Today on Rosh Hashana, we declare in our liturgy: Hayom harat olam -today the world is born. On one level, this refers to the tradition that Rosh Hashana marks the sixth day of creation, the day that human beings were created. On another level, when we say the world is born today, in the present tense, we mean that today is a new beginning; we sound the shofar to wake us up, to urge us to look closely at how we’re living our lives in this world we’ve been given. And we do teshuva, which means “returning;” we return to our highest vision for our lives. We realign ourselves with God’s original vision for what the world could be. With that vision in mind, we renew the creation of the world. Hayom Harat Olam - today the world is born. What kind of world do we want it to be?
You may have noticed over the last several years that my sermons usually address our inner spiritual world, our individual relationships with God and others, and our teshuva process as personal transformation. This year, I’d like to go beyond our own growth and widen our lens. Really widen our lens. We still need to be thinking about ourselves, our relationships with family, our community, and of course Israel and the Jewish People, but I want to widen the lens even further and have us think about the whole planet.
Rav Kook, the first chief rabbi of pre-state Israel, spoke of our orientation to the world as the songs we sing. Some of us sing the song of our own life; some of us the song of the Jewish People; some of us the song of humanity. But there is also a fourth song - the song of all of existence, of the whole earth, of all of God’s creatures. Rav Kook taught that when all four songs come together - the song of self, Jewish people, humanity, and the whole earth - then it’s the song of God. Today on the birthday of all creation, we need to think about our own teshuva as notes in the song of the entire world.
As we are waking up to the sound of the shofar, the world is finally waking up about global warming. There is a consensus among scientists that climate change is real and that it’s a result of human activities. Glaciers are melting, plants and animals are being forced from their habitat, hurricanes and droughts are increasing. I know that many of you have seen the movie, an Inconvenient Truth, and are aware of the catastrophic consequences for life on earth that are expected if we don’t do teshuva. We are finally understanding that we humans really are co-creators with God, that our actions really do change the world. And so on this day when we resolve to create the world we want, I must deliver to you, an Inconvenient Sermon.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to give you a lecture about the threats of climate change, you’ve seen the movie, and if you haven’t, you should -we’re showing it here during Sukkot. I am, however, going to have us think about what God and the Torah require of us. Let’s go back to this very day 5,767 years ago in Torah time. The Torah says that God put the human into the Garden of Eden l’ovdah u’lshomrah (Gen2:15). L’ovdah - to work it, to use it, to enjoy it. And L’Shomrah - to protect it, guard it, keep it for the next generations. In that beautiful garden, God gave us an enormous amount of power and an enormous amount of responsibility. According to the midrash (Kohelet Rabba 7:13), on that first Rosh Hashana, God led the human around the Garden of Eden and said, “Look at all of my works. See how beautiful they are, how excellent. See to it that you do not spoil or destroy My world - for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.”
Okay, so we’re human, and we mess up. Humanity has done a great deal of damage to God’s world, but that’s why we have teshuva, turning around and changing our ways. We’re instructed each year to return to a better place, to return to greater consciousness of our role as co-creators with God. We return, on the day the world is born, to that beautiful garden that God dreamed for us. Hayom Harat Olam. Today the world is born.
Some people think we have more immediate concerns: war, terrorism, threats to Israel, and so environmental problems shouldn’t be at the top of our list as Jews. But, I don’t even want to use the word “environment.” “Environment” makes it sound like it’s one issue, something separate from us, outside of us. In Jewish thought, there is no such thing. Let’s go back to the garden:
The created world is the Presence of God, the Shechina, as the prophet Isaiah said: Melo kol ha’aretz k’vodo - the fullness of the world is God’s Presence. We feel that when we are moved by the awesome beauty of nature. We all know that the foundation of Jewish belief is Adonai Echad, God is One. One God might simply mean that there is only one God, not two or three. But the deeper understanding of Adonai Echad is: there’s nothing but God, as it says in the Torah: Ain Od Milvado (Deut 4:35) -There is nothing but God. Within this Unified One, everything is connected, and everything is a manifestation of the Divine. So, it’s not “the environment” we need to be concerned with, but the Garden of Eden, the dwelling place of God, the Divine Presence itself.
Hayom Harat Olam. I’ve been translating this phrase as “today the world is born.” But actually a more literal translation would be: Today the world is pregnant. Yes, pregnant with possibility. At this moment, we conceive of the world we want, we implant the seed for how we want to grow, and this next year of life will be born from our yearnings.
This image of the pregnant world can be understood another way, too. Just like the image of the Garden of Eden, the womb is also a microcosm. It IS the world for the fetus, and the fetus is completely interconnected with its world. Specifically, the amniotic fluid is constantly circulated by the fetus who is continually swallowing and secreting it, in and out and back in and back out. Before you start getting a little queasy thinking about that, remember that the world that God created for us is also a closed-loop system; in the garden, everything that goes out comes back in.
Later today we’ll do tashlich and we’ll throw our sins into the bay, but fish or birds will come and eat the bread, which will keep it in the ecosystem. Whatever we throw out will eventually come back to us in one form or another; when we put toxic chemicals into our ecosystem, we end up with cancer. We may think we can throw something away, but just like there is no place that is not God, there is no such place as “away” - we or our children or grandchildren will eat, drink, or breathe whatever we leave for them. When we say Hayom Harat Olam, today the world is pregnant, we must realize that we are living in the womb of the Shechina, a miraculous, interconnected system where everything lives and breathes the garden of the One God.
Just like a pregnant mother, in order to keep her baby healthy, avoids fish that we’ve poisoned with mercury, God wants the garden to be a holy and safe place for us to live. The difference between us and a fetus is: we get to make choices about how we tend the garden. Fortunately, the Torah guides us.
One of the 10 Commandments is to rest on Shabbat - what a genius concept. It’s built into the very creation of the world that every seven days we refrain from working the earth and taking from it. Even God rested, so it’s essential to life on earth that we have times of ceasing productive activity. We are given a law that understands our tendency to overwork ourselves, our animals, our employees, and the earth itself, depleting our physical and our inner resources. Similarly, the Torah commands that every seven years the land is to lie fallow so the soil can replenish itself.
Imagine the difference it would make if we stopped working ourselves and the earth one-seventh of the time. We need Shabbat more than ever, a day of resting in the garden, when we stop consuming and polluting, and when we just let ourselves and the earth BE. Shabbat is about refraining from manipulating the world around us and simply returning to creation by breathing, walking, relaxing, and connecting with God who created this beautiful garden. We need this kind of Shabbat consciousness on other days of the week, too, because we’ve lost the sense that we are living in the Garden of Eden.
Think how absurd our lives have become: we drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill; picture it: we drive a two-ton vehicle in traffic on the freeway, polluting the air, using Middle East oil, and adding to global warming, rather than simply going for a nice walk where we enjoy God’s garden. Shabbat consciousness teaches us how to restrain ourselves from taking anything we want from the world and how to just gently be with it.
Our tradition intended for us for feel closely connected with God through the natural world. Our months follow the cycles of the moon, and our holidays follow the seasons of the harvest; our days begin and end with the setting of the sun; our food blessings require us know if what we’re eating grew on trees or in the soil.
But we’ve become so disconnected from creation, and that takes its toll on our spiritual well-being, along with the well-being of the earth. Studies show that over the last five decades, as Americans have earned more, consumed more, thrown away more, bought bigger houses, and built more malls, our enjoyment of life has decreased because we work more hours, spend less time with our families, and spend more time driving in our cars. I recently read a book called, “Serve God, Save the Planet,” in which the author describes an experiment he did with a group of 35 teenagers. He passed around a picture of a Hummer, (you know - the huge, expensive SUV that gets 11 mpg?) and every single one of the kids could identify it. Then he passed around a sugar maple leaf, which happens to be from the most common tree in his area in New Hampshire, the source of the local maple syrup, and the symbol of Canada, just a few miles away. Only two students could identify the leaf. I certainly can name more kinds of cars than trees, how about you? What kind of things are we paying attention to? Shabbat consciousness helps us remember that we’re living in God’s garden; it helps us consume less and replenish more, and that makes life better for us and for everything else living on this planet.
Torah also limits what we take from the earth by the law of bal tashchit, which means: do not waste resources. Bal Tashchit originated with the command not to cut down fruit trees during war but was extended by the rabbis to mean that it is forbidden to destroy wantonly. God allows us to enjoy and use creation, but bal tashchit reigns us in from thinking that we own creation. It applies the essential principle stated in Leviticus (25:23): Ki Li Ha’aretz. The land is Mine, God says, you just get to live here.
But we’ve forgotten that. Americans are 5% of the world’s population, but we consume a third of the earth’s resources, create half of the world’s hazardous waste, and produce 45% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global warming.
Using less energy directly impacts how much carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere. In an Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore calls reducing carbon emissions “a moral imperative.” Thousands of years before him, the Torah commanded us not to be wasteful and destructive with God’s resources. I know that many contemporary Jews do not feel “commanded” to fulfill mitzvot; we see them as guidelines or traditions or “good deeds.” However, when it comes to doing whatever we can to preserve life on earth, we must feel commanded. It is wrong for us to live today in a way that endangers future generations. So, even if you don’t feel commanded by God or by the Torah, how about by Al Gore?
Drive less, carpool, make fuel efficiency the most important factor in what car you buy, buy locally grown organic produce, don’t buy products that are wastefully packaged, and push for legislation that would limit greenhouse gas emissions. Make simple changes like turning off and unplugging electronics that you’re not using or put on a sweater instead of turning up the thermostat. Switch to compact florescent light bulbs; if every household in the United States replaced one light bulb with a compact florescent, it would have the same impact as taking 1 million cars off the road - change five light bulbs! All of these are Jewish acts that fulfill a critical mitzvah, and they are all acts of teshuva, of returning to God’s vision for the garden we are blessed to live in.
The mitzvot train us to live in a God-centered world rather than a self-centered world. The earth doesn’t belong to us; we are just borrowing it. The rabbis of the Talmud legislated that something borrowed must be given back worth the same value as when we borrowed it. How will we leave the world for the next generation? The rabbis taught us the story of Honi who questioned a man he saw planting a carob tree. “Don’t you know a carob tree takes 70 years to bear fruit?” Honi asked. The man replied, “I found this world with carob trees, and as my forebears planted them for me, so I will plant for my offspring.” (Taanit 23a) And they didn’t even know that planting trees reduces global warming by absorbing one ton of carbon dioxide over a tree’s lifetime.
We in the Bay Area enjoy one of the most beautiful places on earth. We also enjoy more wealth, resources, and power to make change than most of the people on the planet. As we enjoy the abundance from God’s world, the Torah requires us to leave the corner of our field for the poor (Lev.19) and to give a tenth of our harvest to the Levite and the stranger. (Deut. 26) In other words, the Torah requires us to think beyond our own needs and to give back from the bounty we receive. We, who have so much, have a special responsibility to consider our impact on God’s world and to make changes.
As part of our heshbon hanefesh, the accounting of our souls that we do this time of year, I urge all of us to do an accounting of the energy we are using. There are many resources on the internet for doing an audit of our personal impact on climate change. Check out climatecrisis.net, that’s the website that goes along with An Inconvenient Truth, to calculate your personal impact and learn specific ways to reduce it.
The last few generations have created for us a world that is not sustainable, individually or globally. But this is not a message of gloom and doom; teshuva is possible - we can change and return in the direction of that beautiful garden. For example, the ozone layer is already beginning to come back because we realized we were doing damage and changed our ways. Let’s celebrate the creation of the world by singing Rav Kook’s fourfold song and by remembering that we help God create this world. Now is the time to look at our lives, to make change, and to begin again to create the world that God hopes we and the future generations will live in. Hayom Harat Olam. Today the world is born!
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