Second Day Rosh Hashanah 5780/2019
It happened once that NASA decided to send three clergy into space: a priest, a minister and a rabbi. They orbited around the earth. When they returned, the press crowded around their landing site. They wanted to know, what was the experience like?
The priest said: “It was awe inspiring. I felt as if I was in the presence of God.”
The minister said: “Looking down at the earth and seeing the majesty of God’s creation was humbling.”
The rabbi said: “Oy! It was exhausting!”
“Exhausting?” Asked a reporter. “Why was it exhausting?”
“Why?” replied the rabbi. “Do you know how many times that rocket circled the earth? I could barely keep up. Wrapping and unwrapping my tefillin over and over, davening Shacharit-Mincha-Maariv, Shacharit-Mincha-Maariv, Shacharit-Mincha-Maariv….!”
In truth, the view of the earth from outer space is one of the most majestic and one of the most humbling images ever seen. Something profound happens to every astronaut who takes in that sight. It even has its own name: The Overview Effect. It is an experience of mental clarity, a shift in awareness that happens as a result of seeing what astronaut Buzz Aldrin called “a brilliant jewel in a black velvet sky.”
Looking down on the entire globe, there is a tremendous sense of awe. It is what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called radical amazement. All borders and boundaries seem meaningless and the astronaut realizes that each of us is part of something far greater that transcends human pettiness. There is a realization of the miraculous nature of our entire world as one intricate and finely balanced organism, a delicate work of art that could never be duplicated by mortals. Seeing it hanging in the void like a feather held aloft by a breeze, there is also the realization of just how precarious our existence is.
Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin wrote, “That beautiful, warm living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart…. “
Shuttle astronaut Sandra Magnus, who logged 133 days in orbit aboard the International Space Station, remarked that “It is all connected, it is all interdependent…. You look out the window, and in my case, I saw the thinness of the atmosphere, and it really hit home, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is a fragile ball of life that we’re living on.’
And Yuri Gargarin, the first human being to orbit the earth in 1961, returned from that flight and said: “I marveled at the beauty of our planet… “People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty, and not destroy it.”
The truth is that we are destroying our planet. Every day through a myriad of actions, as individuals and as a society we engage in acts which shorten the earth’s life span. Most of the time we do not even stop to think about it. Often, we are genuinely unaware of it.
I will not attempt to catalog here all the damage that we do. A sampling will suffice.
Scientists estimate that species on this planet are becoming extinct at between 1000 and 10,000 times the natural background rate – that is, the rate at which extinction would happen without human activity. In the Amazon Rainforest, 4000-6000 unique species are destroyed every single year. Here in North America, a new study shows that 3 billion birds disappeared from our skies in the past 50 years. There are 30% less birds in North America today than there were in 1969. What will our skies look like in another 50 or 100 years? Will there be any birds left?
Eight million metric tons of plastics are dumped into our oceans every year, having a devastating impact on some 700 different marine species. That’s eight million new metric tons on top of the 150 million metric tons already in our oceans. There are five massive patches of plastic in the oceans around the world. These huge concentrations of plastic debris cover large swaths of the ocean and are so thick that many fish who live among them eat mostly plastic. the one between California and Hawaii is the size of the state of Texas. Plastic is found in the ocean as far as 11 kilometers deep, meaning synthetic fibers have contaminated even the most remote place on Earth. By 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans by weight than there are fish. More plastic than fish.
Beyond life threatening entanglements, plastic can interfere with the digestive and immune systems and dumps hormones and dangerous, often carcinogenic toxins into an animal’s bloodstream.
Did you know that land contains between four and twenty-three times more plastic than the ocean? You don’t always see it. As with the ocean, much of it is micro- and nano-plastics – particles so small they escape our notice. Those plastic particles leach dangerous chemicals into our groundwater.
It’s not just animals that are affected. Don’t forget we eat those animals, and when we do, we ingest the plastic inside them. Not only that, much of our food packaging releases nano plastics or leaches chemicals into our food. Every glass of water you drink – regardless of whether it is bottled or from the tap – contains almost two thousand nano-particles of plastic. In fact, every person in America on average consumes the amount of plastic in a credit card – 5 grams – every single week. Its true. Picture a stack of 52 credit cards. That’s 260 grams, or just over 9 ounces of plastic that you ingest every year.
This summer, Naomi and I saw amazing natural beauty as we hiked through Utah’s National Parks. We also saw the devastating effects of climate change on that region. We witnessed large areas of forest decimated by beetles which have migrated to the area because of warming. The Colorado river’s water flow – the source of water for seven states and Northern Mexico, has decreased by 19%. These are the effects of global warming, of climate change: the heating of our planet.
While biking in Alberta, I visited the Columbia Icefields and the six glaciers that spin off of it. One of those, the Athabasca glacier, has retreated two kilometers since 1850. Many of the world’s glaciers will be gone by mid-century, including those in the Rocky Mountains, in the Andes, in Africa and in the Pyrenees in Europe. Others will have diminished significantly and will not last much longer. How important are those glaciers? Asian glaciers feed rivers that provide 40% of the world’s population with drinking water. Our drinking water here, in Cleveland, is taken from Lake Erie, whose water source is the glaciers of North America.
Arctic ice is also melting at an alarming rate. All this melting ice is causing dramatically higher sea levels. Eight of the Solomon Islands have already disappeared under the waves of the sea. The Marshall Islands look like they will be next. The effects on coastal cities around the world will be devastating. Miami is investing in technology to find ways to hold off the water that is slowly flooding the city. Here in the Great Lakes, New York Times reporters journeyed all the way around Lake Michigan this summer. They found that every single community they visited was impacted by rising waters. One house that was hundreds of yards from the beach now has Lake Michigan lapping at its porch.
Global warming is also causing more severe weather systems like Hurricane Dorian this past summer and producing droughts and fires across the globe.
Climate change is real. According to NASA’s official website, 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming is a threat to our planet and that it is caused by human activity that sends carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, trapping heat. Eighteen major scientific associations – in case you are counting, that is all of them – also agree. So does the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
The question is: Why are these Jewish issues? Why am I taking time to talk to you about this on Rosh Hashanah, on one of the three most holy days of the entire calendar?
Well, to begin with, today is the birthday of the world. We just said it in Musaf. Our children sang it to us after each sounding of the shofar: ???? ??? ???? hayom harat olam – “Today is the day the world was born, the day the world came into being.” We celebrate the world as a way of celebrating God’s sovereignty. We marvel at Creation. We have an obligation to that Creation.
In the Torah, God admonishes the Israelites, ?? ?? ???? ki li ha’aretz. The land, says God, is Mine. You are simply tenants on it. We do not own this earth. It is not ours to do with as we please without regard to the consequences of our actions and their impact on the world. Our role in this world is as its caretakers.
It is true that God commanded Adam and Eve to fill the earth and subdue it. That instruction suggests that the world is at our disposal to use as we desire. But the Torah also tells us that Adam and Eve were placed on this earth ????? ?????? l’ovdah ul’shomrah – to serve the earth and to protect it. That means that our permission to make use of the planet is limited by our obligation to nurture it and to ensure the planet comes to no harm. In this season of repentance, as we search our souls for the sins that we have committed and seek forgiveness before Yom Kippur, high on that list should be the harm that we have caused to God’s Creation.
The rabbis expand on our need to strike this balance in a beautiful midrash which envisions God taking Adam by the hand and leading him around the Garden. God introduced Adam to every tree in the Garden, and then God said to him, “See how wonderful and pleasant these trees are! All of this I have created for you. Therefore, take great care that you do not damage and destroy My world, for if you do there is no one else to set it right after you.”
Our sages derived the command to protect the earth from a seemingly innocuous command in the Torah: “When in your war against a city, you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down.” “Are trees of the field human”,” asks the Torah, “to withdraw before you into the besieged city?”
The rabbis understood this law to be meant as just one example of a larger prohibition which they labeled ?? ????? bal tashchit – the prohibition of wanton destruction.
Listen to the reason the Torah gives for this law prohibiting destruction: “Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?” In other words, the earth cannot speak up for itself, says the Torah. The earth cannot flee or defend itself from you. So, we must speak up for the earth and ensure its wellbeing.
Maimonides learns this value from a different law, that of ????? ??? shiluach ha-ken. The Torah states that if you see a mother bird with her young or with eggs, you must not take them together. You must send away the mother bird and only then may you take the young or the eggs. Fulfilling this mitzvah, says the Torah, will guarantee you long life. Maimonides explains the reason behind this law. He teaches that if people always took the mother with her young or eggs it would cause the species to be extinct. In understanding that threat, the Maimonides was ahead of his time.
The anonymous author of Sefer Hinukh, a 13th century commentary on the Torah’s commandments, goes even farther. He wrote: “This is the way of the righteous and those who improve society, who love peace and rejoice in the good in people and bring them close to Torah: that nothing, not even a mustard seed, should be lost to the world, that they should regret any loss or destruction that they see, and if possible they will prevent any destruction that they can.”
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the leading Orthodox rabbi of nineteenth century Germany, viewed ?? ????? bal tashchit – the commandment against bringing destruction to our world – as the most basic Jewish principle of all: to acknowledge the sovereignty of God and the limitations on our own will and ego. He wrote that when we preserve the world around us, we act with the understanding that God owns everything. However, when we destroy, we are, in effect, worshipping the idols of our own desires, living only for self-gratification without keeping God in mind. By observing ?? ????? bal tashchit, we restore our harmony not only with the world around us, but also with God’s will, which we place before our own.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, chief rabbi of Palestine before the Jewish state and noted Jewish mystic and scholar, commented on the command in Genesis that Man should rule over nature. He said: “’rule’ does not mean the arbitrary power of a tyrannical ruler who whimsically and cruelly governs in order to satisfy his personal desires. Such a repulsive form of servitude could not be forever sealed in the world of God, whose “tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalm 145:9). Rather, says Rav Kook, “to rule over the world means to do so in order to care for the world and look after its wellbeing, just as God, the compassionate Ruler of all, looks after us.”
Today, knowing what we do about the effects of our actions on the world, we could add that cleaning up our planet and fighting global warming are also preserving human life. After many decades of talking about environmentalism as protecting the planet, we have finally come to understand that when we do not protect the planet, we endanger our own existence as well. Preserving human life, after all, is the highest imperative in Judaism.
Our tradition teaches that we are ????? ?? ?????? shutafo shel Ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu – we are partners with the holy one in creating this world. During these Days of Awe we should contemplate the ways we have let God down in that role, and how we might set it right.
The task ahead of us is daunting. Scientists say that we have already crossed the Rubicon. We will not be able to avoid some of the most serious effects of global warming. We will have to find a way to live with them. But we can still spare ourselves from the worst catastrophe. We can still save our planet and ourselves if we turn to the task of caring for our world responsibly.
We must learn to reduce our carbon output. We must find ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the ground. No less daunting is the task of reducing our use of plastics and figuring out what to do with them, or the task of preserving species. But we have no choice.
The task is laid out before us. In Pirke Avot we read that Rabbi Tarfon said:
?? ???? ?????? ????? ??? ??? ??-????? ????? ???? lo alecha hamlacha ligmor v’lo atah ben horin l’hivatel mimenah – It is not your duty to complete the work, but neither are you free to walk away from it.
May we together commit ourselves to the sacred work of saving our planet.