Earth Etude for Elul 10

Climate and the Sh’ma

by Leah F. Cassorla Ph.D.

~One of my amazing 7th graders said to me that the second paragraph of the Sh’ma (the V’hayu) says, in his words, “if we follow the commandments, we will have plenty to eat and be safe, but there are people who don’t have enough food.”

He’s right. There are people who don’t have enough food. I explained it’s because we bow down to other gods.

The V’hayu is either completely redacted or read silently in most liberal Jewish communities in North America. It feels a bit icky to us. It describes a system of punishment and reward that we in the West can sometimes feel relies on magical thinking and presents a vengeful and petty God. That is unsettling. And it should be. Because it also describes the world in which we find ourselves today, facing sea-level rise, floods, droughts, wildfires, and worse.

And yet, we know the answer: T’shuvah. The paragraph itself makes it clear. T’shuvah, in Judaism, requires more than recognition of our bad choices, it requires action. We must feel remorse, and pray, and act. We must return to living in harmony with Earth.

It can’t be that simple, you say.

It can. But as any recovering 12-stepper will tell you, “Simple and easy are not the same thing.” It’s as simple as no longer “serv[ing] other Gods and bow[ing] down to them.” We serve the gods of money by actively participating in our over-the-top consumption culture. And that’s a hard habit to break. Still, we can take little steps toward bigger change.

The first and second paragraphs teach us this lesson using possessive pronouns. In Hebrew, the second person pronoun (you) has different singular and plural forms. The V’ahavta uses singular pronouns to tell us how to act. The V’hayu, on the other hand lists the rewards and punishments using plural pronouns. This tells us that the actions of each individual accrue to their community.

We can buy less by sharing more. We can benefit all of life by taking responsibility for our individual choices.

God knows better than to ask us to turn on a dime. We can be reminded of the small steps we want to take daily if we attend to the second part of the Sh’ma. We can pray and act our way back to a healthy relationship with our Source and our Earth.

Leah F. Cassorla, Ph.D., MFA, is a Kol-Bo (dual ordination) student at the Academy for Jewish Religion in Yonkers, NY. She works as a Cantor and Education Director for the Melville Jewish Center in Melville, NY.

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