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by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen Shana Tova! May your year be filled with unexpected moments of insight, delight, and blessing. May you remember that we all belong.  May you notice the subtleties.  May you be transported by wonder.  May you remember to look closely.  May you find windows of opportunity.  May you be caught by a friend when you fall.  May your losses be transformed to beauty.  May you feel your covenant renewed.  May you tap into your creativity.  May you catch glimpses of nourishment amongst the chaos.  May you recognize your limits.  May you experience stillness and quiet.  May your new year be blessed amidst the storm and the wind. Shana tova, may you have a good year. Rabbi Katy Allen
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by Rabbi Josh Breindel  I speak fluent Cat. For most of my life, I’ve lived with these furry companions, learning to read the complex signals in the turn of an ear, the flick of a whisker, the brush of a tail. From our cats, I learned that true listening can be done with eyes as well as ears, and also with the heart. Over the years, I’ve learned that listening fully, both to humans and to cats, requires me to set my own words and expectations aside. When I practice inner stillness, allowing what I’m hearing to enter my being, I become a far better companion. This kind of awareness is especially important as Rosh Hashanah draws close. We’re entering the season of teshuvah, our time to “return” to our best selves by making amends for past missteps. Whether I’ve slighted a friend or failed to heed the Earth’s urgent messages about climate instability, repair begins with the same practice: setting aside my assumptions and truly absorbing what’s being communicated. A Hasidic story of the Yehudi (Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak) makes a similar point. Once, as he and his disciple Peretz crossed a meadow, they heard cows lowing and geese rising in flight, honking with a clap of wings. “If only we could understand what they’re saying!” Peretz cried. “When you can understand what you yourself are saying,” his teacher answered, “you will understand the language of all creatures” (adapted from Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim). The Yehudi knew what my cats have taught me: deep listening needs both external attention and internal awareness of my own biases and shortcomings. Without both, we miss important details and deny ourselves the opportunity to bring our best selves forward. This kind of mindfulness lies at the heart of real teshuvah. When relationships need repair, I must listen carefully to understand the impact of my actions so that I can decide on the most authentic and helpful reply. Our relationship with the Earth deserves a similar focus. Climate change speaks through the language of extreme weather and ecosystem disruption. Meaningful response – environmental teshuvah – requires us to examine our own patterns of consumption and commit ourselves to improving our relationship with the natural world in healthful ways. As we enter Rosh Hashanah, the threshold of the New Year, we’re called to practice this art of deep listening with renewed intention. May we open our whole being to our loved ones (of however many feet) and to our planet so that we can respond with loving intent, bringing healing and renewal to the year ahead. Rabbi Josh Breindel joined Beth El on July 1, 2018. Previously, he served nine years as rabbi of Temple Anshe Amunim (TAA) in Pittsfield, Mass. He earned a B.A. in philosophy with a minor in classics and a concentration in legal studies from Brandeis University. Settling in the Boston area, he served as education consultant at Kerem Shalom in Concord, core instructor for 11th-grade students at Prozdor of Hebrew College in Newton, and assistant director of education at Temple Shir Tikvah in Winchester. After completing master’s degrees in Jewish studies and Jewish education, he was ordained at Hebrew College in 2009.
Rabbi Breindel has particular interests in Jewish storytelling, theater and folklore, and he’s passionate about Jewish science fiction and fantasy — he leads the online Jewish Fantasy and Sci-Fi Book Clubthat’s open to all. You can follow him on Facebook at RabbiJoshB. by Kohenet Shamirah  On the head of the year We stand and blow The curved horn That once stood proud On the head of the ram Each blast, each sound, each alarm, each calling Awakens our souls To act, to protest, to rally So that it may be a year Of goodness. Of Peace. Of abundance for all. כָּל שָׁנָה שֶׁאֵין מַתְרִיעִין עָלֶיהָ בָרִאשׁוֹנָה סוֹף שֶׁמַּתְרִיעִין עָלֶיהָ בְסוּפָהּ. Any year for which no shofar was blown at the start, one will have to blow at the end. —Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 2:1 כל שנה … מריעין לה בסופה if people neglect to sound the Shofar in the beginning of the year (on New Year’s Day), they will sound the truʿah for it at its end (on public fast days on account of calamities) —Jastrow’s Dictionary Kohenet Shamirah aka Sarah Chandler is a Brooklyn-based Jewish educator, artist, activist, healer, and poet. An advanced student of Kabbalistic dream work at The School of Images, she is the CEO of Shamir Collective, as a coach and consultant to high profile musicians, artists, and authors to launch new works. She is a co-author of the recently published zine “Expanding the Field: A DIY Rosh Hashanah Companion” from Ayin Press.
by Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner  Eight weeks postpartum with my first child—an unlikely miracle, given that I’m 42—I watch my daughter wake in the dawn light. She arches her back extravagantly and raises her arms high above her head. Later, she slumps heavy on my chest, napping. Later still, she brushes her fingers back and forth across a nubbly blanket. Throughout the day she drinks hungrily, burps loudly after crying, passes gas as she looks in my eyes and smiles. She doesn’t know how to shrink. She inhabits her body to its limits and there meets the world unfolding. “Make your body your home however you please.” Eight weeks postpartum, this message appears on my screen. Despite the physical marathon of early parenthood, I still live largely inside my head, its walls made of my worries and doubts. My daughter helps me see the meagerness of this. She helps me recall how the world unscrolls—slowly, dramatically, astonishingly—when I step out from under the shelter of my fear. “Make your body your home however you please.” Eight weeks postpartum, I look up and it’s Elul. The Hebrew month calls for teshuvah, return, and carries us into Rosh HaShanah, the birth day of the world. Suspended between birth and rebirth, I hear a new kind of call: Come back, the call says. Come back, be at ease, be at home. This is your birthright, the call says. To be, unshrinking. To be, in yourself and in the world. Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner is a climate change chaplain, educator, and innovative spiritual leader. The founder of Exploring Apocalypse, she helps individuals and communities across faith traditions explore the spiritual disruptions, invitations, and reorientations of living in a time of change.
by Alan Sugar  The rain comes down. I turn away. I do not bless the end of day. And when the light comes back to me, I do not thank the world I see. These are the gifts that I forget. Without remorse. Without regret. The leaves now fall, and all is still. Will these forgive? Oh yes, they will. Despite my pain and my despair, they will return. They will be there. Through day and night, in sun and showers, the earth sustains. And it is ours. Flowers wait beneath the snow. And in the dark, the stars still glow. The day begins and goes away, for those who sin and those who pray. For thieves and schemers who steal and lie. For fools and dreamers such as I. The rain that falls-- from this I drink. At end of day, I nod and blink. And when I wake-- afraid, alone, the world I see becomes my own. The leaves now fall. I call to each. The trees are bare. But, oh, they reach. I see it all, both small and great. And all that fades, I recreate. Bring me the sun, so I may sing-- far from my tears that blind and sting. A breeze that sighs. A soft caress. A hand to hold. A soul to bless. Alan Sugar. Now retired from a career in Special Education, Alan works as a writing tutor at Perimeter College of Georgia State University. His professional background, working with special needs children, has influenced his work. Alan finds much comfort in writing his poems. They allow him to express a need for balance, wholeness, and self. His work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, The Jewish Literary Journal, The Lyric, The Ekphrastic Review, The Awakenings Review, RFD, and Autism Parenting Magazine.
by Trisha Arlin  Light candles now, In your home For the homeless. For the displaced With no place They can afford; For the first peoples Whose lands and cultures Were stolen or degraded; For the animals Invading your backyards. How dare they walk where they once lived; For those on islands Swamped by the rising water, Ocean where there once was land; For those who survived a shooting, There is no more safety, It is lost forever; For the addicted whose illness Destroys their true selves While the greedy make money; For the warred upon and bombed out, Starving and hopeless, Not even a tent to sleep in; For the houses and habitats Burnt up in climate change’s fires, And everything gone; For the immigrants, Losing the old lands to violence and poverty And so violently unwelcome in the new. Where will they light their candles now? This is our covenant: Take care of the earth And it will take care of you. So it is upon us! Build housing; Make reparations; Preserve wilderness; End fossil fuels; Restrict guns; Treat addiction; Cease fire; Live sustainably; Welcome immigrants. Create new homes And save the old ones. Light candles, Now. Amen Trisha Arlin is a liturgist and teacher of prayer writing in Brooklyn, NY. She is published in various anthologies and siddurim, in her book, Place Yourself (Dimus Parrhesia Pess) and online at Ritualwell, OpenSiddur and her site, Trisha Arlin: Words of Prayer and Intention. She writes with the Bayit Liturgical Artists and was Liturgist In Residence at the National Havurah Conference.
by Andy Oram  We all understand that our individual efforts to improve ourselves (t'shuvah) will fall short of solving the climate crisis. Our society, after many decades of avoiding disruptive, transformative change, must act drastically to ratchet back the worsening environmental devastation. It is tempting, in our culture, to associate an eschatological "end of days" scenario with disaster as well as with salvation. We should not overdramatize our situation and call down God's rage; that will not help us move society toward the necessary action. But it's interesting to see the various uses made in the Jewish Bible of the "end of days" concept, expressed in Hebrew as "b'aḥarit hayamim." The word "b'aḥarit" is a subtle one. Its root, "aḥar," means both "other" and "after." It's the opposite of "b'reishit," the word that begins Genesis and is traditionally translated as "in the beginning." I like to translate "b'aḥarit" as "afterness" and see "b'aḥarit hayamim" as a radical disconnection from the past. The word "hayamim," which means "the days," indicates a period of time. Thus, the entire phrase suggests both something that's very different from our current society and a new phase of society that leaves the current one behind. Physicists say that before the Big Bang, there was not only no universe but no time. Eschatologists suggest that "b'aḥarit hayamim" will be another Big Bang that brings time to an end. The peace of Shabbat will always rein. What does time have to do with our environmental problems? To fix them, we have to stop prioritizing efficiency and maximizing our use of time. We can't try to extract every bit of resources from the Earth, faster and faster, as we're doing now. The phrase "b'aḥarit hayamim" appears about a dozen times in the Bible, usually heralding a Golden Age of peace and justice (Isaiah 2:2, Ezekiel 38:16, Hosea 3:5, Micah 4:1, Daniel 2:28, Daniel 10:14). Christians built on this hope, but the Jewish aftertime does not entail the destruction of our world—rather its unification under ideal conditions. Incidentally, the Jews are not the only ones who can look forward to "b'aḥarit hayamim": It can refer to the restoration of other peoples, such as Moab (Jeremiah 48:47) or Elam (Jeremiah 49:39). Furthermore, "b'aḥarit hayamim" intersects with t'shuvah. In one part of Deuteronomy (verse 4:30), the phrase indicates when the children of Israel will reconnect with God, an early concept of t'shuvah. T'shuvah reappears in Hosea 3:5, where the children of Israel ask for God in days to come–"b'aḥarit hayamim." When we are ready to give up our frenetic pace of living; when we are ready for development to serve the Earth and its people rather than the reverse; when we are ready to enter into a different relationship with time—then we will do the t'shuvah we need to save the planet. And we will all prosper under this anotherness of days. Andy Oram is a writer and editor in the computer field. Print publications where his writings have appeared include The Economist, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and Vanguardia Dossier. Andy has lived in the Boston, Massachusetts area for 50 years and been a member of Temple Shir Tikvah, Winchester for more than 30 years. He has created numerous essays and poems on Jewish themes.
by Rabbi Marisa Elana James  Elul A thin slice of moon It transforms and gleams As my soul prepares My anticipation Of a new year The cycle Recurring like tides With the Earth The clouds spinning eastwards Turning together The moon and the month Waxing and waning and waxing again The moon and the month Turning together The clouds spinning eastwards With the Earth Recurring like tides The cycle Of a new year My anticipation As my soul prepares It transforms and gleams A thin slice of moon Elul Rabbi Marisa Elana James (she/her/hers) is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Director of Social Justice Programming at CBST (Congregation Beit Simchat Torah) in New York. Marisa and her wife, contrabassoonist and translator Barbara Ann Schmutzler, live in New York City.
By Thea Iberall Thanksgiving is always a big deal in my family, but the Thanksgiving I learned the truth was even bigger. I was writing a dystopian novel: bad chemicals in the ground, strange substances in the air. Birds were dying and frogs were heating up. I started telling my older sister about it and I’ll never forget what she said. “You don’t have to make it up.” She plopped me down in front of her computer and showed me a graph. It was like a hockey stick: the shaft of the stick along the x axis representing the world I had grown up in. On the right side, growing out of the stick and heading upwards were heat, carbon dioxide, and methane. Temperature and greenhouse gases growing out of control. “That’s real?” I asked.  “Hockey stick graph” Global temperature reconstruction of the last two millennia with instrumental temperature from 1880 to 2020 The computer screen was sitting on a black desk built into the walls. I could hear my cousins’ voices from the dining room and the clinking of silverware. I remembered times in my life when I had felt the beauty of the world. How I sat outside my tent one night at Death Valley at four in the morning. The air was so clear it twinkled. Vermillion mariposa lilies were in bloom, their petals smiling in the coolness. A coyote ran by. I could feel a slight mist on my skin as my pores breathed in the dew. I had never liked the desert until that moment. I could feel life pulsing. It was far from dead. No one had ever told me that deserts are alive.  My sister Norrie "Doc" Robbins smiling in a desert with wildflowers And then there was the time I stood at the top of Glacier National Park looking back over the five miles I had just hiked. Three pristine pools of glacial waters were below me like sparkling steps, one feeding into the other—paternoster lakes of blue-green water contrasting against the white quartzite and dark green Jefferson pines. It was magical.  Glacial lakes My sister nodded yes. Staring at that graph, I began thinking of future generations, my grandchildren and their grandchildren, how they will never know the subtleties of a benign nature. How deserts will die as harsher windstorms carry off the sand and microbes. How flower seeds will get too hot to sprout. How glaciers will dry up and breath-taking turquoise lakes will disappear. How we can be filled by the brilliance of life around us and take it for granted. It has been so easy to forget that we – that I –contribute to the destruction of our world on a daily basis. That I am destroying the deserts and the glaciers. As are the fossil fuel giants through their massive disinformation campaigns. The Jewish word “teshuvah” reminds me to acknowledge wrongdoing and to change. After that Thanksgiving, I began working on reducing my carbon footprint. I joined protests and advocacy campaigns. And I went home and started rewriting my novel. There was a lot to say. Photo Credits: Hockey Stick image. The original northern hemisphere hockey stick graph of Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999, Date May 5, 2013. Author: Klaus Bittermann. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license Glacial Lakes. Photo by John Johnston, 2007, CC BY 2.0 license, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ateabutnoe/128035713 Thea Iberall, PhD, is on the leadership team of the Jewish Climate Action Network-MA. Iberall is the author of "The Swallow and the Nightingale," a visionary fiction novel about a 4,000-year-old secret brought through time by the birds. In this fable, she addresses the real moral issue of today: not whom you love, but what we are doing to the planet. Iberall is also the playwright of "We Did It For You!" – a musical about how women got their rights in America, told by the women who were there. Along with her family, she was inducted into the International Educators Hall of Fame for creative teaching methods. In her work, she bridges between heart and mind and teaches through performance, the written word, poetry, sermons, workshops, and storytelling. www.theaiberall.com.
by Leah F. Cassorla  Humanity, indoors, Blasts The AirCon; The global thermostat Rises in return. Masked, Black-uniformed, Armed, Liberty—turned inward-- Demands, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses!” The FEMA team, Turns to the crowd, Water at their knees, Hands out plastic bottles, Plastic tents, Plastic food. We keep dying of consumption. You put your mask on first, But you and I can’t breathe, Cannot turn to help each other. The self-made-man, Stood on the backs of Those he rendered invisible, Turns away, And proclaims himself God. Where will he stand when They have perished, Returned to dust and ash? What will he say to God When he meets Her? And what will She say In return? Leah F. Cassorla, Ph.D., MFA, is studying for a Kol-Bo (dual ordination) at Academy for Jewish Religion. She believes our climate and political crises are deeply intertwined and driven by unfettered capitalism.
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