5767

Today is the birthday of the world.  That’s what we’re really commemorating on this Rosh HaShanah. On this day, according to Tradition, “Baruch she’amar v’hayah ha’olam,” Blessed is God, who spoke and the world came into being.

We Jews have been numbering the world’s existence for 5,767 years, but we know that it is vastly older than that.  The world has been around for billions of years; that it is a vast and incomprehensible cosmos whose very mysteries deepen our Awe of the Creator, of God.

We wonder at this world we live in, how it is an integral part of cosmic forces that at once terrify us, bewilder us, and stun us with their unfathomable beauty and power.  How all the great oceans and seas and mountains and forests attest to the wonder of this Creation that we are all a part of.

This beautiful planet is, as the Torah says, Tov Me’od, it is very good.  It is really a radical idea, that this world is Tov Me’od, very good—that in its essence, this universe is NOT neutral, but Good!  There is a moral structure in Nature itself that we are here to uphold!

On Rosh HaShanah, we consider our place in Creation, our impact on that inherent goodness. In the first chapter of the book of Genesis, we learn that we have a very specific role in this world: it says that God created Man and Woman, and said to them:  “Pru urvu umil’u et haretz v’kivshuha,” Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, “Urdu bidgat hayam uv’of haShamayim, uvchal chaya haromeset al ha’aretz,” And rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over all the animals that roam the earth.  And so we have great power over this world.  We rule over this planet that God brought into being. 

In the second chapter of Genesis, however, we get a very different description of our role in the world:  it says that when God created humankind in the Garden of Eden, we were placed there “l’ovdah uleshomrah,” to work the land and to protect it.  In this second chapter of Creation, we are not given sweeping authority.  We simply are God’s caretakers of a world that doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to God. 

So which description is correct? Are we here to Kivshuha, to conquer and subdue the land and all its creatures, or are we here l’ovdah uleshomrah, to tend and till it faithfully?  It seems to me that this is a critically important question for us all to ponder in this day and age, this era of environmental crisis, on this day of appreciating our place in a Creation that seems all too threatened with all kinds of ecological devastations.

It seems that we are here both to subdue the land, to use it for our needs, but also to protect and guard it.  But how can we possibly do both those things at the same time?  The answer comes to us not from Genesis, but from the 20^th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy.  In that chapter, God instructs us that when a time of war comes around, and we besiege a city and need to use a tree as a battering ram, we may NOT use a fruit-bearing tree, only a non-fruit-bearing tree.  What is the difference between these kinds of trees? 

The great medieval sage Moses Maimonides explains, that when we chop down a fruit tree, then the fruit is needlessly destroyed.  Only when a fruit tree potentially harms another tree may it be destroyed.  Thus, the rabbis of the later generations have come to teach us the meaning of these two seemingly contradictory teachings of the book of Genesis:  We can kivshuha, we can make USE of this world for our needs; but we must also work to protect this world and NEVER NEEDLESSLY make use of the natural resources of this world.

The rabbis derived a very specific name for the wasteful misuse of this world. They called it the negative mitzvah of Bal Taschit, meaning, “thou shalt not destroy.”  We must never needlessly destroy this precious, miraculous work of Creation.  We do indeed have power to rule over the world and all its creatures, but we must do it with the greatest of care and awe, always respecting nature; always practicing what the rabbis called Tza’ar ba’alei chayim, taking care never to bring needless suffering to any kind of animal or creature.

Maimonides further explains that when the Torah commanded our ancestors to let the land of Israel lie fallow every seven years, this teaching was there to teach us how to preserve the earth and its natural health and fertility.  The Talmud even tells us that when a tree was sick, the scholars of old were instructed to pray for the health of the tree!

And then there is the moving and beautiful Midrash, or rabbinic tale, about the emperor of Rome who finds an old Jewish man planting a fruit tree by the side of the road.  The Roman emperor says to him:  old man, what are you doing?  I am planting fruit trees, replies the old man.  B’chayecha, By your life, you must be a fool, old man, says the emperor.  I hate to break it to you, but you’re not likely to make it to see these trees bear any fruit…Indeed, I may not, replied the old Jewish man; but I do not plant these trees just for myself; I plant them that someday my children and their children after them might eat of them and enjoy them.

In every way, our tradition, for thousands of years has taught us that our respect for Creation not only preserves the world for ourselves, but for all the generations that follow us.

Of course, in our complicated world, adhering to these teachings can get very tricky, but the same respect for the environment is always emphasized no matter what.  How many Jewish people today realize that whenever we build a house, we must ensure that when we build that house, it is Jewish law that we must do the absolute minimum damage possible to the ecosystem that house is built on?  Or, according to the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch, one of the most important sources of Jewish law, if a business does ecological damage to a city it is in, that business must leave that city before it does any more damage?  Businesses are forbidden by Jewish law to pollute the air.  Furthermore, the Shulchan Aruch teaches us that anyone who pollutes the water must personally pay for the damage he or she has caused.

In every corner of our Jewish tradition, we are enjoined to remember that this world is indeed Tov Me’od, very good, and while we can make use of the gift of this world, we must preserve that goodness with all our strength.  We can all be so proud of our Jewish tradition because it has never wavered from a wise understanding about the preciousness of our environment.

So on this day, Rosh HaShanah, 5767, as we take stock of ourselves and of our environment, we have to ask ourselves, what has gone wrong?

The very structure of our modern society pollutes the oceans and rivers, decimates the rainforests, poisons the air, and melts the glaciers,:  and today, we are collecting the data about the results of our actions; we are now beginning to weigh the evidence—and that evidence is mountainous: despite Judaism’s teachings,  our human race has not understood how powerful we have been over the world:  we have been needlessly making use of Creation, destroying this world and ourselves in the process.

Our minds, and now our hearts are beginning to understand the teaching of the Torah:  Midah Keneged Midah:  Measure for Measure:  all the actions that we put out into the universe return to us in kind:  the mindless and destructive actions of humanity eventually comes back to haunt us.  We and our children pay the price of our parents’ and grandparents’ mistakes in our environment.

The problem that we have to face today is that no matter how wise and beautiful the teachings of Creation are in Judaism, it hasn’t been enough to instill sufficient wisdom in humankind as a whole.  We can and must learn and follow Judaism’s respect for nature, but we’re now living in an era where our very ‘rule’ over nature is slipping because our environment is becoming ever-more surely inhospitable to the multiple forms of life as we now know it; and our ability to work the land and protect it is equally slipping because the damage we have already done threatens to be too great.

We need nothing short of a new paradigm to live by in this world we have made for ourselves, this world of global warming and holes in the ozone layer, of melting ice-caps and rising sea-levels.  And, thank God, there is an answer even for this world of today.  When we look even deeper into our Jewish tradition, there is a wisdom and path to follow that can heal this very broken world.

Two Hundred years ago, there was an extraordinary rabbi named Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav.  His teachings were so powerful and life-altering that he still has devoted followers around the world to this day.  In so many ways, he defied the stereotype of a Chasidic rabbi of 200 years ago.  When you think of such a learned rabbi, what do you picture:  a rabbi in a Yeshiva, in a dark room with lots of books.  This was not Rabbi Nahman.  One of his disciples described him this way: "Our rabbi, of blessed memory, even though he had a separate room in the village where he worked by himself, would nonetheless usually go over the fields into the woods; and he would seclude himself there. Once I went with him...[walking] around the fields and the mountains. He stretched his hand toward the fields and mountains and said to me: 'On all these fields and mountains which you see around the town...I have walked several times.'"

Rabbi Nahman’s heart was in the open air; in the forests and in the hills and meadows.  His teachings are filled with extraordinary insights, notions of Torah learned not just from books but from nature.  He once said: “: "When a man prays in the field then all the grasses come to help him in prayer and give him force in it."  He also said, "it is better to be in solitude outside town, in a place where there are [plants], because these cause the heart to awaken."

Such teachings about prayer we don’t normally find in our prayerbooks.  But what rabbi Nahman taught us is vital, and fundamental to Judaism, and was always there.  It’s just that we haven’t emphasized it enough; and now, more than ever in our history, we must teach his kind of wisdom – a Jewish wisdom derived from nature and experience, not JUST from study.

Maybe over the past few centuries, our people have become disconnected from a Judaism of nature,  the kind of Judaism that we see in the ancient Psalms, a Judaism that wonders at Gods creation in the forces of the natural world.  As Psalm 121 says, “Esah Einay El HeHarim Meayin Yavo Ezri,” I turn my eyes to the mountains, from where comes my help.”  Perhaps in the years in cities and shtetls, many of us feared that searching for God in nature too closely resembled pagan worship.  But Rabbi Nahman did not have this fear.  He was ahead of his time.  He bravely reminded the people of his day that our environment is one of the most direct places to find depth of prayer and to experience the divine.

R. Nahman lived his life always keeping one idea at the forefront of his consciousness:  “Melo Kol Ha’Aretz Kevodo.”  The whole Earth is filled with God’s Glory.  Perhaps you recognize those words.  They are originally the words of the prophet Isaiah.  We say them whenever we daven the Kedushah, and go three times up on our toes: Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, Adonai Tzeva’ot, Melo Kol Ha’Aretz Kevodo:  Holy, Holy, Holy is God, the master of all forces of Nature:  the whole Earth is Filled with God’s glory. 

If we take a moment to look deeply into those words, we can draw out a radical teaching:  The word “kevodo,” God’s glory, actually means God’s absolute, undiluted Presence.  The whole world is FILLED with Kevodo, with God’s absolute, undiluted Presence.  What if you and I took a lesson from Rabbi Nahman, and went by ourselves on a walk into the forests and hills and fields?  What if, as we walked and felt the solidness of the Earth beneath our feet, as we felt the warmth of the sun on our skin, as we felt the breeze, and touched the trees and plants around us—what if, as we did this—we kept only One thought in our minds:  Melo Kol Ha’Aretz Kevodo:  Everything, without exception, is filled with, is an expression of the Absolute, Undiluted Presence of God, Whom Rabbi Nahman called Ribono Shel Olam—the master of the world?  It’s all, in every moment, a manifestation of the Master of all the Creation.  Everything….

That would be quite a walk, wouldn’t it?  On such a walk, our every step, our every glance, our every breath, our every touch, every sound that we hear is a prayer.  Indeed, then all the grasses would come to help us in prayer and give us force in that prayer.  Rabbi Nahman showed us, through this simple lesson in Mindful awareness of the Earth, the deepest secret of the Jewish notion of Creation:  and that is, Creation isn’t a historical event.  It’s happening right now, and we can all open up to it and feel it with every fiber of our being.

Rabbi Nahman’s teaching comes directly out of Kabbalah, and it's a teaching of the deepest kind of interconnectedness:  everything that we experience in this world is like a wave on the One Ocean:  every galaxy and star, every planet, every animal, every cloud, every flower, every blade of grass:  it is all an emanation from the One Ribono Shel Olam, the One Divine Presence… Melo Kol Ha’Aretz Kevodo:  the whole Earth is filled with God’s glory, God’s absolute, undiluted Presence. 

And that blade of grass is not in any way really separate from you or me:  we both are comprised of the same elements, the same sun, the same earth, the same wind, and the same clouds.  Yes, we each have separate existences, but if we get too fixated on our separateness instead of our interconnectedness, we lose our grip on ultimate reality.  If the wave gets too fixed on its separate existence, it can forget that it is truly the Ocean.

And just as we say every morning and every evening: Shema Yisrael:  Pay attention, O Israel: Adonai Eloheinu:  the One Being is the Divinity in all the forms of the world; Adonai Echad:  and that Being is Only One.

It’s a magnificent teaching, and it is literally at the heart of Judaism.  Implicit in the very words of the Shema is the notion that we should never be so arrogant as to the think that we are completely unique and separate from anything else in the world; neither should we be too humble and think that we cannot affect the whole universe through our will.  For within our very being is the whole universe, and Kevodo, the absolute, undiluted Presence of God that can work in the world through our actions.

So the teachings of Rabbi Nahman and of Kabbalah call for a paradigm shift from the standard reading of Creation. In essence, these teachings tell us that we aren’t just the rulers over the creatures of the earth, we’re not just the earth’s caretakers, but rather we are the Universe; every corner of creation is within us.  When we look deep enough into our own hearts, we’ll find God right there, creating the universe in every moment, in every breath.  Deep within our own hearts is all the potential for all the Tikkun Olam—the healing that this world needs. 

In this day and age, if, indeed, we are to be an Or LaGoyim, a light to the world, then we must take our Judaism to a deeper level:  our Torah is not just an academic teaching about our place in the world; it’s a call to feel the beauty and the suffering of the world as a basic element of our religious experience.  We must feel the pathos of our planet as our own deepest experience and teach the world the wisdom that to take the Earth in vain is to take the name of God in vain.  That if we pollute the air, we are in reality polluting our very souls: because our souls are called Nishmat Kol Chai, the breath of all life.  To decimate the soil is to decimate our own bodies, for we are bnei Adam, the children of Adam, whose name is from Adamah, meaning Earth itself.  To hurt the trees of the forest, we are in fact desecrating our Torah, for the Torah is called Etz Chayim, the true Tree of Life.

This is the moment when we need to step forward as Jews in the world and proclaim the Truth of Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad – that until humankind wakes up and sees how we and everything are all One, there is no hope for this world.

This, of course, is no small task.  I believe that now is the time for our very Halakhah, for our Jewish law to advance and progress to meet the changing needs of this ailing and globalizing world.   We cannot just uphold a Judaism that glorifies an ancient past; but we must put forward a Judaism that gives us meaningful actions to address the present and future. 

We have a magnificent system called Kashrut:  our dietary laws of separating milk and meat; of slaughtering procedures that emphasize kindness to animals.  But today we live in a world that has invented factory farming that is destroying the environment and creating unprecedented harsh treatment and inhumane conditions for animals.  This factory farming is the norm in most non-Kosher meat and poultry production, but this is even happening in Kosher facilities as well:  if we are to take Kashrut seriously then we must advance what is known as “Eco-Kashrut,” a Kashrut for the new era:  a Kashrut that demands that the environment and tza’ar ba’alei chayim, the compassionate treatment of animals be a fundamental consideration of considering something Kosher, or fit for Jewish consumption:  

Kashrut is only one example of the kinds of actions we need to start taking in the world as Jews.  Our Halakhic system has always been evolving, and it must continue.  We must create an ethics of environmentalism in our religious and personal practice that constantly teaches us that it is a mitzvah not just to avoid hurting the earth, but to actively support all causes and institutions that revere the soil, the air, and the water on the Earth.

I am asking something extraordinary of all of us in this community:  I am asking us to consider adopting a new way of relating to our Judaism:  To see Judaism as a religion that evolves – as the whole universe and the world itself evolves.  We must move toward a Judaism of Interconnectedness, a Torah of Interbeing.  A Judaism based on wisdom that has been around for centuries, but has gotten lost, particularly in the last century. And the world needs to hear this Torah of Everything-In-the-Oneness so very badly. 

And that is why this year, we will be taking the lead in the Jewish world once again by becoming a Green Congregation.  Our Board of Directors has voted on our officially becoming a partner congregation in the Sustainable Sanctuaries Program of an organization known as GreenFaith.  The first program of its kind in the country, Sustainable Sanctuaries will help our congregation model environmentally sustainable behavior to the community, and we will become a center of religious-environmental activism. 

Temple Israel will adopt environmentalist projects for the next 18 – 24 months:  we have already done an energy-usage inventory on our congregation and have taken meaningful steps to reduce our energy waste significantly in the functioning of this building.  We will be looking into the fiscally sound use of wind, solar and other sustainable energy in our facilities, and we will work on waste reduction and more efficient recycling, as well as replacing the use of toxic cleaning and other chemicals with environmentally sound ones.  We have already made the commitment to have my house on Woodbine Court purchase its power from the new windmills that were recently put up in Atlantic City.  These projects will demonstrate to us and to the wider community not only that we care, but that every household can do something as well.

We will continue to learn and study about our Jewish spiritual relationship to our world.  The theme of our adult education program this year is Jewish Healing.  And as with all things, to heal ourselves is to heal the entire world.  Please come to Temple Israel on October 30^th, as we will be having a special screening of the new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, followed by a discussion.  .

And finally, we will work on taking substantive action in our Tikkun Olam, or heal the world committee, to pool our resources and strength to work on some real causes of environmental justice.  We will be organizing environmental health tours of local regions for our Temple Israel religious school Children and for Adults; we are looking into advocating for emissions reductions from diesel and other exhausts from our chocked roadways:  Every act of healing we learn about and perform can in a very real way affect the entire world, because each of us is a world unto ourselves

 We, as a Jewish community, must be motivated by our Judaism, and take action to heal the whole world.  According to the Rainforest Action Network, “more than an acre-and-a-half is lost every second of every day (that’s an area the size of two football fields a second!). At that rate, we lose an area more than twice the size of Florida every year, and if present rates of destruction continue, half our remaining rainforests will be gone by the year 2025, and by 2060 there will be no rainforests remaining on the earth at all.  Many scientists call the rainforests, the Lungs of the Earth.  To destroy the rainforest is, in a very real sense in Judaism, to destroy our own lungs in our own bodies, and in the bodies of our children.  

 We all know the famous quote from the Talmud:  to save a life is to save the whole world.  Hopefully we understand that quote more deeply today.  And the converse of that quote is equally true as well:  to save the whole world, is to save each and every life—my life, your life, our children’s lives.  Each day is a new chance, a new opportunity to heal this broken world. 

 And nothing is too small or insignificant in that process of saving each other in the world.  Each time we turn off the water when we brush our teeth, we conserve the precious water of our planet, and we are in truth hydrating our own bodies and giving drink to our children. Each time we turn off our lights when we’re not using them, when we take care not to let our cars idle when we’re waiting in the car, each time we take care to recycle, we are in truth nurturing our loved ones, b/c our every small saving act is an act of Creation itself. 

 I hope you will take a look at the Greenfaith pledge card on your seat.  I would like to ask each and every one of you to take that card home, and after Rosh HaShanah, decide which boxes you would like to check off—even if it’s only one box.  Please then bring it with you to shul on Yom Kippur, together with your food pantry donation.  Our Tikkun Olam committee will tally up the results and print them in Temple Talk and we can all see and celebrate how we all have begun to making a difference in this One World, this One Creation of which we are all a part. 

 We say that God is ham’chadesh b’tuvo bchol yom maaseh bereshit:  that God in God’s goodness, good actions renews Creation each and every day, each and every moment.  With each and every choice we make, a whole new life, a whole new universe is created.

 Hayom Harat Olam:  Today is the birthday of the world.  Today, right now, we can create the universe anew together with God because that power is in each of our hearts, it lies in the potential strength of each and every one of us.  All it takes is for us to raise our awareness to Melo Kol HaAretz Kevodo: to see that each of us inter-exists together with every creature, every mountain, every sea, and every flower.  We can create the world anew when we resolve to teach this Truth through our words, through our choices, through our actions to Kol Yoshvei Teivel:  to all the inhabitants of this One world we share. 

 May this new world that we create on this day be one of health and joy, of renewal and blessing for us and for our children, for generations to come.  Amen.