By Jeremy Benstein, co-founder and senior staffer of the Heschel Center for Sustainability in Tel Aviv
Parashat Emor includes one of the Torah’s major accounts of the festival calendar. In Leviticus chapter 23, after the description of the Temple rites of Shavuot, the text repeats the commandments of peah and leket, to leave the corners of the fields and the unharvested gleanings of the crops for the poor. Given the ritual focus of the chapter, this ethical addition is even more remarkable. Is this just a simple mental association with the harvest season of Shavuot, or is there a deeper reason? 

In the context of the pilgrimage festivals, Pesach, with its unleavened bread and arduous dietary restrictions is clearly in some profound way about food. Sukkot, second only to Pesach in strenuous preparations, focuses on where, in what, and how you live — its theme is shelter. Both mandate a form of enforced poverty – eating matzah, the bread of affliction; living in a shack, the most modest of dwellings. These holidays are great social equalizers: fulfilling their two central obligations make the wealthy more like the poor, and no one, rich or poor, is excluded by the celebrations. 

The Biblical Shavuot is different. The celebration focuses on the first fruits and newly harvested grain, and the main celebrants are the landowners, those who have grain and fruits to bring. 

As such this festival is “about” land, a basic element of civilization along with food and shelter. Perhaps ideally, everyone was supposed to be a landowner — but the Torah realizes that this was never going to be the case. The holiday, then, has the dangerous potential of splitting the people between landed and landless, and rather than being a ‘leveller’ like Pesach and Sukkot which bring rich and poor together in a shared experience, Shavuot could reinforce the socio-economic gap. The unexpected verse about leaving parts of the harvest for the poor (reinforced aggadically in the story of Ruth read on Shavuot) is a reminder of mutual obligation, a reminder that the land should be a source of justice and not division, that the holiday requires an ethic of care, and not just a celebration of wealth. 

The Biblical land ethic, codified in ritual and ethics, merged the natural with the social by expressing an inseparable link between the land, its bounty and its continued well-being, and the need for the care and support of all the people. 

​This is also a statement about how we celebrate our holidays: gratitude for our bounteous harvests of various types is best expressed through compassion for those who have not been so blessed — not through closed, self-satisfied convocations of the favored. 
That sense of mutual obligation and care that stems from belonging (from household via community to people) is a core value of Shmita, and a core social-economic teaching of the Jewish tradition: that a society based on Jewish ethics can’t tolerate endless accumulation and the concentration of wealth in a few hands, with a growing social gap to the grave detriment of large parts of the population.

Blog post curtesy of Hazon

By Eli Weinbach

Rest requires work. Without putting in the prep time, we may find that a day off is spent thinking about what has yet to be done. Without planning, vacation may not be much more exciting than staying home. Extended conversation with friends about where to go for dinner cuts into dinner time if plans aren’t made ahead of time. When hosting a guest, we make sure their stay is easy, but that ease is the result of extra work. 

Vayakhel and Pekudei are accounts of work done by the Israelites to ensure that God would have a resting place in their midst. Moses gives many instructions, and Betzalel the architect orchestrates production with his assistant Ohaliab. The population is galvanized to contribute either their materials or time. 

In the final chapter of Exodus, the monumental work is finished. The nation watches with baited breath, and their hard work is rewarded. The Shechina descends upon the newly built Mishkan (Exodus 40:35), and divine respite in the physical realm is achieved. All that planning and work seems like so little when the payoff arrives. An immanent God! The Most Holy, right in the middle of the camp! And all that had to be done was laboring for the sake of rest. 

This work-rest dynamic is always available to us, on various scales. We work for six days and revel in the holiness of Shabbat. We toil for six years and leave the seventh Shmita year for rest. We voyage for 49 years and return home in the Jubilee. God created us with the abilities to plan and build, to till and tend. Yet we are commanded to rest. We do not work for work’s sake. It is through that creative exertion that we open the space for rest and true connection with the Godly.  

​Work is hard. Hopefully, we can remember the lesson of Shmita and the Mishkan: the purpose of work is the rest which follows, for it is in that rest that one can find true connection with the divine.  

Rest well!

Eli Weinbach is an experiential education for the Jewish people, and strives to manifest his love of the environment and Jewish tradition in a deeply connected world. He has worked for Hazon since 2017. 

By: Melissa Hoffman (with thanks from Hazon)
Many of us anticipated this Purim as the approximate year-marker since our lives changed unimaginably. There’s something apt about the holiday that highlights the topsy-turvy nature of life bookending the beginning — and hopefully the beginning of the end — of the coronavirus in the United States.  

Purim represents a time of finding happiness and hopefulness amidst great existential uncertainty. It’s also about hidden truths being revealed to us. In the early months of the pandemic, many of us found joy, paradoxically, in hearing tales and seeing images of rejuvenation and rebirth occurring in nature due to the sharp drop in our own activity. With humans in temporary retreat, wildlife proliferated in formerly abandoned habitats and even occupied urban spaces. As motorway traffic plummeted, a dramatic decline in carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions allowed all life to breathe more easily again. We got a glimpse of what it would look like to give the land a long-deserved Shabbat, a respite from our anthropocenic reign. Maybe we caught a glimpse of the truth that’s been drowned out by the busy-ness of our typical, frenetic day-to-day: that slowing down is a good look for the world.  

A key lesson we can draw from COVID-19 is that we need intentional, punctuated rest periods to avoid future burnout, especially for our food system. The regulatory concept of Shmita has enormous relevance and potential for us today — what would it look like to establish a regular cycle of leaving the land fallow for one year every seven years (Lev. 25:4), to release loan recipients from all their debts (Deut. 15:2) and to include animals both domesticated and wild in the Sabbatical practice (Lev. 25:6)? Would such a system naturally curb humans’ exploitative tendencies? Could it instill in us a sensitivity to our own power in relation to land, animals, and others in society? Might we come to a more holistic understanding of who and what comprises community, and how to sustain it?  

The Sifra (Behar 1) poses a famous question about the verses describing Shmita in Vayikra/Leviticus: “מה ענין שמיטה אצל הר סיני? Mah inyan shmitah etzel Har Sinai? — what does Shmita have to do [specifically] with Har Sinai?” Weren’t all commandments disseminated at Sinai? The midrash answers simply (maybe even circumventing an answer altogether) that “just as general and specific ordinances of Shmita were enunciated at Sinai, so too with all the mitzvot.” This doesn’t explicitly address why Shmita is directly linked to Sinai, but we can ponder the significance and relevance of a geographically specific set of agricultural laws received outside and prior to entering the land of Israel. Could the particular laws be not an exclusive set of guidelines for Israel, but instead, a playbook from which we’re meant to extrapolate a general rule of cessation from work, wherever we are? Could our particular love and care for the land and community within Israel teach us an ethic of communal care and justice that apply to anyone, anywhere?  

As the quintessential Diasporic Jewish holiday, Purim reminds us that thriving Jewish community and traditions matter outside of specific geographic boundaries. Wherever we are, Shmita is a metaphor for allowing people and the more-than-human world to recalibrate and revive. Pandemics like COVID-19, abetted by humans pushing natural ecosystems and industrial food systems to their limits, highlight how necessary this reprieve is.  

Although conceptually Shmita applies only to those who own and steward land, expanding and implementing a Shmita-like practice today doesn’t necessitate owning it. In a time when we have done our best to divorce ourselves from our food system, perhaps the most direct way we can participate in a Shmita-like practice is by supporting agricultural production that accommodates and centers these limitations: by eschewing factory-farmed products, by buying from farmers that employ regenerative practices, and by sourcing food that destroys the least wild habitat. We can be agents of Shmita by making choices that put the least amount of strain on people, animals, and the land. 

One year later, the chaotic side of Purim’s topsy-turviness still hasn’t left us. But one truth that will be continuously revealed to us, even as we emerge from this pandemic with hope and healing, is our interdependence with — and responsibility to care for — all land and those who dwell upon it.  

​Chag sameach and Shabbat shalom. 

By Helen Smith, NRPE Program Associate
Christmas is upon us. This season is unlike the others of years past though. We are kept in our houses, away from those we love.  There are long hours on the road ahead for some who will embark on driving to loved ones instead of flying. These long hauls remind me of the wise men, traversing for long periods of time to be able to give treasures and experience togetherness as they celebrate God’s gift of healing for the world.

Christmas means many things to many people, but I see it as a time for healing.  Humanity was hurting and confused and needed guidance, so God sent help. The pandemic and its domino effect has been hard on so many people and their families. It’s not easy to be apart from people you love during this season, or for months on end.  In this time, we need healing. Healing from sickness, tragedy and loneliness.

Through this time, healing of the earth has been happening. When the human world halted this spring, we saw the earth begin to heal. Streams became clearer. Smog began to clear. We saw firsthand that if given a chance, the natural world can help in the healing--both physically and spiritually.

During the pandemic we saw ways that God's creation can heal itself and help heal us. ​Since the pandemic began, people are spending more time on public lands than ever before. Spending time in God's creation provides an ideal safe/socially distanced activity. And, activities outdoors can provide much needed physical activity and can feed us spiritually. 

The healing of the earth has begun, and we get to be an integral part it helping to accomplish a clean earth for many more to come. And just as we begin to celebrate, the Bethlehem star can be seen this week around the world.  A reminder of God and the care for us and creation that continues.
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Tonight is the first night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights. The holiday commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabees defeated the Syrian armies in 165 B.C.E.

A great miracle happened there – when the Jews re-entered the desecrated sanctuary, most of the oil had been deliberately defiled. But despite this, they continued searching through the rubble until they found one single sealed cruse of consecrated oil. It's important to note that it wasn't just sitting there on the floor to be found, it had to be searched for, which required faith, action, and perseverance – a perfect metaphor for 2020.

At the heart of Hanukkah is the lighting of the menorah. Each night candles are lit by the Shamash: a single flame on the first evening, two on the second, and so on until the last night of Hanukkah, when all the lights are kindled. The eight candles represent the eight miraculous nights the Temple flame burned from that single vial, which was the length of time it took to press and consecrate fresh oil.

For Jews everywhere, lighting the menorah is a reminder of God's presence in our lives:

"Why has light been such a favorite symbol of God? Perhaps because light itself cannot be seen. We become aware of its presence when it enables us to see other things. Similarly, we cannot see God, but we become aware of God's presence when we see the beauty of the world, when we experience love and the goodness of our fellow human beings." (Etz Hayim Torah commentary published by the Conservative Judaism movement, p. 503).

Seeing God’s presence in creation and community resonates across nearly every religious tradition and is central to our shared work through Earth Ministry/Washington Interfaith Power & Light. Even in the darkest hours of night – even in the most difficult days of a pandemic-filled year – there is always light. Remember that we all carry within us the spark of creation and that together we form a strong and resilient community.

LeeAnne Beres, Executive Director, Earth Ministry

Rev. Dr. Steven C. Bland, Jr. is the Senior Pastor at Detroit’s Liberty Temple Baptist Church and the President of the Michigan Progressive Baptist State Convention.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a glaring and harsh spotlight on the irrefutable fact that unhealthy air and water can become devastating disasters for communities of color. We have always known that clean air and water is necessary for human health. But the COVID-19 pandemic revealed, yet again, the harsh and tragic reality of what decades of pollution does to communities of color. While as a nation we are rightfully focused on addressing the immediate health needs of infected individuals, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the health and well-being of Black and Brown folks must be addressed through pollution reduction. 

Under the current deregulatory agenda, water protections are drying up, coal is worth more than human life, and new tailpipe emissions standards may actually cause more deaths. Even the nation’s bedrock environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), is under siege. These rollbacks will increase human exposure to pollution that is linked to higher coronavirus death rates. As a pastor concerned with both protecting human life and God’s creation, this is untenable. 

Cumulative impacts—a phrase to mean systematic and ongoing poisoning of neighborhoods and communities—need to be addressed if we are ever to truly recover from this pandemic. These cumulative impacts cannot be addressed by rolling back regulations in the name of economic progress. Yet, that is exactly what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing -- including the recent executive order to use a national emergency declaration to waive NEPA’s crucial environmental protections.

The rollback of NEPA is of particular concern since it is credited with protecting communities from the devastating impacts of an unwanted and unneeded freeway expansion in the northeastern part of the state and saving Michigan taxpayers $1.5 billion. Yet, even given its effectiveness in minimizing impacts to the environment and to communities during infrastructure development, the EPA is currently planning to revise and undermine this law. Despite public outcry, the EPA is close to finalizing changes to the entire NEPA process that favor polluting industries. 

In a bid to escape the burden of environmental stewardship, the EPA proposed rollbacks aim to change the NEPA review process and pave the way for further degradation of vulnerable communities. We know that these communities—low-wealth neighborhoods and communities of color—often bear the brunt of problems caused by poorly planned infrastructure projects. By rolling back NEPA, the EPA is planning to eliminate one of few environmental protections that these communities have. The changes to NEPA threatens the health of our communities and puts our air and water at risk 

My Christian faith calls on me to care for the earth and most importantly to care for my neighbor. This healthy future that my faith envisions and my community deserves demands more than rollbacks designed to pave the way for unsustainable and irresponsible development. Protecting the environment through regulations like NEPA aligns with a vision of vibrant, healthy communities. NEPA has helped us escape some of the more environmentally tragic infrastructure missteps for more than half a century, and it should be regarded as helping us build a pathway to a healthier future.

The impacts of COVID-19 may have uncovered for many the environmental injustice lived daily by communities of color, but it also unearthed a solidarity among us all to care for our neighbor in their time of need.  We know more acutely now that pollution left unchecked will severely undermine our ability to respond to pandemics. We must, therefore, ensure that protections such as NEPA that protect human health remain intact, because we depend upon these safeguards to build vibrant and just communities.
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