Earth Etude for Elul 16

Zazu Dreams – Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle –
Cautionary. Fable for the Anthropocene Era

by Cara Judea Alhadeff, PhD

~Our collaboration combines four generations: Zazu (the dreamer), Cara/Mommia (the storyteller), Micaela/Nana (the artist), and Grand Papoo (the family photographer).

Zazu Dreams focuses on human rights and ecological justice, merging humanities and the sciences, exploring the relationships among cross-cultural Sephardic and Arab-Jewish spiritualities with biodiversity.

The trailer opens with Jacques Cousteau’s declaration, “The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.” We then ripple into a school of parrot fish freeing Zazu and Ari from plastic gyre where the Persian Gulf meets the Arabian Sea.

Corporate giants are swiftly engulfed by inter-religious symbols echoing the Golden Rule. Spiritual unity connects with the earth body as we transition into Zazu’s dog Cocomiso who poops fertile “bricks,” reminiscent of the Blessing of Asher Yatzar and the critical function of excrement in the cycle-of-life. “Waste” (death) and fertility (birth) unite through the perseverance of the dung beetle (non-human ecosystems).

The diligent dung beetle reminds us of Stephen Hawking’s wisdom, “Everything we need to know is already within us, just waiting to be realized.” Rachel Carson states, “To sin by silence when they should protest, makes cowards out of men.” As Hawking and Carson visually merge, Uum Kulthum’s song, La Ya Habibi, welcomes Zazu, Cocomiso, and Zafira among the singing sand dunes from which emerge the 10 sefirot. Maimonides tops our Kabbalah Tree of Life, followed by RBG, Ibn Sina, Gandhi, Emma Lazarus, Sol Hachuel, MLK Jr., Frederick Douglass, Einstein, and Mandela. Zazu affirms, “I understood more and more that there was so much work to be done; that the only way to heal ethnic and racial divisions and the ecology of our global body is to see how we are all interconnected. We all have to take care of each other.”

Ladino proverbs and family archival photographs are montaged with mosaics from the Maghreb, a visual manifestation of community expressed through interlocking perspectives. The camera zooms out from a question mark composed of multiracial ears reminding us of a tenet of Judaism: the individual-collective act of questioning—there are 50,000 arguments in the Talmud and only 50 are resolved. Questions open the possibility for unexpected encounters. As Zazu recounts his dreams, we see Harriet Tubman who declares: “Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”

Zazu Dreams explores the equilibrium between biodiversity and cultural diversity, human and wildlife ecosystems in balance, and Jewish and Arab-Jewish ancient wisdom.

Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff, Mother, Artist, Author, Alchemy: Unlearning What We Think We Know, will launch during the World Affairs Conference. Alhadeff’s monographs, Viscous Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene and Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era, have been critically acclaimed and endorsed by activists, philosophers, and scientists. Zazu Dreams unravels the complexities of climate crisis as it celebrates our interconnectedness through cross-cultural Jewish indigenous wisdoms, economic, literary, environmental. Learn more:www.carajudeaalhadeff.com

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