The voice on the other end of the phone was completely incredulous, "How could a decent Jewish girl, a rabbi no less! be living out in the middle of nowhere?!"  I had sent a box of the CDs I produce to my distributor on the east coast and they had arrived damaged. "Why can't you send them UPS?" he had sputtered in frustration.  I calmly explained that I lived in the country more than an hour's drive to the closest UPS center, so I sent them via the US Postal service. "And it's not the middle of nowhere," I added. "It's the most beautiful and sanest place I could ever imagine living...Why are you living in the middle of such craziness?" This high-powered east coast Jewish businessman paused for a moment to consider this, and then slipped back into puzzled incredulity.

When I hung up I realized that my distributor had just given voice to what so many urban Jews had been just too polite to say. Jews belong in the city, at the heart of sophistication and culture, certainly not in the wilderness.

Yet our foundational story, our entire journey from slavery in Egypt to the flowing milk and honey of the Promised Land-takes place in the wilderness. It is in the wilderness where we encounter God and receive the Torah. It is in the wilderness where we so carefully construct the Mishkan (the portable sanctuary where the Presence of the Divine can dwell) which represents the structures of a holy life.  The word for wilderness in Hebrew is Midbar, which can be understood as the place without (mi) speech (daber). It is the place of silence from which all speech, all meaning is born.

Our central prayer in Judaism says, "Shma!" Listen! Then you will experience the Oneness and Unity of all Reality. And then you will love God/Reality with all your heart, all your soul and all your might.

The perception of Unity and the Love that flows from that perception begins with listening. A practice of deep listening therefore seems to me to be an essential requirement of a Jewish life. The wilderness is the place where the skills of deep listening are refined. In the wilderness we listen to God's voice as it speaks to us directly through the miracles of Nature. And we cultivate enough spaciousness and silence so that the "still small voice" within can be discerned and followed. In order to love with all my heart, all my soul and all my might, I must have a rich inner life. How else can I explore the reaches of the heart, the expanse of the soul or the strength of my humanity? When I look out my window at the sweeping vistas and wide expanse of red rock mesas, cottonwood valleys, and open skies, I am sent to the spacious inner landscape, where the Great Mystery reveals itself again and again with each breath.

I spend about half my time traveling and teaching in communities around the world, mostly in cities where the complexities of meaningful speech are always in high demand. I am a lover of words, of music, stories, text, philosophy...and I spread that noisy love wherever I go...But when I return home to the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico, I am nurtured by the silence, by the wilderness. I am completely inspired by the birds and chipmunks that play at my feeder. I am startled into reverence for all Life when a bear lumbers casually onto my deck.  When a storm blows up the valley, I stop and gather up all of my senses in witness to Majesty in Motion.

Each day I am surprised by the dawn's magic as it lights up the mesa.

Then I return to my holy text and say, "Of course...this is what I've been praying about!"

People to the ends of the earth are overawed by Your wonders;
At the coming of morning and evening they stand up and sing for joy. (Psalm 65)

Our Jewish story begins with Abraham, who is told, "Lech L'cha!" Get going... literally, "Go to yourself." Abraham is commanded to leave his settled, comfortable urban life, and set out into the wilderness.

Each time we respond to the call of the wild, we are hearing God's command to leave the safety of the known... and venture forth into the unknown. As we step out into the wilderness we are also stepping inward, in to the wild of our own hearts. "Lech L'cha!" Get going... literally, "Go to yourself." I go to the wilderness to find myself, to know the wild and holy animal that is suffocating beneath layers of expectation, decorum, habit and distraction. There I will find the source of my vitality.

Our ancestor, Jacob, whose life like ours, was filled with complicated struggles, thorny deceptions and deep yearnings, was also sent out into the wilderness. He put a stone under his head as a pillow and was given a glorious dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder that stretched between Heaven and Earth. He woke up, received God's promise along with a moment of Awakening as he realized, "God was in this place all along. This is none other than the House of God. This is the gate of Heaven!"

His revelation, our revelation is given through the power of Place. God has been waiting in this place all along. But sometimes our constructs, our ideas, our elaborate civilization... keep us from experiencing the raw power of place. The word for place in Hebrew is Makom... which is also a secret name for God. When layers of civilized conditioning are stripped away in the experience of Wilderness, we remember that "This is none other than the House of God." We never really owned it. We are honored guests here and our host is the Lord of Hosts, welcoming us each day.

Our Jewish calendar is designed to connect us with the cycle of the seasons, with the waxing and waning of the moon, with the times of planting and harvest. Our prayer times each day are tied to the mysterious moments of changing light. Our celebrations connect us with the phases of the moon. And our lunar calendar is modified so that we can also be attuned to the cycles of the sun. Our religious life is meant to send us outside so that we can feel ourselves moving in relationship to the cosmos.

At the end of Shabbat I go outside to search the sky for three stars that signal permission to perform the ceremony of Havdalah. Yet so many reject the gift of the stars in favor of the authority of what is written in their calendars.

Looking up at the stars I can remember that "God was in this place all along," and that "This is the Gate of Heaven." I receive my inheritance as a set of tools that can connect me with a larger Reality. Our holy books are meant to send us to a place beyond words.

D.H. Lawrence expresses the sadness and exasperation I feel when clock-time and calendar-time supersede the Reality that is right in front of us, when we become imprisoned in the systems that were meant to free us.

"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love

when it was made personal, merely personal feeling,

Taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun,

And cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox!

This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots

because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars.

And love is a grinning mockery because, poor blossom,

we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and

expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table." [1]

"Our civilized vase on the table"... may be the only life that feels safe and comfortable and we may even feel satisfied with these poor blossoms. Our religious lives, our intellectual inquiries, our sense of identity may also feel safe, comfortable, respectable and civilized. Then, we try to quench our deep thirst for vitality through various forms of entertainment, technology, food, sports, or vicarious thrills. Yet all our efforts are but a "maiming of love." All of our efforts leave us still yearning for raw truth, for the fullness of love.

In writing my book, Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land, I wanted to enter in to the landscape of Torah and let the power of the wilderness open me to the transformative truth that is hidden between the words, in the white fire that glows between the black fires of text. In writing Torah Journeys, I became aware of my own wilderness journey as a journey of awakening. The journey of Torah mirrors my own soul's journey as I step up to the challenge of becoming whole-hearted, of reclaiming the shadow-places inside me. Through Torah I experienced the places inside me that were both dangerous and wonderful.

The experience of wilderness reawakens our sense of wonder. It strips away our illusions of safety and puts us face to face with the truth of our fragility, our vulnerability. In that vulnerability, we find our true power, our true love. To live a Jewish life requires that we cultivate the courage to directly encounter the most awesome aspects of Creation.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches us that, "Awe is an intuition for the creaturely dignity of all things and their preciousness to God; a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something absolute. Awe is a sense for the transcendent, for the reference everywhere to God, who is beyond all things."

This "sense for the transcendent" is awakened in us in the wilderness, in that place that is beyond our comfort zone. We are called the People of the Book. And sometimes we can get caught inside the pages, inside the ideas, inside our heads. We get fixated on the finger that is pointing to the moon, and meanwhile the moon shines on, her secrets secure.

Or, perhaps as The People of the Book, we can let the book send us to the place beyond words, where secrets are revealed. In the Song of Songs, the lovers know that they must venture out to the fields, to the vineyards, to the jagged mountains in order to find the fullness of love.

Will you dare to put your books down and be sent into the wilderness to encounter Your Creator directly?

I am my beloved's
And his longing is for me,
Only for me.
Come, my beloved,
Let us go out to the field
And lie all night among the flowering henna,
Let us go early to the vineyards
To see if the vine has budded,
If the blossoms have opened,
And the pomegranates are in bloom,
There I will give you my love.
The mandrakes yield their fragrance
And at our doors are all kinds of precious fruits,
Both newly picked and long-stored,
I have hidden them away for you.[2]

I am given as a gift to this life, though I resist.
My small life is a gift to the whole.
The cosmos longs to know itself through me.
I hear this longing in the call to adventure,
The call to journey within and beyond.
Come, my beloved,
Let us go out to the field
Come my beloved,
Let us leave the comfort of familiar habit,
Let us challenge these walls, fling open these doors,
Explode definition, shatter this outgrown identity.
Let us dare to disagree with the wardens of Time and Space,
Let us step outside possibility,
There I will give you my love.
Come my beloved,
Let us go down into the valley,
To see if the cottonwood has budded its new green,
To caress the feather of mountain mahogany,
And breathe in the butterscotch of pine-sap flowing,
My precious fruits, both newly picked and long-stored,
Have been hidden away too long.
Whatever I don't give away,
Will decay and fester and become misery.
Let us go out to the field
Where spaciousness can untie my tangles,
Where tantalizing fragrance can inspire my curiosity,
Where I can lose my apprehension, find my humor,
Play in the soil of the Ancestors, bury treasures for my descendents,
And open to my true desire.
There I will give you my love

 

---

 

[1] (D.H. Lawrence, "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover." In Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore, editors, Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and other prose works by D.H. Lawrence. New York: The Viking Press, 1968).
[2] Song of Songs, Chapter 7, translation by Rabbi Shefa Gold

****

Rabbi Shefa Gold is a leader in Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and received her ordination both from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. She is the director of C-DEEP: The Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice in Jemez Springs, New Mexico and is also on the faculty of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She is the author of "Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land" released in 2006 and "In The Fever of Love: An Illumination of the Song of Songs" released in 2008.

Photo is of the Jemez Mountains, courtesy of visitusa.com

Last night I went to hear Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farms in Virginia, speak at a benefit for the Hollywood Farmer's Market, one of my favorite farmer's markets here in Portland. Salatin is featured in Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and more recently in the film Food, Inc. (BTW, if you haven't seen the film, go, this minute, and take everyone you know, even if you have to drag them kicking and screaming).

Salatin is a self-described "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-farmer," which gives you some idea of his philosophies and approaches to, well, just about everything. His talk was about food safety, specifically how governmental approaches to it are not only not making our food safer, but are also marginalizing and criminalizing small farmers who raise animals on a non-industrial scale. I didn't go to Salatin's lecture expecting to learn anything new; I've read several of his books, including Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, and I also know a bit about this subject from other sources and from my work in the food sustainability world. I went to experience Salatin himself. And he was definitely worth the price of admission.

Salatin is, among other things, an entertaining writer, with a love of language that pays homage to his Southern roots. In person he is even more so. I felt like I was in a tent camp revival meeting gettin' some old time religion. Salatin exhorted, he roared, his energy couldn't be contained on the small stage, he overwhelmed the levels on the rather feeble amplification system he was using. It was a pleasure to hear him trace back the history of our attitudes towards food safety, going back to Pasteur and germ theory (Salatin's redux on Pasteur's approach is that germs are out to get us, so we have to destroy them before they destroy us). Instead of trying to regulate deadly bacteria out of existence, Salatin pointed out, we should be creating environments where salmonella, E-coli, campylobacter, listeria, etc. can't thrive. In other words, outlaw feedlots and other concentrated animal raising operations that feed animals things they were never supposed to eat and that make them sick (corn, in the case of cows), force animals to live hip deep in their own feces, with no access to the outside (in the case of factory poultry) and no ability to move about freely. If the USDA outlawed these kinds of operations, the proliferation and spread of these dangerous germs would be drastically reduced and our food would be measurably safer. That, along with the myriad ways government bureaucracy sets up obstacles for small farmers who want to raise animals sustainably and in a manner designed for their maximum health (not to mention ours), was the gist of Salatin's talk.

I didn't agree with everything Salatin said. He's a true libertarian as far as his contempt for anything governmental is concerned, and he believes the free market and capitalism are a sufficient corrective to industrial food abuses (He cited Upton Sinclair's The Jungle as an example; after it was published in 1906, sales of meat products dropped by 50%). I'm way too much of a socialist to ever buy into that point of view, and my contempt for capitalism is almost as deep as Salatin's is for government. But it was great to sit in a room with over 250 like-minded folks (many of them young farmers) and share a sense of purpose, to renew our individual and collective commitments to raising,  buying, eating and advocating for good (and I mean that in every sense of the word) food. And it was balm to my spirit to hear Salatin describe that commitment as "noble and righteous." Amen to that.

 

This post originally appeared on The Jew & The Carrot and is reprinted with permission.

Look out at the plot of land and you will see an empty field, surrounded by thick forest on three sides, and tennis and basketball courts on the fourth. But when Simcha Schwartz, associate director of The Jewish Farm School, gazes out that way, his vision floods with goat sheds and shade structures, rows of purple cabbages, green peas, fiery tomatoes, and yellow flowering broccoli; with hoop houses and green houses and busy bodies bent over plants, walking through rows of seedlings, walking with hoes, some wiping their brows, smiling, staring up at the sky.

"The first step of planning a farm is observation," Schwartz says. So for now he and his colleagues are watching the grassy field, noting how water flows through it when it rains, the shade and sun patterns throughout the day, when the wild deer and gopher seem most active.  

Schwartz, 31, along with his good friend Nati Passow, 29, co-founded the Jewish Farm School (JFS) in 2005, along with a group of other colleagues from the Teva Learning Center and Adamah. The group aimed to reconnect Jews with the land, food production, and an environmentally sustainable way of life. Although they have neither a permanent farm nor school just yet, JFS has reached a wide variety of people through their diverse programming and courses. They visits schools and teach gardening and farming skills, they teach workshops on urban sustainability, they have partnered with the Teva Learning Center on Teva's Annual Seminar on Environmental Education, they have offered keynote speeches and classes and workshops at Hazon's Food Conference, they run their own Alternative Break trips on farms throughout the country, and they have also launched a consulting business called Cooperative Design, which  works with synagogues and other Jewish institutions to create systems that foster cultural, ecological and social sustainability.

Showing off the game planBut this summer most of JFS's attention has been focused on establishing what they hope will be their first permanent farm at Eden Village Camp. The camp is a project of Yoni Stadlin, 30, a former colleague of Schwartz and Passow at the Teva Learning Center, and his wife, Vivian Lehrer, 29. The couple has received a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation to start a camp on land owned by the Jewish Federation. This farm venture is a synthesis of three main players: The Jewish Federation is funding the installation of the farm, and is interested in seeing it as a year-round project that will bring Jews of all affiliations to the land to solidify a sense of Jewish identity and involvement. Camp Eden Village is happy to host this JFS farm in order to provide educational garden activities for their campers and staff, and to grow food for the dining hall. Eden Village Camp has also asked JFS to run related programs around the site, like maintaining "snack gardens" with cherry tomatoes and berries outside the bunks, and planting fruit-bearing trees around the fields. JFS's dreams for this land include running year-long projects like alternative breaks, workshops, and retreats, providing the Jewish community with progressive cutting edge farming techniques and models of natural building and living. JFS also hopes to use the farm as a training grounds for rising Jewish educators who want to learn about farming, Judaism, and the rich intersection between the two.

This collaboration is exciting for Schwartz, who for a long time has been dreaming of a life style centered around community, sustainability, Judaism, and nature. The past five years have seen him working on a farm in Georgia, working for Teva, Hazon, American Jewish World Service, and in Israel. In all of these experiences he felt a deep connection with his Jewish roots, and a longing to combine the things he loves - farming, Judaism, education, and community - in a long-term living situation. Schwartz has recently moved to the Eden Village Site full-time.

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Jewish identity and ecological identity may seem like strange bed-fellows. Yet our identity is our sense of our self: who we are: what grounds us in our selves and the world. Knowing who we are implies knowing who we are relative to others. How we are different, and, just as importantly, how we are similar.

At times, some of us Jews are so fearful about preserving our people and our tradition that we think the way to do so is to hunker down and focus on our uniqueness as Jews, our difference, the things that set us apart-our laws, our texts, our Jewish institutions, our communal life. But the dark side of concentrating too much attention on our difference, our uniqueness, is the narrowing of our worldview and ourselves. We can develop a limited view of life and its possibilities, and unwittingly push away our young people and adults who are hungry to explore the wider world.

In their landmark book The Jew Within, in which they report on their intensive interviews of moderately affiliated American Jews between the ages of thirty and fifty, Steven Cohen and Arnie Eisen noted that the respondents exhibited a distaste for religious language that emphasized the differences between Jews and non-Jews and an attraction to language that was more universal.

The ways in which we are similar to other people-all of whom are made in the image of God-- is the flip side of what we usually think of as Jewish identity. But this dimension-our universality--seems to get short shrift in Jewish life and Jewish education.

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Earth Day is a Jewish holiday. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but from the quantity of books that have been written on the intersecting subjects of Judaism and the environment, you'd think that Earth Day—coming up on April 22—appears on the Jewish calendar between Passover and Yom HaShoah. There are a lot of paths leading from Judaism to environmentalism and vice versa, and the following ten books offer gateways and guidance. Hopefully they're printed on recycled paper, too.

	God in the Wilderness: Rediscovering the Spirituality of the Great Outdoors, by Rabbi Jamie Korngold: "Balancing an in-depth knowledge of scripture with a wry sense of humor and a compassion for nature, Korngold reminds us of the nooks and crannies of the natural world and says that we must seek them out, soak them in and care for them. The variety of personal stories, tales of travel with various Adventure Rabbi groups and contemporary alternative biblical outcomes—what if Moses had been too busy texting to notice the burning bush?—make for a book that is easily digestible but at the same time worth savoring. Purposely sized to fit easily into a backpack or pocket, the call to return to the wild—or at least your local city park—is ever present."
	A Wild Faith: Jewish Ways into Wilderness, Wilderness Ways into Judaism, by Rabbi Mike Comins: "As the subtitle indicates, Comins asserts that the relationship between Torah and nature is a two-way trail: wilderness is the best place to work out a personal, unscripted, fresh relationship with divinity, and Judaism offers a vocabulary and practice to translate the experience of wilderness into a life of purpose and meaning. For those who love nature and know little about Judaism, and those who love Judaism but know little about wilderness, Comins's message is clear: one need not choose between the two to find potential, promise and fulfillment."
	The Way into Judaism and the Environment, by Dr. Jeremy Benstein: "For everyone who wants to understand how Jews view the natural world and the responsibilities of environmental stewardship, this book provides the way into an essential aspect of Judaism and allows you to interact directly with the sacred texts of the Jewish tradition. At a time of growing concern about environmental issues, Jeremy Benstein, PhD--a founder and associate director of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership--explores the relationship Jews have with the natural world and the ways in which Judaism contributes to contemporary social-environmental issues. He also shows us the extent to which Judaism is part of the problem and how it can be part of the solution."
	Ecology and the Jewish Spirit: Where Nature and the Sacred Meet, by Ellen Bernstein: "In today's modern culture, we've become separated from the spiritual possibilities of the natural world. "Modern" religion often overlooks nature, focusing instead on history and human drama. This book offers an alternative...a different, eye-and-soul-opening way of viewing religion: a perspective grounded in nature, and rich in insights for people of all faiths. Here, innovators in Judaism and ecology lead us on an exploration of the concepts of sacred space, sacred time, and community."
	Trees, Earth, and Torah, edited by Ari Elon, Naomi Mara Hyman, Arthur Waskow: "This exhaustive and exhausting collection of essays, biblical passages, poems, songs and recipes scrutinizes Tu B'Shvat, a minor Jewish festival that occurs on the 15th day (tu Equals number 15 in Hebrew) of Shvat, the fifth month of the Jewish year (it usually falls between mid-January and mid-February). Known as the New Year of the Tree, Jewish Arbor Day or Tree-Planting Day, Tu B'Shvat began as a tax day for calculating which fruit would be included in the tithe brought to the Temple. More recently, Tu B'Shvat has become a day for planting trees in Israel and for celebrating ecological concerns."
	Spirit in Nature: Teaching Judaism and Ecology on the Trail, by Matt Biers-Ariel, Deborah Newbrun, Michal Fox Smart: "This pioneering guide book awakens hikers of all ages to the miracles of God's creations along the trail. Each discovery revealed through the book's 27 engaging activities becomes an adventure of the senses and the spirit as hikers recite blessings over natural phenomena, "build a tree" with their bodies, and recreate the rainbow of colors that adorn fields and trees and stones. A special index highlights the connection between key Jewish values and the wonder of nature. Spirit in Nature will guide camp directors, counselors, teachers, religious leaders, parents, and youth group leaders in nourishing the spiritual lives of hikers exploring the natural world."
	Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology, by Ellen Bernstein: "Many people see the environmental crisis as a spiritual one, but author Ellen Bernstein sees the Book of Genesis as a guide to living peaceably with the Earth. The creation story, according to Bernstein, invites a deep appreciation of nature and may be the perfect muse for a world that is hungry for an integrated ecological vision. This message, however, is a hidden one. Thus the importance of The Splendor of Creation. Written from a Jewish perspective, this book is both accessible and compelling to a broad audience, as it explores Genesis 1, verse by verse, reflecting on the language that contributes to a holistic ecological vision."
	Judaism and Environmental Ethics: A Reader, edited by Martin D. Yaffe: "Brought together in one volume for the first time, the most important scholars in the field touch on diverse disciplines including deep ecology, political philosophy, and biblical hermeneutics. This ambitious book illustrates - precisely because of its interdisciplinary focus - how longstanding disagreements and controversies may spark further interchange among ecologists, Jews, and philosophers. Both accessible and thoroughly scholarly, this dialogue will benefit anyone interested in ethical and religious considerations of contemporary ecology."
	Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word, by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and twenty others: "This volume intends to contribute to the nascent discourse on Judaism and ecology by clarifying diverse conceptions of nature in Jewish thought and by using the insights of Judaism to formulate a constructive Jewish theology of nature. The twenty-one contributors consider the Bible and rabbinic literature, examine the relationship between the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of revelation in the context of natural law, and wrestle with questions of nature and morality. They look at nature in the Jewish mystical tradition, and they face the challenges to Jewish environmental activism caused by the tension between the secular nature of the environmental discourse and Jewish religious commitments."
	Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel, by Alon Tal: Virtually undeveloped one hundred years ago, Israel, the promised "land of milk and honey," is in ecological disarray. In this gripping book, Alon Tal provides - for the first time ever - a history of environmentalism in Israel, interviewing hundreds of experts and activists who have made it their mission to keep the country's remarkable development sustainable amid a century of political and cultural turmoil. The modern Zionist vision began as a quest to redeem a land that bore the cumulative effects of two thousand years of foreign domination and neglect. Since then, Israel has suffered from its success. A tenfold increase in population and standard of living has polluted the air. The deserts have bloomed but groundwater has become contaminated. Urban sprawl threatens to pave over much of the country's breathtaking landscape. Yet there is hope. Tal's account considers the ecological and tactical lessons that emerge from dozens of cases of environmental mishaps, from habitat loss to river reclamation. Pollution in a Promised Land argues that the priorities and strategies of Israeli environmental advocates must address issues beyond traditional green agendas."

Jerusalem of Green: Bustan Brody community garden Downtown Jerusalem is cluttered enough at any time of year, but rarely more so than this past week. Posters for cleaning services and chametz sales imploring people to burn, sell, or otherwise dispose of their leavened bread in preparation for Pesach were pasted on lampposts and notice-boards on every street. Jews are generally partial to consuming food rather than throwing it away, but this time of year is the exception to the rule.

Only a few minutes from my apartment is another exception to the rule: A place where Jerusalemites come each week to throw away their leftovers, no matter the season. Down at Bustan Brody, part of a city-wide network of community gardens, ecologically-minded Israelis bring their unwanted food to dump on the compost heap. The volunteer-run garden is a green oasis in the midst of five-story apartment buildings—an area which was once slated for development during Ehud Olmert’s stint as Jerusalem Mayor, in a bid to reduce the city’s budget deficit by selling off public plots of land for construction.

“We took responsibility for our own backyard, that’s a revolutionary concept,” says Abba Zavidov, one of the founders of the Bustan, which lies within easy walking distance from the Prime Minister’s official residence. “If we’re going to talk about sustainability then we need to prove it can be done. People bringing their kitchen waste to compost at the garden is a great way of showing how."

In Jerusalem, organic refuse like kitchen scraps and garden clippings make up around 40% of the city’s solid waste. If not recycled via composting, it typically ends up contributing to more of the brown landfill mountains like those straddling the road from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, which trick you into thinking that you’re still in the Judean Hills instead of speeding across the (once flat) coastal plain.

And God Said, "Are You Gonna Eat That?': compost in the holy land But it’s not just the Festival of Matzo that inspires a frenzy of food disposal: Figures published last week reveal that folks in my native Britain throw out one-third of all food they buy each year, including over four million apples. And they don’t even have Pesach as an excuse. Waste on such a huge scale has been partly fueled by cheap food culture and marketing ploys like ‘two-for-one’ offers, which encourage over-consumption.

I hope that Rabbis in Israel and the Diaspora will be using their sermons during the Jewish festival of freedom as an opportunity to reflect on the merits of environmental responsibility in a world where not everyone can take their food for granted. In any case, composting can offer a green solution to the stale matzo and indigestion-cookies due to be littering kitchens across Israel next week.

The Vatican Runs On Solar Power: does your house of worship?This week the Vatican announced a list of new sins. Included in the corrupt collection are ominous warnings against polluting the earth and "causing environmental blight." These "ecological" offenses are listed alongside "New Forms of Social Sin," including excessive wealth, contributing to the growing gulf between the rich and the poor, and stem cell research.

At first glance this might look like a lame ploy by the Vatican to appeal to young people who are socially and environmentally conscious, but at least with the green initiatives, they’re backing up the rhetoric with real action.

Pope John Paul and successor Pope Benedict have made great strides in greening the Vatican: Vatican City has already teamed up with a Hungarian carbon offset company to plant the Vatican Climate Forest, which will cover 37 acres (Vatican City is only about .2 square miles, so it doesn’t take much to make it carbon neutral).

The papal audience hall is completely powered by solar panels installed in a rooftop garden. Planktos/KlimaFa--the carbon offset company working with the Vatican--has announced that it’s committed to helping them develop methods to calculate the carbon emissions of individual Catholic churches, and offer eco-restoration options to turn their carbon footprints green.

In his World Peace Day 2007 speech, Pope Benedict XVI said, “Disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence. There is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men.”

It’s a fairly humble beginning, but if a billion Catholics follow the Pope’s example on this issue, the world would be in a much better ecological state. Likewise, it would be great to see any of the branches of Judaism pushing a green agenda as enthusiastically as the Vatican has. Thus far, the Reconstructionist movement seems to be doing the most, including building some great green synagogues.

Trees everywhere: need to be hugged.I really love Tu B'Shevat. All the things I want and appreciate in a holiday, it has. In years past, I've both attended and held gorgeous, meaningful sederim for the day and unfortunately have to report that I'm not going quite as all-out this year as I did last year. But, that's okay. (PS- Read Helen Jupiter's lovely post about Tu B'Shevat for inspiration.)

Of course, I'm still going to give tzedekah. In addition to the usual JNF Plant-a-Tree program that I often use, as most of us probably have (I do appreciate the environmental work JNF does, among other things) I've unearthed (no pun intended) a few other opportunities for you to love trees if you're thinking of adding another tree, in addition to perhaps an Israeli tree, to your tzedekah this week.

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If you’re not already very familiar with the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, please check out their amazing website now. It’s chock full of fantastic resources for making your synagogue and Jewish community more aware of environmental consequences, and ways to decrease your community’s environmental footprint.

But the big news over at COEJL is that they’ve started a new program called "Conservation Conversations: Invite Your Elected Official to Synagogue" to engage your elected officials in a dialogue about climate change policy and conservation. The program is being launched in partnership with the Relgious Action Center, and the RAC’s website is hosting a bunch of the materials that are relevant. They’ve got resources to help you find the best advocacy opportunities in your area, as well as tools to help you prepare for a political visitor. They even help you figure out how to use momentum from such an event to get things going further at your synagogue, minyan, or kehillah.
We supposed to be a light to the nations: Get it?
This is what I love about the RAC. They see an issue and they just attack it full on, disseminating information, helping with programming, morale, funding and other resources. Regardless of your level of observancy, you should check out the RAC’s homepage every once and a while just to see what kind of work they’re doing. Trust me when I say you’ll always be impressed.

Anyway, I hope you’ll check out the COEJL programming and take some time to get your representative or Senator to stop by your place of worship. And while those details are being worked out, go get yourself an energy efficient lightbulb to reduce greenhouse emissions. It’s easy, saves you money, and helps save the world. I’m pretty sure God would approve. For more info on COEJL’s How Many Jews Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb campaign, click here.