CiviMail

Our “Sodomite-in-Chief’” lives in the White House

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

How can I use this label of contempt, “Sodomite,” against the President?

Here’s how:

The Bible tells the story of the city of Sodom, destroyed by a Flood of Fire for its sins. (Gen. 18-19) 

What was the sin of Sodom? Almost all Jewish commentary on the story makes clear that the sin of Sodom was not rampant homosexuality (as much of Christian tradition suggests) but rampant rage and violence toward foreigners, immigrants, and the poor.

That line of thought began with the Prophet Ezekiel (16:49-50) who said: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”  This understanding has continued in rabbinic thought for two thousand years, till our own day.

There is another strand in the story: what might be called the sin of Lot. He was Abraham’s nephew, an immigrant to Sodom who like his uncle held as a high value the welcoming of foreigners as guests.

 Faced with a mob of Sodomites enraged that Lot had made his home a nest of immigrants and refugees, Lot offered his own daughters to be raped by the mob, in order to calm their rage against his foreign guests.

At first and second and third reading of Lot’s offer to let the mob rape his daughters if they will leave his foreign guests unharmed. we are horrified. Horrified that in order to protect the foreigners he is willing to sacrifice and destroy his own family.

This is exactly Sodom turned upside down. The citizens of Sodom who surrounded Lot’s house and threatened to rape or kill him and his guests are so obsessed with protecting their own city, their own jobs, their own culture that they are willing to wreak havoc upon foreigners.

Lot,  on the other hand, is so obsessed with protecting his guests that he is willing to wreak havoc on his own family.

Neither of these is a just or sacred solution to the tensions that often erupt between some "natives" and some "immigrants."

According to the story, once it becomes clear that not even ten just and decent people live in this hate-filled town, the Divine Breath of Life, the Wind of Change,  becomes a Burning Hyper-Hurricane -- so incensed at Sodom’s hatred of outsiders that the city is destroyed.

 

 

Lot survives, but his lot is not so pleasant. His wife dies as collateral damage in the disaster. The daughters whom he had offered up as mere objects think that all the other men in the world have died in the Flood of Fire. So they turn Lot into an object – just as he had treated them --  by getting him drunk to make him father their children.  Another kind of rape!

In the midst of this ugly story, does the Torah have any suggestion as to what a decent outcome might have been?

It does, in the bargaining between God and Abraham over whether Sodom should be destroyed in the first place.

In the underlying argument over whether to protect one's own city and own family at the cost of shattering the lives of immigrants and outsiders, or to protect the outsiders at the cost of shattering one’s own city, one's own family – – the famous tension between "particularism" and "universalism" – – Abraham’s challenge to God hints at a resolution.

And this is exactly what the Torah says God has in mInd. For God begins the process by letting Abraham in on the secret plan to punish the crimes of Sodom -- wiping out the city.

Why has God singled out Abraham? According to the Torah, precisely because God sees Abraham as both the progenitor of a sacred people and the bearer of blessings to all peoples.

And Abraham responds! --  by validating God’s Calling on him to become a blessing to all the families, peoples, cultures of the world. Abraham tries to protect and defend even this nasty foreign city. "What about the decent, innocent folk who live in Sodom?  Should the innocent be punished with the guilty? Is that what justice means? Shall not the Judge of all the world do justice?"

The Abraham who is to be the progenitor of a “particular” community -- Yisrael, the "Godwrestling" folk, the Jewish people.  – is the same Abraham who tries to protect a foreign city from God’s wrath.  

How to Cool the Earth & Restore Life-giving Climate

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Climate Restoration Methods Draft 10/06/2017

By Peter Fiekowsky

[Fiekowsky is a physicist/ engineer in the Silicon Valley network, a graduate of MIT who has patented many technological improvements and has committed himself to work to restore a climate as life-giving for our children and grandchildren as it was for our parents and grandparents. He has founded a network and website called the Healthy Climate Alliance and has been working with The Shalom Center toward bringing together a mutireligious network to call for restoring a healthy climate.

For us, the Prophetic Call toward making that vision real is expressed in the very last passage of the very last of the classical Hebrew Prophets, Malachi, who lived 2500 years ago: "I [YHWH, the Interbeathing of all life] will send you Elijah the Prophet to turn the hearts of parents to children  and the hearts of children to parents, lest I [the Breath of life, the Wind of change,  become a Hyper-Hurricane] bring utter destruction on the Earth. (Mal. 3:23-24)

We share a conviction that the religious communities of the US are potentially the basis for turning this prophetic vision into vigorous  public support, as the religious communities did with racial justice half a centtury ago. We have already begun creating new liturgies, sermonic materials, and Spirit-filled forms of activism  to engage the deepest thoughts and emotions of our communities. And we also intend that the religious communities bring our own ethical and spiritual concerns to assess various different proposals for restoring a healthy climate --  some oroposals perhaps more risky than others, some perhaps more likely than others to embody social justice.

--  Rabbi Arthur Waskow, editor]


Methods for Climate Restoration

Introduction

There has been accelerated recognition that we are changing Earth’s climate to the extent that human civilization is imminently threatened. The villain is CO2, which is primarily created by burning fossil fuels. The respiration of plants—which absorb CO2 and turn it into oxygen— is the primary way it is addressed1. Over the past 150 years, we have burned so much more fossil fuel and destroyed so much plant life that we have thrown the planet out of balance2.

Reducing emissions

The concerted human activity and thinking about what governments and technology have to do have so far focused on slowing down and then stopping the human activity that adds to the CO2 load (e.g., reduction of emissions from cars, coal power stations being phased out, etc.).

Unfortunately, we have already disrupted the environment so much that is just not enough3. Not nearly enough. As urgently as we find ways to stop putting CO2 into the ecosystem, we have to find ways to take out what we have already put in and continue to put in.

The good news

Fortunately, emissions reduction is not the only tool at our disposal. We have the capacity to remove CO2 from our atmosphere both through novel technology4 and by speeding up natural decarbonization processes. This process is called "restoration". It is urgent and it is the ignored stepchild of the emerging global warming consciousness.

The Healthy Climate Alliance

The Healthy Climate Alliance is built upon the idea that it is our responsibility and our moral obligation to leave our children and future generations a climate as healthy as that which our grandparents gave us. The climate goal that embodies this message is returning to 300 parts per million (ppm) CO2 by 2050.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the initiative of restoring the climate. Climate restoration cannot replace emissions reduction efforts—those are still necessary—but rather can work in parallel. We must begin this work now, because emissions reduction is not nearly enough to guarantee the survival of humanity. As it stands, technologies exist to

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begin the climate restoration process, and there is a high likelihood that other better technologies will be developed if we give researchers resources and support to do so. The critical action now is to recognize their importance, develop them, and scale them.

Achieving the Goal

Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement5 was agreed upon by 195 nations in December 2015. It is the first universal, legally binding global climate deal. According to the UN Framework Convention6 on Climate Change,

the Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The Paris agreement calls for an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050 in order to stay below two degrees warming. However, the IPCC and prominent climate scientists have claimed that two degrees warming will still subject future generations to irreparable harm7. In short, the goals set forth in the Paris Agreement are insufficient.

Restoring a healthy climate

Achieving the goal of giving our children a healthy climate with zero warming would require —in addition to following through on the Paris goals8—removing about a trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. This means removing about 50 Gt CO2 per year for 20-30 years. This rate of CO2 removal is ten times what is called for in the Paris agreement9.

There is a widespread assumption that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies that could achieve that rate do not yet exist (After all, surely if they did exist, we would be hearing about and acting upon them!). However, that assumption is false; there are various technologies that are capable of that rate, and it is likely that others could be discovered through research. So to correct that assumption, this paper describes several technologies that can be scaled up at reasonable cost.

The methods described in this paper are not hypothetical--they already exist. Decarbonization technologies have been developed, and newer and better technologies are being developed every year. These methods establish a performance bar that will only be raised. They were chosen for inclusion in this paper based on how easy they are to visualize being expanded to the needed scale.

Removing CO2 can happen in two general ways. One is that CO2 is captured from the air and then turned into a stable, productive, benign form (usually referred to as Carbon Dioxide

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Removal or CDR). The other way is that the natural earth systems that remove CO2 from the atmosphere (in particular, photosynthesis) are enhanced or accelerated to increase the amount of CO2 that is processed and removed by nature (usually referred to as referring primary productivity). In addition to these processes, it is likely that cooling methods, known as Solar Radiation Management (SRM), will be needed in the short term.

Carbon Dioxide Removal

CDR, the foundational technology of climate restoration, can be divided into land-based and ocean-based technologies. Land-based methods mostly start with “direct air capture” (DAC), which concentrates CO2 from the atmosphere for sequestration or use. Ocean-based methods restore the oceans and their primary productivity with the immediate result of increasing fish and seaweed production, while simultaneously sequestering carbon as detritus falls towards the ocean floor.

Many CDR methods yield secondary products (e.g., fish, seaweed, concrete aggregate) that can be sold. This allows these methods to be viable for businesses with little or no public subsidy. Because of this, the cost becomes inconsequential.

DAC

The problem of CO2 capture involves both capturing the CO2—from the atmosphere or from the flues of coal or other plants—and then putting that CO2 into stable and harmless forms. There are seven DAC technologies, which are listed in a Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment 2017 paper10 along with their costs. In recent years three DAC companies have made news with their plants, Climeworks11 in Switzerland, Carbon Engineering12 in British Columbia, and Global Thermostat13 in California. Global Thermostat (which we are focusing on due to the authors’ proximity and familiarity with it) asserts an at-scale cost of $10-$35 per ton CO2. They are described in Drawdown14, from Paul Hawken.

Land-Based CDR

Once the CO2 has been captured from the air using any of the DAC methods, it can be converted into a stable form. Many of these forms have commercial uses, while others use natural processes to keep the CO2 sequestered.

Commercial uses for CO2

Aggregate

One productive economic output for CO2 from DAC is producing aggregate (limestone) for concrete used in roads and buildings. It is safe, profitable, and scalable. A process

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developed by Blue Planet Ltd15, Los Gatos, California simulates the chemistry used by shellfish to produce limestone from calcium and CO2. Global demand for aggregate is currently 54 Gt/year16, which corresponds to potential sequestration of 20 Gt CO2 per year into concrete. The first plants built use CO2 from industrial exhaust from power plants or steel, cement, and aluminum plants. Later plants could also get their CO2 from DAC companies.

As of the writing of this paper, aggregate appears to be the only commercially viable output from DAC.

Other commercial uses

There are other commercial uses of CO2, like in the manufacturing of plastic and carbon fiber17. However the global market for these materials can absorb less than 1%18 of the carbon sequestered in aggregate globally.

Natural processes

Basalt fields

One way to use nature to absorb CO2 is to bury the CO2 extracted from the atmosphere into basalt rock fields, which are common around the world. When water is present, The CO2 dissolves in water—which can be added to the CO2 stream if it is not already present, increasing costs—producing carbonic acid, which reacts with the rock to produce stable carbonates over a period of 2 months to 2 years19.

Sequestering CO2 in basalt fields is estimated to cost about $8/ton, which must be added to the DAC cost, bringing total costs to $23-$58 per ton. This implies that a carbon price of about $50/ton, paid for sequestration, could finance the restoration of our atmosphere. If this were the only CDR technique, it would require 2.5% of global GDP, a quarter of global health spending. However aggregate, fish, and seaweed production could together sequester CO2 at the required rate at minimal, or even negative cost.

Other natural processes

Other CDR techniques commonly recommended for the Paris two degree warming goal, such as biochar20, BECCS21 (bio-energy with carbon capture and storage), and afforestation22 are not suitable for climate restoration because their maximum scale, although useful for a mitigation goal, is about 1/10 of the 50 Gt CO2 per year required for climate restoration.

Ocean-based CDR

The earth’s surface is 71% ocean23, and much of that ocean is blue “ocean desert”24, which is too hot and low in critical nutrients to grow phytoplankton, the photosynthesizing organisms

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that make the sea green. This represents an enormous unused opportunity to harness sunlight for carbon sequestration without disturbing existing agriculture. Increasing the ocean’s primary productivity—the amount of photosynthesis—increases its uptake of CO225.

This carbon is sequestered as long as the carbon-containing products are stored, unoxidized, in the ocean. Typically, this sequestration lasts for centuries or millennia26. This is similar to the situation on land, where trees and roots store CO2 as long as they remain unoxidized. Also similar to land, increased productivity is associated with higher food (fish and seaweed) production.

Oceans contain 98% of all the carbon in the atmosphere and oceans. Sequestering all the excess atmospheric CO2 would increase ocean carbon content by less than 1%27.

Ocean-based CDR tends to be profitable because the fish, seaweed, and phytoplankton produced can generally be sold to human populations for food, energy, and chemical feedstocks.

Ocean Iron Fertilization

One method of restoring ocean primary productivity is ocean iron fertilization (OIF)28, which distributes minute amounts of high-iron dust in a manner similar to the way volcanic dust blowing onto the ocean fertilizes it. This increases the primary productivity—often producing record fish harvests—and CO2 sequestration. The dust distribution is performed by ship, and when performed in territorial waters, income can be generated from fishing licenses and taxes.

Marine permaculture

Another method of restoring primary productivity to the oceans is called marine permaculture. It involves the use of simple, lightweight structures in deep water, as described in Tim Flannery’s Sunlight and Seaweed29 and featured in Project Drawdown’s ‘coming attractions’, with this description:

The key technology involves marine permaculture arrays (MPAs), lightweight latticed structures roughly half a square mile in size, submerged 80 feet below sea level, to which kelp can attach. Attached buoys rise and fall with the waves, powering pumps that bring up colder, nutrient-rich waters from far below. Kelp soak up the nutrients and grow, establishing a trophic pyramid rich in plant and animal life.

Plants that are not consumed die off and drop into the deep sea, sequestering carbon for centuries in the form of dissolved carbon and carbonates. Floating kelp forests could sequester billions of tons of carbon dioxide, while providing food, feed, fertilizer, fiber, and biofuels to the world.

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Other ocean-based methods

Other scalable CDR techniques discussed by the IPCC30, such as geochemical weathering31, would require significant public financing

It takes a village to heal America; it takes a village to heal the Earth

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Seven Axioms for healing transformation:

  1. No house can long stand half slave and half free.
  2. No house can long stand where, of its resident family, 1% are masters and 99% are bewildered.
  3. No house can long stand if its masters plan for its grandchildren to suffer death and disaster.
  4. No house can long stand if its family shrieks only No as fire consumes their home but has created no vision of a life-giving alternative.

    5. Scattered individuals, inspired from afar but not connected with each other, cannot heal and transform a house, a country, a planet.

6.  It takes a village of people who speak, sing, chant, dance, plant, build, and dare with each other to heal the present and give life to the future.

7. Many such villages, in fact.

In the past, The Shalom Center has been a healing force when we were able to bring inspiration to people who became villages by connecting with each other.

At our beginning, in 1983, we gave a Jewishly inflected voice on the dangers of nuclear holocaust – – what the ancient rabbis called a Flood of Fire – – to Jews who had become lost in the thickets of "national security."

We called together young Jews for weeks of training in how to draw on Jewish wisdom – – liturgy, symbols, festivals, life-cycle markers, texts of Torah – – to become in the same breath effective renewers of Judaism and effective workers for tikkun olam, the healing of the great round world.  They called themselves “Jewcies,” reveling in the pun that put pungent flavor into a tradition that had become worn and boring.

When an American presidency lied our country into a war against Iraq, we spoke out even before the invasion to say how immoral, how false, how disastrous that war would be. 

We inspired pockets of opposition among rabbis and within synagogues and other Jewish gatherings, and brought those resisters together into villages of shared support  until they could challenge their official organizations into change. We acted like a tugboat that could nudge great ocean liners into changing course.

As it became clearer and clearer that the burning of fossil fuels was scorching our Mother Earth, we re-examined  the weave of ancient Torah to find in it a strong thread of wisdom about how human beings could resonate with the Earth of which we are always a part.

We sowed the seeds of Eco-Judaism until they began here and there to sprout.  But there is still no Jewish organization other than The Shalom Center that makes the healing of the Earth and the survival of human civilization its first priority. Indeed, the very best Jewish impulses for social justice  still too rarely respond to the truth that in our generation, social justice and planetary healing are inextricably intertwined.

It is time to turn sprouts into verdant fields.  It is time to move from individual inspiration into the making of villages.

And it is already time for Earth-concerned Jewish villages to connect directly with Earth-concerned villages from other spiritual, religious, and ethical traditions  -- including the scientific community. It is time for us to make from each separate "wisdom species" a cultural ecosystem in which each species gives life to the others, precisely because it brings its own unique wisdom to the ecosystem as a whole.

It is time to awaken the very last words of the last of the ancient Hebrew prophets: "I will send you Elijah the Prophet to turn the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of the children to the parents, lest the Breath of Life become a destructive wind, a Hyper-Hurricane, to utterly destroy the Earth."  (Malachi 3:23-24.)

What does this mean today? It is time to refocus our response to the climate crisis and global scorching not only with a No to the burning of fossil fuels but also the creation of Yeses that can heal and restore the climate for our children and grandchildren so that it brings as much life-givingness as when it nurtured our parents and grandparents. 

How do we create such villages in every community of every tradition?

We urge that you who are the readers and supporters and members of The Shalom Center do the following:

Ask in your synagogue, your church, your mosque, your PTA, your neighborhood, who would like to gather as an Earth-healing Village to act in several  ways:

  1. To organize a congregation-rooted or neighborhood-rooted Solar Co-op.  It can save its members money by reducing their electrical expenses, it can reduce the rates of asthma and cancer in some neighborhoods where coal-fired plants or oil refineries spew poison into the air,  it can physically reduce the CO2 emissions that  are bringing on Hyper-Hurricanes and city-crippling Floods and region-wrecking Droughts and Famines and Floods of refugees. And each Solar Co-op could become a neighborly group and a political base for broader change.

2. The same people in the same Co-op could join with others to become a reading and self-education group to learn how we can use the knowledge scientists are amassing to bring about Healthy Climate Restoration.

3. The same people in the same Co-op could join with others to challenge elected officials and corporate managers to  adopt strong policies to end emissions of CO2 and methane, and act to withdraw from the atmosphere a trillion tons  of disastrous CO2 that we have already put there earlier -- before we realized what the results would be. 

4. If some or all of these same people are members of religious congregations, together they could introduce new versions of the prayer and meditation process that will focus sacred attention on our sacred commitment to the Earth, to ourselves, and to future generations of our families.

What can The Shalom Center do to help empower this kind of grass-roots work? 

This letter, this Shalom Report, is already long enough to spark discussions among your family, your friends, your colleagues at work, your neighbors, your fellow-congregants. We invite you to forward it by email or even print it out, to share it with some of them. Invite them over for an evening of nosherei  (“munchies”) and conversation to discuss what this might mean.

Write us what you do and what emerges.

We will follow up. Indeed, at The Shalom Center we are already preparing for some shared long-distance computer-enabled conversations where we can both teach and learn what visions, what actions, can heal us.

FLOOD EPA WITH BIBLICAL WARNINGS OF THE FLOOD

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

"God gave Noah the Rainbow Sign:

No More Water; The Fire Next Time!"

INTERFAITH AND ECO-ETHICAL ACTION 

TO HEAL THE PLANET & HUMAN CIVILIZATION

Petitions are not enough!

Let’s send a FLOOD of Sacred texts, objects, pictures and environmental books to Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency --  which he is swiftly turning into the Earth Poisoning Agency.

The story of Noah, which Jews will be reading in the Torah-reading cycle this next Shabbat, October 20-21, tells the story of an utterly disastrous planetary Flood brought on by corrupt human behavior, in which only the spiritual depth and creative ingenuity of a few people save enough species in the web of life to begin anew. 

The Flood parable stands as a warning to our own generation. Indeed, ancient Jewish commentary (Midrash Rabbah on Genesis, 49:9) and a Southern Black spiritual warn us that we might bring a Flood of Fire on ourselves:  “God gave Noah the Rainbow Sign: No more Water, the Fire next time!”

And in fact we are now suffering from both Floods of Water and of Fire, brought on by burning fossil fuels, happening faster that we can offer support for the victims. A climate crisis is already afflicting us, right now. Just in the United States, three Hyper-Hurricanes in one month, and unprecedented wildfires in parched California

And in the very midst of these unnatural disasters, the person in charge of the EPA has decided to destroy the CLEAN POWER PLAN, one of the most important steps the U.S. has taken to reduce carbon emissions, the main contributor to climate change.

Mr. Pruitt professes to be a person of faith.  And the communities of faith in America are potential sources of healing that are beginning to awaken to this danger and to the need to make our entire planet an Ark against disaster.

So we are calling on all people of faith and of ethical commitment to heal our Mother Earth to send the EPA and its director Flood-related passages from the Bible or Quran, from prayer books,  from other sacred texts and objects, or photos of the recent devastations and of the Rainbow.  These could go along with your own personal message and prayer that he will leave in place and even strengthen  the Clean Power Plan —

Indeed, pray and urge that he look beyond ending CO2 emissions to removing CO2 from the atmosphere —looking  toward the restoration of a climate as healthy for our children and grandchildren as it was for our parents and grandparents   — thus turning the hearts of the generations toward each other "lest the Earth be utterly destroyed" (Malachi 3: 23-24)..

Why actual texts and objects? These make a stronger statement and will be harder to ignore or throw away. (But if you are indeed worried about possible violations of the sanctity of a sacred book, that is a good reason to send a passage instead, with your note. You could even send a print-out of this letter.)

We are trying to reach Mr. Pruitt and the American  people in a language that many of us understand. We envision a DELUGE, preferably from every state and perhaps other countries.

We encourage you to make copies of this Call and distribute them. We encourage rabbis and Jewish congregations to announce the beginning of this campaign this Shabbat as one action to carry forward our reading of the Flood story  --  our own effort to build an Ark and lift the Rainbow of protection for all Earth. For other religious communities, we encourage spreading the word as soon as possible.

For secular folks, we encourage you to send your favorite environmental book, or a bound copy of your research, or a framed picture of a place or species you hold dear that would be or already is being affected by climate change, or a framed picture of the devastation.

How to deliver them? We will gather these mailings at a church in Washington DC near the EPA and then choose an  appropriate time when an assemblage of the faithful can gather in a vigil to deliver them by hand to the EPA at 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, only a few blocks from the White House.  

Please send your sacred texts and objects, photos of the Floods, letters, even just a copy of this Call, to: 

The Shalom Center, c/o New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1313 New York Ave NW, Washington, DC 20005

If you are also interested in taking part in a possible nonviolent, prayerful in-person vigil at the EPA in the near future, please email:  Flood@theshalomcenter.org  with your name, affiliation, address, and phone number. 

Blessings of shalom, salaam, peace for Earth and all its human communities --

  • Rabbi Katy Allen (Jewish Climate Action Network, Boston)

    Rabbi Elliot Dorff (American Jewish University of Los Angeles)

    Dr. Mirele Goldsmith (Jewish Climate Action Network,  NYC)

    Rabbi David Ingber (Congregation Romemu)

    Rabbi Raachel Jurovics (President, Ohalah Rabbinical Association) 
    Rabbi Mordechai Liebling (Reconstructionist Rabbinical College) 
     
    Ruth Messinger (Board, Hazon)
     
    Rabbi David Shneyer (Congregation Am Kolel)

    Rabbi Arthur Waskow  (The Shalom Center)

    Rabbi Rain Zohav (Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington)

    [Signers are signing as individuals only; affiliations are mentioned for identification only.]

Puerto Rico: Healing those who Suffer & Naming the Killers

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Dear friends,

When a natural disaster strikes, we have one urgent obligation: to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the injured, and restore key services like electricity and water.

When an unnatural disaster strikes, one caused or worsened  by human action, we have two urgent obligations: to meet the immediate needs of those who are suffering, and to speak the truth about the disastrous behavior that has brought about the suffering.

The American people have just suffered through three Hyper-Hurricanes. All three were made far more furious and destructive by the burning of fossil fuels that is scorching our planet. In all three cases, the worst suffering landed on the poorest people, especially those in the Black and Latino communities.

It is not surprising that the Trump Administration, in its zeal to protect the wealthy and white supremacy and its hostility to the poor, to the middle class, and to people of color, is doing its best to bring about future Hyper-Hurricanes, future droughts and famines, and future floods to destroy our coastal cities. And not only "our" in the sense of the American people, but “our” in the sense of the human race and the entire web of life that makes up Mother Earth.

So it is not surprising that when their efforts to support Big Oil and Big Coal result in predictable disasters, the Trumpist officials say it is "insensitive" to talk about the causes and to name their complicity in what amounts to murder.

In the three Hyper-Hurricanes we have just experienced,  the racism, white supremacism, and xenophobia  of the Trump Administration had their worst effects on  Puerto Rico.  The Trump government waited more than a week to send the US Navy and Air Force into emergency relief, and has not yet even asked Congress for the billions in emergency aid that Congress passed for Texas within days of Hurricane Harvey.

So The Shalom Center urges you, our members and supporters, to address both urgent needs in the face of a man-made unnatural disaster: relief for those suffering now, and organizing to prevent future disasters.

  1. We have checked out various groups funneling aid to  Puerto Rico. People are dying because there is no electric power. We urge you to send money to El Puente, a state-side Puerto Rican organization that has very close relationships with Puerto Ricans on the battered island and is ready to supply them with emergency solar energy.

This meets three urgent needs: Immediate emergency electricity; longer-term people-based alternatives to the shattered Puerto Rican coal-based electric-power system; and urass-roots climate-concerned organizing to stymie racism and prevent future disastrous Hyper-Hurricanes. 

Please click to --

<https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1441788?uniqueID=634588002278884597>

and check off the box marked “Puerto Rico Emergency Solar Energy Fund.”

2. And please help The Shalom Center organize for a renewable-energy world despite the modern Carbon Pharaohs of our day -- fossil fuel killer corporations and their governmental boot-lickers.

This appeal is especially urgent right now. Every year, Rosh Hashanah-Yom Kippur time is one of our major times for incoming contributions to The Shalom Center. This year, the three Hyper-Hurricanes swept into us during the same period. So many of our regular donors wrote they were devoting some of their money to emergency relief.

We utterly understand –-- and we also know that unless the Carbon Pharaohs are stopped, these disasters will come even more often and get still worse.

The Shalom Center has been one of the key pioneers in the Jewish and the multireligious worlds to awaken the sleeping giant of American religious life to act against global scorching.

Now more than ever, we need your help –--  and  now even more than ever, the work we do is crucial to our children and the children of our children.

Please click on the maroon “Contribute” banner on the left-hand margin of this page, and please make a strong contribution to sustain our work for a sustainable future.

 

 

Carrying Isaiah into the Streets for Yom Kippur

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Dear friends, Yesterday I reported that P’nai Or of Philadelphia, a Jewish-renewal congregation led by Rabbi Marcia Prager and blessed with a strong tikkun-olam (“Heal the World”) committee, will carry the Prophet Isaiah into the streets on Yom Kippur.

The crucial Prophetic reading for Yom Kippur is a passage of Isaiah in which he warns that fasting is not the point of the Great Fast ---   justice and compassion are the point. Only when the whole society descends to the depths – – actively standing with the poor, the outcasts, the desperate – – can the whole society rise to experience the spiritual heights of Shabbat, the sabbatical year, God’s radiance. (For an “awoke” translation of the Isaiah passage, see <https://theshalomcenter.org/isaiah-lives-challenge-yom-kippur>)

Although time is short for other congregations to plan this kind of action before this Friday evening when Yom Kippur begins, it may still be possible. So I thought it might be useful to provide the crucial graphics and instruments by which P’nai Or will step forward -– literally! -- to pose a challenge in Isaiah’s name. And congregations of other faiths and traditions might consider this or some analogous action.

First, a leaflet to explain what will be happening and invite congregants to take part. (For those who don’t choose to, prayers will continue inside the synagogue.)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

TODAY we will hear the words of Isaiah

after the Torah service:

“Let the oppressed

go free.

Break off every yoke!

Share your bread

with the hungry.

Do not hide yourself

from them!”

 THIS YEAR, LET’S TURN THESE WORDS INTO ACTION AS WE

BECOME MODERN DAY ISAIAHS!

ALL WHO ARE ABLE WILL MARCH FROM OUR SHUL

INTO PUBLIC SPACE AT NEARBY SHOPS & STORES --

TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT CURRENT YOKES OF OPPRESSION

(APPROXIMATELY 3:00-4:00 PM)

Several members will speak out about actions we can take this year to promote social justice in the Delaware Valley. All those who march can participate as witnesses and by handing out information to shoppers.

This year, we will also share a collaboration with the High Point Café which will be collecting donations

for food for the poor and homeless of our city.

Those who remain at shul will send us off with blessings and continue with the Yizkor ritual where small groups share events in their lives that were joyous and those that brought grief.

We on the march will gather to observe Yizkor outside for our beloveds and for those who have died this year in the name of social justice and due to hurricanes and earthquakes.

We will return to join in El Maley Rachamim, the memorial prayer for the dead, with the whole community.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And here is what the community will carry when its members walk forth. One congregant, Tobie Hoffmn, stands before the Ark and the Torah Scroll, holding one of the placards of Isaiah’s teachings:

 

 

Why is this  happening?

We are living in a moment of American history when the power of the US government is devoted not to compassion but to contempt;  not to justice but to subjugation.  Many different American communities have worked out ways of publicly condemning and resisting this attempt to fasten despotism on a free people:

·      Women marched in defiant millions on the day after the Inauguration of a President given to bodily sexual abuse and political hostility to women’s rights.

·      Thousands gathered at airports to welcome immigrants and refugees who had been barred by the new government.

·       Football and basketball players have taken to kneeling instead of standing for the “National Anthem,” to challenge endemic racism, police violence, and the contempt poured on peaceful protest by the President.

·      And for Jews, as the Days of Awe and spiritual Transformation come alive in the spirals of our calendar, many rabbis and congregations have drawn on ancient and recent Jewish wisdom to speak out in love of immigrants, in pursuit of racial justice, in support of underpaid and overworked workers, in commitment to heal the sick, in affirmation of religious freedom for Muslims as well as Jews, in concern about the devastation that global scorching is visiting through flooded cities and countries, parched crops, and desperate famines.

Mostly this speaking-out has been happening within the walls of synagogues. P’nai Or of Philadelphia decided to encourage its Yom Kippur congregants who chose, to take another step –-  literally.

Torah teaches that thousands of years ago, Abraham began his great adventure when he heard the Call to “Lech l’cha! Walk forth into your deepest self!”

Isaiah walked into the midst of a crowd that thought it was obeying the rules of fasting for Yom Kippur, calling out to them to feed the hungry and break off the handcuffs of those imprisoned by injustice —and he kept walking and speaking even when some in the crowd shook their fists at him and threatened violence.

Just fifty years ago, Abraham Joshua Heschel understood the Selma March for racial justice as a time when “My legs were praying.”

So some who gather at P’nai Or on Yom Kippur to chant and fast and bring food to feed the poor of the city will also walk forth into their deepest selves, carrying the words of Isaiah into public space.

May their legs be prayer, their message be heard, and may all American houses of worship and justice and compassion and healing walk forth into their deepest selves.

Isaiah Lives! -- The Challenge of Yom Kippur

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

At the heart of Yom Kippur is, of all things, a critique of “Yom Kippur”   -– if it is a ritual without compassion or commitment to radical change.

Long ago the Prophet Isaiah walked into the crowd celebrating the holy day by fasting and chanting psalms. 

‘Is this the fast that the God Who freed the slaves is demanding?” he asked.

And --  to use the words that would speak an Isaiah living today --

“No! 

You must break off the handcuffs and free from prison those poor and outcast whom you have made the victims of police brutality,  mass incarceration, and a criminal injustice system!

“You must welcome in your midst the despairing refugees from ‘foreign’ lands whom you have deported, whose families you have broken.

“You have let the rich scorch your planet till great storms have destroyed many homes, great droughts have parched many crops.

“You must make sure the hungry are fed, the homeless find homes, the jobless find well-paying, worthy work -- – not just for a day but a lifetime!”

And for hundreds of years, we have read these challenges at the heart of our day of deepest transformation.

How do we keep these words themselves from becoming mere “liturgy,” became exactly what Isaiah was challenging?

Let me share with you three examples:

(1)  P’nai Or of Philadelphia will carry Isaiah into the streets. They have made placards, each with a line in English and Hebrew from Isaiah, and will march from their prayer service into public space, carrying Isaiah, speaking the truth and the challenge of today. To all who gather for prayer they will explain:

 

TODAY we will hear the words of Isaiah

after the Torah service

“Let the oppressed

go free.

Break off every yoke!

Share your bread

with the hungry

Do not hide yourself

from them!”

 THIS YEAR, LET’S TURN THESE WORDS INTO ACTION AS WE

BECOME MODERN DAY ISAIAHS!

ALL WHO ARE ABLE WILL MARCH FROM OUR SHUL

INTO PUBLIC SPACE AT NEARBY SHOPS & STORES --

TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT CURRENT YOKES OF OPPRESSION

(APPROXIMATELY 3:00-4:00 PM)

Several members will speak out about actions we can take this year to promote social justice in the Delaware Valley. All those who march can participate as witnesses and by handing out information to shoppers.

This year, we will also share a collaboration with the Highpoint Café which will be collecting donations for food for the poor and homeless of our city.

Those who remain at shul will send us off with blessings and continue with the Yizkor ritual where small groups share events in their lives that were joyous and those that brought grief. We on the march will gather to observe Yizkor outside for our beloveds and for those who have died this year in the name of social justice and due to hurricanes and earthquakes. We will return to join in El Maley Rachamim, the memorial prayer for the dead,  with the whole community.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

(2) A way to prepare your own heart, mind, and spirit for Yom Kippur: We encourage you to watch a remarkable on-line video recitation in words,  music ,and graphics of the Isaiah Prophetic reading, at

<https://theshalomcenter.org/video/video-yom-kippur-haftarah-isaiah-5714-5814-midrashically-translated-rabbi-arthur-waskow>

(If the link appears broken on your screen and clicking to it does not work, please copy the whole link between the <> signs and paste it into your browser. )

(3)  Using the translation below, B*R*E*A*K  into the text with brief messages from today. For examples, see below – but feel free to choose your own.

Isaiah breaks into the official liturgy of Yom Kippur

The Prophetic Reading for the Fast of Yom Kippur, Isaiah 57:14-58:14
[Slightly midrashic translation by Rabbi Arthur O. Waskow]

And God said:
Open up, open up, Clear a path!
Clear away all obstacles
From the path of My People!
For so says the One
Who high aloft forever dwells,
Whose Name is Holy:

I dwell on high, in holiness,
And therefore with the lowly and humiliated,
To breathe new breath into the humble,
To give new heart to the broken-hearted.

For your sin of greed
Through My Hurricane of Breath YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh
I smashed you.

 


Worse: I hid My face, withheld My Breath.

Yet I will not do battle against you forever,
I will not be angry with you forever.
From Me comes the breath that floats out to make all worlds.
I breathe the breath of life, I am the Breath of Life.

When you wander off the path as your own heart,
wayward, takes you.
I see the path you need —— and I will heal you.
I will guide and comfort you
With words of courage and of consolation
For those who mourn among you.
Peace, peace … shalom, shalom!… to those who are far and near,
Says the Breath-of-Life —-
And I will heal you.

But the wicked are like a troubled sea
Which cannot rest,
Whose waters toss up mire and mud.
There is no peace, said my God,
For the wicked.

Cry out aloud, don’t hold back,
Lift up your voice like the shofar!


Tell My people what they are doing wrong,
Tell those who call themselves the “House of Jacob” their misdeeds.
For day after day they go out searching for Me,
They take some kind of pleasure in getting to know My ways —-
As if they were a people that actually did righteous deeds
And never ignored the just rulings of their God.

They keep asking Me for the rules of justice
As if they would take delight in being close to God.

They say: “Why is it that we have fasted, and You don’t see our suffering?
We press down our egos —- but You don’t pay attention!”

Look! On the very day you fast, you keep scrabbling for wealth;
On the very day you fast, you keep oppressing all your workers.

Look! You fast in strife and contention.
You strike with a wicked fist.

You are not fasting today in such a way
As to make your voices heard on high.

Is that the kind of fast that I desire?
Is that really a day for people to “press down their egos”?

Am I commanding you to droop your heads like bulrushes
And lie around in sackcloth and ashes?

Is that what you call a fast day,
The kind of day that the God of the Burning Bush would wish?

 



No!



This is the kind of fast that I desire:

Unlock the hand-cuffs put on by wicked power!
Untie the ropes of the yoke!
Let the oppressed go free,
And break off every yoke!

 

 



Share your bread with the hungry.
Bring the poor, the outcasts, to your house.
When you see them naked, clothe them;
They are your flesh and blood;
Don’t hide yourself from them!

Then your light will burst through like the dawn;
Then when you need healing it will spring up quickly;
Then your own righteousness will march ahead to guard you.
And a radiance from YHWH will reach out behind to guard you.
Then, when you cry out, YHWH will answer;
Then, when you call, God will say: “Here I am!”

If you banish the yoke from your midst,
If you rid yourself of scornful finger-pointing
And words of contempt;

 


If you open up your life-experience to the hungry
And soothe the life that has been trampled under foot,

Then even in darkness your light will shine out
And your moments of gloom turn bright as noonday.
Then the Breath of Life will always be your guide,
Will soothe your own life in your own times of dryness
And strengthen your bones when they are weary.

Then you shall be like a garden given water,
Like a wellspring whose waters never fail.
Those who spring from you shall rebuild the ancient ruins
And you shall lay foundations for the coming generation.
You shall be called “Those who mend torn places,”
You shall be called “Those who build lanes to live in.”

If you refrain from trampling my Renewal-time*
And from being busy-busy on My holy day;
If you will not only call Renewal-time* delightful
But also turn far from your usual way
And set aside your business and your chatter
To be yourselves the rays by which God’s Holiness
Can turn this world into a radiant joy —-

Then indeed you will find delight in YHWH.
For then —- when you have joined the lowly —-
I will set you all with Me,
Astride the heights of earth.
Then —- when you feed others —- I will let you eat your fill
From what is truly due you as the heirs of Jacob.

Now!
For this word comes from the Mouth that
Breathes all life.

 [The "Burning Bush" and "Torah of the Earth" graphins are by Michael Bogdanow. For more of his work, and to

bring prints into your own home, click to <http://www.michaelbogdanow.com/>]

From 1946 to Rosh Hashanah Tonight: A Blessing

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on


I was 12 years old in the summer of 1946, a camper in a Jewish day camp in Baltimore, sponsored by the “Y” – the YM/YWHA. That summer I was the editor of our mimeographed weekly newsletter, “The Y’s Owl.” 

That summer, August 6 was the first anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, tens of thousands of people killed with a single atomic bomb.  That day in 1946 was also Tisha B’Av, the day when Jews mourn the destruction of two ancient Temples in Jerusalem.

On that day I wrote an editorial for “The Y’s Owl,” the first serious writing of my life. I ignored Tisha B’Av , except perhaps in some archetypal silent sense in which I sensed but did not  mention the connection – the danger of the destruction of all that is most holy. I wrote that Hiroshima pointed toward an obvious truth: the human race must put an end to war.

This year, 2017, more than half a century later,  and yesterday -- seven weeks after Tisha B'Av --  we are supposed to have come from destruction and grief to new life, a new year, Rosh Hashanah, a time of transformation.

Yesterday the ruler of the most powerful nation on Earth spoke before the assembled nations of the world:  “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."

“Totally destroy.” A nation is a label for millions of people. Men, women, children. Laughing, weeping, makimg love,  building homes, scanning smart-phones, eating breakfast.  Millions obliterated, turned to smoke and ashes.The world a desert, devoid of life

I went to sleep last night with an image shadowing my sleep:

And yet I woke up this morning with a different image in my eyes:

Not yet devoid of life. A sprout of hope, of active nurturing.

And then another vision:

Beyond what seems to be the arid overwhelming desert of fear and oppression, rivulets of love connect and flow, surprise us by watering our lives. —

Tonight begins the time of Transformation.    Tomorrow we will take our misdeeds and cast them into the running water of our lives – not to be thrown “away” – there is no “away” in our interwoven world – but to wash away  their erring and their cruelty, to be cleansed of their mistakes and filled with the waters of life and love and clarity of vision. 

So now we at The Shalom Center thank you for all that you are doing to heal our wounded world.   And we bless you and all of us, all the beings who breathe the Breath of Life and drink the Waters of Life, of healing and rebirth – for a year of rivulets.  

Shalom, salaam, sohl, paz, 평화 pyeonghwa, peace – for all us human earthlings and for all of Earth. --  Arthur

My Qualms and Self-Correction

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

“Tshuvah: Till by Turning, Turning, We Come Round Right”

 I have been having qualms about some aspects of what I wrote a few days ago in response to Rabbis Marc Angel’s and Uri Regev’s open letter called “Vision Statement: Israel As A Jewish Democratic State." (See below for their text.)

From Hyper-Hurricanes to Life-Giving Action

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

In the wake of Hyper-Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, it may be especially appropriate to address the tradition that  Rosh Hashanah is Hayom Harat Olam --  “Today is the Birthday of the World.” Or as some say, the day of the birthing of adam (humanity) from adamah (earth). (Gen 2: 7).

 For those who don’t include Rosh Hashanah in their celebrations, it is still noteworthy that the Biblical tradition teaches that the interwoven relationship between adam and adamah is the central sacred aspect of our relationship with YyyyHhhhWwwHhhhh  -– the Interbreathing Spirit of the world. That relationship is intimately connected with eco-social justice.

The sacred Interbreathing of CO2 and Oxygen between animals and vegetation is now so overheated by our burning fossil fuels that it becomes not only the Wind of Change but Hyper-Hurricanes of destruction.

Leviticus 25 calls on us to create a rhythm of work and restfulness with the earth, and Leviticus 26 warns that if we don’t, the result will be great storms, floods, droughts, famines, plagues of disease, and mass refugee disturbances.

This spiritual wisdom was rooted in the practical experience of farmers and shepherds.

Today we can draw not only on that ancient indigenous practical experience but on modern science and on the new practical experience of dreadful disasters.  Today we see that because we have refused to let the Earth rest from our poisoning the atmosphere with too much CO2 and methane, all the disasters of Leviticus 26 are coming upon us.

What can we do?

  1. Organize a Neighborhood Solar Co-op.  We can act on our own, making a real chemical difference to the earth and our neighborhoods, and a growing political difference in our country. Gather a group of friends, neighbors, congregants to explore what it means to create a Neighborhood Solar Co-op (or Wind Co-op, if that is more practical on your terrain). Begin by looking at two websites:

    <http://communitypowernetwork.com/>
    A nation-wide network of neighborhood-based solar-energy co-ops groups. It can help with advice and support.

    <http://nwphillysolarcoop.com/> 

    NPSC (Northwest Philly Solar Co-op, pronounced Knapsack) is a group in Northwest Philadelphia inspired and sparked by The Shalom Center. It has grown as an independent body and is now serving several dozen households, with more to come. It could be a useful model for your own congregation or your neighborhood.

    Call a public meeting for all who want to explore the possibility of a solar co-op to hear speakers and ask questions. Begin your co-op  with those who attend and then say “Yes!”

2.  Support the OFF Act -- Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act (HR 3671), which would transition our country to 100% renewable energy by 2035. It has been introduced by seven members of Congress -- Tulsi Gabbard  (HI), Nanette Barragan (CA), Barbara Lee (CA), Ted Lieu (CA), Jamie Raskin (MD), Keith Ellison (MN) and Jan Schakowsky (IL).

The OFF Act requires 100 percent renewable energy by 2035 (and 80 percent by 2027), places a moratorium on new fossil fuel projects, bans the export of oil and gas, and also moves our automobile and rail systems to 100 percent renewable energy.  It provides for a truly just transition for environmental justice communities and those working in the fossil fuel industry.

The bill requires that people in impacted communities have a leading role in the development and implementation of clean energy plans and regulations, and establishes an equitable transition fund and workforce development center, paid for by closing an offshore tax loophole and repealing federal tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry.

Please call 202-224-3121, ask for your Member of the House of Representatives, and ask your Member to co-sponsor the OFF Bill, HR 3671. Say something about your reasons  -- religious, ethical, your grandchildren, your horror at the devastation wrought by Harvey and Irma and the Bangla Desh floods and the terrible droughts and famines in central Africa.

Ask your congregation or its social-action committee to join in this effort and hold public forums to support the OFF Act.

3. Explore “Climate Restoration.”    Some scientists are now proposing to go even beyond OFF Fossil Fuels to “Climate Restoration.” That means withdrawing a trillion tons of carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere, so that our children and grandchildren can take joy and sustenance from a climate as life-giving as that which sustained our parents and grandparents, with a level of eco-social justice that many of our forebears did not experience.

Why undertake this effort? Because even zero emissions by 2035 will leave so much CO2 and methane in the atmosphere that  “unnatural disasters” will strike blow after blow at human civilization.

To begin  discussion of Climate Restoration in your friendship group, neighborhood, or congregation, click to  <http://www.healthyclimateproject.org/> and  <https://www.climate-restoration-foundation.com/>. On this latter website, please learn from what is on there but do NOT write them; they have told me they are focused on working with scientists and are hoping to avoid being overwhelmed by incoming mail.

If you are celebrating the New Year, learning your way into these possibilities can be as deep and full a religious practice as hearing the Shofar.

Indeed, in our day these actions meet the very outcry that the Shofar calls  to us--  that in this great crisis we “Awaken!” and “Transform!” our lives.

Blessings of shalom, salaam, peace, for Mother Earth, her human earthlings,  and all her other life-forms --  Arthur

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