Spiritual Wisdom from Earth and Torah

Blessed is all that is sacred and holy in this universe, which has kept us moving forward, sustained us in every way, and brought us to this day, still alive and kicking.

Such is the essence and spirit of the Shehecheyanu, the prayer we say at every holiday and special occasion, including Hanukkah, what some call the Jewish gratitude prayer.

Gratitude. It’s a wonderful, beautiful word. Associated with an emotion that can be transformational for us personally, toward the good.

I seem to have had a need to focus on gratitude lately, and one of the ways that has expressed itself is that I’ve been teaching about gratitude. Having the concept constantly on my mind has opened new windows into my own feelings of gratitude, especially in one particular aspect of my life.

Nine years ago this month at LimmudBoston, Elie Gerzon and I succeeded in gathering together a Jewish cohort concerned about climate change, a cohesive enough group to begin the process that led to the creation of JCAN, the Jewish Climate Action Network. At the time, I was immensely grateful for that breakthrough, especially because a couple of years earlier, I had also tried, and my efforts had fizzled - nothing had taken shape.

Nine years ago, climate change was less blatantly the incremental disaster that it more obviously is today, and the national Jewish climate action landscape was almost barren, save for a few important voices. Little serious effort was being made within the Jewish community to respond to the growing threat of climate change. Personally, I needed to be doing something, anything, about climate change, but I also needed to be doing the work rooted in Jewish tradition. And so I stretched myself, and co-created and, for eight years led, an activist organization. 

I had never been an activist and could never have anticipated such a move on my part. I was totally outside my comfort zone. I was a chaplain and saw the work I was doing as eco-chaplaincy, a previously non-existent field that only a few people were beginning to speak about or practice. I considered my work founding and running JCAN to be chaplaincy work: I was creating and holding a space for others to engage in climate action through a Jewish lens, an opportunity that filled a previously empty niche.

In those early years as the leader of a Jewish climate action organization and a rabbi, my name often came up when someone in the Boston area wanted a Jewish presence at an interfaith climate action event. Need a speaker at a rally? Need a Jewish representative to plan a climate action? Need a Jewish panelist at an event? A Jewish voice for an interfaith group testifying at the statehouse? Ask Rabbi Katy.

I was glad to do this work, and more. It was meaningful, it stretched me, and it provided a Jewish voice in the faith climate world.

But I also longed to not be so alone. I wasn’t the only Jewish leader in Greater Boston to be involved, but the options were definitely limited. I longed to be part of a team, and to know that I could more readily turn to a colleague to hold some of the spiritual leadership. 

With time, other voices began to enter the fray, relieving some of the sense of responsibility from my shoulders.

But also, with each passing season, the climate crisis grew more obvious. One-by-one, then two-by-two and three-by-three, other Jewish leaders entered the field, many of them new and young professionals, but some of them older and more experienced. 

And then suddenly, over a short couple of years, the national Jewish climate action landscape exploded, and the situation drastically changed. The Shalom Center had long been doing climate work, but now the Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest hit the scene. Dayenu came into being. Hazon took a bold national stand. Small organizations popped up around the country. I was not alone. I was suddenly a small player in an amazing and diverse sea of Jewish climate activists. And I was delighted.

The relief I felt was palpable, at the same time that it was mixed with a certainty that we are in the midst of a growing catastrophe. 

I find it ironic that as the climate situation worsens, I am feeling incredibly grateful. I am grateful that I don’t have to hold the space with so few others. There are dozens and dozens of rabbis and cantors and Jewish educators, laypeople and unaffiliated folks and students and even children, from every walk of life, who are leading the charge in the Jewish community to act in the face of this incomprehensible and existential threat to the world as we knew it.

I am relieved, and I am grateful. And as I kindle the lights of the hanukkiah this Hanukkah, I think about the miracle of the single cruse of oil that lasted for eight nights, and I see its meaning expressed in my experience. It is through community, through holding each other through hard times, through gathering together to do the work of justice and compassion that each of us, a single cruse of oil, can last beyond one dark night. Together, we can do what none of us can do alone.

And so we say, Shehecheyanu!

Happy Hanukkah! 

Rabbi Katy Allen is the founder and rabbi of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope, which holds services outdoors all year long and has a growing children’s outdoor learning program, Y’ladim BaTeva. She is the founder of the Jewish Climate Action Network-MA, a board certified chaplain, and a former hospital and hospice chaplain. She received her ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religionhttp://www.ajr.edu/ in  Yonkers, NY, in 2005. She is the author of A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text and lives in Wayland, MA, with her spouse, Gabi Mezger, who leads the.singing at Ma'yan Tikvah.

by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen

There is an unexpected comfort

in grief so broad and wide

that it encompasses more

than the mind can fathom.

Like G!d 

it’s source is so expansive–

inclusive of so much destruction

so much displacement

wounding

death 

extinction

disruption,

affecting so many,

unjust at every twist and turn–

that I cannot comprehend it.

But also, like G!d,

i know it is real

even when I cannot see it

or touch it.

Like G!d,

I encounter it daily–

sometimes I notice it,

and sometimes I don’t.

Like G!d,

it impacts at unexpected moments,

during a thunderous storm

or in the quiet of the night.

Like G!d,

and yet, so very, very

different.

G!d created us

and we created this anti-G!d

of environmental degradation

climate disruption

environmental injustice

mass extinction

global glacial melts

incipient sea level rise

and massive habitat destruction.

So like G!d, and so unlike G!d.

And very surprisingly

a comfort,

for every other disturbance in life

suddenly feels insignificantly important

and fully possible to resolve

and out of this understanding

arise strength and calm,

courage and determination,

a certainty 

and trust

that could, perhaps,

be understood

to be G!d’s presence

walking beside me.

יש נחמה לא צפוייהיש נחמה לא צפוייה

באבל כל-כך רחב ונרחב

שהוא מכתר יותר

ממה שהמחשבות מסוגלות להעמיק.

כאלוהים

מקורו כל-כך מקיף--

כולל כל-כך הרבה השמדה

כל-כך הרבה עקירה

פציעה

מוות

הכחדה

התפוררות,

משפיע על כל-כך הרבה,

אי-צדק בכל תפנית וסיבוב--

שאני לא יכולה להשיג אותו.

אבל גם כאלוהים,

אני יודעת שהוא אמיתי

אפילו כשאני לא יכולה לראות אותו

או לגעת בו.

כאלוהים,

אני נתקלת בו יום יום--

לפעמים אני מבחינה בו,

ולפעמים לא.

כאלוהים,

הוא פוגע בדקות לא צפויות,

בזמן סערה רועמת

או בדממת הלילה.

כאלוהים,

אבל כל-כך, כל-כך

שונה.

אלוהים ברא אותנו

ואנחנו יצרנו את האנטי-אלוהים הזה

של שחיקה סביבתית

הפרעת אקלים

עוולה סביבתית

הכחדה המונית

המסה קרחונית עולמית

עליית פני הים התחלתית

והרס גידול-סביבתי המוני.

כל-כך כאלוהים וכל-כך לא כאלוהים.

ובאופן מפתיע מאוד

נחמה,

כי כל הפרעה אחרת בחיים

פתאום מרגישה חשובה לא משמעותית

ולגמרי אפשרית לפתרון

ומההבנה הזאת

עולים כח ושלווה,

אומץ ונחישות,

ודאות 

ואמון

שיכולים, אולי,

להיות מובנים

להיות שכינת אל

הולכת לידי.

Rabbi Katy Allen is the founder and rabbi of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope, which holds services outdoors all year long and has a growing children’s outdoor learning program, Y’ladim BaTeva. She is the founder of the Jewish Climate Action Network-MA, a board certified chaplain, and a former hospital and hospice chaplain. She received her ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religionhttp://www.ajr.edu/ in  Yonkers, NY, in 2005. She is the author of A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text and lives in Wayland, MA, with her spouse, Gabi Mezger, who leads the.singing at Ma'yan Tikvah.

by Rabbi Katy Allen

Last year I forgot, and ordered a lulav and etrog.

This year, I remembered and didn’t order them. This year I knew I was going to try substituting locally grown plants in place of the etrog, palm, myrtle, and willow that I normally order from the local Judaica shop, coming straight from Israel.

I didn’t know what plants I would use. But I was aware that I would miss holding those traditional plants in my hand as I stood in the sukkah and waved them in every direction, acknowledging the presence of something greater than myself all around me. I knew my forgetfulness last year was a measure of my ambivalence. I’m not a halachic Jew by any means, not feeling compelled to observe the letter of the law, but I have always found meaning and comfort in the lulav and etrog. And I absolutely love the holiday of Sukkot. I love building the sukkah, sharing it with family and friends, and eating outdoors no matter how cold it is in New England in October, driven indoors only by the rain.

So here I was, with Sukkot approaching. The question of what plant leaves and fruit to use was on my mind. I read up a bit on what others have done. But I hadn’t decided what I was going to use in place of the traditional tropical plants that Jewish law and tradition direct us to use.

Then Sukkot was upon us. Having been busy - always a convenient excuse - I hadn’t taken the time to give the question enough thought to settle on any particular plants.

I was busy hosting my children and grandchildren as the holiday began, and then suddenly it was Sukkot morning, and I didn’t have a lulav and etrog and I still hadn’t collected anything to take their place.

My wrestling with the question was abruptly interrupted by family issues, some of them emotionally charged. (I’m assuming you have experience with this and understand.) I became caught up in dealing with all of it, and as it progressed, I found myself losing my equanimity and getting upset in ways that I didn’t want to.

Finally I paused to take a deep breath, and I realized it was past time to find my replacement lulav and etrog. Slowing down, I wandered our yard considering my options. I returned with a fruit from a kousa dogwood tree, not native, but a volunteer, probably from fruit from our neighbor’s tree; a long yucca leaf, also definitely not native, but having come from separating my aunt’s (z”l) yucca plant some twenty years ago; and an arching stem of giant Solomon’s seal, a native plant that came from separating someone else’s patch 15-20 years ago; and a stem of monarda, also a native plant, one that I had purchased a few years ago as part of my efforts to enrich my native pollinator garden.

Various metaphors from rabbinic literature regarding what the lulav and etrog represent flitted through my mind - the parts of the body or the types of people who make up a community, as well as the understanding that they come from different ecosystems. But when I finally held these plant parts in my hand and sat with them in the sukkah, suddenly all the angst in my heart and my mind, some of it painful, dissolved. Beneath everything I had thought was bothering me, I felt a deeper pain, a deeper grief, from a source far more difficult to heal – my grief and pain over what we have done to the Earth over the centuries, and in particular, in recent decades.

I sat with that unexpected pain, and realized how minor the family concerns were by comparison, even the most difficult aspects of them. I realized, too, that this deeper pain related to the Earth was coloring my responses about the family situation. The family issues could be resolved with love and respect, patience and caring. The global environmental issues are far more complicated. As I understood what was happening to me and honored the difficult feelings, relief washed over me, despite the pain. Clarity matters.

The time had come to shake my “lulav and etrog.” But what blessing could I say? I couldn’t recite a blessing for shaking a lulav - a palm - since I wasn’t holding one. With my procrastination, I hadn’t researched what others say. After a bit of reflection, I decided that I could say bimkom lulav, meaning “in place of the lulav”.

But what about the shehecheyanu blessing? How and why should I express gratitude for reaching this time? This time when we have already entered an unprecedented global environmental crisis? This time when it is apparent that any extra and unnecessary energy and carbon output is critical to avoid? 

And then, unexpectedly, I felt gratitude for feelings of connection to the natural world around me resulting from substituting locally grown plants in my sukkah rising within me. As some measure of my pain was released, I gave thanks for reaching this season, this day, this understanding. I knew that this was just the beginning of honoring the pain I was feeling, and that these difficult feelings would fuel my determination to share the reality of such emotions with others, and also to provide venues for other people to honor and process their own pain and grief in the face of the massive existential crisis of climate change.

On Sukkot we are commanded to be happy. It is only by honoring, naming, feeling, and letting go of a layer of our pain and grief that we can honestly be happy.

Rabbi Katy Allen is the founder and rabbi of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope, which holds services outdoors all year long and has a growing children’s outdoor learning program, Y’ladim BaTeva. She is the founder of the Jewish Climate Action Network-MA, a board certified chaplain, and a former hospital and hospice chaplain. She received her ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religionhttp://www.ajr.edu/ in  Yonkers, NY, in 2005. She is the author of A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text and lives in Wayland, MA, with her spouse, Gabi Mezger, who leads the.singing at Ma'yan Tikvah.

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