by Thea Iberall

​Signal Hill stands 365 feet above Long Beach in Southern California looking down on San Pedro Bay, home of the largest US port. In the 1500s, Tongva tribe members stood on the hill sending smoke signals to their families on Catalina Island. Early settlers used to call it the Bay of Smokes. Eventually, large homes were built on the hill, surrounded by an abundance of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Even a Hollywood movie studio shot films there.

Signal Hill changed forever when oil was discovered in 1921. It became covered with over 100 oil derricks. They called it Porcupine Hill. It’s still a productive oil field, although it doesn’t look like one. There are still families living there in big houses surrounded by orange trees and flowers.

Buried deep in the fault zone, the secret is hidden 
in the stench of the hill. I can feel it—smothered layers of
dead diatoms, algae that once photosynthesized sunlight 
into hydrocarbons. For millions of years, the remains
of the algae were buried, heated and pressurized, filling 

pockets in clay rocks, accumulating into massive amounts of oil--
rich, thick, debauched oil that fuels our trucks and planes
and lives as we send smoke signals with our cell phones 
using the electricity sparked up by the secret of this hill.

On the hill, ten oil pumpjacks are caught in
various angles like low-nodding donkeys straining 
to drain the hill of its black money and fetored decay. 
There used to be hundreds of oil derricks on this foggy 
hill like porcupine quills. It’s not that there are fewer,
it’s that most are camouflaged as condos and playgrounds. 

I am reminded of the Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds by Farid-ud-din Attar. In this masterpiece, the birds of the world gather to seek a king. They are guided by the hoopoe who takes them through seven valleys. At each valley, the hoopoe shares obscure anecdotes to teach the birds (think of Zen Buddhism koans). For the Valley of Detachment, the hoopoe shares a story about a seeker on a spiritual quest. He meets a dog keeper who says he abandoned his spiritual life after 30 years to take care of dogs. When the seeker expresses his confusion, the dog keeper says, “I would rather look ridiculous than only appear as if I know the meaning of a spiritual life.” The dog keeper teaches the seeker how to take care of the dogs, and after much repetition, the seeker detaches from his search and learns it is enough to be living a homesteader’s life. 

Out in San Pedro Bay are four small artificial islands (the THUM Islands) with buildings, a ritzy hotel, sculptured screens, a waterfall, and palm trees. At night, the structures are lit by colored lights. It’s quite beautiful, especially from atop Signal Hill. But it’s all fake, like a movie set. They’re actually a pump station. No one lives there; you’re arrested if you try to land. The billionth barrel of oil was pumped from the oil field in 2011. The islands were named for an acronym for the consortium of companies who built them: Texaco, Humble (now Exxon), Unocal, Mobil, and Shell.

Attar says, “Do you want to look spiritual or be spiritual?” Do you want to be a living environment for children or just look like one? Do you want to be a tropical island or just look like one? Do you want to do true t’shuvah and return to God during the month of Elul or just look spiritual?

Thea Iberall, PhD, is on the leadership team of the Jewish Climate Action Network-MA. She is the author of The Swallow and the Nightingale, an eco-feminist 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! Women’s Journey Through History – 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 she teaches through performance, the written word, poetry, sermons, workshops, and storytelling.  www.theaiberall.com.

​by Rabbi Suri Krieger

​Green green, it’s green they say, on the far side of the hill
Green green I’m goin’ away to where the grass is greener still.​

It’s a song that was a familiar refrain for me in my growing up years. I loved the message as much as the melody. We were a camping kind of family, and grazing in the greenery of the woodlands was my sacred place. But wherever we went… the Green Mountains of Vermont or the Poconos of Pennsylvania… the green was always somehow marred by the inevitable Fast Food throw-aways of the various camping sojourners. 

These days, I live in what I think to be the Green suburbs, where most of my neighbors, like myself, are quite environmentally conscious. We conscientiously separate our recyclables, we attempt to grow at least a few of our own vegetables, we sign petitions to our local politicians. But within a mile of our pristine green neighborhood, there is a Starbucks, MacDonald’s, Duncan Donuts, and three thriving strip malls.

I am writing at this very moment from the Highlands of Scotland, where I have the good fortune of spending this summer’s vacation. Here green comes in 50 shades. Green and rocks and trails are the colorful souls of these Highlands... and gardens everywhere, the Classic and the Wildflower Garden,  with not a Mall or Strip Mall in sight. We stop at every ‘pull-in’ to take in the view, and I find myself musing… if this were the US, what fast food chain selling Outlander Burgers would pop up here?  What over-the-top Resort would block my view of Castle Eilean Donan ? We would find shop after shop of plastic Loch Ness monsters. 

Grateful am I that there are still some places remaining on this beleaguered planet of ours, where the grounds are not littered with plastic and take-out containers…where the grass is greener still… where there is  preservation of what’s precious in our precariously wounded planet. 

I offer up this ancient blessing: ‘May the Holy On Blessed be She, give you the dew of heaven and the green fatness of the earth’*

Ken yehi ratzon  ~   

May it be so, that our malls be plowed into green pastures, that our fast fooderies blossom into floral havens.
May this be our Tikkun, our Earthly Teshuva.
so may it be!

Reb Suri Krieger is Rabbi of B’nai Or, Jewish Renewal of Greater Boston.


*Blessing adapted from Goldie Milgram’s Mitzvah Stories

by Rabbi Charles R. Lightner ​

And the giants began to kill men and to devour them. And they began to sin against the birds and the beasts and creeping things and the fish, and to devour one another’s flesh. And they drank the blood. Then the earth brought accusation against the lawless ones for all that was done on it. (1 Enoch 7:4-6)[1] 

​And again I saw them, and they began to gore one another, and the earth began to cry out. (1 Enoch 87:1)​

The Book of 1 Enoch is the oldest work of Jewish apocalypse, portions dating to the fourth century BCE. Its original language was Aramaic, and it was important to the sectarian Jews of the last two centuries BCE. The text was lost to the West early in the Common Era but a copy in Greek was translated into the classical Ethiopian language of Ge’ez. That version was preserved for centuries in both the Jewish and the Christian communities of Ethiopia. Copies of the Ethiopic version were brought to Europe in the 18th century, but it was not until 1912 that R. H. Charles published the first definitive translation. 

The book is written from the point of view of the biblical Enoch, the seventh generation of humans from Adam and Eve and the great-grandfather of Noah. Genesis Chapter 6 tells us that divine beings descended to earth in the time of Enoch and began to disrupt the natural order. That disruption and its consequences are the subjects of much of the long text of 1 Enoch. In the biblical account it is that disruption that leads to Genesis 6:6, which tells us that the Lord regretted having made humans, and the Lord’s heart was saddened.

In the Genesis account, the Noah story follows immediately. But most of 1 Enoch takes place in the timeless gap between the account of God’s determination to cleanse the earth of all life and Genesis 6:8, when Noah is introduced. In that gap, 1 Enoch documents a reaction to the evil and the disruption of the natural order. A reaction that we do not find in Genesis.

In 1 Enoch the earth itself rises up, reacting against violence and disruption. The earth brings angry accusation. The earth cries out in pain. In this earliest of Jewish apocalyptic texts, it is the earth itself that objects to being used for ill purposes. It is that objection, it is the earth’s crying out in 1 Enoch 87 that introduces the cleansing Noah story. This ancient text teaches that offenses against the natural order require repair in the physical realm. It adds a dimension to our understanding of t’shuvah. Atonement and repair in matters of the earth are different from and in addition to the t’shuvah required in spiritual and human relationships. 

[1] Translations from: Nickelsburg, George W. E. 1 Enoch 1. Hermeneia–A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Fortress. Minneapolis. 2001 

 
Charles R. Lightner received rabbinic ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religion in 2008. He currently leads a study group and a Shabbat minyan at Temple Emanuel of Westfield, NJ. He studies and writes about the literature of the Second Temple period with an emphasis on apocalypse. 

by Bill Witherspoon

We were supposed to name all the animals.
Lately we have gotten pretty good at it,
While it begins to dawn on us that
Even that slender branch of the tree of life
(Let alone the one on which crawl the slime molds,
Or the branch dotted with archaea microbes that turn salt ponds pink
Or the one spread with green life that converts sunlight into food)
Is just too prolific for words.

Still, 500 animal species named since last Elul
(150 of them the beetles of which She is “inordinately fond”)
Is kind of impressive for an ape that, according to Earth time
Only dropped from the fruit trees day before yesterday. 

Maybe we can be a blessing on creation, singing hallelujah
With the answer machines in our palms.
If, in this season of turning to look at ourselves
We admit that our archery is wide of the target
That it is time to ask directions 
of the keepers of indigenous knowledge
How were we managing to keep it going
For thousands of generations?


Bill Witherspoon is a geologist-educator and for 20 years a Jew by choice. At Congregation Bet Haverim in Atlanta, he sings in its remarkable chorus and occasionally leads services. He is a native of East Tennessee where he was blessed with many visits to its huge national park throughout his formative years. Bill encourages fellow humans to check out Citizens Climate Lobby.

by Rabbi David Seidenberg

The book of Numbers begins, “YHVH spoke to Moshe in the Sinai wilderness.” The midrash asks, why does it specify “in the Sinai wilderness”? Because the wilderness is ready to receive all people and belongs to no one. Just so, the Torah receives all people and belongs to no one, not even to the Jewish people. In the Shmitah year, we are similarly reminded that the land of Israel/Canaan/Palestine belongs to no one – that we are just “sojourners and temporary settlers” (gerim v’toshavim) on the land (Lev 25:23).

The rabbinic word for belonging to no one is hefker. At the beginning of Passover, we declare that any chametz we still have in our dwellings is “hefker, ownerless, like the dirt of the ground”. Wilderness is by definition hefker. In the Shmitah year, all produce, everything growing from the ground, is automatically hefker. And the midrash also teaches that the way to receive Torah is to “make oneself hefker” (Tanchuma).

Rashi explains a strange paradox concerning Shmitah-year produce in his commentary on Leviticus 25:5. The verse says, “your set-aside grapevines n’zirekha you may not store or hoard t’batzer”. According to Rashi, this means that even though anything in the field can be harvested by anyone – including the owner of the field – if the owner intends in their mind to set aside particular grapevines for their private use, they are davka not allowed to eat any grapes from those vines. This is also like the words of Torah: if you learn them to share them and teach them and do them, they can become yours, but if you “hoard” them and don’t put them to use for the benefit of others, they are not yours either.

Rambam (Maimonides) also tells us that it is a violation of the Shmitah year to lock up or fence in one’s fields (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Shmitah 4:24). That’s because they need to be accessible not just to any person, but to any wild animal, because, the Torah says, “all her produce will be for you for eating, and for your servants and for your hired worker and your stranger and for your domesticated animal and for the wild animal of the field” (Lev 25:6). This is one giant step toward the covenant between God and all the animals described by Hoshea: “I will break bow and sword and war from the land and they all will lie down in safety” (Hoshea 2:20).

Maharal explains that Torah is given in the wilderness to show that Torah in its essence is separate from humanity and its materialism, just as wilderness, in order to remain wilderness, must remain separated from human greed and materialism (Tiferet Yisrael 26:5). But also, he teaches that Torah represents the highest fulfillment of what humanity can become, and contains exactly what each person needs in order to reach their own perfection, just as the wilderness contained what was needed for every single person among the children of Israel (Tiferet Yisrael, 16:8).

Since our fields become a direct extension of wilderness in the Shmitah year, Shmitah puts us all in a state, literally and figuratively, to become hefker and to receive revelation, to receive anew the covenant. As we are approaching the end of the Shmitah year, we can ask ourselves, what revelation might we receive from living in Shmitah consciousness? Can Shmitah reveal to us how to fulfill the Torah’s mission to create a sustainable world, a world where we “choose life”?

If we become like the wilderness, we become the very place in which Torah is revealed, and not just the subjects to whom Torah is revealed. If wilderness first means a place where one can venture off alone and separate from society, and if secondly can mean seeing all people as equal in relation to Torah (and to the land), in its fullest expression, it will mean welcoming the diversity of human beings that make up society, the vulnerable, the poor, the stranger, into one’s life, and the diversity of species that make up this world, into the circle of revelation, into the home of one’s spirit.

May we be so blessed to travel those stages and reach those levels, so that when Hashem seeks a partner in revelation, the One will look upon us and say “you are My people”, and we will say, You are my God” (Hoshea 2:25).

Rabbi David Mevorach Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org, author of Kabbalah and Ecology (Cambridge U. Press, 2015), and a scholar of Jewish thought. David is also the Shmita scholar-in-residence at Abundance Farm in Northampton MA. He teaches around the world and also leads astronomy programs. As a liturgist, David is well-known for pieces like the prayer for voting and an acclaimed English translation of Eikhah ("Laments"). David also teaches nigunim and is a composer of Jewish music and an avid dancer.​

by ​Asher Hillel Burstein

by ​Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein

I live on the prairie, in the Prairie State of Illinois. Not a “Little House on the Prairie,” a big house, but there are vistas that remind me of that show. In a county that is known for its dairy farming. Borden Milk came from here. The library is Gail Borden Public Library. That Borden. The house across from the synagogue is known as the “Butterman’s House” because the prices for butter as a commodity were set there. There was even a documentary called “From Dairies to Prairies.”

Once, before it was farmland, it was mostly prairie. Now there are only 6 square miles of prairie in all of Kane County. This past year in the Jewish liturgical calendar was a shmita year, a year the land lies fallow. Our congregation tends a community garden which feeds into the soup kettle’s nightly meal, wrestled with what to do. Should we not plant anything? Do we still need to continue to feed the hungry? What could we do for Tu B’shevat, the new year of the trees, where traditionally we start the seeds for the community garden.

A compromise was reached. For every household, in the congregation, we sent seed paper in the shape of butterflies, enough seeds to plant a pollinator garden, a small butterfly garden, in the hopes that we could help restore the prairie to its natural state. 

We thought this would be important in terms of the long-term health of the environment. We envisioned increased wildflowers including milkweed, the only host plant for monarchs. Monarchs need milkweed for fuel as they migrate long distances between Mexico and southern Canada. We thought we’d see a return of bees and butterflies. ​

by ​Carol Reiman

​Livestreaming ladder of angelic messengers. ​

Wandering, weeping by waters, reaching beyond and within.  ​

Nurturing what was pulled from the reeds, allowing the land and its tenders to rest, leaving food at the edges for those in the margins. ​

by ​Mirele B. Goldsmith, Ph.D.

Before I went to Minnesota, I thought it was very far away. When I was there, my eyes were opened. We are all connected, not least through the water cycle. The molecules of water that flow through my body once traveled the Mississippi River, and soon will again. The water that nourishes the bodies and spirits of Native Americans on the White Earth Reservation, nourishes me. I pray that the joy of swimming in Lake Itasca will give me strength for the struggles ahead. In the powerful mantra of the Anishinaabe and water protectors around the world, “water is life.” 

Dr. Mirele B. Goldsmith is co-chairperson of Jewish Earth Alliance, a national, grassroots network empowering Jewish communities to raise a moral voice for climate action to the US Congress. ​

​by David Krantz 

As Rosh Hashanah approaches, it’s customary for us to take stock — What have we done wrong? What could we be doing better? — but Rosh Hashanah is also a time to look back and consider the many ways we have been blessed. This Elul, as his time in Knesset likely (and unfortunately) comes to a close, we are particularly grateful to Aytzim cofounder and Knesset member Dr. Alon Tal, Israel’s leading environmentalist, for all he has done to improve the well-being of Israel’s land, plants, people and non-human animals. 

Aside from co-founding Aytzim in 2001, Tal also has founded or co-founded a slew of other environmental initiatives, including and not limited to Adam Teva V’Din (the Israel Union for Environmental Defense), the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Ecopeace: Friends of the Earth–Middle East, and Israel’s largest green party, HaMiflaga HaYeruka (formerly the Green Movement). No one else has had a greater impact than Tal on Israel’s landscape of environmental organizations.  

As a co-founder of Aytzim and member of Aytzim’s board, Tal served as one of Aytzim’s representatives to the board of Keren Kayemet L’Yisrael (Jewish National Fund in Israel), helping to green KKL-JNF from the inside out. Along with Dr. Orr Karassin and Dr. Eilon Schwartz, Tal was responsible for leading Aytzim’s biggest efforts to green Israel, resulting in quadrupling the number of trees planted annually, changing the types of trees planted so that they would be suitable for Israel’s arid and semi-arid climate zones, and supporting bicycling by building and expanding bike trails, including trails circumnavigating the Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and running across the country. 

As an academic — at Ben-Gurion University and at Tel Aviv University, among others — Tal literally wrote the book on Israel’s environmental history. “Pollution in a Promised Land” is a must-read primer for anyone interested in Israel’s environment. His many other books and papers have all helped push sustainability issues toward the top of an Israeli agenda typically dominated by concerns about the economy and “the situation,” Israel’s euphemism for the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. 

As the second-ever member of HaYeruka to join the Knesset, Tal has been a steadfast voice for sustainability in Israel. From helping establish parliamentary subcommittees and caucuses addressing climate, health and the environment — including caucuses to protect the Jerusalem Forest and to clean up Haifa Bay — to proposing about two dozen laws to support sustainability in Israel, to issuing more than 70 oversight queries to ministries to help ensure environmental laws are followed properly, Tal has been the most ardent sustainability advocate to ever walk the halls of Knesset. 

Although it is unlikely that Tal will return to Knesset — his low placement on the Benny Gantz-led Blue and White-New Hope list, revealed this week, means that it would take a miracle for Blue and White to receive enough votes for Tal to maintain his seat after elections in November — everyone who cares about Israel and its land and people owe a debt to Tal for his work. I would expect Tal to continue his lifelong work of greening Israel after leaving Knesset, but this Elul is an apt time to express gratitude: Thank you Alon! 

David Krantz is the President of Aytzim: Ecological Judaism.