January 08

Justice in a Time of Madness - Righteousness Ain’t as Easy as it Looks
by Roger S. Gottlieb
p. 2 of 2

T’shuvah

Collectively, at least, the Jewish religion has a long history of moral self-examination. What is the month-long period of tshuvah [repentance] preceding Yom Kippur, after all, but a time to look closely at our own failings? If the practice has been ignored or trivialized, that does not mean it cannot take on a new and vital meaning tomorrow. Surely environmental tshuvah is called for. Similarly, we are not without our self-critiquing prophets today. From Arthur Waskow and Art Green to Michael Lerner and the staff of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) Jews are telling other Jews (as well as the population at large) to examine their lives, repent of their sins, and change their ways.

Traditionally, of course, T’shuvah was meant to be an examination of our own guilt and no one else’s. Yet a plethora of writings and sermons have expanded the traditional notion to a collective process. And in this context the prophetic call bears a distinct and disturbing mark. For even Arthur Waskow plugs his computer into the same greenhouse gas emitting power grid as everyone else. Even Michael Lerner damages the ozone layer by flying around the country to promote his vision of a sustainable society. Even Roger Gottlieb uses countless pages of paper in rough drafts to craft his eloquent environmental manifestos.

To the extent that we participate, we are all at least a little guilty. To the extent that we are guilty, we are also a little crazy.

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Renewal

An important element of tshuvah in Jewish practice is its second step, renewal. We turn back to look at our past deeds, but also forward to how we may improve. Judaism as a religion and as a morally oriented culture has renewed itself many times in this way.

What was the Talmud, after all, but a drastic shift when history demanded that we abandon a Temple cult in favor of the Near East’s first portable religion? What are Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Reconstructionism, and even in some ways the Modern Orthodox, but shifts in our understanding of Judaism in response to our liberation from the ghetto, our achievement of equal civil rights in modernized societies, and our realization that most of us will not live in Israel? What is Israel itself but a response to the historically unprecedented reality of the Holocaust?

It is in this spirit that we can note the position of Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, who helped create the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, an interfaith coalition with a wide range of educational programs for faith groups and society as a whole. Schorcsh, for many years the chancellor of Conservative Judaism’s leading educational institution, the Jewish Theological Seminary, is not hesitant to take Jewish tradition to task and advocate a fundamental transformation. It is a mistake, he argues, to use Judaism’s rejection of paganism to propel Judaism into an “adversarial relationship with the natural world.” When that is done “the modern Jew is saddled with a reading of his tradition that is one-dimensional. Judaism has been made to dull our sensitivity to the awe inspiring power of nature. Preoccupied with the ghost of paganism, it appears indifferent and unresponsive to the supreme challenge of our age man’s degradation of the environment. Our planet is under siege and we as Jews are transfixed in silence.” This statement is all the more significant because Conservative Judaism was, as much as any other form of Judaism, a longstanding adherent of the very “one-dimensional reading” of tradition that Schorche is criticizing. His claim, then, suggests that Jews have been theologically and ethically misguided. We have been participants in injustice, and not known it.

In a considerably milder example, but one which is still in a self-reflective mode, there are suggestions by the Vancouver chapter of COEJL as to environmentally sensible gifts for the eight nights of Hanukah. For example, “turn down the thermostat, “skip a car trip,” “recycle your paper,” etc.). These have a certain cuteness about them, but they also have a deeper meaning. For how many Jews, after all, has Hanukah been a celebration of consumerism; or at least a way to make their own kids feel less left out for not getting all the stuff other kids get at Christmas? The implicit import of the Vancouver COEJL list is, then, a challenge to consumerism—and a reminder that Jews, despite our admirable history of commitment to social justice, may be just as much participants in this addictive displacement of human energy and hope as anyone else.

Self-righteousness

Even deeper than our attachment to consumerism, there is what is perhaps an equally pernicious attachment that honest self-assessment must prompt us to challenge: our venerable addiction to self-righteousness. After 2000 years of conscienceless victimization by the non-Jewish world, and even more after the horrors of the Holocaust, we may be more than a little entitled to this addiction. We have been brutalized for no fault of our own, all the while teaching a powerful and influential set of moral values. And so we tend to believe that we are (with a few exceptions, such as those “other Jews” who after all aren’t being Jewish in the right way) godly, chosen, special, good—the others are, well, “goyim”: a terms whose literal meaning of simply “nations” should not obscure its frequent at least slightly pejorative overtones.

When it comes to the environmental crisis, however, our free and easy participation in the environmental practices of our society implicate us as much anyone else in its environmental crimes: its astronomical cancer rates, ferocious eradication of species and indigenous peoples, and vastly disproportionate production of greenhouse gases and consumption of energy. No appeal to the saintly values of Chasidic masters or the bold calls for justice of Amos can save us from the realization that we are as mad, and as harmful, as everyone else.

What then should we do?

Let us turn self-righteousness to some good use. For example: Self-congratulating synagogues must be asked about their environmental practices. How is the shul heated and cleaned? Are paper goods used as if they come from and go to nowhere? What environmental values are taught in religious school and stressed in sermons? Thankfully, resources both theological and practical have been created to enable us to give positive, helpful answers to these questions. We can do energy audits, use organic cleaners, and refer to Jewishly authentic ecotheology.

Beyond individual temples, we can demand (as pleasantly and politely as possible) that environmental sanity be part of our national and international agenda.We can commit our institutions to environmental politics with at least as much fervor as we have to the struggle against anti-Semitism racial or equality. Let Rachel Carson and Chico Mendes be heroes for our children alongside Martin Luther King and Golda Meir.

Sanity in Humility

Above all, to escape from the closed circle of madness, the Jewish environmentalist who raises these questions must reflect that the Jewish environmentalist, probably not all that much less than the unawakened rabbi or religious school teacher, is part of the problem as well as part of the solution.

There is therefore a way to be an environmentalist that is morally appropriate to the issues at hand. It is with deep humility, with compassion for the weaknesses of others as well as our own complicity, with a large dose of self-deprecating humor and no dose at all of thundering denunciations of all those sinners out there. Doubtless there are sources for this attitude in the tradition. Just as Jewish ecotheologians have created Green readings of Torah and Talmud, so Jews much more knowledgeable than myself must find those sources. We have countless examples of Jewish wisdom, courage, self-sacrifice, intelligence, and (often biting) wit—doubtless we can find some examples of humility, moral self-awareness, and compassion for shared limitations as well.

This does not mean that we should stop calling a spade a spade. Pollution, anti-green lobbying, and covering up environmental crimes are what they are—and all the humility and self-effacement in the world should not keep us from saying so. Indeed, we might even think of considering the environmental record of the Big Givers who have enormous power in our communities. Would we welcome a millionaire, no matter how generous, who also funds Hamas or the American Nazi Party? It would, to say the least, be a contentious issue. Why then should we allow a polluter to be on the board of trustees?

No doubt all of these moves, especially questioning the Big Givers, will cost money. We environmentalists will be told that we just can’t afford to go Green in any meaningful way.

My simple and intolerant response to this is “nonsense.” It is never an excuse not to do something “because it costs money.” Doesn’t it cost money to teach Hebrew, support Israel, and counsel the bereaved? Of course, we will be told, but those things we have to do, they are what we are.

And if we are not equally, and at times more, about no longer being in full and unchallenged complicity with an environmental structure that is murderous to non-human and human alike, what are we?

Are we not party to a monstrous injustice? And are we not more than a little mad?

 



ZEEK


Roger S. Gottlieb is professor of philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is the author or editor of fourteen books and more than one hundred articles on environmentalism, religious life, contemporary spirituality, political philosophy, ethics, the Holocaust, and disability. He is internationally known for his work as a leading analyst and exponent of religious environmentalism, for his passionate and moving account of spirituality in an age of Holocaust and ecocide, and for his innovative and humane description of the role of religion in a democratic society. Two of his most recent books are A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and our Planet’s Future and Joining Hands: Politics and Religion Together for Social Change.

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