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Earth Etude for Elul 10
Objects as Storytellers: CoEvolving with Thomas Berry by Cara Judea Alhadeff, Ph.D. This video excerpt made with Jay Canode and Shahab Zagari plays with the absurdity and complexity of our consumption-obsessed, waste-oblivious society--particularly in the midst of greenwashing, environmental racism / green colonialism, and the fallacious "renewable" energies movement. Dancing in front of a diptych of West Virginian children coal miners from the ...
Earth Etude for Elul 9
Living in a Fragile World: A Torah Godly Play Story by Rabbi Michael Shire ~I wonder if you have ever looked up at the night sky and wondered how big it is…how far it stretches…..how immense the universe is……? Or how there are thousands upon thousands of suns, stars, planets and moons, thousands of solar systems and galaxies? And I wonder how you feel when you look up into the vast space and how see how very big it ...
Earth Etude for Elul 8
Canadian Wilderness by Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein I am a lifelong Girl Scout. My love of the out-of-doors comes from many years camping, hiking, canoeing at Girl Scout camps throughout the Midwest, New England and yes Canada. All summer I have been haunted by an old camp song, known as “Canadian Wilderness” or “The Life of a Voyager”. One verse sings: “Call of the lonely looncoyotes howling at the moonwind rustling through ...
Earth Etude for Elul 7
Creatress of Night and Day by Rabbi Louis Polisson ~Blessed is She Who causes day to pass and brings the night (1) May She raise up perfect healing to all who are struck (2) Whether they are silent, plant, a living animal, a speaking being (3) Light from darkness, darkness from light (1) May She bring us out from the demonic fire (4) Selfishness The harmful impulse May She cause us to cleave to the ...
Earth Etude for Elul 6
Blessed by Judith Felsen, Ph.D. ~Blessed are we who have strayed and returned called back by Your mercy, awakened from selfishness to holiness, from cruelty to kindness. Unseeing we concealed, justified, perfected, means to reach our ends, claim desires, perhaps ignorant of damage done, unaware of straying far from You. Detours often deadly to our peace, balance and well- being are brought to halt, corrected paths of ...
Earth Etude for Elul 5
Priestly Atonement and Cleansing the Environment by Andy Oram ~Can you really have an impact on climate change by switching to veggie burgers or lowering the heat in Winter? How about making a change at work that shaves some of the carbon footprint off of your product? Do these really matter when the world continues to pump tons more carbon into the atmosphere each year? The Jewish tradition offers a useful perspective on this question in the ...
Earth Etude for Elul 4
The Ultimate Emergency is a Cancer on the Earth, but It Can Be Successfully Treated by Deb Nam-Krane ~In 2022, after a decade of worsening symptoms that included erratic energy as well as digestive issues – and plenty of gaslighting – I was diagnosed with colon cancer. It was serious enough that even after every visible trace had been removed I needed to undergo chemotherapy treatments. Just as I should have gotten the attention I needed ...
Earth Etude for Elul 3
Turn it and Turn it Again by Leah Cassorla, Ph.D ~Our lives are marked by recurrences in time and season that nonetheless are not truly a circle, but rather a spiral, in which the return of the familiar sounds more like a harmonious echo than a repetition. Even Torah and holiday cycles regularly repeat and are never the same. This summer, with its heat waves, wildfires, and flood-causing storms, however, seems like a step out of time—in both ...
Earth Etude for Elul 2
'A Monument'al Vacation by Rabbi Steven J Rubenstein During the late spring, my wife and I joined her son and daughter-in-law on a trip to Vancouver Island off the western coast of Canada, bordering Seattle, Washington. So many things reminded me of previous events in my journeys that are so life-affirming. First and foremost were the majestic mountains of the Canadian Rockies, holding on to the last vestiges of snow in late May at their peaks. ...
Earth Etude for Elul 1
Perception of Time by Thea Iberall, Ph.D. ~I ’m driving home from Marblehead where we commemorated Erev Tisha B’Av. My trip home seems so much faster than the trip there, even though my GPS says travel time is 45 minutes each way. As I stare out the window, watching headlights cut through the darkness, I’m baffled. Why can’t I measure actual time? We measure distance, size and number without difficulty. I can know if I can fit through a ...
An Evening of Earth Etudes for Elul!
Join us for our Zoom Program on Thursday, August 24th from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm EDT The 30 days of Elul (Elul 1 starts the evening of August 17) are a time for cheshbon hanefesh (soul searching) and teshuvah (return, repentance). They are a time to turn from the ways in which we have missed the mark and return to G!d and our best selves. Elul is a time to be reborn, transformed, and renewed. This year for the first time, JCAN-MA ...
Earth Etude for Elul 29: Chasing Sunrise
by Sarah Chandler The rolling fog Invites me To stretch my neck To peek at a new perspective It’s Not quite bright enough To squint ~ My eyes wide across the valley Trying not to wait For something else to be ~ Just when I think My orientation is eastward The clouds above the mountain Tickle the sky Spreading north across the orange glow These trees form a frame Filled with smaller frames So ...
Earth Etude for Elul 28: When One Door Closes, Another Opens
by Joan Rachin Like many of a certain age, my husband and I had decided to downsize, but unlike many others, ours was less a choice and more a necessity following his stroke two+ years ago. We loved our town, neighborhood, and street and had been making plans to “age in place” before life intervened. As I began to survey the overwhelming task ahead, it was clear that my obsession with helping preserve what pristineness remained in nature had ...
Earth Etude for Elul 27: Grateful Lament
by Judith Felsen, Ph.D. My King, How will I love You when we meet in this year’s fields of Elul? You who have sent illness, pandemic, bloodshed, injustice, hypocrisy, fire, starvation and death… We have been estranged and denying our separation for eons Now it has come to this… With my ambivalence how will I love You? Will I remember that You sent us Your starry sky on Your darkest night blooms ...
Earth Etude for Elul 26– Turning to Shabbat: An Ecological Approach
by Dr. Leah Cassorla In the loaming, Boobah the One-eyed Wonderdog and I sit outside in our vast, shared backyard, watching the swallows. As the evening descends, we watch the tree line of the nearby patch of forest. The lightning bugs begin their fiery dance before us, the swallows swoop in and out, and hares hop in and out of the line of sight--my line of sight as Boobah's is thankfully too restricted to catch them. I consider this beautiful, if ...
Earth Etude for Elul 25: For the Land in Not Mine
by Rabbi Louis Polisson And the land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me1 ~ And now we are learning ~ That the Land belongs to No One, To the One with No End For the earth was confusion and chaos2 ~ And we too have become wild and waste Human beings from the earth Human beings, full of harm3 for the earth Every day ~ But our fate is not sealed ...
Earth Etude for Elul 24: Choosing Gratitude
by Rabbi Judy Kummer It was my ankle that went. There I was, in the gorgeous Berkshires countryside, walking briskly with my sister-in-law on a glorious true-blue spring day, sun spilling giddily over wildflowers by the sides of the country road, bugs thrumming merrily in the long grass and the smells of freshness and potential all around. My sister-in-law pointed out cows in a nearby field; as I glanced over at them, savoring the ...
Earth Etude for Elul 23: Signal Hill
by Thea Iberall, PhD Signal Hill stands 365 feet above Long Beach in Southern California looking down on San Pedro Bay, home of the largest US port. In the 1500s, Tongva tribe members stood on the hill sending smoke signals to their families on Catalina Island. Early settlers used to call it the Bay of Smokes. Eventually, large homes were built on the hill, surrounded by an abundance of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Even a Hollywood movie ...
Earth Etude for Elul 22: Fifty Shades of Green
by Rabbi Suri Krieger “Green green, it’s green they say, on the far side of the hill Green green I’m goin’ away to where the grass is greener still” It’s a song that was a familiar refrain for me in my growing up years. I loved the message as much as the melody. We were a camping kind of family, and grazing in the greenery of the woodlands was my sacred place. But wherever we went… the Green Mountains of Vermont or the Poconos ...
Earth Etude for Elul 21: The Earth Objects
by Rabbi Charles R. Lightner “And the giants began to kill men and to devour them. And they began to sin against the birds and the beasts and creeping things and the fish, and to devour one another’s flesh. And they drank the blood. Then the earth brought accusation against the lawless ones for all that was done on it.” (1 Enoch 7:4-6)[1] “And again I saw them, and they began to gore one another, and the earth began to cry out.” (1 Enoch ...
