Category Archives: Beauty in Nature

Hope is a Commandment of the Heart

22 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Beauty in Nature, Ethics, Health and Well-Being

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Dark Clouds over Tel Aviv

I changed recently the cover photo on my Facebook page (www.facebook.com/RabbiJohnLRosove) to the image here of the winter sky hovering over the Mediterranean Sea that I took eight years ago from the Tel Aviv shore. It suggests, I believe, what we are facing today as a world-wide community. On the one hand, the sky flows between dark and light grays. Yet, waiting to burst through the cloud cover is sunlight.

We are most assuredly living in dark times, but light shines in the extraordinary deeds of loving-kindness performed by courageous health care workers on behalf of the sick and dying, by those reaching out by phone, text, email, and social media to maintain connections with single isolated people (young, middle age, and senior), by the many front-line workers sustaining our communities in vital jobs, and by many of our nation’s governors, mayors, and members of Congress working on behalf of the safety and sustainability of all (American citizens and non-citizens alike). Collectively, they remind us, if we need reminding, that we “are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality” (Dr. Martin Luther King, March 31, 1968).

I don’t recall who wrote the following, but its wisdom is worth sharing:

“Hope is a commandment of the heart in the face of uncertainty, a vision that opens up the future, based on trust, supportive of purpose, enabling us to live in an enhanced present of constructive waiting.”

 

 

The Sun of Auschwitz – for Yom Hashoah 2020/5780

19 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Beauty in Nature, Holidays, Poetry, Tributes, Uncategorized

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“You remember the sun of Auschwitz / and the green of the distant meadows, lightly / lifted to the clouds by birds, / no longer green in the clouds, / but seagreen white. Together / we stood looking into the distance and felt / the far away green of the meadows and the clouds’ / seagreen white within us, / as if the colour of the distant meadows / were our blood or the pulse / beating within us, as if the world / existed only through us and nothing changed / as long as we were there. I remember / your smile as elusive / as a shade of the colour of the wind, / a leaf trembling on the edge / of sun and shadow, fleeting / yet always there. So you are / for me today, in the seagreen / sky, the greenery and / the leaf-rustling wind. I feel you in every shadow, every movement, and you put the world around me / like your arms. I feel the world / as your body, you look into my eyes / and call me with the whole world.”

Tadeusz Borowsky (Translated by Tadeusz Pioro), from Holocaust Poetry, Compiled and Introduced by Hilda Schiff, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995), p. 119.

Tadeusz Borowsky was a Polish poet and prose writer (b. 1922) in Ukraine. He was imprisoned in Dachau and Auschwitz (1943-1945) but survived by helping, in a lowly capacity, to administer the death regimes in these institutions as did many other survivors. Having survived the war and given expression to his agonized view of the human condition, he committed suicide in 1951.

 

“Few and hard have been the days of my life”

13 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Art, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

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This week Jacob, the inveterate victim, meets Pharaoh after discovering that Jacob’s favorite son Joseph is not only alive but had become second in power only to Pharaoh in Egypt. (Parashat Vayigash)

Every Jewish parent I know would be thrilled to experience anything close to this, but read the conversation between these two old men:

“Pharaoh asked Jacob, ‘How many are the years of your life?’ And Jacob answered Pharaoh, ‘The years of my sojourn on earth are one hundred and thirty. Few and hard have been the years of my life, nor do they come up to the life-spans of my fathers during their sojourns.” (Genesis 47:8-9).

Poor Jacob! No matter what good might have come to him in his life, he defaults to negativity. The rabbis put these words into God’s mouth in response (B’reishit Rabbah 95):

“God said: ‘I saved you from Esau and Laban. I brought Dinah back to you, as well as Joseph – and you complain that your life has been short and evil? I’ll, therefore, count the words of Pharaoh’s question and add that number to the number of words in your response (33 words total) and then shorten your life by exactly that much so that you’ll not live as long as your father Isaac. [Isaac lived to 180, whereas Jacob lived only to the age of 147 – i.e. 33 years less].”

Jacob’s negativity is surprising given all the good he had experienced in his life including twice encountering God. The first time was in his vision of angels ascending and descending a staircase to heaven at Beth El (Genesis 28) and waking to realize that God had been with him all along and he hadn’t known it. The second was in his struggle with a being described as both divine and human at the River Jabok where he emerged with a new name – Yisrael (Genesis 32).

We might expect more gratitude from Jacob instead of his complaining especially since this conversation with Pharaoh occurred at the reunion of Jacob with his cherished son Joseph.

We all know people like this who see the world as if through a negative prism? Are we those people? Do we put greater emphasis on the half-empty glass or the glass that’s half-full?  Are we “Debbie Downers?” (ala SNL)

There are so many examples of people who focus on the negative: parents who pay too much attention to their children’s weaknesses and failings – marriages that dissolve because one or both partners refuse to let go of the breeches, the bad times and flaws of the other – our inability to transcend disappointment, frustration, aggravation, and failure.

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey notes that the most well-balanced, positive and proactive people, those who live happily and well with others at work and at home, tend to balance continually four dimensions of their lives;  the physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional.

As we prepare to conclude the secular year 2018, we might take this time to take stock and make adjustments, to tackle one or more of these four aspects of our lives and thereby improve our lot.

We may need mostly to better care for our bodies, eat the right foods, lose weight, get sufficient rest, keep stress at bay, and exercise more.

Perhaps spiritually we may need to find ways to sense more keenly the Ineffable in life’s mysteries, spend more time in communal prayer or by ourselves in meditation, relish the genius of the great artistic masters, spend more time on our own creative process and in the natural world.

Perhaps we’ve allowed our minds to atrophy and our curiosity to languish by learning little that’s new and stimulating.

Perhaps socially and emotionally we could strive to become more empathic, less self-centered and self-referencing, and to serve others more selflessly without a quid pro quo.

There’s one more area that Covey doesn’t mention specifically but includes the physical and mental and is epidemic in our society – depression, a miserable scourge in the lives of millions. If this is your malady or someone near and dear to you suffers from depression, there is redress. Seeking bio-chemical help from qualified physicians is neither shameful nor a sin. To the contrary, doing so is wise and potentially efficacious in addressing the misery that those suffering from depression feel every day and every hour of the day.

The Midrash notes that Jacob’s negativity shaved years off his life. I would hope that each of us not allow ourselves to follow his example and fall into the same trap.

Shabbat shalom.

 

In the Black Night – A Poem for Vayishlach

01 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry

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In the black night / the river runs cold / slowly passing me by / over formerly sharp edged stones / worn smooth by centuries of churning  / as if through earthy veins / and I Jacob, alone / shiver and wait / to meet my brother / and daylight.

Will there be war? / And will the angels carry my soul / up the ladder / leaving my blood / to soak the ground?

A presence!? / And I struggle / as if in my mother’s womb / and my dreams.

We played together as children / my brother Esau and me / as innocents / and I confess tonight / how I wronged him / and wrenched from him his birthright / as this Being has done to me / between my thighs.

I was so young / driven by ego and need / blinded by ambition / my mother’s dreams / and my father’s silence.

I so craved to be first born / adored by my father / to assume his place when he died / that my name be remembered / and define a people.

How Esau suffered and wailed / and I didn’t care; / Whatever his dreams / they were nothing to me / my heart was hard / his life be damned!

I’ve learned that Esau and I / each alone / is a palga gufa / half a soul / without the other / torn away / as two souls separated at creation / seeking reunification in a great spiritual sea / the yin missing the yang / the dark and light never touching / the mind divorced from body / the soul in exile / without a beating bleating heart / and no access to the thirty-two paths / to carry us up the ladder / and through the spheres.

It’s come to this / To struggle again / To live or die.

Tonight / I’m ready for death / or submission.

Compassionate One / protect Esau and your servant / my brother and me / as one  / and return us to each other.

El na r’fa na lanu! / Grant us peace and rest / I’m very tired.

 

This poem was composed by Rabbi John L. Rosove and was originally published in the CCAR Journal: Reform Jewish Quarterly, Spring, 2010, pages 113-115

 

 

 

Jacob’s Dream and His Emergence into a Man of Faith

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Art, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

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Marc Chagall’s Jacob’s Ladder

Jacob’s destiny was set from birth and would come at a price. As his mother Rebekah’s troubled twin pregnancy came to an end and the babies were born, Jacob holding Esau’s heel suggested a strong pre-natal desire to be born first and become the future leader of the tribe. In a clever commentary, Rashi (11th century, France) says that the scene reflects a primogeniture truth, that Jacob was actually conceived first, though he came out second, much as a pebble dropped into a tube first will come out second when the tube is inverted.

Despite being second-born, Jewish tradition asserts that Jacob’s spiritual potential merited his assuming first-born rights, and it also suggests that Rebecca knew that her other son Esau, a hunter, lacked the requisite sensitivity, gentility, vision, and prophetic capacity to lead the tribe, whereas Jacob possessed all those virtues.

Jacob’s dream event that opens this week’s portion Vayetze (Genesis 28:10-22) signals the beginning of a new stage in Jacob’s life. He had just fled in fear from an enraged Esau, was alone in the mountains, unsure of himself and exhausted. He fell asleep and dreamed of ladders and angels.

This dream sequence is filled with powerful religious imagery, suggestion and mythic archetypes. The stones Jacob placed under his head are symbolic of what Carl Jung called the Ego, the limited “I” of Jacob, a man still unaware of the implicate order in the universe that links the material and metaphysical worlds.

The top of the ladder represents what Jung called the integrated Self which unifies the conscious and unconscious into a non-dualistic cosmos.

When Jacob went to sleep using stones as a pillow, we suspect that something unusual is about to happen, that he’s on the cusp of new self-consciousness. Lo and behold, he sees angels ascending (representing his yearning for something greater than himself) and angels descending (representing God’s outreach towards him), Rabbi Heschel’s idea of prophetic empathy and God’s pathos.

When Jacob awoke from the dream and opened his eyes, he was astonished: “Surely God is in this place, va’anochi lo yadati, and I did not know it! … How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and this is the gateway to heaven.” (28:16-17)

The beginning of any religious experience requires us to understand that we know nothing at all. In Hebrew “I” is ani (anochi is a variant form), and when we rearrange the letters – aleph, nun, yod – we spell ain, which means “nothing”). The religious person must transform the “I” of the  ego into a great Self in which we become part of God’s Oneness. Jacob’s sudden awareness results in his newfound humility and is a prerequisite to the development of his faith.

Despite the spiritual potency of this experience, Jacob remains unaware (i.e. he lacks access to his full unconscious) and his faith is conditional. He says, “If God remains with me, if God protects me…, and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safe … the Eternal shall be my God.” (28:20-21)

One of the consistent themes throughout the Genesis narrative is that in order for the Biblical figures to grow in faith they had to suffer trials. As a protected child of his mother, Jacob had been pampered. However, in being forced to flee for his life from the brother he wronged, Jacob became aware of the shadow (Jung’s term denoting that part of the unconscious consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings and instincts) in which he lived and which would envelop him for the next twenty years. Then he met a being divine and human at the river Jabbok and emerged with a new name, Yisrael – the one who perseveres with God.

From Jacob’s birth to next week’s encounter at the river we witness the patriarch’s evolution from the unconsciousness of his childhood to greater awareness, from a self-centered trickster to the bearer of the covenant. As he progressed he learned to view the world through the eyes of faith as he stood at heaven’s gate.

Shabbat Shalom!

 

 

Twinship

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Stories

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The following are the thoughts of Rabbi Jacob J Weinstein (z’l) whose daughters Judith and Deborah were identical twins. I return every year to his reflections about his daughters during the week of Parashat Toldot (Genesis 25:19-28:9), the story of two other twins, Jacob and Esau.

“Job said that there were some things which he could not understand: the way of a ship upon the sea, a coney on the rocks, and the way of a man with a maid.  How then can I understand the super mystery of twinship?  A Rabbi — like other carers of souls —becomes a chameleon and takes on the coloration of the confessor, and I have sometimes felt the kick of the child in the pregnant woman who comes to relate her fears of childbirth. But I have never been able to enter into that very special intertwining relationship which governs twins. Where does one find a scalpel keen enough to sever an invisible umbilical cord?

Your description was about as close as any I have heard in capturing the inwardness of that shifting half-separation and rebounding amalgamation which takes place between the Jacobs and Esaus, the Judiths and Deborahs of our world.

You both will find it hard to realize that separate parachutes may be the only means of salvation at certain times — that there must be spaces in our togetherness, that the oak tree and the cedar do not grow in each other’s shadow.

While this may be a constant source of danger and will require a degree of special awareness, the compensations are more significant. Your twinship will have reduced to a minimum that fear of relatedness, that reticence in sublimation, that inability to put yourself into another’s shoes, or skin or heart or mind—which accounts for so much of the alienation, divisiveness, frigidity and uncommunicativeness in our society. I know that you recognize Mother’s and my wisdom in deliberately placing separateness in your togetherness, even as we recognize how wisely you have disciplined yourselves.

I know that having learned to respect each other’s differences and each other’s need to follow the compulsion and vagaries of your individual hearts, you will both be ready for that most crucial laboratory of relatedness, which is marriage. While you have at times condemned each other and bitterly pointed out faults in each other, you have never allowed these criticisms to dampen your affectionate acceptance of each other, and you have always and at times savagely resented attacks from any outside source (including your parents). If you can transfer that “acceptance” to your mate, you will have it made.”

From “Letters from A Father” – by Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein, pages 10-11. These letters were privately published by his children, Ruth, Daniel, Judith and Deborah Weinstein in 1976 in Berkeley, California. 

Note: Judy and Deborah both became psychologists. Each was a remarkable woman. They died of cancer two years apart at the age of 48 and 46 respectively leaving husbands and 3 children between them.

Deborah was among my wife Barbara’s and my dearest friends. She was a force of nature, brilliant, passionate, socially conscious, a strong feminist, and kind. She loved us and we loved her. We miss her still nearly 24 years since her death. We knew Judy less well, but she was no less extraordinary. They adored each other. Witnessing them interact revealed the complexity that comes with the closest sibling relationships and  the joy that comes with the deepest intimacy.

 

 

 

 

God’s Promise and the Rainbow – A Midrash

19 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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rainbow-sky-over-the-rainbow

God looked out upon creation and saw that violence, chaos and mean-spirited self-centeredness engulfed the human heart. There was neither kindness nor justice in the world. Empathy had ceased. Fear and hatred supplanted peace and love. In Divine disappointment and righteous rage God determined to destroy creation and return everything to primordial darkness.

The Eternal mourned and recalled how great was the effort to create the heavens and earth, give life to growing things, design and fashion the birds, sea creatures and animals in all their variety, shape, color, function, and form. That thought grew within the Divine mind, and so the Creator hesitated and stepped back from the brink thinking how great a tragedy it would be to destroy that which had once been thought “good.”

God wondered: ‘Is there one human on earth, different from the rest, who can still fathom Me, who hasn’t been consumed by the sitra achra, the evil that brought such darkness to My creation.’

God peered into every human soul seeking that one, better than the rest, who though not yet a complete tzadik might be good enough to hear the Divine voice and save what could still be saved.

To God’s relief, there was one human named Noah, so God spoke to Noah and told him to build an ark and save his family and two of every creature that all might not be lost and that the world might begin anew.

As the Eternal wept in contemplating the devastation, Divine tears fell heavily to earth and continued forty days and nights.

When finally God’s tear ducts were dry the waters receded, dry land appeared, and the ark docked. The Eternal God spoke to Noah:

“I am God, Noah, Who created you and brought you into this new land. Look around you and see the cleansed earth. The world is once again new. There is no longer rage or hatred, violence or hubris in the human heart. I will make with you a covenant marked by a sign that will remind us both how I created the world in peace, but then destroyed it, and then allowed it to begin anew that it should remain a place of peace for all time.

And the sign of this covenant will be a radiant smile that stretches across the heavens and fills the sky, an arc of light shining through the flood waters, a vision of loveliness that will inspire awe and love for Me. 

This promise, Noah, shall be called the ‘rainbow,’ and this bow in the sky will remind you, Me and your progeny that I will never again bring such devastation to the earth. 

Your duty and that of your children and children’s children must be to protect My creation, to preserve and nurture it, for there will come no one after you to set it right if you destroy it.”

Then God bent towards the earth and stretched the Divine arm mightily across the sky and made an arc. And just where God’s hand had been, there appeared a sheltering bow of every color spread out across the blue canvas of sky.

And God spoke of the colors and the sign of the rainbow:

“First comes red to stand for the blood pulsing through human veins that carries My Godly soul and makes all things live; orange is for the comforting warmth of fire and its potential to create, build and improve upon what I created; yellow is for the glory of the sun that lights the earth and gives vision to earthly souls that they might see Me in all things and live; green is for the grass and the leaves of trees and their fruit, that all creatures might be sustained in life; blue is for the sky, sea and rivers that joins air and ground and makes clear that all is One, divinely linked and a reflection of Me; indigo appears each day at dusk and dawn to signal evening and morning, the passage of time and the seasons, the ever-renewing life force that is intrinsic to all things; violet is for the coming of night when the world rests and is renewed, and it carries the hope that all might awake in the morning and utter words of thanksgiving and praise.”

God explained that the rainbow appears to the human eye as a half circle, and said to Noah:

“Do not be fooled, my most righteous one! There is more to life than what the eye can see. There is both the revealed and the hidden, and the hidden half of the bow reaches deep into the earth that you and those who yearn after Me might come and discover Truth, and reveal and make whole both the revealed and the hidden in My world.”  

God told Noah:

“Remember this blessing, My child, and you will remember My promise – Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, zocheir habrit v’ne-eman biv’rito v’kayam b’ma-amaro.

Praised are You, Eternal our God, Sovereign of the revealed and the hidden, Who remembers, is faithful to, and fulfills the Divine covenant and promise.”

Compiled and written by Rabbi John Rosove. Inspired by classic Midrashim. First published in October 2010.

 

Talking with 5th Graders about Prayer and God

16 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Beauty in Nature, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Social Justice

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jewish-identity-popkin-fb
This past week I spent an hour with 40 fifth grade Day School students talking about prayer, faith, rational and intuitive thinking, science, religion, and God.
 
I found these eleven-year-olds not only keenly interested in our conversation but sophisticated thinkers already at their young age.
 
My goal was first to open with them a conversation in which they felt comfortable thinking freely and expressing themselves without being judged. I explained that when it comes to matters of faith there is no right or wrong, that faith is deeply personal.
 
I explained to them the fundamental Jewish idea of achdut, the oneness of God, the Jewish people, humanity, nature, and the metaphysical, and that this idea is carried fully in the Sh’ma. They understood.
 
I also talked about the limits of the rational mind and the intellect, that faith is a function of the non-rational mind that it is beyond linear thinking and does not depend upon that which can be proven through observation or empirical evidence. Faith is founded, I explained, upon the intuitive capacity and is based on our experience of awe and wonder.
 
I asked the students what they believe is the purpose of prayer. They responded that prayer is our opportunity as individuals and as a community to praise, to give thanks, to feel appreciation, to forgive, and to hope. These were their words, not mine.
 
I asked whether prayer changes us or God. They said that prayer changes us, not God, though one boy said that prayer is also about asking God for things. I probed – “What kinds of things?” He answered, “When we most need something from God, when we’re sad or sick, and when people we love die.”
 
“Yes,” I said, “but what is it that we are likely to receive?”
 
We kept talking. I suggested that when we’re really sad prayer can help us feel less alone, that God is the loving unifying and creative force in the universe and that can be a source of comfort. When we pray, I explained, many people gain the sense that we are all part of something far greater than ourselves and beyond our capacity to understand, that we can gain in courage through prayer to face the sadness and loneliness we feel and feel inspired.
 
One girl asked about the fairness of human suffering and why God allows people to die when they are young. I spoke to them about two of the many names for God in Jewish tradition. The holiest Name is YHVH, the Name we call God that appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai and inspired the writing of the Torah. The other common name is Elohim, the God of the Book of Genesis Who creates the heavens and the earth (the Torah portion last week was Bereishit, the first chapters of Genesis). Elohim is the Name of God that sets the physical world according to the laws of nature.
 
Whereas Elohim is the Name of God that is the author of natural disasters, illness, and death, I explained that I do not believe that God singles out any individual human being to suffer. We are human and mortal and some people unfortunately get sick while others stay healthy for most of their lives.
 
I emphasized, however, that YHVH is the Name of God that met Moses on Mount Sinai and inspired Torah, and that when we act in a Godly way by virtue of our being created in God’s image, we bring God’s love and generosity into the world. When we do that, we inspire hope.
 
As is the case in the adult Jewish population, there were doubters among my fifth-grade students. I asked, “Do you think you can be a Jew without believing in God?” Some thought so but others weren’t so certain.
 
I told them “Yes,” because Judaism is far more than a religion. We are a people, a culture, civilization, and a faith tradition with a vast literature, four Jewish languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Ladino, and Yiddish), philosophy, rite, ritual, holidays, life-cycle events, and ethics codified in law. I explained as well that Judaism is the longest continuous surviving tradition on the planet reaching back to Abraham and Sarah 3600 years ago.
 
I reminded our students that a Jew is someone born of a Jewish mother in traditional communities or of a Jewish parent in the American Reform movement, and that Jewish identity is established and thrives when we study Torah and our tradition, perform the mitzvot (commandments), stay close to Jewish community, and identify with the people of Israel around the world and support the State of Israel.
 
Our mission as a people, I explained, is Tikkun Olam – repairing an imperfect, unfair, and sometimes unjust world. There is much work to do, I said, and that each one of us has the responsibility to make a contribution to a better world.
 
I left this conversation feeling hopeful. Our young people are thinking, smart, kind-hearted, and committed to our community, and they are asking all the right questions and struggling to understand who they are in these initial decades of the twenty-first century.
 
We are not the “ever-dying” people. We are alive, and when I am with young people like these fifth-grade students, I feel alive!
 
 

Majesty of Calmness – A Must-Read during the High Holidays

18 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Beauty in Nature, Book Recommendations, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Quote of the Day

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Calm - Ocean

I recommend highly a little book first published in 1898 called “The Majesty of Calmness” by William George Jordan, an American editor, lecturer and essayist of the late 19th and early 20th century.

This 62-page treasure-trove of common-sense wisdom reminds me of the Biblical Book of Proverbs and the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible. It was written in an elegant prose that exists in classical works.

This series of seven short essays is particularly appropriate reading during the coming ten days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: “The Majesty of Calmness;” “Hurry, the Scourge of America;” “The Power of Personal Influence;” “The Dignity of Self-Reliance;” “Failure of Success;” “Doing our Best at All Times;” “The Royal Road to Happiness.”

I offer a few short passages from each of the essays that offer a taste of what you will find in this remarkable series of essays:

“Calmness is the rarest quality in human life. It is the poise of a great nature, in harmony with itself and its ideals. It is the moral atmosphere of a life self-centered, self-reliant, and self-controlled.” (p. 1)

“Nature is very un-American. Nature never hurries. Every phase of her working shows plan, calmness, reliability, and the absence of hurry…Hurry has ruined more Americans than has any other word in the vocabulary of life….In the race for wealth, people often sacrifice time, energy, health, home, happiness, and honor, –everything that money cannot buy, the very things that money can never bring back.” (pps. 8, 9, 10)

“Self-confidence, without self-reliance, is as useless as a cooking recipe, –without food. Self-confidence sees the possibilities of the individual; self-reliance realizes them. Self-confidence sees the angel in the unhewn block of marble; self-reliance carves it out for himself.” (p. 23)

“Many of our failures sweep us to greater heights of success than we ever hoped for in our wildest dreams. Life is a successive unfolding of success from failure…Failure is often the turning-point, the pivot of circumstance that swings us to higher levels…Failure is one of God’s educators.” (pp. 33, 35, 36)

“Living at one’s best is constant preparation for instant use. It can never make one over precise, self-conscious, affected, or priggish. Education, in its highest sense, is conscious training of mind or body to act unconsciously. It is conscious formation of mental habits, not mere acquisition of information.” (p. 46)

“Happiness is the greatest paradox in Nature. It can grow in any soil, live under any conditions. It defies environment. It comes from within: it is the revelation of the depths of the inner life as light and heat proclaim the sun from which they radiate. Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself.” (p. 53)

“Majesty of Calmness” can be purchased on Amazon for $4.95. Do yourself a huge favor. Read it once, and then read it again.

 

 

Human Rights and the Environment

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Beauty in Nature, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Social Justice

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Sixty-nine years ago on December 10, 1948, forty-eight nations signed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1]. This historic document resulting as a consequence of crimes committed against humanity during World War II was the first global expression of what constitute inherent human rights for all human beings.

On this Shabbat coinciding with the anniversary of its signing, “T’ruah – The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights” invited hundreds of American rabbis and their synagogues to focus on the most dangerous threat to human rights on the planet – climate change.

The theme of climate change coinciding with the Declaration of Human Rights couldn’t have been calendared at a more propitious moment given President-Elect Trump’s selection this week as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, a proven ally of the fossil fuel industry and arguably the greatest climate change denier in the United States.

Pruitt’s selection ought to chill the blood of anyone who accepts what 90% or greater of all scientists believe to be settled fact, that human-made greenhouse gas emissions have caused a 1.7 degree Fahrenheit warming of the earth since records were kept in 1880 and that virtually all warming since 1950 has been caused by the human release of greenhouse gasses.

In an article from the NY Times explaining what climate change is and does and what are the politics surrounding it, we read this about people like Trump and Pruitt:

“The most extreme version of climate denialism is to claim that scientists are engaged in a worldwide hoax to fool the public so that the government can gain greater control over people’s lives.” [2]

The truth, of course, is otherwise – that if we can’t find enough carbon neutral energy as a way to limit global climate disruption, we won’t be able to grow enough food and there will be no space in which we can protect fundamental human rights around the world. Unless we successfully find a way nor will societies be able to maintain democratic governments.

We need not look very far to see evidence of the danger. In the past year increasing fear of Syrian refugees has helped to invigorate right-wing and proto-fascist policies in Great Britain and Europe.

Rabbi David Seidenberg, an activist, writer, and scholar on environmental issues, has written from a Jewish perspective about the climate change threat:

“The intersection between the economy and human rights is … not only found in opposing the building of a toxic waste incinerator near a poor community, or fighting the exposure of children to endocrine-disrupting pesticides…[or] is it in the perceived moments of conflict between human rights and the environment, such as the false choice between making jobs and saving a forest… A deeper intersection is found in the great human tragedy that could accompany global warming. If predictions hold and the rising sea creates millions of refugees from coastal areas, then shelter, which should be a [basic human right], will become an impossibility. Any government trying to protect the most basic human needs and rights would find itself in extreme crisis under such circumstances, and many governments will be tempted to discard human rights in the name of national emergency…Where we find the deepest depths is…where human rights…makes us blind to our place in the earth …” [3]

Scientists warn that if we allow the warming of the environment, the polar ice caps will continue to melt, the seas will rise, and there will be greater, more frequent and damaging coastal flooding. Rainfall will become heavier in many parts of the world and hurricanes and typhoons will become more intense. There will be a massive extinction of plants and animals, more waves of refugees will flee their lands, and more governments will be destabilized.

What do we do?

First, we all need to become activists and protest the Trump administration’s expected elimination of regulations on the fossil-fuel industry.

We need to support the Paris Climate agreement’s implementation, and in every way reduce our own individual carbon footprints. If large numbers of people did so it would make a difference. Suggestions include insulating homes, reducing our use of power, using efficient light bulbs, turning off lights and heaters, driving fewer miles, taking fewer airplane trips, and reducing or eliminating the eating of beef.

In the Book of Genesis, the first humans were given dominion over the land [4]. Though we were given the privilege to have use of the land and its resources for our benefit, later Jewish tradition gave a warning to the irresponsible use of and the waste of our natural resources:

“Upon presenting the wonder of creation to Adam, God said: ‘See my works, how fine and excellent they are! Now all that I created, for you I created. Think upon this, and do not corrupt and desolate my world; for if you corrupt it, there is no one to set it right after you.” [5]

When this Midrash was written some 1500 years ago, the intent was likely focused on specific towns and villages. Today, we are confronted with a threat to all life on the earth.

[Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles will celebrate Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday, December 10 at 6:30 PM and we will focus our attention during services on climate change and human rights. All are welcome.]
Notes:

[1] General Assembly resolution 217 A.
[2] “Short Answers to Hard Questions about Climate Change”, by Justin Gillis, NYTimes, November 28, 2015.
[3] https://www.google.com/#q=Human+rights+and+ecology+-+david+seidenberg).
[4] Genesis 1:28.
[5] Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:28.