בס׳׳ד
The Soul of the World: Shmittah and Climate Change
Rabbi Scott Perlo
It bothers me when articles from The Onion become primary
source material for my sermons. Somehow, America’s best satirical newspaper is
capturing the truth more and more.
400,000 people marched for global climate legislation and
action in New York a couple of weeks ago. Yet the UN conference that occasioned
the protest lasted all of one day. Here’s The Onion:
“In an overwhelming show of support for
dangerously escalating temperatures, 7.1 billion people from nearly every
nation on earth staged massive demonstrations yesterday in favor of global
warming. “Whether they were sitting in their living rooms, watching football at
a bar, or just driving somewhere, a sizable portion of the world let its
support for climate change be heard loud and clear,” said environmental policy
expert Janet Purvis…At press time, the 7.1 billion protesters were reportedly
making plans to stage similar rallies every day for the foreseeable future.”
So heartbreaking. So accurate.
I want to talk about the changes to our planet
occasioned by our agency, and the danger that we face. But my hope is that this
will be a different drash about the environment and climate change than you’ve
heard before.
That is because I don’t think that I need to
detail the various depredations to our world, nor make a case for the
importance of reversing or ameliorating those changes. You’ve heard all the
arguments long ago; reports of that damage are in every paper, on every site.
You certainly don’t need me to remind you, nor, I think, to cheerlead the cause
of environmental justice.
Rather, what
I want us to talk about is: given that there’s widespread agreement on the
global effects of our way of life, why are we so hampered in doing anything
about it? We are the 7.1 billion. We know what we’re doing. Yet our whole lives
are built such that we propagate that damage every day. And, were we to be
truly honest, I think we feel ourselves completely unable to change our ways
because of the practical exigencies of how we live: The food and clothing that
I buy is shrouded in acres of packaging. The work that I do produces reams of
spent paper – you don’t know want to know how many trees sacrificed themselves
for this Yom Kippur. The delicious, delicious air conditioning that I
love so squanders obscene amounts of energy.
To change those things, and the thousands like them,
would be to change everything[PM1] .
So I want to address the difficulty of such profound
change from an entirely spiritual perspective, to try to get at the root of
what it means to change from the inside out.
Let us consider three circles, and give thought to the
three concentric arenas in which we live. They are the world, the community,
and the self. To walk the paths of righteousness is to know, intimately, how
our actions affect each of these three spheres. To be a hasid, to have true reverence, is to know how each circle
affects us[PM2] . I think
that a living consciousness of all three is the apex of the spiritual ideal.
Aware of this, the Torah teaches us a manner with which
to live in all three. And in testament to its[PM3] wisdom and
its holiness, our holy words teach us one word with which to regard them all.
That word is Shabbat.
To explain, I’ll work my way from the outermost circle to
the innermost, and then back again.
Let us speak of the world. This year is the final year of
a seven-year Jewish cycle called shmittah.
Shmittah started, in fact, on Rosh
Hashanah.
If you’ve not heard of shmittah, don’t be surprised – it’s only observed in the land of
Israel, and, until recently, hadn’t been practiced in 2000 years. But don’t let
its obscurity to us fool you: shmittah
is a central preoccupation in the Torah; it serves as a source of profound
spiritual preoccupation for the greatest Jewish minds.
Shmittah is, quite
simply, a Shabbat for the earth.
“God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, telling him to speak to
the Israelites and say to them: When you come to the land that I am giving you,
the land must be given a rest period, a sabbath to God. For six years you may
plant your fields, prune your vineyards, and harvest your crops, but the
seventh year is a sabbath of sabbaths for the land. It is God's sabbath during
which you may not plant your fields, nor prune your vineyards. Do not harvest
crops that grow on their own and do not gather the grapes on your unpruned
vines, since it is a year of rest for the land. [What grows while] the land is
resting may be eaten by you, by your male and female slaves, and by the
employees and resident hands who live with you. All the crops shall be eaten by
the domestic and wild animals that are in your land."
-Leviticus 25:1-7
This is to say that, for an entire year, there was
neither sowing nor planting nor harvesting. Every inch of the land lay fallow,
not an acre to be touched.
Imagine the audacity of this mitzvah. The society of the
Torah – well into the Common Era, was agrarian. These people were farmers. And
for an entire year, they farmed…nothing. The burden on their way of life was
immense, the effect on their commerce, profound.
In addition to the agricultural mitzvah, there was a
stunning financial mitzvah. In the seventh year, all debts were forgiven. Being
rather saddled with student loan debt, let’s just say that the notion appeals.
What is yet more audacious, what’s even crazier, is that
they actually did it. This wasn’t theory; Shmittah
was practiced.
The question, of course, is why? Why would an entire
country give up their normal way of life for a year? What would compel them?
I promise to try to answer the question…but not just yet.
From the world to the community: to be Shabbat observant
in contemporary society is to appear insane. There’s a perfectly good car that
isn’t used. Perfectly good elevators shunned in favor of walking nine flights
of stairs to your friend’s apartment. Perfectly good episodes of Orange Is The
New Black that need binge watching.
And I want to cop to it. Shabbat observance is insane.
Except.
Except that Shabbat is only insane in relation the rules
of the larger society in which we live. Those rules are largely arbitrary, but
they are such a part of our lives that we rarely notice their artificiality.
For those in ties - do you really think there’s a
compelling reason to wrap that nooselike piece of fabric around your necks? For
those in heels, explain to me it’s mandatory that you stand on a few inches of
toothpick right?
Only Because.
Football is on Sunday is Only Because the 8 hour work day
and 40 hour week created a weekend.
The school year runs September to May Only Because there
was a time when children were expected to help their parents with spring
planting and fall harvest.
Many of you had to drive to get here Only Because when we
started the mass production of the automobile, people of means thought it
fashionable to move far out of the city, and suburbia was built to separate
private homes from communal and commercial spaces – a move considered by
movements like New Urbanism to be a massive mistake, as an aside.
A stunning percentage of what we accept as The Way Things
Are – those rules are in fact Only Because.
Except that in the 21st century, today, as the
pace of life, increases, frenetically quickens, a pace breakneck and then more
breakneck, a forced stoppage is feeling less and less insane.
Shabbat observance creates a very different kind of
world: one in which efficiency is the least valued priority; in which people
must live in physical proximity of each other; in which stopping, ceasing, is
the best thing that one can do. In the context of a mechanized, mobilized,
technologically forward society, the choice to do so, even for a day, is a
clash against the dominant values. Shabbat is deviant.
Nor can it be done alone. To observe every Shabbat by
oneself is a form of torture: the doors to society literally closed against you
by the requirement of money or the use of electricity.
Except for the Smithsonian, which is free, so one can go
on Shabbat. If you go to the zoo, you can see Bao Bao. That’s nice.
Shabbat demands a community.
Sociologist Peter Berger wrote: “Unless
our theologian [religiously committed individual] has the inner fortitude of a
desert saint, he has only one effective remedy against the threat of cognitive
collapse … He must huddle together with like-minded fellow deviants and huddle
very closely indeed. Only in a counter-community of considerable strength does
cognitive deviance have a chance to maintain itself…”
The question, of course, is why? Why would an entire community give up their normal way of life, every week, for a full day? Why would they act against the structure of dominant society? What would compel them?
From the community to the self: Shabbat’s negative commandments
dwarf its positive mitzvot. That means that the essence of Shabbat is found in
not doing, in what I do not do, in from what I prevent myself.
The self chafes against these restrictions. Why again can
I not hop on a plane if that makes me happy? What’s the reason I can’t work if
there’s work to be done? Why can’t I drive if it’s more convenient? And what is
this book that’s supposed to tell me how to live?
Worse yet, when any command - especially a religious one
- is forced on us from without, against our will, the resentment that results
poisons every fruit that springs from its tree, no matter how well intentioned.
So why would a person submit to restrictions of her
person? Why would she limit her way of life, especially when there are so many demands
on her? What would compel her?
Shabbat is compelling because it teaches one to stop. If
one wants to find God, if one wants to find oneself, one must first learn how
to stop, how to cease. I know of no other way[PM4] . Otherwise
one is drowned in the hubbub and the busy. To cease is to clean and to clear
out, and in that clearing a thing that is delicate, yet absolutely essential,
finally has the chance to grow.
My favorite teacher, the great Rav Kook, may the memory
of the righteous be a blessing, wrote about Shabbat, “This national treasure
that is imprinted deep within us, the image of a world that is good, upright,
and godly – aligned with peace, justice, grace, and courage, all filled with a
pervasive divine perspective that rests in the spirit of the people – cannot be
actualized within a way of life that is purely businesslike. Such a life, full
of frenetic action, veils the glory of the divine soul, and the soul’s clear
light is blocked from shining through the overpowering mundane reality.”
From the self to the community.
As Shabbat
clears out the detritus of the self and cultivates the soul, so too does it
push us to transcend the “Only Because,” of society’s rules. He says, “There is
always a tension between listening to the voice…that calls us to be kind,
truthful, and merciful, and the conflict, compulsion, and pressure to be
unyielding that surround buying, selling, and acquiring things. These aspects
of the world of action distance us from the divine light and prevent its being
discerned in the public life of the nation. This distancing also permeates the
morality of individuals like poison. Stilling the tumult of social life from
time to time in certain predictable ways is meant to…touch the divine qualities
inside them that transcend the stratagems of the social order and that
cultivate and elevate our social arrangements, bringing them towards
perfection.”
Even in the
face of tremendous societal pressure, in which every moment, every circumstance
pushes us to move forward, the message of Shabbat is to stop. And damnit if it
can’t be done; people are doing it. That is the deviant wisdom, the
revolutionary brilliance of Shabbat: it imbues into our souls the unequivocal,
indisputable knowledge that it can be done, that it can be different.
From the community
to the world.
The way that
we treat this world demands that we destroy it in order to benefit from it: The
disposability of
what we own, the waste
of materials in how we package, rampant
overuse of energy, the continual
plumbing of the land for food, resources, without cease.
In
destroying the world, we destroy ourselves.
Rav Kook
goes on to say, “What Shabbat does for the individual, shmitta,” the land’s Shabbat, “does for the nation as whole.” But
that sentiment seems incomplete, for shmitta
also belongs to the land, addresses its needs.” However, in his concept, we
belong to the land to, and are part of it. And he says, “ The people works with
its soul force on the land, and the land works on the people, refining their
character in line with the divine desire for life inherent in their makeup. The
people and the land both need a year of Shabbat!”
I think that what we are all waiting for, what, deep
down, we are all relying upon, is that circumstances will come upon us from the
outside that will compel us to act, that will give us no choice but to change
the way we treat the planet because there will be such an undeniable connection
with how we ourselves are treated by it. We’ll feel motivated, we say, we hope.
We’ll be moved to change.
But to wait for those circumstances, I fear, will mean
arriving in a global state that is dire in the extreme. We should not wait to
suffer before we change. We should not wait for tragedy.
But there is another choice than to be compelled from
without. And that is to choose to be compelled from within. To choose to have
to; to accept to have to. The element of choice banishes the resentment that accompanies
commands from without. The element of obligation ensures that we will not
falter from within. Though the demands of climate change are scientific, I
believe that it’s time to be religious about how we confront them. Motivation
is a fickle thing. “We have to” is the lever that moves the world.
So this is
the moment, the moment to ask ourselves: what’s it going to be? What are we
willing to give up? Will it be that, one
day a week, no matter what, that car will sit in the driveway? Will it be that thermostat
never goes above a certain temperature, or below one? Here’s one that’s
personally painfully; will it be that there’s No More Take Out.
Ooh. Ouch.
You tell me. Tell me
what it’s going to be. But when you tell me, there’s yet one more step, one
requirement – even more difficult than the giving up. Whatever it is has to be
done in community. An individual isn’t strong enough. The effect of community
is exponential.
What I know, with deep conviction in my soul, is that to
face the environmental struggle that will define us for centuries, we need
Shabbat to teach us that we have not lost the possibility for global change. I
believe that after 2000 years, the time for shmittah
has come again.
