Post by Rabbi Neil on Oct 4, 2022 16:21:13 GMT
On Yom Kippur, we try to remove ourselves from the world as much as possible. By abstaining from food or drink, not anointing ourselves, not engaging in intimacy, and more, we focus less on the physical and more on the spiritual part of ourselves. We spend much of the day standing, just as angels stand in the presence of God. We say out loud the line Baruch shem k’vod malchuto l’olam va’ed, words that, according to Midrash, Moses overheard the angels singing [ Midrash: Deuteronomy Rabbah 3:25] and which we whisper on all other times of the year - only today do we say that line out line, just like angels. The Book of Psalms says of human beings that God made us a little lower than angels. [Psalm 8:5] We do have advantages over angels – we have free will there they do not, we move around where they stay entranced in the presence of God, we can atone where they cannot. Nonetheless, angels are considered to be far more elevated spiritually – they live in the presence of God, after all. Biblical and Rabbinic theology holds by what became known as the Great Chain of Being. In that model, God is highest, then angels, then humanity (separated into higher man and lower woman), then the animals and then the non-sentient elements of creation. On Yom Kippur, we try to unchain ourselves from the earth and try to climb up the Great Chain of Being to draw as close to God as possible.
And that, it turns out, perpetuates an enormous problem with global consequences. With few exceptions, Jewish spirituality, especially since Rabbinic Judaism started, has tended to be ethereal and other-worldly. At least in the Bible, spirituality was connected strongly with the cycles of the earth, with harvest and rain, with animal sacrifices, with letting the land rest as God rested. Once we move into the time of the Mishnah and Talmud, though, and concepts of an afterlife coming into Judaism, Jewish spirituality immediately became other-worldly. While the body was still considered a gift from God that must be cared for, Rabbinic thought adopted the idea that eventually the body dies while the soul has the potential to live on. The focus of Jewish spirituality shifted dramatically away from this world. “This world is like a hallway into the world beyond,” writes Rabbi Ya’akov in Pirke Avot, [Mishnah: Avot 4:21] “Prepare yourself in the hallway to enter the banquet hall.” Of course, this world remained the place where we relate to God, where we performed mitzvot, but the ultimate reality was no longer this one, it was in another realm. Jewish spirituality became focused outside this world. Physicality and spirituality separated.
The Bible encourages us to look down the Great Chain of Being. The Book of Proverbs [Proverbs 6: 6-9] encourages the lazy person to look down and learn from the ant who busily stores and gathers food. Talmud certainly states that were Torah not given we would have learned its main principals from the animals, such as modesty from the cat, not stealing from the ant, modesty from the dove and decent manners from the rooster. Nonetheless, the Rabbinic gaze is definitely up away from this world. Up is seen to be good - up brings us closer to heaven; down is bad – down brings us closer to She’ol and to Gehinnom. This world is full of positives and negatives, whereas Rav teaches [Talmud Bavli: Berachot 17a] that “The World-to-Come is not like this world. In the World-to-Come there is no eating, no drinking, no procreation, no business negotiations, no jealousy, no hatred, and no competition. Rather, the righteous sit with their crowns upon their heads, enjoying the splendor of the Divine Presence.” True joy, everlasting joy, is not in this world. There is no eternity here, only death and decay. “From where do you come?” asks Akavyah ben M’hal’lel [Mishnah: Avot 3:1], “From a putrid drop. Where are you going? To a place of dust, of worm and of maggots. Before whom you are destined to give an account and reckoning? Before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy blessed One.”
Added to the focus away from this world, the Rabbis cemented the philosophy not just that the rest of nature is lesser than human beings but that it only exists for human beings. When commenting on Noah’s flood, the Talmud [Sanhedrin 108a] asks why the animals were destroyed because of the sins of human beings? The reply given is a mashal, a parable, in which a king prepares a banquet for his son who subsequently dies, so the king breaks up the feast. Similarly with the Flood, teaches Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karcha, God says that “now that humanity has sinned, what need have I for the animals and beasts?” That kind of attitude of nature existing only for human beings naturally leads hundreds of years later to Nachmanides, the medieval Biblical commentator, interpreting the Biblical verse that says that human beings shall have dominion over all the creatures and over all the earth [Genesis 1:26] as permission to “rule vigorously” over them like “the rule of the master over his servant.” He even goes so far as to say that this verse indicates that we have the right to “rule over the earth itself, to uproot and to pull down, to dig and hew out copper and iron.” [Nachmanides on Genesis 1:26] We went from learning from nature to exploiting it however violently we want because it only exists for our purposes.
The seeds for this separation from the Earth were laid in the Bible, which made a distinction between domesticated and wild animals. Only in the Messianic Age are wild animals no longer a threat [“The wolf will lie down with the lamb, the leopard with the goat.” (Isaiah 11:6)], just like in the idyllic existence of Eden. In the traditional Jewish mindset, nature is separate to humanity, and in its rawest form is a threat to humanity. It is different ontologically on the Great Chain of Being. Nature exists for humanity but when humanity sins against God, nature is used as a tool to harm and punish humanity. We, therefore, are not natural. We exist somewhere between the natural and the supernatural. Animals, it is said, only have a yetzer hara, an animal inclination, angels only have a yetzer hatov, a lofty inclination, and it is only humans who have both, and thus free will. [“Angels serve their Creator, and do not have yetzer ha'ra. Animals, on the other hand, have yetzer ha'ra but lack intelligence. The result is that angels cannot receive reward for their service, as they have no yetzer ha'ra to overcome, and animals cannot be punished for their actions, as they do not have the intelligence.” (Aruch HaShulchan, 1:1:1). Also, “Six statements were said with regard to humans: In three ways, they are like ministering angels, and in three ways they are like animals. The baraita explains: In three ways they are like ministering angels: They have intelligence like ministering angels; and they walk upright like ministering angels; and they speak in the holy tongue like ministering angels. In three ways humans are like animals: They eat and drink like animals; and they multiply like animals; and they emit excrement like animals.” (Talmud: Chagigah 16a)] So, Jewish tradition sets a choice before us – lower ourselves by behaving like animals, or elevate ourselves by behaving like angels. We aim for the latter, so we aim to remove ourselves morally from nature and, ultimately, to escape it in the World to Come.
The emancipation from nature becomes even more problematic when we realize that the Hebrew for earth, adamah, is feminine. In Biblical and Rabbinic thought, God is the male Deity above, usually called Adonai, meaning my Lord, while the earth is the female presence below from whom we need to distance ourselves, or whose body we may violently plunder and use however we wish. Our tradition’s structural violence against women is the same as its structural violence against the Earth and we cannot deconstruct one without deconstructing the other.
In chapter 2 of Genesis, the Bible clearly assigns us to be stewards over the Earth, l’ovdah ul’shomrah, to serve it and preserve it [Genesis 2:15]. We are separate from the earth but we have a duty to protect it. The Bible is environmental, but it is absolutely not ecological. Environmentalism means protecting that which is threatened within the existing socio-economic structures. The Bible is actually very environmental. We are told that within a siege we cannot chop down fruit trees [Deuteronomy 20: 19-20], we are told to give the land rest in the Sabbatical and Jubilee years [Leviticus 25: 9-10], we are told to protect animals [e.g. Deuteronomy 5:14, 14:21, 22:6, 22:10] … we are separate from the earth but we absolutely must take care of it. Seeing Divinity in the earth, though, is absolutely forbidden, which is why the ancient Israelites are told to burn the sacred groves of other nations [Deuteronomy 12:3]. There is sacred time in Judaism [e.g. Genesis 2:3, Leviticus 23] but the only sacred space is man-made, such as the tabernacle or the Temple. That is one of the core reasons why Judaism survived expulsion after expulsion, because our attachment to the land that we had been expelled from was already tenuous, but wherever we were, we were able to observe sacred time. Yom Kippur is the ultimate sacred time – the Sabbath of Sabbaths, as it is often called. We celebrate it by denying space, by denying the world around us, by shutting ourselves off from the natural world in every way possible, including traditionally shutting ourselves indoors for an entire day, as opposed to the ancient Mishnaic custom of celebrating Yom Kippur afternoon matchmaking in the vineyards [Mishnah: Ta’anit 4:8]. So, after we leave the world for a day, or try to, how to we return to the world? Do we return to plundering it for our own benefit? Do we return to imagining that we are stewards of all the other species on earth despite the fact that not only do we not even know all the other species on earth but we can’t even responsibly steward ourselves? Are we really going to return to the Great Chain of Being? Or, instead of being environmental, which is a top-down approach, could our Judaism be more ecological – could our Judaism more accurately reflect the interdependence of all living beings, including humanity? Or is Judaism so embedded in hierarchy that to make it ecological would make it essentially un-Jewish?
This, I believe, is one of the most important Jewish questions of our time. Our Western society exists due to exploitation, which means that our Jewish community exists due to exploitation. We exist on land that was taken by force or deception from those who previously lived here. We all but steal resources from poor, usually non-white, communities around the world who are forced to sell their wares by a globalized economic system that favors the rich countries that set it up. Once we consume those resources, we then export our waste back to those communities under the guise of recycling, where most of it ends up in landfill and that which is recycled is done so in ways that pollute those areas in the process. In Talmud [Bava Kama 30a], we learn that the pious ones of old used to hide their splinters of wood and shards of glass and bury them three handbreadths beneath the surface of their fields so that they would not impede the progress of the plow. Rav Sheshet used to throw them in a fire. Rava threw them into the river. They did what we still do - out of sight, out of mind! In response to this, Rabbi Judah said: a person who wants to be pious should attend to matters of liability. We are liable. There is no such thing, ecologically speaking, of throwing something away, because there is no away. All waste goes somewhere and in our society our waste invariably goes to faraway places where it pollutes the land and the water and poisons the global poor. That we can do this comes from the mindset of domination, of hierarchy, and the false elevation of humans as stewards of creation. The Book of Ecclesiastes mocks the idea of stewardship, saying [Ecclesiastes 3:19], “Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals.” That’s ecology. An authentic ecological Judaism is therefore possible, even if it was not the majority position in the Bible or in Rabbinic literature. So, if an authentic ecological Judaism is possible but we continue to maintain an environmental Judaism that supports hierarchy and domination and merely tries to address issues as they arise, if our environmental Judaism does nothing but patch up the cracks in the system that supports us, how morally good are we? Can our atonement ever be accepted if it is embedded in such a system? Is our atonement environmental in that it covers over small things while refusing to address systemic change? Is the assumption at the end of the day that our atonement has been granted merely the self-congratulations of the oppressor who fails to hear the cries of the oppressed? The root letters for kippur mean to cover over, just like the pious ones of old used to cover their waste with enough soil that it wouldn’t affect the plow. But that isn’t getting rid of sins, that isn’t changing anything, that’s merely hiding them from view while they pollute the moral soil below. Can our atonement be ecological, that is, can it help us reconnect to the world and its inhabitants in a totally different way?
I believe not only that it can be, but that it must if Judaism is to transform and remain relevant in the 21st century. That doesn’t mean that we have to start creating sacred groves or worshiping nature, but it does mean that we can change our relationship with nature. But we can certainly change our attitude. In Torah, we learn that the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant [Genesis 9: 13-17]. In Talmud [Chagigah 16a], we learn from an Ezekiel verse [Ezekiel 1:28] that the rainbow is like the glory of God, so one should never look at it. In fact, Talmud tells us that “one who looks at a rainbow… deserves never to have come into this world.” That’s stated even though earlier in Talmud [Berachot 59a] that when we see a rainbow we should recite a blessing. In the Kiddush Levana ritual of blessing the Moon, a ritual that can only be performed when one sees the Moon, the custom is to glance at the Moon at the beginning of the ritual and then not to look up at it again [See Magen Avraham OC 426 sk 8]. This is because the Moon represents the House of David so looking at the Moon when it is not full implies diminishment of the Jewish people. What’s going on here? How are we ritualizing looking at nature but banning ourselves from looking at nature? To bless the new moon at the proper time is like greeting the Divine Presence, says Talmud [Sanhedrin 42a], but we’re not supposed to look at it while we do it. If all of nature is like the Divine Presence, are we meant to just not look at anything other than Torah? Perhaps that is why we read in Pirke Avot [3:9] that one who interrupts their study and proclaims how beautiful a nearby tree is considered to have harmed their soul. In that mindset, God is found in Torah and in Talmud, in the page, in words, not in reality. That has to change. We don’t bow to nature, we don’t worship nature, but we should be able to look at it and proclaim the beauty of God’s creation through it. When we look at nature, we see what is harming nature, and then we work to reduce that harm. The text known as Perek Shira lists the differing songs of all elements of creation that call out constantly. Maybe the Divine Call that I referred to last night isn’t just God’s call to us to pursue justice – maybe it’s also the call of all creation singing praise of God. It calls to us constantly and can draw us closer to God. Returning to the world, having a more ecological Judaism, might perhaps mean bringing the experience of nature into our spirituality as much as the experience of our textual tradition. Cutting down trees and finding God in their shredded corpses but not finding God in those trees while they are alive is nonsensical. Our living textual tradition is essential, but so is the living earth which God created. Our textual tradition says that we are above, separate from, nature. A walk in the woods tells us that we are not. An authentic modern Judaism needs to hold both of those to be true.
This Yom Kippur, then, let us return to the world – let our atonement change the way we view the world and interact with the world. Let us leave the service with a different perspective on the world around us to we had when we came in. Let our atonement be structural, not piecemeal. Let us acknowledge not only the sins of our selves but also of our society from which we benefit. Let us atone for addressing only the smallest sins so that we could continue to benefit from the greatest. Let us hear the call of nature and find God in it. Let us find God in our texts and in nature that surrounds us. And let us transform ourselves, our community and our society so that we may live with all creation in harmony and peace, and let us say, Amen.
And that, it turns out, perpetuates an enormous problem with global consequences. With few exceptions, Jewish spirituality, especially since Rabbinic Judaism started, has tended to be ethereal and other-worldly. At least in the Bible, spirituality was connected strongly with the cycles of the earth, with harvest and rain, with animal sacrifices, with letting the land rest as God rested. Once we move into the time of the Mishnah and Talmud, though, and concepts of an afterlife coming into Judaism, Jewish spirituality immediately became other-worldly. While the body was still considered a gift from God that must be cared for, Rabbinic thought adopted the idea that eventually the body dies while the soul has the potential to live on. The focus of Jewish spirituality shifted dramatically away from this world. “This world is like a hallway into the world beyond,” writes Rabbi Ya’akov in Pirke Avot, [Mishnah: Avot 4:21] “Prepare yourself in the hallway to enter the banquet hall.” Of course, this world remained the place where we relate to God, where we performed mitzvot, but the ultimate reality was no longer this one, it was in another realm. Jewish spirituality became focused outside this world. Physicality and spirituality separated.
The Bible encourages us to look down the Great Chain of Being. The Book of Proverbs [Proverbs 6: 6-9] encourages the lazy person to look down and learn from the ant who busily stores and gathers food. Talmud certainly states that were Torah not given we would have learned its main principals from the animals, such as modesty from the cat, not stealing from the ant, modesty from the dove and decent manners from the rooster. Nonetheless, the Rabbinic gaze is definitely up away from this world. Up is seen to be good - up brings us closer to heaven; down is bad – down brings us closer to She’ol and to Gehinnom. This world is full of positives and negatives, whereas Rav teaches [Talmud Bavli: Berachot 17a] that “The World-to-Come is not like this world. In the World-to-Come there is no eating, no drinking, no procreation, no business negotiations, no jealousy, no hatred, and no competition. Rather, the righteous sit with their crowns upon their heads, enjoying the splendor of the Divine Presence.” True joy, everlasting joy, is not in this world. There is no eternity here, only death and decay. “From where do you come?” asks Akavyah ben M’hal’lel [Mishnah: Avot 3:1], “From a putrid drop. Where are you going? To a place of dust, of worm and of maggots. Before whom you are destined to give an account and reckoning? Before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy blessed One.”
Added to the focus away from this world, the Rabbis cemented the philosophy not just that the rest of nature is lesser than human beings but that it only exists for human beings. When commenting on Noah’s flood, the Talmud [Sanhedrin 108a] asks why the animals were destroyed because of the sins of human beings? The reply given is a mashal, a parable, in which a king prepares a banquet for his son who subsequently dies, so the king breaks up the feast. Similarly with the Flood, teaches Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karcha, God says that “now that humanity has sinned, what need have I for the animals and beasts?” That kind of attitude of nature existing only for human beings naturally leads hundreds of years later to Nachmanides, the medieval Biblical commentator, interpreting the Biblical verse that says that human beings shall have dominion over all the creatures and over all the earth [Genesis 1:26] as permission to “rule vigorously” over them like “the rule of the master over his servant.” He even goes so far as to say that this verse indicates that we have the right to “rule over the earth itself, to uproot and to pull down, to dig and hew out copper and iron.” [Nachmanides on Genesis 1:26] We went from learning from nature to exploiting it however violently we want because it only exists for our purposes.
The seeds for this separation from the Earth were laid in the Bible, which made a distinction between domesticated and wild animals. Only in the Messianic Age are wild animals no longer a threat [“The wolf will lie down with the lamb, the leopard with the goat.” (Isaiah 11:6)], just like in the idyllic existence of Eden. In the traditional Jewish mindset, nature is separate to humanity, and in its rawest form is a threat to humanity. It is different ontologically on the Great Chain of Being. Nature exists for humanity but when humanity sins against God, nature is used as a tool to harm and punish humanity. We, therefore, are not natural. We exist somewhere between the natural and the supernatural. Animals, it is said, only have a yetzer hara, an animal inclination, angels only have a yetzer hatov, a lofty inclination, and it is only humans who have both, and thus free will. [“Angels serve their Creator, and do not have yetzer ha'ra. Animals, on the other hand, have yetzer ha'ra but lack intelligence. The result is that angels cannot receive reward for their service, as they have no yetzer ha'ra to overcome, and animals cannot be punished for their actions, as they do not have the intelligence.” (Aruch HaShulchan, 1:1:1). Also, “Six statements were said with regard to humans: In three ways, they are like ministering angels, and in three ways they are like animals. The baraita explains: In three ways they are like ministering angels: They have intelligence like ministering angels; and they walk upright like ministering angels; and they speak in the holy tongue like ministering angels. In three ways humans are like animals: They eat and drink like animals; and they multiply like animals; and they emit excrement like animals.” (Talmud: Chagigah 16a)] So, Jewish tradition sets a choice before us – lower ourselves by behaving like animals, or elevate ourselves by behaving like angels. We aim for the latter, so we aim to remove ourselves morally from nature and, ultimately, to escape it in the World to Come.
The emancipation from nature becomes even more problematic when we realize that the Hebrew for earth, adamah, is feminine. In Biblical and Rabbinic thought, God is the male Deity above, usually called Adonai, meaning my Lord, while the earth is the female presence below from whom we need to distance ourselves, or whose body we may violently plunder and use however we wish. Our tradition’s structural violence against women is the same as its structural violence against the Earth and we cannot deconstruct one without deconstructing the other.
In chapter 2 of Genesis, the Bible clearly assigns us to be stewards over the Earth, l’ovdah ul’shomrah, to serve it and preserve it [Genesis 2:15]. We are separate from the earth but we have a duty to protect it. The Bible is environmental, but it is absolutely not ecological. Environmentalism means protecting that which is threatened within the existing socio-economic structures. The Bible is actually very environmental. We are told that within a siege we cannot chop down fruit trees [Deuteronomy 20: 19-20], we are told to give the land rest in the Sabbatical and Jubilee years [Leviticus 25: 9-10], we are told to protect animals [e.g. Deuteronomy 5:14, 14:21, 22:6, 22:10] … we are separate from the earth but we absolutely must take care of it. Seeing Divinity in the earth, though, is absolutely forbidden, which is why the ancient Israelites are told to burn the sacred groves of other nations [Deuteronomy 12:3]. There is sacred time in Judaism [e.g. Genesis 2:3, Leviticus 23] but the only sacred space is man-made, such as the tabernacle or the Temple. That is one of the core reasons why Judaism survived expulsion after expulsion, because our attachment to the land that we had been expelled from was already tenuous, but wherever we were, we were able to observe sacred time. Yom Kippur is the ultimate sacred time – the Sabbath of Sabbaths, as it is often called. We celebrate it by denying space, by denying the world around us, by shutting ourselves off from the natural world in every way possible, including traditionally shutting ourselves indoors for an entire day, as opposed to the ancient Mishnaic custom of celebrating Yom Kippur afternoon matchmaking in the vineyards [Mishnah: Ta’anit 4:8]. So, after we leave the world for a day, or try to, how to we return to the world? Do we return to plundering it for our own benefit? Do we return to imagining that we are stewards of all the other species on earth despite the fact that not only do we not even know all the other species on earth but we can’t even responsibly steward ourselves? Are we really going to return to the Great Chain of Being? Or, instead of being environmental, which is a top-down approach, could our Judaism be more ecological – could our Judaism more accurately reflect the interdependence of all living beings, including humanity? Or is Judaism so embedded in hierarchy that to make it ecological would make it essentially un-Jewish?
This, I believe, is one of the most important Jewish questions of our time. Our Western society exists due to exploitation, which means that our Jewish community exists due to exploitation. We exist on land that was taken by force or deception from those who previously lived here. We all but steal resources from poor, usually non-white, communities around the world who are forced to sell their wares by a globalized economic system that favors the rich countries that set it up. Once we consume those resources, we then export our waste back to those communities under the guise of recycling, where most of it ends up in landfill and that which is recycled is done so in ways that pollute those areas in the process. In Talmud [Bava Kama 30a], we learn that the pious ones of old used to hide their splinters of wood and shards of glass and bury them three handbreadths beneath the surface of their fields so that they would not impede the progress of the plow. Rav Sheshet used to throw them in a fire. Rava threw them into the river. They did what we still do - out of sight, out of mind! In response to this, Rabbi Judah said: a person who wants to be pious should attend to matters of liability. We are liable. There is no such thing, ecologically speaking, of throwing something away, because there is no away. All waste goes somewhere and in our society our waste invariably goes to faraway places where it pollutes the land and the water and poisons the global poor. That we can do this comes from the mindset of domination, of hierarchy, and the false elevation of humans as stewards of creation. The Book of Ecclesiastes mocks the idea of stewardship, saying [Ecclesiastes 3:19], “Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals.” That’s ecology. An authentic ecological Judaism is therefore possible, even if it was not the majority position in the Bible or in Rabbinic literature. So, if an authentic ecological Judaism is possible but we continue to maintain an environmental Judaism that supports hierarchy and domination and merely tries to address issues as they arise, if our environmental Judaism does nothing but patch up the cracks in the system that supports us, how morally good are we? Can our atonement ever be accepted if it is embedded in such a system? Is our atonement environmental in that it covers over small things while refusing to address systemic change? Is the assumption at the end of the day that our atonement has been granted merely the self-congratulations of the oppressor who fails to hear the cries of the oppressed? The root letters for kippur mean to cover over, just like the pious ones of old used to cover their waste with enough soil that it wouldn’t affect the plow. But that isn’t getting rid of sins, that isn’t changing anything, that’s merely hiding them from view while they pollute the moral soil below. Can our atonement be ecological, that is, can it help us reconnect to the world and its inhabitants in a totally different way?
I believe not only that it can be, but that it must if Judaism is to transform and remain relevant in the 21st century. That doesn’t mean that we have to start creating sacred groves or worshiping nature, but it does mean that we can change our relationship with nature. But we can certainly change our attitude. In Torah, we learn that the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant [Genesis 9: 13-17]. In Talmud [Chagigah 16a], we learn from an Ezekiel verse [Ezekiel 1:28] that the rainbow is like the glory of God, so one should never look at it. In fact, Talmud tells us that “one who looks at a rainbow… deserves never to have come into this world.” That’s stated even though earlier in Talmud [Berachot 59a] that when we see a rainbow we should recite a blessing. In the Kiddush Levana ritual of blessing the Moon, a ritual that can only be performed when one sees the Moon, the custom is to glance at the Moon at the beginning of the ritual and then not to look up at it again [See Magen Avraham OC 426 sk 8]. This is because the Moon represents the House of David so looking at the Moon when it is not full implies diminishment of the Jewish people. What’s going on here? How are we ritualizing looking at nature but banning ourselves from looking at nature? To bless the new moon at the proper time is like greeting the Divine Presence, says Talmud [Sanhedrin 42a], but we’re not supposed to look at it while we do it. If all of nature is like the Divine Presence, are we meant to just not look at anything other than Torah? Perhaps that is why we read in Pirke Avot [3:9] that one who interrupts their study and proclaims how beautiful a nearby tree is considered to have harmed their soul. In that mindset, God is found in Torah and in Talmud, in the page, in words, not in reality. That has to change. We don’t bow to nature, we don’t worship nature, but we should be able to look at it and proclaim the beauty of God’s creation through it. When we look at nature, we see what is harming nature, and then we work to reduce that harm. The text known as Perek Shira lists the differing songs of all elements of creation that call out constantly. Maybe the Divine Call that I referred to last night isn’t just God’s call to us to pursue justice – maybe it’s also the call of all creation singing praise of God. It calls to us constantly and can draw us closer to God. Returning to the world, having a more ecological Judaism, might perhaps mean bringing the experience of nature into our spirituality as much as the experience of our textual tradition. Cutting down trees and finding God in their shredded corpses but not finding God in those trees while they are alive is nonsensical. Our living textual tradition is essential, but so is the living earth which God created. Our textual tradition says that we are above, separate from, nature. A walk in the woods tells us that we are not. An authentic modern Judaism needs to hold both of those to be true.
This Yom Kippur, then, let us return to the world – let our atonement change the way we view the world and interact with the world. Let us leave the service with a different perspective on the world around us to we had when we came in. Let our atonement be structural, not piecemeal. Let us acknowledge not only the sins of our selves but also of our society from which we benefit. Let us atone for addressing only the smallest sins so that we could continue to benefit from the greatest. Let us hear the call of nature and find God in it. Let us find God in our texts and in nature that surrounds us. And let us transform ourselves, our community and our society so that we may live with all creation in harmony and peace, and let us say, Amen.
