A Messianic Jewish Look at Sustainability: Tending

Volume 19 •5
A Messianic Jewish Look at Sustainability:
Tending the Garden of Life?
by Susan Perlman
“I
s the environment a Jewish concern?”
asks Rabbi Eric Lankin, chief of
institutional advancement and education for
the Jewish National Fund. “Under tikkun olam,
we have an obligation and need to restore
the broken world. We have an obligation
to love all of God’s creatures. When we
endanger something, we have to
correct our ways. The environment is a
topic of Jewish concern. Jewish people
have been living these values for
thousands of years.”1
While many Jews would agree with Rabbi
Lankin that the environment is a topic of concern
within the Jewish community, are we obligated to
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fix our broken world? And have we as a people been “living
these values” as he purports? One’s answer has a lot to do with
one’s vantage point on creation itself.
God didn’t begin creation with a finished temple or cathedral
where we might meet him. He created a growing thing, a
garden where there would be seeds, shoots, roots, stems,
flowers and more seeds to start the process all over again.
Adam, the first caretaker of the garden, was the only
person around to train the plants, put them in order and
enhance their growth. In return, they gave him their beauty
as well as their food for his sustenance. He named the
animals and enjoyed them and they provided a certain
degree of company. Yet Adam needed the understanding
that could only come from another person, and so God
provided a mate for Adam in Eve, and together they tended
the garden.
God arranged an ordered culture. He made grass to grow
up and rain to come down. He made lovable animals like koala
bears and unpleasant creatures such as fleas. He made man
and woman and he put them in a place where they could
cultivate their environment and be a part of the beauty of that
garden by making a contribution to it.
God was the Grand Gardener to humanity and gave us the
right to garden, cultivate and enculturate our own circle or
sphere, which radiates from our families outward.
Unfortunately, the first couple did not follow the simple rules
set up by the Creator. The book of Genesis relates the account of
how they disobeyed God and ate of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, thereby destroying the ecological balance of their
own souls. We call that garden fiasco “the fall.”
It has had a debilitating effect on our physical environment
as well as on the souls of all of us who inhabit this planet. We
have taken what God arranged and put it in disarray. We have
made chaos out of what once was order.
Modern day examples abound.
We can see it in industrial disasters like the level seven
meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima I Nuclear Power
Plant complex in Japan; or in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,
a swirling mess of plastic (some say the size of the state of
Texas) in the North Central Pacific Ocean that is spreading
toxic chemicals and altering the ocean’s ecosystem; or in the
2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in which 200 million gallons of
oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico.
Blogger Ryan Marshall was driving along the Florida
panhandle about a month after the Gulf oil spill and stopped to
chat with Fred, an elderly fisherman with a roadside stand at
which he sold fish for $5
apiece. Marshall writes:
Around 1942 he
started his first fish
market; he has been
doing this ever since.
He worked alongside
his wife for 35 years,
raised children, and
has an army of
grandchildren to love.
. . . I asked Fred if he
was worried about the
BP oil spill looming in
the Gulf further north,
and what it would
mean for him if that
ISSN 0741-0352 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. ©2012
EDITOR IN CHIEF: SUSAN PERLMAN
EDITOR: MATT SIEGER
DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION: PAIGE SAUNDERS
•
oil made its way into these waters. He was quiet and
broke our eye contact. At first I thought he just wasn’t
going to answer me, and then he simply said, “Well, I
guess it means that all of this is over, and BP will have to
pay . . .” For him there was no other solution to survive.
He looked at me and said: “What else can I do?”2
Experts in the area of sustainability say:
• Ninety percent of the world’s large fish have been eliminated
from the world’s oceans. And more than half of all species
could be severely endangered by the end of this century.3
• According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
21,000 cancer deaths in the U.S. each year may be
resulting from radioactive radon that is accidentally
trapped in well-insulated homes.4
• Our atmosphere’s ozone layer is being seriously
depleted, threatening our health and retarding crop
productivity because the increased ultraviolet rays are
reaching the earth.5
• The EPA has estimated that about 40 million Americans are
exposed to drinking water lead concentrations that it
considers to be a health risk.6
• There are an estimated 250,000 tons of highly radioactive
nuclear waste that must be absolutely contained for
100,000 years so as not to damage the environment.7
The world’s global environmental “footprint” or depletion
rate now exceeds the planet’s capacity to regenerate by 30
percent.8
While we can measure this kind of environmental havoc
more easily today, environmental deterioration is not new. Our
God-created universe has been altered by the created
beings—us. All of our human instincts call out for selffulfillment, self-protection and self-interest, and yet reversing
today’s sustainability crisis demands self-discipline, self-denial
and the determination to love one’s neighbor as one’s self.
The greatest threats to the environment are not
depleted resources, global warming or overpopulation,
but people who are self-centered rather than Godcentered. Ours is a self-centered world in which we abuse
not only our environment, but our greatest resource—other
human beings. There is enough of everything to go around for
those who see themselves as gardeners in God’s garden,
entrusted with preserving what God has made. But there is not
enough of everything for those motivated by greed.
When it comes to how we treat the environment and each
other, we need a perspective beyond our own human wisdom.
We need to see the earth as God sees it. As King David said,
“The earth is the LORD’s and everything in it …” (Psalm 24:1). It
is God’s earth whose resources are
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Jewish “Green” Architecture: Will it Redeem Our World?
by Melissa Moskowitz
“. . . seek the peace and prosperity of the city to
which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for
it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
(Jeremiah 29:7)
he greatest of all architects was not Frank Lloyd Wright,
but God. His creation was intended to be good; the ability
to create has been given as a good gift to mankind, his
created ones. It is not difficult to find in the Bible evidence
that God intends for there to be a continual effort to both
repair and redeem his world. Yet it is evident that the care
and utilization of resources to both build and sustain God’s
creation often results in exactly the opposite, where precious
resources are diminished or destroyed.
T
Jewish Reform Congregation sanctuary
The relationship between the earth and its human
earthmovers has given birth to sustainable “green”
architecture that is designed to “take less from the earth and
give more to people.”1 Resources are to be renewed and
restored. Energy practices are to become more efficient and
conserved. Earth’s elements are to be utilized, but not used up.
In the Jewish world, efforts are being made to wed
secular concern for the environment with more eternal
values, where protecting the environment is viewed as a
mitzvah. Stewardship of the earth is considered to go handin-hand with being Jewish. Today, many synagogues and
4
other centers of Jewish life are being built with this sacred
call to sustainability in view.
One such synagogue is the Jewish Reform Congregation in
southwest Chicago, a sustainably built edifice designed to
connect to its environment and enhance the spiritual life of its
congregation. As one member wrote:
When I enter the sanctuary to pray, the large windows
reveal the trees outside as they weather the changing
seasons. As I witness them from this sacred space, my
connection to them is unavoidable. Sacred space
should touch you in a way that leaves you transformed
. . . touched, I seek to connect with those around me.
Transformed, I seek to act. 2
Other synagogues across the country are building or
renovating their facilities to be green-friendly. The
Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York, was
recently constructed with recycled and sustainable materials;
the ark boasts above it a solar-powered ner tamid, the eternal
flame. Rabbi Richard Jacobs felt it was a “moral imperative”
to build an environmentally conscious building.3
Another example is Beth David Synagogue in San Luis
Obispo, California. There are 194 windows and 10 skylights, as
well as non-toxic paint, recycled newspaper insulation and
hand-troweled straw bale walls (a material made of bales of
straw from oats, wheat, rice and rye).
The Jewish Reconstructionist Synagogue in Evanston, Illinois
was re-opened in 2008 after undergoing massive remodeling and
reconstruction. Not only did the congregation revamp the building,
but they also established green living policies, set up docent-led
tours of the facility and created a lay-led environmental task force
to work with the congregation on how to live sustainably.
Along the same lines, some Israeli kibbutzim have
established the Green Kibbutz Group. Kibbutz Lotan, one of the
greenest in the group, has constructed its adobe walls with old
tires. The kibbutz is also exploring the use of sloping stable
geodesic domes to make significant use of renewable
resources in buildings. In a concept created by German
mathematician Walter Bauersfeld in 1922, the domes are
constructed in an exoskeleton of triangles.
Renewal, Repair and Redemption
Perhaps two of the most momentous choices that any of us
will make are the kind of house we live in and the place in
which we worship. As Jews, we recognize that issues of
sustainability are especially valid and important when it comes
to protecting or insuring the renewability of resources for
future generations of our people.
Tikkun olam stresses the healing or repair of this present
world. Redemption stresses the healing of the soul, as well as
insuring a place in the world to come.
Yet all repair—whether it is of shoes, relationships or
the environment (for example, through sustainable
architecture)—is temporary, no matter how tenacious the
glue of our efforts. The world is decaying, not just because
forests are being cut down and the carbon footprint is
encroaching at our doorsteps. The world is meant to
decay, or perhaps, is destined for it. Even the best and
most qualified efforts to sustain our environment must be
tempered by the realization that sustainability will not
bring permanence. The world is “continually passing away”
(I Corinthians 7:31).
What, if anything, does redemption of the world mean
in relationship to how we build our homes or our houses of
worship—or our lives, for that matter? Redemption and
sustainability are not the same in that the former is a
buying back by means of a costly sacrifice; the latter
stresses repair, which can go up and down, back and forth,
and is affected by the winds and wiles of nature and time.
Redemption is permanent; renewal requires vigilant
maintenance.
The most significant edifice of Jewish life—the Temple—
provided the setting in which we could be assured of
something greater than sustainability. It was the most “truly
green” of all Jewish sites, because within its Holy Place
people were more than repaired; they were redeemed.
Solar panels at Beth David Synagogue in San Luis Obispo, California
The Temple no longer stands, but the truest of all Jewish
architects—the Messiah Y’shua—insured our renewal, repair
AND redemption: “He did not enter by means of the blood of
goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for
all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption”
(Hebrews 9:12).
Endnotes:
1. Barnett, D. L. and W. D. Browning, A Primer on Sustainable Building
(Rocky Mountain Institute: Snowmass, CO, 1995), p. 2
2. Carole Caplan, “Building the Sacred Inside and Out: Green
Architecture for Houses of Worship,” April 26, 2011,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carole-caplan/sacred-both-insideand-ou_b_853284.html
3. “Westchester Reform Temple Awarded LEED Certification,” July 4,
2011, http://www.westchester.com/news/westchesternews/realestate/15387-westchester-reform-temple-awarded-leedcertification.html
Photo attributions:
JRC Chicago: Steve Hall © Hedrick Blessing
http://www.greenspacetoday.com/green-spaces/mazel-tov-jewishreconstructionist-congregation-evanston-il-attains-leed-platinum-certi
Westchester Reform Temple:
http://construction.com/community/pl/EntryPhoto.aspx?eid=174&pid=2
Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York
Beth David Synagogue in San Luis Obispo, California:
http://www.cbdslo.org/aboutus/goinggreen/
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Tikkun Olam:
What You Can Do
• Turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth and
shaving.
• Turn your thermostat up three degrees (in
summer) or down three degrees (in winter).
• Change incandescent light bulbs in your home to
compact fluorescents.
• Lower the temperature of the water in your water
heater.
(continued from page 3)
being consumed at a frightening rate. While we were given
the roles of gardener and cultivator here on earth, we have
behaved instead as ravagers, consuming more of everything
than is necessary or good for us. Unless we find a way of
harvesting food on Mars for our world population and using
fossil fuels from Venus, we are treating our planet in a way
that says, “When things run out, like clean air and food, then
that’s it.”
While there are no quick solutions or simple answers
to the ecological mess we find ourselves in, there is
reason to hope. To help unpack that, one contemporary
Jewish thought leader, Rabbi David Gordis, points us to
the Hebrew Scriptures:
• Clean or replace furnace filters regularly.
• Install low-flow showerheads and faucets.
• Wash your clothes in the coolest water possible.
• Turn off the lights, TV and computer when you
leave the room.
• Only run the washer and dishwasher when they
are full.
• Read Psalm 23, 24, 104, 147 and 148.
• Clean out your closets and donate clothes you
have not worn in the past year.
• Bike, walk, carpool or use public transportation
instead of driving.
• Pick up and throw away any trash you see on the
ground.
• Buy locally-grown produce.
• Follow an old saying: “Use it up, wear it out,
make it do, or do without.”
Most of these tips are adapted from an article by Miriam Burr, “Energy
Conservation and Living a Green Life in Your Home,” from Taking your
Chapter Green and Living a Green Life, published by the Wilmington,
Delaware, chapter of Hadassah,
http://www.hadassah.org/atf/cf/%7B3E7B035F-EF15-490E-B27B647B9E1FB4E2%7D/GreenLife.pdf
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Through narrative, poetry, law, and prayer, the Bible
conditions its readers to feel reverence for nature,
enjoins restraint in the exploitation of natural
resources for human needs, elicits awe in response to
the diversity and complexity of creation, and
articulates the principle of human responsibility for
faithful trusteeship over the natural world.9
But how does one become that person who is selfsacrificing instead of selfish? Jewish lore speaks of a time in
the future when a Messiah will come and restore all things.
The coming of the Messiah is not fiction, but his example to
us is one of selflessness and servanthood. Jesus, who walked
the earth 2,000 years ago, said that he who manages to get
along with the least on this earth will have the most in the
kingdom of God. He was talking about the ecosystem of the soul.
God can create a pure heart in us so we can
substitute self-interest for godly concern for all his
creation! God can create a clean heart in each of us so that
we can learn to do with less, to sacrifice, to deny ourselves,
to share more, to provide for others, to truly be a responsible
gardener, a cultivator and nourisher in the garden. The Yotzer
Prayer for the Sabbath concludes with a messianic petition:
Spiritual sustainability is concerned with avoiding the
waste of people, the misuse of humanity. As much damage
as we do to the structure, fabric and substance of the planet,
we are doing even more damage to the body of humanity. That
damage comes about through the toxic waste of sin. It is a
spiritual smog which creates a haze that clouds the vision.
When we can’t see clearly, we become unbalanced. We don’t
notice danger signs down the road, so we proceed without
taking the proper precautions. Those precautions involve a
recognition of who we are, who God is and what is expected
of us.
When we look at the spiritual state of our souls, we must
come to grips with the reality of our defilement, that we have
been polluted by sin, and say along with King David, “Create in
me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within
me” (Psalm 51:10).
David uttered that cry after he had sinned. That Hebrew
word for create is bara, and it is used exclusively for the
activity of God. If God could create a new heart in David, he
can perform that spiritual operation on any of us.
He is the Lord of wonders, who in His goodness
reneweth the creation every day continually; as it is
said, (O give thanks) to Him that maketh great lights,
for His lovingkindness endureth (is sustainable) for
ever. O cause a new light to shine upon Zion and may
we all be worthy soon to enjoy its brightness. Blessed
art thou, O Lord, Creator of the luminaries.
That new light is reflected in the person of Y’shua
(Jesus). The New Testament portion of the Bible offers the
promise of new beginnings for those who trust in him:
“Therefore, if anyone is in
Messiah, he is a new
creation; the old has
gone, the new has come!”
(2 Corinthians 5:17).
Y’shua is the Constant
Gardener, who sustains and
cares for all who put their
trust in him, and who will
usher in a new heaven and
a new earth10 where we can
live with him forever.
Endnotes:
1. Merri Rosenberg, “ ‘Going Green’ As Jewish Value,” The Jewish Week, http://www.jtsa.edu/Documents/pagedocs/Communications/Jewish%20Week%20%20Going%20Green%20as%20Jewish%20Value%2011.25.08.pdf
2. Ryan Marshall, “His Gulf of Mexico,” http://www.blogher.com/frame.php?url=http://pacingthepanicroom.blogspot.com/2010/05/his-gulf-of-mexico.html
3. Alliance for Global Conservation, “Why It Matters to You,” http://www.generationextinction.org/the-extinction-crisis/why-saving-species-matters/
4. United States Environmental Protection Agency, “A Citizen’s Guide to Radon,” http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/citguide.html
5. Restoring Eden, “American Baptist Policy Statement on Ecology,” http://restoringeden.org/resources/denominationalstatements/americanbaptist
6. Drinking Water Research Foundation, “Lead and Drinking Water for Children,” http://www.thefactsaboutwater.org/ask-the-experts/lead-and-drinking-water-forchildren/
7. Duncan Geere, “Where Do You Put 250,000 Tonnes of Nuclear Waste?” http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-09/20/into-eternity-nuclear-waste-finland
8. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/download.php?id=30
9. David M. Gordis, “Ecology,” Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (New York: The Rabbinical Assembly, 2001), p. 1369
10. “Then I saw a ‘new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away . . .” (Revelation 21:1)
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On the Road to Dharamsala
Here where the grass grows free,
wild is awakened in my heart
And nature’s skin is unashamed.
It bares its innocence and purity
and harshness and apathy.
Here where man has failed to tame
mountains high and unborn trees
bursting forth with the green
of new life.
Here where forces unseen
are loosed upon the once serene
And open more to good and bad
I know that You are close at hand.
Here where so many before
have searched and searched
for so much more.
Here where hope is lost by men
And few the workers, much to tend
Here I find my calling,
or at least the beginning.
Here I say yes to not look back,
to walk in faith despite attack
I know not what may lie ahead,
but all of me for You instead.
—Sterling Reed
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