Fertility, Plagues, Earth, & Freedom: Torah & Today
These snatches of Prophetic Vision sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with each other. For not even prophetic vision can adequately express the Infinite ways to seek deep healing and justice inherent in the Breath of life.
David Waskow is an international climate policy analyst based in Washington, DC. His work focuses on international cooperation that supports action on climate change at the national level in developing and developed countries.
We share with you today his Torah-teaching that connects MLK's Birthday and the Jewish holy day of Tu B’Shvat.
In the year when Waskow prepared this D'var Torah for a special Shabbat at the Tifereth Israel Congregation, the two sacred festivals converged; in every year, they come close. This year, Tu B'Shvat, which celebrates the midwinter earliest stirring of ReBirth of Trees and of the sacred "tree" of all life, begins the evening of January 23. The lessons of the connection are true this year as in every year. Below Waskow's piece, we are also sharing with you a Tu B'Shvat Seder and a Tu B'Shvat action to Congress that come out of these values.
— AW, ed.
Fertility, Plagues, Earth, & Freedom: Torah & Today
By David Waskow
We sit at the confluence of two moments in time: Tu B’Shvat starting tomorrow evening — a celebration of trees and creation — and Martin Luther King’s birthday — a commemoration of a commitment to justice. So I want to talk a bit about how creation and justice intersect.
I’d like to start with something that comes in the Torah just before today’s parshah (Beshallach): the plagues that we saw in the readings of the past two weeks. There have been many attempts to understand and interpret the plagues, many suggested structures to explain how they differ and how they fit together. But I think all of the plagues are all essentially of a piece.
To understand the plagues, I think we need to go back to the beginning of Shemot, the book of Exodus. Pharaoh sets out to eliminate Jewish male babies, essentially to destroy the fertility of the Jewish people. It is through the heroism of five women — Puah, Shifra (my daughter’s name), Yocheved, Miriam and Pharaoh’s daughter — that the baby boys, and then Moshe in particular, live.
But Pharaoh continues on his path, and I think the plagues are his comeuppance for attempting to interfere with, and to destroy, fertility.
In one way or another, the plagues are all about fertility gone awry. The blood in the Nile not only destroys the life in the river but also symbolically represents fertility gone wrong. Then there is an overabundance of animals and pests — frogs, lice, wild beasts; then viruses and infections; then the source of fertility in the form of rain gone very wrong in the form of hail; then locusts followed by a darkness that echoes the darkened skies from the locusts; and, finally, the striking of the first born.
All of this fertility gone wrong is an unsettling echo of what Pharaoh has attempted to do: to undo fertility. He has unsettled the ecosystem and aimed to overcome nature — Pharaoh famously says that otherwise Israel may “rise from the earth.” But the ecosystem around him, and fertility gone awry, ultimately topple him.
Critically, this is a story where people and the natural world are bound together, not siloed and separate. The oppression of the slaves and the oppression of fertility are inextricably linked.
And though Martin Luther King may not have had exactly that in mind, some of his words echo profoundly. He said: “In a real sense, all life is inter-related. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
And that is what we see today with climate change. This is not a challenge of the natural world, of the “planet,” but rather a crisis, and even a system of oppression, where people and the planet connect, where we are bound up in an inescapable network of mutuality.
A few years ago, when I worked for an international development organization, we did a publicity stunt outside a climate negotiating session: a bunch of people dressed up as polar bears carrying placards that read ‘Save the Humans.’ It was funny but also obviously deadly serious.
We are living on a planet now where oppression of the planet and people are linked together, where our fate and the planet’s are bound up together. And though we will all suffer if we don’t change course, deeply and rapidly, those who are most vulnerable and will suffer the most are the poor, the marginalized, women, children, the elderly.
If we stay on roughly our current emissions trajectory, children born today will on average face seven times more scorching heat waves during their lives than someone born in 1960. Newborns across the globe will on average also live through 2.6 times more droughts, 2.8 times as many river floods, almost three times as many crop failures, and twice the number of wildfires as people born 60 years ago.
And these impacts will not be felt equally. In Afghanistan, children could face up to 18 times as many heatwaves as their elders. Children born in Mali could be facing up to 10 times as many crop failures as someone who’s 60 today.
For us as Jews, the plight of migrants and refugees forced from their homes because of the impacts of climate change, may resonate most. Sea-level rise, extreme weather events, water scarcity, crop failures — taken together, these impacts are likely to cause a huge rise in migration and refugees around the world.
We are already starting to see it. Central America, for example, is especially vulnerable. In the dry corridor, an arid space across large portions of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, subsistence agriculture is regularly and increasingly affected by drought. Then, when severe weather-related disasters hit, such as with Hurricanes Eta and Iota in November 2020, the resilience of households is overwhelmed, and thousands have migrated from their countries.
And it’s not just the climate change itself that is felt so disproportionately — it’s the enormous health problems that come along with the same pollution causing the warming. In the US, those living in poverty and Latinos are exposed to around 1.5 times the harmful particulate air pollution that white people are, while Blacks are exposed to twice the level of pollution that Whites are.
As we can see, our environment and injustice are bound together.
There has been a debate among climate advocates the past couple of years about whether we should talk about personal and individual action or not, or whether all that we should emphasize is broader societal, systemic and policy change.
We need deep change to go where we need to go, and it’s true that a focus on whether, for instance, we’re recycling can distract from the broader, deeper change we need. But I think our tradition teaches us, in a profound way, that it’s not an either/or proposition.
In our tradition, we have woven together the personal action with systemic change. We have Shabbat as a moment when we refrain from work — from what we call malechet avodah — and we are deeply aware of the fundamental importance of the release from communal oppression in slavery — also called avodah. Shabbat and freedom from oppression — personal action and systemic change — are not mutually exclusive — they must go together.
Our Shabbat evening kiddush reminds us of this – even reminding us of how closely tied this is to the entire world of creation. We say:
וְשַׁבַּת קׇדְשׁוֹ
בְּאַהֲבָה וּבְרָצוֹן הִנְחִילָֽנוּ,
זִכָּרוֹן לְמַעֲשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁית.
כִּי הוּא יוֹם תְּחִלָּה לְמִקְרָֽאֵי קֹֽדֶשׁ,
זֵֽכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרָֽיִם.
“Your holy Shabbat, in love and favor you gave us as our heritage, a reminder of the work of creation, it is first among the days called holy, a reminder of the Exodus from Mitzrayim.”
Shabbat, freedom from oppression, and creation all tied together in one seamless whole.
And, as with Shabbat, so too must our actions span the personal to the broader world: we will need to drive electric vehicles, and at the same time we must build a system of public transport that can carry everyone where they need to go; we will need to use solar energy to power our homes and electricity to heat them, and at the same time we must develop a highly modern grid system that can carry renewable energy across vast territories to where it is needed; we will need to compost our food waste at home, and we must support sustainable agriculture and reduce waste throughout our food systems.
And we have to recognize that action where justice is concerned cannot just be about reducing our climate pollution to avert the impacts of the future. It must also ensure that those who are hit hardest and are most vulnerable to climate impacts — both in our country and around the world — have the resources they need to respond to the increasingly severe impacts they face today. That includes the migrants and the refugees forced from their homes.
We have much to gain from taking action. Reductions in harmful air pollution, more livable cities, energy that is more accessible to those in remote rural areas in poorer countries, healthier food, more resilient and thriving communities.
But change of this magnitude and at the pace required will not come easily.
I’m sure many of you know the oft-cited midrash for today’s parshah about Nahshon ben Aminadav. When the Israelite people reached the Red Sea, Nahshon went into the sea until the water reached his nostrils, at which point the sea split. That midrash tells an important message about human agency in the midst of a tremendous challenge and in the face of great risk.
Interestingly, though, when I went to look at the source of the midrash in the Talmud, it tells the story somewhat differently in important ways. Here’s the midrash from tractate Sotah:
According to the midrash from Rabbi Yehuda, “at the sea this tribe said ‘I am not going into the sea first’ and that tribe said ‘I am not going into the sea first.’ Then, in jumped the prince of Yehuda, Nahshon ben Aminadav, and he descended into the sea first, accompanied by his entire tribe.” And, according to Rabbi Yehuda, Nahshon prays at that moment, using the words of Psalm 69: “Save me, God; for the waters are come in even unto the soul (in Hebrew nefesh, literally up to my neck). I am sunk in deep mire, where there is no standing . . . let not the water flood overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up.”
The midrash continues: “At that moment, Moses was prolonging his prayer. God said to him: My beloved ones are drowning in the sea and you prolong your prayer to me? And Moshe said: Master of the Universe, but what can I do? God said to him [and now the midrash quotes from today’s parshah ‘Why do you cry out to me? Tell the children of Israel that they go forward. And you, lift up your rod and stretch out your hand.’”
In this version of the story, Nahshon’s action doesn’t so much force God’s hand or somehow directly cause the sea to split. Instead, he forces Moshe’s hand; he forces Moshe to take action. Rather than remain caught between the sea and Pharaoh’s army, stuck in an apparently interminable prayer, Nahshon takes a leap of courage and then raises his voice, invoking leadership with his call to action.
It calls to mind Greta Thunberg, at first initially alone in her actions, standing outside the Swedish parliament. But soon she was joined by other youth around the world — Vanessa Nakate in Uganda, Alexandria Villaseñor here in the US — in a movement calling for leaders to act urgently as the threat of the climate emergency grows.
None of us can stand by, waiting for others to go first. As the sea level rises around us, we must all — each of us in our own way — leap into the sea.
Pray as if Trees, Earth, & Justice Truly Matter:
A Tu B’Shvat Seder
Tu Bishvat Virtual Lobby Day for Climate Solutions with Jewish Earth Alliance
January 25, 2024
This Tu Bishvat, join together with Jews across the country to meet with Members of Congress to advocate for climate solutions. You’ll receive everything you need to be ready to participate in a virtual meeting with your Senators or their staff. These half-hour meetings take place online.
Register today for Tu Bishvat Virtual Lobby Day!