Dear Children,
As I sit down to write you this letter on the eve of the New Year, 5767, you are still warm and cozy in my womb. With two of you in there, I'm sure you are extra cozy. We cannot wait to meet you in only a few short months. The world will be renewed as it is seen for the first time through your newborn eyes. And yet, it is a world that has been seen over and over again by each generation through the millennia. Your new world that you will encounter is not only the masterpiece of God's ongoing work of creation, but also a work in progress shaped and chiseled by the hands of all of us who come before you. So on the threshold of this New Year, as we celebrate the birth of the world, we give thanks for the world into which we will welcome you.
What kind of world is it that you will be born into? It is a world in which the advances in human discovery and technology charge forward at an unprecedented rate. It is a world that contains unparalleled choices and freedom. It is a world filled with natural beauty. And yet for all the good in the world, my heart breaks when I think about the tragedy that exists; calamities that people create. I am troubled by the health of our planet earth. I am frightened that we will bring you into a world whose climate, environment, and ecology, are on the brink of irreparable damage.
Many of us on the other side of the womb share a concern about the environment. In the blink of an eye you will each sit in a high school or college history class looking back at the year 2006. You will see that 2006 was a year of rising consciousness of the growing environmental crisis, specifically the problem of global warming. The environment became a pop star gracing covers of magazines with sexy titles: Time Magazine: Global Warming: Be Worried. Be Very Worried; The Economist: The Heat is On, A Special Report on Climate Change; and Newsweek: The New Greening of America: From Politics to Lifestyle, Why Saving the Environment is Suddenly Hot.
The environment even recently starred in its own movie, An Inconvenient Truth, made by a former Vice President, Al Gore. It graphically shows the violence that we human beings inflict on our atmosphere and our earth. It sends a shudder down the spine as it creates images of troubling statistics: The ten hottest years on record occurred in the last fifteen years. We now have the highest concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the last 150,000 years. And it has spiked 30% since the industrial revolution, 150 years ago. Scientists also show that based on ice core samples, the temperature of the earth increases proportionally to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. These changes in the earth's pollution and climate are happening at a dizzying speed.
But will this only be fifteen minutes of fame for the environment? Does it grace magazine covers because the environment is a hot new trend, or will this new consciousness change our behavior? By the time you are fifteen years old, will we be on the path to solving the trend of global warming, or still paying lip service to the problem? Based on our track record, I am not sure.
Fifteen years ago, before there was a movie, then Senator Gore wrote a book called, The Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. In his book, Gore begins to articulate the damage that human-produced CO2 causes the environment. Even then, Gore notes that skeptics advocated doing nothing about global warming until more research could be completed. Gore writes about the first Bush administration's response to global warming. On the eve of Earth Day 1990, for example, the Bush White House circulated to its policy spokesman a confidential memorandum suggesting the most effective arguments to downplay the threat of global warming. The memo, which was leaked to the press, advised that instead of directly arguing that there is no problem, a "better approach is to raise the many uncertainties."
My children, here we are a little more than fifteen years later and you are going to be born under a second President Bush White House whose tactic remains the same—to down play the science that is consensus for world experts, as this administration seeks to research the world into oblivion. Only this time the sin is more egregious as our government censors its own scientists, like NASA's James Hansen, and alters scientific reports to poke holes in the severity and certainty of the harms of CO2 emissions. Little has changed in the last fifteen years.
Someday, many years from now when you read this letter, I know that you will have questions for me and that I will owe you an explanation. And it will not only be you who asks these questions but an entire generation. Each of us alive today will be compelled to answer your questions about the destruction of our environment. We must be able to turn to the children in our homes and our communities, look them in the eye, and take responsibility, when they ask, "Where were you when the polar ice caps started to melt at an uncontrollable rate? What kind of car did you drive when there were countless warnings about skyrocketing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere? What did you do to try to stop global warming?"
You will probably guess by now, since after all, both your parents are rabbis, that we would offer a Jewish response to these pressing questions. As Jews, if we are going to take global warming seriously, we must do so not only with an awareness of it as a scientific problem, but also as a religious, spiritual problem. Our Rosh Hashanah liturgy says, "Ha-yom Harat Olam"—Today is the birth of the world." On this birthday of the world, 5767, I want you to know that I turned to our Jewish community and asked them to consider the urgency of climate change. I asked them to consider how they would answer these questions to their children or grandchildren, their nieces and nephews, the children playing in the synagogue and on their streets. The following three Jewish responses to our overheating world are as much for our community as they are for you.
Our first Jewish response is, "Da mi lifnei atah omed—Know before whom you stand." This phrase reminds us of our smallness in the grandeur of God's natural world. On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate God as the Creator. Climate change is an affront to God, the Creator of all life, because as the 24th Psalm declares, "The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." We are but sojourners on a land that belongs to the Holy One. When we forget this, we destroy God's creation. Many have experienced a "da mi lifnei atah omed moment"—a discrete moment in life of being acutely aware of God's presence and transcendence.
I can recall such a moment several years ago while backpacking in the Grand Canyon with your father, aunt, saba, and bubbie. We were supposed to get an early start, but you know, "Jewish Standard Time." When we finally arrived at the trailhead at noon, we had a half of a day left to make our campsite, a full day's hike. Of course we did not make it, the sun started to set, and the sky became dark. There are no Holiday Inns in the back country of the Grand Canyon. After hiking along the edge of a cliff most of the day, we were lucky to find a small tongue of land jutting out, almost like a peninsula in mid air. It was the only place for miles to spread out a sleeping bag.
I will never forget the next morning. Waking up before the crack of dawn I was surprised and awed by what I found. Our little refuge was much smaller than we had thought. But our sense of fear moved to awe as the sky slowly shed its deep blue of night, and progressively lighter hues of blue leaked across the horizon. With the sun's rising, the canyon glowed in shades of red and pink, and the cool air made me feel intensely aware of being alive, though conspicuously small. We were tiny specks of life in the midst of an endless sea of canyon and cliff, abyss and sky. That was a da mi lifnei atah omed—know before whom you stand moment.
We hope that you will have many such moments in your lives that remind you of the holiness all around you. The Hasidic rebbe, Shneor Zalman, teaches, "All that we see, sky, earth and its fullness, are God's outer garment." When we pollute our skies, we stain God's garment. When we overheat the earth, we burn God's garment. When our actions lead to piecemeal decimation of our ecosystem, God's colorful garment becomes frayed. If the polar ice caps do in fact melt in 50-70 years, as scientists predict, will the world be the same? If ocean levels continue to rise, will the world be the same? If the vicious power of hurricanes intensify and draughts and floods become more severe, will the world's population not suffer? If any of these happen, will God not suffer?
Kids, if we continue on the downward path that we are on today, the world will look very different for your generation. It is not enough to only teach an awareness of the divine presence in all things. It is not enough to only believe that we are but leasing the earth from God. Our tradition teaches us how to live by that awareness. We hope that you are born into a community that models a healing response to our ailing world. The second way we do this is called Bal Tashchit. It simply means do not destroy. In Torah, Bal Tashchit places a limitation on destroying the environment in war. We are permitted to harvest a tree, but not without planting another. Torah allows the fields to be tilled for six years, but in the seventh, they must lie fallow. And in the 50th year, the jubilee year, not only does the land rest, it goes back to its original owner. Bal Tashchit affirms the needs of daily life in society, but it places brakes on what could become a runaway train of using and consumption.
Bal Tashchit is not just a prohibition on destruction. It is an attitude of restraint. It is the seventh day of creation. And what did God create on the seventh day? Nothing, cessation, Shabbat. God stopped creating. Not doing, not using, not expending energy became hallmarks of Shabbat and with it the foundation of an important environmental principle. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches, "To set apart one day a week for freedom, a day on which we would not use the instruments which have been so easily turned into weapons of destruction...a day on which we stop worshipping the idols of technical civilization...a day of armistice in the economic struggle with our fellow men and the forces of nature—is there any institution that holds out a greater hope for man's progress than the Sabbath?...Man's royal privilege to conquer nature is suspended on the seventh day." (The Sabbath) Shabbat presents a weekly opportunity to practice restraint. Like the Havdallah spices, inhaled to take the essence of Shabbat with us into the week, we could imagine a better world if we were to take the Shabbat attitude of restraint into the other six days of the week.
What would it look like to live each day of our lives by the value of bal tashchit? When we refrain from guzzling gas and assaulting our pristine wildlife reserves to feed our oil addiction we observe Bal Tashchit. When we do simple things like turn off the faucet when brushing our teeth or washing dishes, we observe Bal Tashchit. If we brush without the water flowing we can each save 1,500 gallons of water a year. And how many Jews does it take to change a light bulb? It begins with one. When we refrain from using our regular light bulbs and replace them with energy efficient compact florescent light bulbs we observe Bal Tashchit. And if every house in America did this, it would be like taking 1,000,000 cars off the road. When we replace our regular bath tissue with tissue made from recycled fiber, we observe Bal Tashchit. If everyone in the nation replaced one four roll pack of regular toilet paper with recycled toilet paper the savings on CO2 emissions would be the equivalent of planting 9,089,943 trees. All of these things are a start, and it starts with each of us. One bulb at a time. One roll at a time. One person at a time.
One of the things that we look forward to as parents is telling you stories, especially Jewish stories. This is a story that is important for all of us to hear. It is a midrash and it teaches us that we each have an essential role in saving the earth.
"When the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first human being, God took him and led him all around the trees of the Garden of Eden, and said to him, 'Behold My works, how beautiful and commendable they are! All that I have created, for your sake I created it. Pay heed that you do not corrupt and destroy My universe; for if you corrupt it there is no one to repair it after you.'" (Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah)
The third Jewish response to the environment is that we are all Keepers of the Earth—Shomrei Adamah. That is why God put us here. As it says in Genesis 2:15, describing the very first days of creation, "Adonai God took Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden—l'ovdah ul'shomrah—to till it and to guard it." (Genesis 2:15) We are each like Adam, the first human being. Adam is called "Adam" because he was formed from the adamah—the earth. How can we continue to be bnai adam, human beings, if we destroy the adamah around us? It is time that we see ourselves as the first Adam, the first human; that everything depends on us to preserve our garden of Earth.
So let's put Shomrei Adamah into terms that we can understand. Make your voice heard through your vote. There are currently 189 nations that have signed the Kyoto accords. 189 nations affirm that our climate system is a shared resource and its stability can be affected by industrial and other greenhouse emissions. 189 countries agree that we have to work together to solve this problem. Israel is one of these countries. The United States is not. We are 5% of the world's population and we emit 25% of the world's greenhouse gases. And we claim to have a moral vision for the world.
We should applaud what California has done to cap the expulsion of carbon dioxide and other gases in the State. We are the first state in the U.S. to do so and this landmark legislation aims to cut emissions by 25% by the year 2020. But this is not enough. The environment should be a key measuring stick on how we evaluate local and federal candidates. Being Shomrei Adamah means that we vote with urgency on behalf of our earth.
Now let's move closer to home. Take an inventory of your home, workplace, and synagogue. Are lights on when people aren't using them? Does the landscape need gallons of water to maintain? Can you plant more trees? Do you use recycled paper? Are recycling bins visible and plentiful? Recycle—many of us do it, but we can do it more assertively. Every can, bottle, and piece of paper counts. We Americans waste so much paper yearly that we could build a 12 ft high wall stretching from New York to Los Angeles. It takes approximately 90 days for an aluminum can to make it from a recycling bin to its new incarnation on a shelf. Compare that with 100 years, the lifespan of an aluminum can tossed in the trash. That number goes up to 1 million years for a plastic bottle. Products—non-toxic cleansers, perfume and dye-free detergents save the earth. Cars—drive them less. And when it's time to buy a new one, consider the earth. Turn down the heat this winter. Put on another layer. Cuddle up with a loved one. You'll save on your utility bill and reduce greenhouse emissions.
We can do this together. Create a minyan of Shomrei Adamah—of Jewish eco-warriors. Take on a project with your havurah, brotherhood, sisterhood, or group of friends. Did you know that NFTY, our movement's national youth group, chose the social action theme of "Shootfei Adamah: Partners of the Earth" for this year? Identify one way you can make a difference. This week you will receive an email from me with a Brit Adamah, a personal Covenant with the earth. Look over the ways that you and your family can make a difference, commit to doing one thing, or two, or five, sign the covenant and keep it in a visible place to guide your actions through the year. It is about taking small steps. These are all things that many of us are already doing, but we can do more. As human beings, we need reminders. Each year the shofar blasts remind us to wake up and examine our actions. This year the call of the shofar blares from the earth.
Hayom Harat Olam—today is Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world. On this birthday of the world, it seems fitting that we would give the world a gift. These are gifts that we give to the world, and to you, our children. We give the gift of Shomrei Adamah, of becoming keepers of the earth. We give the gift of Bal Tashchit, of not destroying our environment, because restraint is holy. We give the gift of Da mi lifnei atah omed—of knowing before whom we stand, so that we can become witnesses to God's outer garment, to God's presence all around.
Soon, my children, it will be your birthday. Creation, we are taught, is not something that happened once upon a time. God called the world into being, and that call goes on. Soon, your Aba and I will experience our own gift, our own miracle of creation in you. There are so many gifts that Aba and I want to give to you. We hope to give you the gift of a sustainable earth, a greener world, a better world. May we, and all those in our generation, heed God's call.
With Love,
Ima
