Jews are used to a flood story with a happy ending: The animals march onto the ark two by two, and after forty days and forty nights of rain, things begin to ease up. The dove brings back an olive branch. There is a rainbow, and a pledge never to destroy humanity by flood again. Sweet on the page, but gruesome if you think about it for too long. The world slowly drowned. God erased history.
Flooding in Iowa City: water water everywhere
The flooding in Iowa is not quite cataclysmic, but it is horrifying and dangerous and sad. Aside from the four Eagle Scouts who were killed in a storm last week, thousands have been evacuated from their homes. Businesses and agriculture have been submerged in water that is noxious and full of sewage, farm chemicals, and fuel. As an alumna of the University of Iowa, I was personally horrified to hear that sixteen university buildings have taken in water, including the main library, the brand new journalism building, and a small non-denominational church.

• The Red Cross announced yesterday that its disaster relief fund has been completely spent, so the agency is borrowing money to help victims. Donate to the Red Cross here.

• Right now, Iowa’s Jewish communities are holding up well, but they anticipate needing help in the near future. Synagogues in Mason City and Dubuque have taken on water, and will likely need money and supplies once the waters have receded and they can clean up. The Jewish Federation in Des Moines is accepting contributions to be distributed for general flood relief, wherever it may do the most good. You may send a check, earmarked "Flood Relief" to the Jewish Federation, 910 Polk Boulevard, Des Moines, IA, 50312.

• Hillel is talking about organizing a volunteer rebuilding trip in late summer when the waters have receded and damage has been assessed. If you’re interested in such a trip, contact the University of Iowa Hillel.

• And the Midwest isn’t the only area being hit by record-breaking floods this year. In China, dozens have been killed and more than a million people have been forced from their homes as waters rise in the Guangdong Province. The Red Cross Society of China is on the ground in Guangdong distributing supplies to people whose homes are submerged. Donate to the RCSC here.

 

Life with the Fremen in Dune: water is wealth--even recycled water"Toilet-to-tap" water systems may sound nasty, but for portions of the globe increasingly threatened by drought, they could be the best solution. If you're not familiar with the process, Slate has a thorough report on this kind of water-purification and why it could prove essential to the survival of regions like the American west.

Cities throughout the US have actually recycled wastewater for use in agriculture and landscaping for decades, but despite the proven and available technology, the idea of drinking water that once coursed through the sewers, awash with pee and poo, is too much for some people. Plans to recycle wastewater for potable use in Los Angeles and San Diego have been shot down by public resistance in the past decade.

But LA and San Diego (and many other regions around the world) are facing serious water crises. I suggest that people in states like California, Utah, Arizona, and Georgia (not to mention Southern and Eastern Australia) find themselves a copy of Dune and meditate on the body water-conserving lifestyle of the hardy Fremen. Because really, what's more unpleasant: drinking recycled toilet water, or running out of water? Besides, studies of regular old tap water have turned up contaminants like pharmaceuticals and insect repellents. Our water is already polluted, even after it's been "cleaned and disinfected." A little toilet water added to the mix is just a drop in the bucket, right?

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome recently banned bottled water from all city offices and functions (Yishar Koa’ch!). A recent documentary film and book, Thirst, by Deborah Kaufman (founder of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival) and Alan Snitow asks whether water is a public resource or a commodity to be bought and sold for profit. From political debates over pollution, to controversies over public control vs. privatization, to the very personal dilemmas of whether you should carry bottled water, there is truly “water, water, everywhere.”

How should the Jewish community respond to these global and local water crises?

Continue reading...

I grew up davening in a minyan without a mechitza, and I pretty much didn’t experience a mechitza at all until I got to my modern Orthodox high school. After 14 years of attending services every week with my family, and davening every day at school, suddenly having a wooden screen between me and the pimply-faced skinny boys in my class just seemed totally stupid. I was not distracted by them. I cannot imagine that as a pimply faced overdeveloped girl I was much of a distraction to any of them, and it was in high school that I learned about what I have found to be the main and most problematic consequence of the mechitza: it just encourages people—especially women—to ignore the davening, and instead chat with their neighbors.

See No Evil: not the best policy ever
In case you were wondering why this is coming up today, it’s because Sukkot is supposedly the anniversary of the first mechitza. See, during the time of the Temple they’d have this huge party during the intermediate days of Sukkot. The party was called Simchat Beit HaShoevah (literally, the celebration of the water drawing house) and there was all manner of singing and dancing. "Whoever did not see the Simchat Beit Hashoeva," says the Mishna (Sukkah 51a), never saw true celebration in his life. The celebration was in honor of the water libations that were performed on sukkot, and the libations represented tbe rainy year that we hoped God would give us. Anyway, the parties were huge, and there was apparently some levity involved (I know, levity at a party—crazy!) and the rabbis decided that the best way to avoid this was to construct a special balcony for the women so they could watch without being involved and thus wouldn’t cause any levity. Snazzy, eh? And apparently the whole balcony concept stuck, they decided to just leave it up all year, and there you have it—the origins of the mechitza.

I’m going to stay away from a discussion about whether or not the rabbis should have just learned to control themselves, because it’s all in the past and who gives a fuck. My main point is this—if you stick the women in a place that seems to be a step or seven away from the action going on at shul, you have to expect that they’ll feel like they’re not involved, unnecessary, and would just as soon talk to their neighbors about Malka Mushka’s new sheitel, or whether or not the rabbi’s son is still dating that shiksa from Delaware.

And even if you don’t think it matters if women pray or not, you should care about how much talking goes on in the women’s section because sound does bleed over to the men’s section, and suddenly you can’t hear the Torah reading because of damn Malka Mushka and her sheitel.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you tell people that they need to be far away so as not to distract you, you can’t be surprised when they get distracted standing way off in the distance.

Above, Iraqi children fill jugs from a water truck.

Last week, a Times editorial admonished bottled water drinkers to switch over to regular old tap water in light of the costs and unfavorable environmental effects of the bottled water industry: the oil and energy used to make the plastic bottles plus the huge amount of oil used to transport water, which is heavy, over long distances (often from the Alps or Fiji to American convenient stores and restaurants). All this, when our tap water is perfectly healthy and drinkable.

While we fumble around with this issue, Iraqis aren't so lucky: clean potable water is a precious and scarce commodity in today’s Iraq. IraqSlogger reports,

Many internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps in Iraq are facing shortages of water, especially clean drinking water, and the situation is being exploited by unscrupulous militants, local NGO's say.

“We have been informed that in some displacement camps near Baqouba, Najaf and Missan, families have been taking water from nearby open sewage drains, using cloths to filter it, and then drinking it without boiling it,” said Fatah Ahmed, a spokesman for the Iraq Aid Association (IAA).

Militants who bring clean water to the camps have bullied the IDP’s into providing them with money, favors, and even sex, in exchange for the water. An Oxfam International report recently stated that 70 percent of Iraqis do not have adequate water supplies, which is up from 50 percent in 2003.

There are precisely two parts of Passover that I like. One is making my family’s charoset, which I do with an old meat grinder, as per my grandfather’s custom. This is What Charoset Should Look Like: Meat grinders NOT optionalThe other is the prayer for dew, tefilat tal that we say on the first day of Passover. I missed tefilat tal because I wasn’t in walking distance of a synagogue on the first day of Passover, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it today since it’s pouring in Nashville.

Twice every year Jews praise God for providing us with water and rain. On the last day of Sukkot, during the Musaf Amidah, we open the ark, and the person leading services dons his or her kitel and sings tefilat geshem, a special prayer that recalls all of the forefathers, plus Moses, Aaron, and the tribes of Israel. Each is connected to water. Abraham’s gardens were saved from fire and from water, Isaac’s blood was almost spilled at the sacrifice like water, Jacob struggled with a creature of fire and of water, Moses hit the rock and out came water, Aaron purified himself and the other priests with water, and the twelve tribes were lead through walls of water to freedom. At the end of each stanza of the poem we beseech God to grant us water (i.e. rain) in the coming months. It’s a really beautiful prayer, and one that I think about every time I hear that the Kinneret is at record low, which is pretty much always.

For the next four months or so we add a line in the beginning of the Amidah asking God to cause the wind to blow and rain to fall. These four months are the rainy season in Israel, and if you’ve ever been in Jerusalem for a thunderstorm you know just how intense they can be. God is not kidding with that wind stuff, either.
I Dew: Love Dew
Then, on the first day of Passover, during the musaf Amidah we open the ark again, the person leading services again dons a kitel, and we say tefilat tal, the prayer for dew. But where tefilat geshem focuses on the spiritual and theological history of water, tefilat tal is much more practical. We need dew in order for our agricultural work to be productive. Urban life, too, is dependent on dew, we remind God, and we connect the role of dew in maintaining livelihoods in Israel to the return of Jews from the Diaspora. Though similarly structured, and composed by the same guy who wrote tefilat Geshem, Rabbi Eleazar Ha-Kallir, who lived in 7th Century Palestine, it’s interesting that the prayers for rain and for dew are pretty different.

It always struck me as weird that we don’t go ahead and ask God for rain even after the rainy season has pretty much ended. I mean, we could get lucky, right? And it’s not like we don’t still need rain after Pesach, it’s just less likely that we’ll get it because the wet season is almost over.

I once asked a rabbi about this, and what he reminded me of the famous lines from Kohelet: 3:1-2

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;

As Jews we have to recognize that there is a time for a rain, and a time for dew. We don’t get things randomly. Ours is a religion about respecting borders, and among the borders we have to respect are those of the seasons and the rains. We also have to learn to ask only for what we need without being greedy or wasteful.

These are all messages that resonate with me post-Passover. As I helped friends pack up their Passover dishes and uncover their counters and toss out uneaten macaroons it occurred to me that one of the most challenging lessons of Passover is to buy and make only what we really need. There’s a tendency to freak out and buy every K for P product one can find, especially in places like Nashville, where there aren’t many to choose from. But every year, when we’re left with extra food what we should be thinking about is how to ask for and buy only what we really need without going overboard.

You know how environmental activists are always goin on about sustainable ecosystems? This year, make a pact to make your kitchen a sustainable environment. It should be able to provide for you and your family, but think about cutting back on the extras. It’ll put more cash in your pocket, and maybe even a few extra drops of dew on the hills of Galilee.