Is the Earth a Jewish issue?

 

Art/9m Waskow

we were to imagine the best possible context for
progressive political change, we might seek to ad-

dress?

sharp and major danger that threatens people across
virtually all social, economic, and ethnic categories;

status quo in which those who benefit the most
from doing nothing about that danger are few in num-
ber and are concentrated in positions of great wealth
and power;

'An alternative vision that inspires joy and desire, so
that political action is not rooted only in fear and anger
but also in hOpe and celebration;

'The possibility of taking small actions in households
and local face?to-face communities as well as large ac-
tions in public policy;

'The possibility of drawing on a set of symbols, prac-
tices, and ideas that together give peOple a strong sense
of emotional, intellectual, and existential meaning; that
already have legitimacy in the culture as a whole; and that
can be authentically revitalized as a path of social change,
even if they are not already ?in play? toward that end;

'The presence of a proto~community or network of
people and institutions in which these symbols and ideas
are rooted?ideally, a COmmunity that also has learned
to be politically effective and has built a power base.

All these conditions are met in regard to the dangers
now facing the web of life on this planet. This web,
which is not the ?environs? around us but is in fact part
of us as we are part of it, is now in deeper danger than
at any time since the human race came into being?and
the danger stems from the unbridled and destructive use
of human technology.

At the same time, we have a deeper understanding of
the web itself than we have ever had. And we have some
glimmers of the possibility of a joyful life as part of the
planetary web, if we can learn to live as part of it?to
live in and with the earth rather than from and upon it.

Symbolically, the healing of the earth is the transcen~

 

Warkow is director ofT/ae Shalom Center; gut/JorofSeasons of
OurJoy and tbeforibcomz'ng Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food,
Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life, and coedt'tor ofNew

Menorah, ajoumal ofJewz'sb renewal.

dent issue of our generation because it affects us in our
widest sense of connection with nature and with future
generations. Unlike many symbolic issues, it also affects
us in our everyday lives, for the wounded earth strikes
back at us through the intense pain and death of envi-
ronmentally caused cancers, immune-system diseases,
and famines?with worse still to come, as global warm-
ing and ozone depletion accelerate and as plutonium and
petrochemical poisonings take their deadly toll decades
after the event.

This con?uence of symbolic and practical issues is
moving more and more of us to feel the need to act?
and to feel it is possible to act.

order to act with intelligence, passion, and power,

we must join ancient spiritual wisdom to our mod-

ern scientific knowledge. And we must join both of
these to political effectiveness and power.

The Jewish people has a stake in the success of this
project and has both its own wisdom and its own polit-
ical power to contribute in walking this life-path.

Why, one might say, the Jews? What unique role have
we to play?

Our stake is no more unique than that of the Navajo,
or the citizens of Chernobyl, or the rubber workers of the
Amazon, or the redwoods and the dolphins. Each of us
is endangered?and perhaps each of us also has some-
thing uniquely our own to contribute to a great mosaic
of what needs to be thought, said, and done. Can we then
draw On our uniqueness to save ourselves and each other?

Here it is important to realize that the Jewish peOple,
like the Navajo, has a traditional wisdom that goes back
long before the modern age; and like the most modern
of clever citizenries, the Jewish peOple also has the
knowledge, the contacts, and the clout to act effectively
in the modern political arena. If the movement to heal
the earth needs both wisdom and power, we can con?
tribute some of both?if we choose to.

And if we do choose to, working to heal the earth can
become a powerful lever for moving the American Jew?
ish community in a progressive direction.

Since most North American Jews are economically

35

 

and socially comfortable, the sharpest experience of ac-
tual danger in our own lives is probably the environ-
mental danger. It is also the one we most share with
others in every class and country. It therefore lends it-
self both to Jewish action and to coalition building.

ince the major Opponents of an earth-protective

political economy are global corporations (espe-

cially those linked to oil, petrochemicals, and au-
tomobiles), the issue lends itself to a progressive analysis
that will constantly deepen among peOple who begin
taking action.

Pe0ple are most effective when they act together, in
community, with a shared vision.

The Jewish people could he such a community, sharing
such a vision. Much of our practice har/es hack to our ori-
gins as a pastoral-agricultural people that saw in everyday
life that we needed to sustain the earth that sustained us.

From this knowledge grew the practice of Shabbat
and the Sabbatical Year, when we and the earth rest to
gether; the festivals that celebrate the cycles of earth,
moon, and sun; and the notion that we need to control
our own consumption through the code of kosher food.

It is true that most of us for the last few generations
have shrugged off these practices, treated them as
anachronisms suited only to an agricultural-pastoral peo-
ple. But what we are learning now about the web of life
on earth is that we are all still, so to speak, shepherds and
farmers. The only issue is whether we are good farmers
and shepherds or destructive ones. Good shepherds know
that they live in an ecosystem that includes sheep, grass,
rain, earth, beetles, and the shepherds themselves. The
shepherds are different from the other elements in the
ecosystem mainly in that they have a higher degree of con-
scious responsibility to live in balance within the eco-web.

Today we, all of us, are in fact responsible for the sur-
vival of many life forms on the planet. We can encour-
age balance?or destroy it. Recovering this sense of
ourselves as shepherds of/within all life does not mean
going back to exactly what it meant to be literal shep-
herds in the ancient land of Canaan. Today we can draw
on?not reenact but draw on?the approaches that we
learned then through generations of experience. We can
learn from them (not least, from the very sense that it
takes a multigenerational view to create wise social pol-
icy), and we can take them in new directions. Our cere-
monies, our congregations, our metaphors, could hind us
together in emotion, intellect, and spirit?to act on envi-
ronmental issues.

OurJewish traditions can also give us a vision of hope
and joyful life, not merely a vision of doom. Certainly
one way to understand the requirement for resting on
Shabbat and the Sabbatical Year is the grim knowledge

36 VOL. 7, No. 5

 

that if we do not, the earth will force us to rest anyway,
through desolation. Indeed, the Torah says exactly that.
But at the same time, we made Shabbat and the Sab-
batical Year not a time of grim foreboding and fear, but
a time of joy: a time for song, for making love, for study-
ing the ancient sacred teachings, for sharing the new wis~
dom that constantly emerges from our lives if we take
time to let it come.

that same way, we can draw from the ecological

crisis not only a sense of danger but one of life in-

tertwined and a life-practice that celebrates this in-
tertwining. We can begin to enact in our present lives
some piece of the more harmonious future that we imag-
ine. That would make our politics more whole?and
more powerful.

If we renew our tradition (and eSpecially the earth-
healing parts of it) to address the present crisis, there will
be a double payoff: a healthier earth and a healthierJew-
ish people. AJewish environmental campaign will bring
many Jews who are otherwise alienated from Jewish life
back into the Jewish community~e5pecially the young,
for whom healing the earth is a life-and-death question.

In this sphere, daily life-practice and social action hoth
matter. This means that both Jews who think Judaism
centers on keeping kosher and those who think it cen-
ters on social action can become involved and then can
broaden their involvement, step by step.

The clearest need and most urgent political act is cre-
ating aJewish coalition to prevent global warming. Such
a coalition would seek massive cuts in emissions of car-
bon dioxide?CSpecially by radically reducing use of oil
and gasoline.

There are many fronts on which such a battle should
be fought?conservation, new sources of renewable en-
ergy, tougher regulation of oil drilling and oil tankers,
new transportation policy, highest possible compulsory
standards of gasoline mileage in US. cars, higher taxes
on gasoline, and international treaties making manda-
tory reductions in C02 emissions.

At local, regional, and national levels, Jews need to
work in coalition with a whole range of others?envi-
ronmental groups, other religious groups, and public ac-
tion groups that are rooted in labor, racial, ethnic, or
regional constituencies. That does not mean vanishing
into a soup. We have our own wisdom, our own organi-
zations, our own experience, and our own networks to
contribute. We will all accomplish a lot more in mosaics.

This does not all happen automatically. We need or-
ganizers. A body of organizers, not just scattered indi-
viduals. Devoted ones, with a sense of commitment to
each other as well as to the earth and theJewish people.
That is how things get done. The Shalom Center?s effort

 

 

to create an ?Eco-Shalom Corps? points the way. These
will be peOple of college age who are trained for one
month as Jewishly oriented and knowledgeable envi-
ronmental organizers, who are then placed as interns for
a year to connect Jewish groups into environmental
coalitions. At best, they will then stay in touch with each
other year after year, deveIOping an esprit dc corps that
will keep them moving over years and decades to heal
both the earth and the Jewish pe0ple.

lthough reduction in the use of oil and gasoline

is one of the most urgent and most doable sin-

gle actions, there are other policy steps that we
should be considering on a longer range basis. Among
them might be any or all of the following:

'Encourage theJewish people throughout the world
to reshape itself into a model community for pur-
suing an environmentally sound life-practice?includ-
ing strong support for ?eco?kosher? purchasing, con-
suming, conserving, and investing by the Jewish
community; reworking all present Jewish study (rab-
binical education, summer camps, years in Israel, after-
noon synagogue schools, adult Torah study, day school
curricula) to address the question of protecting the
earth; recovering the cycle of the Jewish year as a cele-
bration of sun, moon, and earth; and supporting Jew-
ishly COmmitted environmental organizers.

'Encourage Israel to become a major world center
for research, development, production, and sale of pro-
environmental technology. Israel is in an unusually good
position to move in this direction because it has a rela-
tively strong background in solar and renewable energy
and a large pool of new immigrants who are trained en-
gineers and technologists but have no jobs. Progressive
Jews who want Israel to be secure, prosperous, and men-
would gain a great deal from helping to create
an Israel whose chief high-tech export was not weapons
but solar autos and heaters.

?Support extension of ?environmental impact state-
ments? (now applied to land use) to major investments
in new products and major government investments
require proposals for a new highway program to
undergo an environmental impact report that compares
it with an invesrment of the same size in mass transit;
require major corporations to undergo enviroumental-
impact assessments before deveIOping and introducing
major new products).

'Urge periodic moratoria one year in every
seven?) on all new technological research and deveIOp-
ment except research on healing mortal diseases, dur-
ing which there would be major national/international
review of goals of new technologies and their effects on
society and the environment.

 

'Urge adoption of a nationwide one-day period each
month (each week?) for ?low-impacr use
of fuel, electricity, meat, etc. Strongly discourage travel
and other high-energy-using pursuits for this day and
encourage neighborhood folk festivals, town meetings
on healing the earth, etc.

What does it mean for us to bring such "Jewish" ap-
proaches to the broadest issues of national and interna-
tional policy? We are bringing Jewish wisdom to bear
not only in its Specific teachings about the path to be
walked by the Jewish people, but as it might address all
human kind and indeed all living, breathing beings on
the planet.

There is, in fact, inscribed within the specifically Jew-
ish Torah, a Torah that applies to all the earth. That is
the Torah of Noah's children, the Torah of the Rain-
bow?the covenant to preserve all Species and the great
cycles of seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer
and winter, day and night.

This is the overarching Torah, the crucial teaching
within which every other question must be asked, every
other issue he adjudged. What it means today is that we
must invent no new technology, enact no tax, declare no
war, make no great decision without first asking: How
will it effect the biOSphere in which all of our lives and
societies are embedded, and on which we all depend? l:l

Organizations that have formed or; various arpectr of the environ?
men! from a Jewish renewal standpoint indutie {be foliowing:

'The Shalom Center (EcovShalom Corps oforganizers; public pol-
icy, some liturgy and curricula): 7318 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia,
PA 19119

OShomrci Adamah (Jewish curricula, some liturgy): Church Rd.
and Greenwood Ave, Wyncote, PA 19095

'Oznaiim Communications (Jewish arts and theater): 608 W. Up-
sal St., Philadelphia, PA 19119

'P'nai Or Religious Fellowship (liturgy, spiritual responsibility):
7318 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19119

'Institute for Jewish Renewal (Eco-Kosher Project): 7318 Ger-
mantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19119

'Melton Center at Jewish Theological Seminary (theological and
theoretical analysis): 3080 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

JEWISH ENVIRONMENTALISM 37