definitions; I will not settle for comfort and ease and a small predictable Reality…. because I have glimpsed your vastness, your wild immensity, your unfathomable nature. “

I live at the edge of wilderness, and I’m always playing at that edge. I have a small container garden on my porch, a hummingbird feeder and a seed-block for the woodpeckers, jays, juncos, grossbeaks and finches that I count as family. A grateful tribe of chipmunks live under my wooden planter boxes. Bears sometime lumber onto my porch to do their mischief. The seeds from my chive’s flowers waft off my porch into the ground the surrounds my house, taking root as tufts of delicious food for the deer that wander by.

 The other day I stood on my porch and stared into the dark eyes of a doe who was leading her two young children into those between lands where my chives had spread. For a long timeless moment, we were lost in each other’s eyes. And then quite suddenly she must have heard those words, “Hurry, flee, be like a gazelle in your swiftness and wild beauty; run to the mountain of spices.” I was so grateful for those moments and sad to see her go, and happy for her wildness, for in those precious moments, she awakened the wild in me. 

And this is also how the Song of Songs ends -- leaving us playing at the edge- between our civilized, predictable, constructed, comfort-seeking world ... and the vast dangerous mystery that can’t be contained, defined or even fathomed. 

The Song of Songs asks, “What would it mean to live at that edge?”

[As for me, I’ve loved the Song of Songs since 1974 when Rabbi Max Ticktin, z’tz’l, led a group of Fabrangeners in an open exploration of its Eros-Spirit. Till when just this past year I wrote on Dancing in God's Earthquake and just this past week when I wrote in the Shalom Report  that the Song is Eden for a gown-up human race. That it will take the Song to teach us the Torah of the next seventy generations, the Torah of how Earth and human earthlings can live together – can keep living at all. -- AW, editor]      

Faith Communities Will Gather in DC Oct 12 for Civil Disobedience to Heal our Climate

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

ON October 12, I will turn 88 years old. I plan to undertake an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, among hundreds of others from a broad rage of  faith communities, at the Whote House in a call to the President to use all his legitimate power to address the climate crisis far more vigorously.

I see my being able at 88 to take part in this action as a joyful birthday present from the Breath of Life --- YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh –- to me, making the Sheh-hekianu prayer real: – Blessed is the Interbreathing Spirit of the world world Who has filled me with life and carried me in the Wind of change to reach this moment.

And from me, the protest will be a healing birthday gift to our wounded Earth.

Clergy Civil Disobedience

(Here I am quoting from an invitation to this action by Rabbi Elliott Tepperman, president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.)

 We as people of faith are being invited to support People Vs. Fossil Fuels, an Indigenous-led coalition of frontline communities working to stop the climate catastrophe now. Please join me and many other rabbis and faith-committed people on October 12 in Washington DC as over 100 clergy and many supporters sit down in front of the White House and risk arrest as part of a week of action demanding President Biden use his executive power to stop all federal approvals for fossil fuel projects. 


To participate you need to come to training in DC Monday evening 10/11. They are planning for the arrests to result in a $50 fine and release that day, likely with outdoor processing. Biden’s team has already shown a strong desire to avoid the story of clergy arrest and strong evidence that this action will move the needle.


This action is the first on a national scale for organizers who have been fighting fossil fuel projects like pipelines all over the country. They are coming together in recognition that victory over any one project is insufficient. To reach safety, we need to stop them all. Sign up here with our partners at GreenFaith..  The GreenFaith clergy working group meets the next two Tuesdays at 11 AM via Zoom. Sign up!

 *** ***

Some thoughts I want to add:

We face a great moment of deep decion. When such moments came in Torah, we hear calls for the entire people to be present. At Sinai and for the Sukkot after the Sabbatical/ Shmita Year and when the exiles in Babylon returned, we hear that everyone must assemble.

There could be no deeper decision than whether to  burn all Earth  and wreck human civilization or to move into an era of Eco/ Social Justice. We should be making every effort to involve and hear our fullest community when we vote.

Yet some of our elected representatives are trying not to “move Heaven and Earth” but to thwart Heaven and choke Earth so as to hold power in the old way. To them that means alliances of the minority of Americans who want to subjugate and ravage Earth for their own profit with those who want to subjugate women, GLBTQ people, Muslims and perhaps Jews, Spanish-speaking refugees and immigrants, Indigenous people, and the Black community.

To defeat this cabal who want to govern by fear, violence, and exclusion, we must not only unite against them, but for and in a world that governs through love. That governs hrough the mind-set of ecology  -- in which every species, every culture, every person is willing to celebrate its/ her/ his/ their/ our uniqueness and fit our differences together like a jigsaw puzzle into the Great Name, the Interbreath of Life, the Holy One.

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

After Texas, We Must Confront Misogynist, Anti-Sex Theology

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

RALLY FOR ABORTION JUSTICE, OCT 2, IN WASHINGTON DC AND LOCAL MARCHES ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. CLICK TO 

https://womensmarch.com/oct-2021-march for details. Also contact National Council of Jewish Women. And prepare ourselves for a deeper challenge to the theology that undergirds these oppressions. 

[On September 15, the 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 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 and I were adults and Roe v. Wade was decided before my mother’s mother told us the circumstances of my father’s mother’s death. Having birthed five sons and begun rearing them, she became pregnant again. Feeling it impossible to raise a sixth child, she found someone willing to do an illegal abortion. She died as a result. Her death cast a shadow over my father’s life.

 

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 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, 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 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). So abortion, contraception, homosexuality, masturbation – all became sins. Hence Archbishop Gomez’ warning.

 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 that are threatening Earth and Humanity.

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

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

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

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