Rosh Hashanah Morning 5777 - Temple Bat Yam, South Lake Tahoe, CA

See to it that You do not Destroy It, for If You Do, There Will be no one Else to Repair it!


In each generation, there are traits that remind us of the past.  Sometimes it is when the ginger hair appears that has skipped a generation or two, perhaps a new baby with hazel eyes and we wonder where they came from.  Even more powerful is when it stretches beyond the visible, and physical characteristics, behaviors or certain acumen are displayed.  Think about a child, a nephew or niece, perhaps a cousin who talks just like a grandparent.  Consider the traits we hold that at different moments remind us of another member of our families.  The strong Ashkenazic tradition of naming our children for past generations is almost a hope for those strong and positive character traits to manifest in the new life, in the babies we welcome to the world.  In each instance, such attributes serve as a legacy in the chain of generations in our families, they become part of the legacy that links us to our past.  Yet we need not leave all to the chance of genetics and nature, but we ought to consider the nurturing environments we create.  There is a rich tradition in Judaism of imparting to future generations the values we pray will endure.  From Jacob’s dying wishes to his children, the tribes of Israel, to Moses’ charge to the Israelites as he nears his death and beyond, we recognize the power of passing on more than eye color and a certain gate in our step.  Perhaps the import of this practice is embedded deep in our own people’s story.  That first moment we stood as one people ready to accept our role as Am Yisrael holds the roots of this practice.  There is a great Midrash that brings into focus the exchange of Torah to us at Sinai: 

When God was finally ready to give the Torah to the Israelites, the heavenly court expressed concern, and God agreed.  How could we trust human beings with the Torah, they wondered.  Finally God recognized that the destiny of Torah itself, its purpose was to be a guide for all humanity.  So God invites the Israelites to offer guarantors for Torah.  We responded, “Our ancestors will serve as our guarantors.”  God responds that they will not suffice, rather bring me good guarantors.  “Our prophets will be our guarantors,” we responded.  Again, God retorted that the prophets are not sufficient either, bring me good guarantors.  We came back saying, “Indeed, our children will be our guarantors.”  The Holy One said:  Your children are good guarantors.  For their sake I give the Torah to you.”

Not only is Torah the text of the ethical will we pass from one generation to the next, but even more Torah has been entrusted to us to ensure there will always be children to inherit it, children to continue our stewardship of the Earth - our common home.  The most profound gift we pass to future generations is the Earth and it follows that we must be sure that what we hand over is in good health. 

It may sound like the beginning of a joke, but on this Rosh Hashanah, let me quote the Pope.  In his groundbreaking encyclical document, Laudato Si - On Care for our Common Home, he wrote about the common good that, “Once we start to think about the kind of world we are leaving to future generations, we look at things differently; we realize that the world is a gift which we have freely received and must share with others.”  There is an undeniable link from one generation to the next in the way we live on this Earth.  It is time that we take much more seriously this responsibility.  We have received the gift of this common home, our planet, and the way we embrace and utilize the resources of it will forever be part of the ethical will we bequeath to our children’s children and beyond.  Many of us are familiar with the great story from our Talmud about Honi the Circle Maker.  The tale unfolds as Honi is walking along the road and comes across a man planting a tree.  Honi inquires of him, “What kind of tree are you planting?”  The man responds, “A Carob tree.”  Honi presses further, “How many years will pass to see this tree bear fruit.”  He answers, “Seventy years.”  Honi says, “How is it that you will live seventy years to see the fruit of this tree.”  The man responds, “I found carob trees in the world.  Just as my ancestors planted for me, I plant for my children.”  We must ask, “What are we planting for the future?”  It must be more than our eye color, the shades of our skin and male pattern baldness!

It is clear that of the most pressing issues of justice in our world today is that of Climate Justice.  The preponderance of evidence teaches us that while climate behaves with an ebb and flow, there is a drastic impact our human actions have caused that has now, for multiple generations, altered our world.  The effects are far reaching and daunting…even overwhelming.  The native of this land, the Washoe have said, “The health of the land and the health of the people are tied together, and what happens to the land also happens to the people.”  This is our challenge of today, this is the call of Torah to us in 5777 and beyond, it is to ensure the land we pass on is healthy, it is to ensure that the common home - Earth - we all inhabit can produce for all, it is about ensuring all humanity inherits a world we can all share - for humanity and the Earth are inextricably linked.

On Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur, we are charged with the enormous task to understand the impacts of our own actions as individuals in the past year.  We search our deeds, our behaviors and our relationships for moments when we could have reached higher.  It is a time to reset our course in the year about to unfold.  This recalibration requires a measure of sacrifice each and every year.  Sometimes it is the challenge of seeking forgiveness and granting it.  Other times we are struggling with unhealthy behaviors that affect our own bodies and souls…therefore inflicting those who love us.  The issue of Climate Justice is not different, it demands so much of us as individuals within families, within communities and as part of the human race. 

I cannot enumerate the countless ways our consumer choices can have an affect, however small or large, on the climate challenge.  It is beyond this rabbi’s reach to explain the far-reaching impact of this crisis on the world’s poor, on the physical conditions of coastal cities and agricultural communities.  The sacrifices required of us will, dare I dream…dare I pray, become, eventually, opportunities for a better world.  However, the role of our faith is to guide, as Torah for which our children are the guarantors does, to guide us in responding with openness to what is possible.  Our belief in a greater power, be it the Divine, be it collective community, must be the role of faith in this pressing challenge.

Tim DeChristopher, a Master of Divinity student at Harvard Divinity School argues, “I am convinced that our greatest vulnerabilities to climate change are not physical conditions like low-lying cities, but rather our social divisions—classism, racism, and sexism. These divisions make us vulnerable to responding to crisis with fear and hatred rather than solidarity, with competition rather than cooperation. These are the scenarios that turn hardship to horror. This means that even as we revolutionize our energy, economic, and political systems, we must do so in a way that also dismantles classism, white supremacy, patriarchy, xenophobia, and other social evils.”

Just as when we stood at Sinai and offered our children as the guarantors for Torah, we are in such a moment when we must consider this choice again.  For our common home to endure, to continue to breath as we yearn for its clean air, water and land, we must share this responsibility beyond the borders and boundaries that divide.  In the Midrash on Leviticus we understand this reality:  Some people were sitting in a ship.  One of them took a drill and began to bore a hole in the ship under where he was sitting.  His companions said, what are you sitting and doing?  He said, what has it to do with you?  I am boring a hole under my part of the ship.  They said, but the water is coming in and sinking the ship under us all.   

Knowing that this is a shared challenge for all of humanity is the first sacrifice we must all make moving forward.  At the most basic level, what we all have in common is this planet, our Earth.  And while we only live for a blink in the eye of geologic time, our children are our guarantors.  This alone, I believe, forces us to re-examine what divides and move past these barriers.  It demands of us to seek out partners to educate us about what more we can, and must do.  It is about building relationships that become strong enough to effect change and to create the necessary policy to address climate change.  The Citizen’s Climate Lobby is a non-profit, non-partisan, grassroots advice organization focused on national policies to address such change.  It’s mission includes building upon shared values rather than divides.

This day, Rosh Hashanah, is called Yom HaRat HaOlam - The Birthday of the World.  Let us celebrate this anniversary of the world’s birth with a commitment to learn more, to care for our common human home and to build the necessary relationships to effect change. 

A member of our TBY family, Patricia Sussman, is engaged in our local chapter of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby.  She wants us all to know that at whatever level each of us can take on, there are opportunities.  She has taught me that Citizen’s Climate Lobby, or CCL, is an international organization with local chapters, one here in the South Shore community.  Their major mission is to adopt a plan which requires Congressional support to reduce carbon emissions, creates jobs and can spark the economy by helping householders offset expenses.  Strategies like this one inspire energy conservation, investment and jobs in alternative energies - benefiting our economy and ultimately, helping to preserve the delicate balance of life on Earth.  The CCL has a solution, they have tools to help us understand and a marketing plan to influence our representatives.    

You can engage in the local chapter and inspire others by helping CCL bring about these national and international policy shifts, or even locally.  Their local efforts are in relationship with our local government:  Our public utility districts, the city council and county to implement climate friendly practices.  This includes seeing current projects and plans that are overdue towards fruition to make our community a model of stewardship and inspire those with climate conscious ideals towards leadership at this local level.

And those truly passionate and looking for even more opportunities, the CCL can help you become a champion of something in the works already or own an effort that is sidelined waiting for your leadership. 

From a small commitment to becoming a leader within CCL, we all can, and have a Jewish responsibility…a human responsibility, to ensure the world, our common human home is healthy.  In the first chapters of Genesis, we learn about the creation of the world.  At some moments, God calls the works Tov - Good, even at the conclusion, on the sixth day, God beholds the works of creation and says, Hineh Tov Meod - This is Very Good!  Let us make sure our world continues to become the “tov” - the good God calls our world at its beginning. 

This summer a student of mine researched the meaning and history of Jewish art.  In an amazingly articulate expression of what he learned, he claimed that creation is God’s work of art.  Taking it further, this work of art is the Earth we inhabit, the world for which we are stewards and the home we share with all humanity.  Its beauty is seen and felt throughout our lives, yet we are called to action.  The action of raising our common voice to protect this original work of art.

In the Book of Ecclesiastes, we read, “Consider the work of God; for who can make that straight, which He has made crooked?”  To this the rabbis respond in the Midrash, “When God created the first human beings, God led them around the Garden of Eden and said:  Look at my works!  See how beautiful they are - how excellent!  For your sake I created them all.  See to it that you do not spoil My world:  For if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.”

In this year, 5777, on this Rosh Hashanah, let us all commit to learn more, to care for our common human home and to build the necessary relationships to effect change, for if we don’t, there will be no one else to repair it.

Shanah Tovah U’Mitukah