Earth Etude for Rosh Hodesh Elul

Turning Earthward

by Rabbi Asher Chaim Sofman

~ I sit in my backyard on a cool and beautiful August day. Cicadas and crickets buzz. It’s a workday, but if my laptop’s on, even hours I spend lounging outside can be productive.

I’m working, of course. I have multiple programs open and I’m typing away.

What I’m not sure I’m doing is “producing.”

Our scraggly food garden lies to my left. Mostly what’s growing there are weeds, but not everything. The plot also hosts two melon vines that sprouted from my compost pile. They have flowers now; there’s a chance I’ll see cantaloupes this year. I see a handful of tiny carrot seedlings growing, too. We let their overwintered parent go to seed.

Farmers and gardeners call plants like these, ones that grow without human effort, volunteers. I’d call the weeds volunteers, too. We didn’t do anything for them. Nevertheless, they shield the ground with their tender bodies and bring up water and minerals to share with fellow plants, the soil biota, and us hungry, thirsty animals.

I catch myself thinking that humans don’t make anything the way plants do. We don’t draw carbon from the spinning mass of star-rock beneath us; we don’t absorb solar energy to fuse that carbon with nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen and create life-making compounds. We don’t fruit. We don’t produce. Even those of us who garden and farm don’t create those crops. The plants do. At best, we move stuff around. Seeds. Water. Nutrients. Light and shade. It’s an uncommonly cynical thought, for me. 

Then I realize that’s all the plants are doing, too. They move nutrients through their cells and change their forms. Those new forms will be moved and changed again by other creatures and forces. Moving is all everything has done since creation. We’ve shuffled the stuff of the universe, matter and energy and so-called dark materials, from one place, one form, one combination, to another. Human beings, microbes, crickets, cantaloupes, and even mineral atoms all have this power to move. To create things others need.

It’s not productive to think we don’t.

In Elul, the movement of the moment is teshuvah, or repentance. Both words come from roots that mean “to turn.” Jews learn that next month, Yom Kippur will atone for transgressions between us and the Divine, but earthly missteps require appeasing those we’ve wronged. We must repair damaged ties. When we do teshuvah, we return—re-turn—to right relationship.

What is our right relationship with the earth?

Adam, the human being, comes from adamah, earth. Read another way, though, adamah could mean “towards the human being”—adam-ah. The earth is already turned towards us, providing all we need to grow and thrive together. In return, we humans can volunteer to be more conscious, and more conscientious, about what we move, where we move it, and how much of it we borrow, to restore our productive partnership in creation. We can compost. We can eat thoughtfully. We can reduce, reuse, and recycle.

We can return earthward.

Rabbi Asher Sofman is the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion program coordinator at Reconstructing Judaism, a deeply inexperienced gardener, and vermicomposting enthusiast.

---