13 results for author: Lawrence Troster
The Meaning of This Hour: Confronting the Coming Cataclysm of Global Climate Change
In March 1938, Abraham Joshua Heschel delivered a speech to a conference of Quakers in Frankfort (it was later expanded and published in 1943) called The Meaning of this Hour.
Heschel had been living in Berlin for some years, acquiring his Ph.D. and a liberal rabbinic ordination (he had already gotten a traditional ordination when he was a teenager in Warsaw). During his years there, he was a witness to rise of Nazism even while he taught and began to publish his work.
In 1938, it was clear to many people that war in Europe was coming. In the very month that Heschel spoke came the Anschluss, the Nazi takeover of Austria. Heschel was ...
The Age of Climate Dithering Must Come to an End
There is a new genre fiction called “Climate Change Fiction” that has become increasingly popular. The major theme of these works is what the world will be like after the effects of climate change has taken effect.
One of my favorite Science fiction authors, Kim Stanley Robinson, has utilized this theme in several of his books, the latest being, 2312 which won the 2012 Nebula award for best science fiction novel and has been nominated for the Hugo award for best science fiction novel of 2013.
2313 mostly takes place off Earth among colonies on Mercury and the moons of Saturn. Earth itself is still recovering from massive ...
Do Animals Go to Heaven? Reflecting on Our Relationship to Non-Human Life
Do All Dogs Go to Heaven? When we ask such a question or “Do animals have souls?” what are we are really saying? We are revealing a deeper existential and theological question about how human beings relate to other living creatures. No one can know the actual reality of the afterlife, but what we believe about it says something about what we believe about life. Our ideas about animal “souls” is, therefore, really about whether humans are unique among living creatures and determining the spiritual distance or ontological gap between humans and the rest of life. In other words is there a “sacred hierarchy” in ...
Beyond the Letter of the Law: Jewish Ethical Investing in the Light of Climate Change
Responding to a Dangerous Impasse on Climate Change
Climate change resulting from the use of fossil fuels poses a well-documented, grave threat to humanity and the ecosystems that support life. But in the United States, a real national response to climate change has been stymied by political inaction, cultural inertia, and the concerted effort of fossil fuel companies, which have funded propaganda and disinformation in opposition to limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Increasingly, environmental organizations have resorted to various actions meant to break this deadlock. One of these tactics is encouraging divestment from fossil fuel ...
Going Fossil Free and Investing Green
On the of the biggest campaigns of 350.org is its Fossil Free campaign (http://gofossilfree.org/) which seeks to have many institutions including religious one divest their holdings from 200 publically held companies that hold 200 publicly-traded companies hold the largest amount of the world’s carbon-based energy reserves. The campaign, which has become quite successful in organizing on college campuses, is demanding that those companies stop any further exploration for new carbon-based energy reserves, cease from political lobbying on the state and national level to preserve their tax breaks and subsidies (and which take away government ...
From Light Green To Dark Green: Committing to An Effective Jewish Environmentalism
Tu Bishvat which takes place later this month has become over the last 40 years the Jewish Earth Day. Whatever its origins, Tu Bishvat is the most likely time that synagogues “do” Jewish environmentalism. And while this is a good thing, it tends to isolate the environment as an issue like any special Shabbat program that happens once a year.
And while the present Jewish environment movement has been doing a very good job on educating and activating the Jewish community on the issues of food sustainability and energy conservation, there is still a great deal of work that needs to be done. I find that much of Jewish environmentalism ...
Where is Wisdom to be Found?
Most scholars believe that chapter 28 of the book of Job is a later poetic addition into the text. The poem is nonetheless a beautiful hymn to Wisdom (Hokhmah) and a meditation on how to acquire it. The unknown Wisdom teacher who composed this poem is warning us that we cannot find wisdom in the ingenuity of human activity, which can even encompass searching the depths of the earth through the mining of precious metals and jewels.
Man sets his hand against the flinty rock and overturns mountains by the roots. He carves out channels through rock; his eyes behold every precious thing. He dams up the sources of the streams so that hidden ...
Equity or the Flood: Two Visions of Justice
It is now seven weeks to Passover and the Passover foods are already for sale in my local supermarket. My family is already planning when to do our shopping and whom to invite to the seder. Like many Jewish families, we put a lot of time and preparations into this holiday because we want to make it special and different from the rest of the year as was done when we were children.
But our preparations are not only about shopping, cooking, invites and the changeover of dishes. Every year, we spend at least a little time considering what we should talk about at the seder table. We try to discuss something related to the ...
The Voices of the Whales and the Trees: Lessons for TU B’SHEVAT
It was not a typical Shabbat afternoon that August of 2001. We were sitting on the shore of Windfall Island, on the edge of Tebenkof Bay in Southwest Alaska, watching the Humpback whales feed in Chatham Strait. As we watched, they moved across our view from north to south, diving and surfacing as they fed. They moved behind a small island and as they came back into view two whales suddenly threw themselves into the air at the same time. Then others followed as we shouted in delight. It was a fitting climax to a wonderful and inspiring experience. The “we” in this case were ten Jewish environmentalists from all over North America and ...
The Festival of Lights: The Spiritual Dimension of Energy
Oh, Lord, my God, You are very great;
You are clothed in glory and majesty,
Wrapped in a robe of light;
You spread the heavens like a tent cloth.
(Psalm 104:2)
Hanukkah which means “(re)dedication” has also been called the “Festival of Lights” at least since the 1st Century CE as the earliest reference to this name is found in the historian Josephus:
And from that time [the purification of the Temple by the Maccabees] to the present time we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us; and that thence was the name ...
Here I Am: Responding to the Call in Creation
Some years ago I was leading an interfaith environmental spirituality retreat near Seattle. My co-leader and meditation teacher, Kurt Hoelting, asked us to do a “walking meditation” where we would mindfully walk. This meant that while we were walking (and we were not to try to direct where we were walking) we tried to be mindful of each step, focusing on the place where we put our foot down and trying to be in the present moment of each step. In practice, this kind of walking is much slower than regular walking but is wonderful to focus the mind on a sense of the present in time and space. We were given around half an hour to do this ...
“Water, Water Everywhere and Nor any Drop to Drink”: Praying for Rain at the Right Time and in the Right Amount
When I was in Israel for my Junior Year abroad in 1974, I remember that on Erev Sukkot the headline on the Jerusalem Post read: “Sukkot Starts Tonight, Weatherman Predicts No Rain.” For those of us in the Northeast this year Sukkot started with a lot of rain continuing a very wet few months that caused severe flooding in many areas. In Israel, rain at this time of year would very unusual which is why the Mishnah says the following:
All the seven days [of the festival of Sukkot] a man must make the Sukkah his permanent abode and his house his temporary abode. If rain fell, when may one be permitted to leave it? When the porridge ...
Clean Earth to Till: An Environmental Vision of Redemption
The concept of Tikkun ‘Olam (the repair or healing of the world) in a contemporary form has been extensively used in Jewish social justice ethics over the last 50 years. In this iteration of Tikkun ‘Olam, there is a high degree of human freewill, instead of divine intervention, as the chief means by which the world will be perfected. But what do Jewish environmentalists imply when they use Tikkun ‘Olam? What kind of Jewish environmental perfection are we seeking? This is an important question because even if we are seeing the repair or perfection of the world as a symbolic and not literal goal, the concept of redemption we ...