#rabbi timoner

[tristansherwin]

THE GOOSE CHASE | BEAUTIFIER (GEN. 1; EZEK. 37)

THE GOOSE CHASE | BEAUTIFIER (GEN. 1; EZEK. 37) 'Again and again, the Spirit comes to the edges of disorder and chaos, and unsettles the norms, disrupts the habitual, rouses the dead and shakes the oppressive.'

Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 8th Oct. 2023), continuing our series on the Holy Spirit. You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded). ‘In restless dreams I walked aloneNarrow streets of cobblestone‘Neath the halo of a streetlampI turned my collar to the cold and dampWhen my eyes…

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Daniel Greenfield

This spring, Schumer agreed to become the public face of the Biden administration’s campaign to bring down the Israeli government, save Hamas and end the war. In a high-profile Senate speech, the lifelong politician who had spent his career pretending to be pro-Israel, equated the Israeli government with Hamas, forbade Israel to go into Rafah to pursue the terror group, claimed that “the Israeli war campaign has killed so many innocent Palestinians” and warned that the Biden administration would use its “leverage” to create a terrorist state inside Israel.

While many pro-Israel figures excoriated Schumer, he trotted out his ‘rabbi’, Rachel Timoner, a radical leftist anti-Israel activist who had taken part in anti-Israel rallies, to defend his betrayal.

According to Timoner, Schumer said “what most of us think” and “what the overwhelming majority of American Jews are saying to each other”. However what Timoner was saying, according to T’ruah, one of the anti-Israel groups she was allied with, could be summed up as, “American Jews must tell our govt we oppose this war and want an end to the occupation.”

Was Schumer saying what most American Jews were really thinking?

Schumer’s latest Siena poll numbers in New York are in. And while his total unfavorable rating in the state is only up a few percent, his numbers among Jewish New Yorkers are catastrophic. With a 48% approval rating among New York Jews, his is only 3% higher than Trump’s at 45%. And his disapproval rating is higher than that of any other statewide figure in the poll. He now has a higher disapproval rating among Jews than among blacks, Latinos or protestants.

Those are stunning numbers and they show a sharp reversal of political fortune. They also help explain why the same poll shows that 46% of New York Jews would now vote for Trump.

A Siena poll that covered the pro-Hamas campus riots found that 87% of New York Jews believed that they had crossed the line into antisemitism and 80% supported calling in the cops.

This is completely at odds with the messaging that has come from Timoner and the infrastructure of allied anti-Israel astroturf groups like J Street, T’ruah, Bend the Arc, New York Jewish Agenda, Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice which receive nonstop coverage from a media that pretends these extremists represent Jews.

The views of New York Jews are not actually reflective of those pushed by the JTA, The Forward and other anti-Israel leftist narrative outlets and Sen. Schumer is now paying the price.

[eretzyisrael]

by Daniel Greenfield

Bringing out Timoner, the clergywoman of the leftist congregation Schumer attends, doesn’t help him. It reveals how bad he really is.

Let’s take a look at what Rachel Timoner has been up to.

Timoner took part in a recent anti-Israel “ceasefire” rally while whining that “continued war and Israeli occupation of Gaza will be an unmitigated disaster.”

She signed on to a letter by the T’ruah anti-Israel hate group which claimed that “there is no military solution” and demanded that Biden “ensure that Israel does not invade Rafah” and finish off Hamas.

In the past, Timoner had signed on to a T’ruah/J Street letter defending BDS.

Timoner, the author of op-eds such as “Fellow Dykes: We Must Be Both Pro-Israel And Pro-Palestine,” tries to have it both ways, but she picked her side.

The side of those who murder Jews.

We know what Timoner is. Now what does tell us about what Schumer is?

“Schumer has attended Timoner’s synagogue near his home in Park Slope, Brooklyn for at least a decade. Timoner officiated his daughter’s wedding, blessed his three grandchildren and buried his father.”

This is what Schumer embraced as his guiding spiritual light.

A mere few weeks after the Hamas atrocities, Timoner was already scolding Israel in a sermon, warning that “killing thousands of Palestinian civilians will not bring back the Israeli civilians.”

She repeated the same message in a New York Times op-ed.

[t-jfh]

“I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t do it,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader.

(Photo: Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times)

Mr. Schumer at James Madison High School in Brooklyn.

(Photo: Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times)

Mr. Schumer said his main purpose “was to say you can still love Israel and feel strongly about Israel and totally disagree with Bibi Netanyahu and the policies of Israel.

(Photo: Kenny Holston / The New York Times)

Mr. Schumer has confided in Rabbi Rachel Timoner, who told him that right-wing extremists in Mr. Netanyahu’s government were “endangering all of us.”

(Photo: Benjamin Norman for The New York Times)

‘Part of My Core’: How Senator Chuck Schumer Decided to Speak Out Against Netanyahu

In an interview in his native Brooklyn, America’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official said he felt obligated to call for new leadership in Israel.

In the library of James Madison High School in Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon, Senator Chuck Schumer took stock of the splash he made a few days before. In a speech on the Senate floor, he had branded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel a major impediment to peace in the Middle East and called for elections to replace him when the war winds down.

It was here, he recalled, inside this hulking red brick school deep in south Brooklyn, where at 16 he was glued to his transistor radio to hear breaking news of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. It was where he idolized Sandy Koufax, the Jewish pitcher for the Dodgers who refused to play on Yom Kippur, and learned it was cool to be proud of his heritage.

And on Sunday, Mr. Schumer, the New York Democrat, majority leader and highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States, returned to explain how his upbringing in Jewish Brooklyn in the shadow of the Holocaust prompted him to deliver a politically risky speech that brought about a watershed moment in the politics of U.S.-Israeli relations.

“This is so part of my core, my soul, my neshama,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview, using the Hebrew word for soul. “I said to myself, ‘This may hurt me politically; this may help me politically.’ I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t do it.”

His main purpose, he said, “was to say you can still love Israel and feel strongly about Israel and totally disagree with Bibi Netanyahu and the policies of Israel.”

By Annie Karni

The New York Times- March 19, 2024

•

[merrikstryfe]

Heavy with grief, as I am, going to the shivas, scrolling through the pictures, hearing the stories, it is easy not to notice how radical a message is the message of these three progressive rabbis, how at odds it is with a paradigm that has held sway for a long time among progressive Jews. Lots of progressive Jews, most of all in America but everywhere else, too, have made a foundation of their theology of Tikkun Olam, the idea that the main brief of Jews is to make the world a place better for everyone, helping the poor (whoever they are), undoing discrimination (against whomever), freeing the enslaved (wherever they may be). This impulse made it possible for progressive Jews to believe that being a Jew aligned with the Bill of Rights, with the civil rights movement, with opposing apartheid, with Black Lives Matter, with the movement for Palestinian self-determination.

Rabbis Buchdahl, Brous and Timoner are all progressive Jews, and they each have a history of standing for civil rights, fighting against oppression, decrying racism, opposing the Occupation. But what they each said this week is that their Judaism is not the same as those things. Their Judaism does not counsel equal concern for “all the people in the region” of the Middle East. Their Judaism says Jews are our family, our community, and we drive from Tel Aviv to Nahal Oz to save them first. After that, we help the others.

This sort of thinking comes almost naturally here in Israel, though we mostly don’t see it as an expression of our Judaism. Since the massacre, hundreds of thousands of people found hundreds of thousands of ways to help the hundreds of thousands of people we consider our own, people who lost people or lost their homes or both, in a display of ingenuity and generosity more vivid than any in my lifetime. Ex nihilo, there was a free ride-sharing app, a free homestay app, a free food-delivery app and a free baby-sitting apps, as if Uber, Airbnb, Doordash and Bambino just stopped charging. Massive warehouses filled with clothes, toys, books, dishes, furniture, anything anyone might want, all donated, all for free. Therapists gave free sessions. Databases of information about hostages in Gaza took shape. The economy became familial, tribal.

Here, though, the tribalism makes it hard to talk about, even to think about, how people in Gaza are suffering and dying, most of them people who never voted for Hamas, and who maybe feel that Hamas is an author of their hardship. Hell, most of them are kids who, whatever awful things they believe are, after all, just kids. For most of us here, now anyway, there is no concentric circle for Gazans.

But, as Rabbi Brous put it, “our close encounter with the pain of the narrowing of the lens of moral concern, must awaken us to the danger of narrowing our own lens of moral concern.” The way to concern for others, the American rabbis said this week, runs through – not around – experiencing the world as a Jew, concerned first for Jews.

[…]

Still, what Rabbis Buchdahl, Brous and Timoner told their congregations last week brought progressive American Jews and Israelis closer in attitude than we have been, maybe for generations, maybe ever. It also signaled a rift in attitude between progressive American Jews and other progressives in the States and in Europe that is maybe wider than any such divide has been for generations, maybe ever. What they told their congregations is the beginning of setting out a new way to be progressive and maybe, though it sounds too grand to say, a new way to be a Jew.

It’s late at night as I write this. When my boy heard the first reports of what Hamas had done, and what Israel had suffered, when they were reporting only that tens of people had been murdered, he got a ticket from LA to Tel Aviv, leaving college to go join his infantry reserve unit, and right now, I am worried sick about him. Right now, too, the papers say that 4,651 Palestinians have died in the bombings of Gaza (of whom 471 were killed, apparently, by an Islamic Jihad missile that went astray), an unimaginable number, and the ground war my boy will take part in hasn’t even started yet. I am overwrought, and trying to figure out how to make sense of all this.

I find that three progressive, American rabbis can help. I find in them voices that I trust.

[progressivejudaism]

I remember the first Dyke March, organized by the Lesbian Avengers in 1993 during the LGBT March on Washington. I was there, and I remember feeling that I was finally free — that we dykes could claim all of who we were — our full and complex identities, our bodies, our love, our commitments to equality and justice for all — and be utterly unashamed. It, and the subsequent marches since all over the country, have been profoundly liberating for so many people.

This month, the Dyke March is coming back to Washington, DC, after a 12 year hiatus. It’s claiming its grassroots feel and justice roots, standing with the oppressed and the displaced, and it should. But the DC Dyke March has decided to ban Jewish stars on flags, and that’s a big mistake.

First of all, as Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg demonstrates in these tweets, the Magen David has a history as a Jewish symbol that stretches back at least 1,700 years. Our people have claimed the Jewish star as a sign of pride and identity, and it also has been used against us for purposes of oppression and annihilation.

Banning Jewish stars on flags is not just anti-Zionist but anti-Semitic. Let’s not forget that we are living in a time of perilous anti-Semitism, in which two synagogues were subject to murderous anti-Semitic attacks. In Brooklyn, where I serve as a rabbi to a large congregation, we are in the midst of an epidemic of random and unprovoked assaults on Orthodox Jews by seemingly unrelated people of diverse backgrounds. Anti-Semitic violence only becomes possible in a climate of normalized anti-Semitism. This decision contributes to that climate.

But that’s not the only problem. A deeper, bigger, and more complicated problem is an overly-simplistic and misguided approach on the Left when it comes to Israel/Palestine. There’s an urge towards purity on the Left, a desire to split the world into good guys and bad guys. I know, I come from the Left.

The problem is, the real world is not that neat or simple. And in the case of Israel/Palestine, both peoples need self-determination, freedom, and safety. Both peoples have a valid claim to and history in the land. Both peoples have a history of trauma.

Choosing Palestinians over Israelis, seeing the humanity and narrative of only Palestinians adds to the conflict and delays a time when both peoples can live with self-determination, freedom, and safety. As Palestinian and Israeli leaders in groups like the Bereaved Parents Circle and Combatants for Peace say time and again, “If you are pro-Israel and anti-Palestine, or pro-Palestine and anti-Israel, you are not helping. We need people who are pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. That is the only way you can help.”

Sometimes people oppose Israel’s right to exist by saying that they are against nationalism. But you can’t be against nationalism when it comes to the Jewish people and in favor of nationalism when it comes to the Palestinian people. In this line of thinking, DC Dyke March organizers say that they’ve banned the Jewish star on flags because it’s a nationalist symbol, but that they welcome the Palestinian flag. They say that they stand with the Palestinians because they are a displaced people. A cursory study of Jewish history would demonstrate that the Jewish people have been displaced over and over again, all around the world.

Let me be clear: Israel is abusing its power. Israel’s policies violate the human rights of Palestinians and threaten the future of the Jewish people, and must change. The occupation of the West Bank must end. There are many Israelis working every day to bring about that change. I just brought 32 people from my congregation to visit Israel and the West Bank, and we met amazing activists on the ground who are dedicated to a just, safe future for both peoples, groups like Breaking the Silence, the New Israel Fund, and so many more.

We Americans can relate to their struggle, as we work every day in this country to change the unconscionable policies and behaviors of our government. Israel is not a theory, and it is not monolithic. It is a real country, with people who disagree with the government and are struggling for a better life and future.

Dykes, we know what it is to hold complexity. Let’s stretch ourselves to embrace this complexity. Let’s be both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner is a renowned rabbi, author and activist. She currently serves as Senior Rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, New York and previously served as Associate Rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles, California.

[brooklynmuseum]

In case you missed it at The Brooklyn Conference…

Watch Rabbi Rachel Timoner, Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, and Reverend Eric Thomas, Interim Pastor, Siloam Presbyterian Church in Bed-Stuy, discuss spiritual life in Brooklyn with Joyce S. Dubensky, CEO, Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, with particular attention to belonging, allyship, safety, and self-expression.

[yidquotes]

The struggle for the freedom and safety of the Jewish people in this country will always be linked to the struggle for the freedom and safety of Black people and immigrants in this country. David Duke knows that. The Ku Klux Klan knows that. The Nazis who are getting louder in this time know that. What is happening right now is a mirror being held up to the soul of our nation, and to our souls as Jews. Jews have been given white privilege in America, making it tempting for us to look away from the consequences of white supremacy and to imagine that we will never again be its target. But this moment proves that we will always be linked to the outcast, the stranger, the oppressed.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner

[jewish-privilege]

Anti-Semitism, Israel, immigration, climate change. But mostly: anti-Semitism. Aspiration, repentance, renovation, optimism, and, again, anti-Semitism. Diets, meditation, memory, anger, balance, meaning, love, waiting, faith, change — and anti-Semitism.

After a year in which 12 Jews were killed in terror attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, Calif., a year the police recorded rising hate crimes against Jews in Brooklyn and beyond, while offensive words and images spread like kudzu on social media, of course anti-Semitism is the predominant theme for High Holiday sermons. But what, exactly, will our clergy have to say about it?

We put out a call to rabbis and others planning sermons for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Below are responses from dozens of them, lightly edited for clarity; the excerpts are drafts, works in progress, in some cases just ideas.

“I will be speaking on “Now what? What have we learned and where do we go from here?” said Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where the first of the two deadly shootings happened. “I crafted a new martyrology,” he added, “as we will have a special Yizkor devoted to our 11 beautiful souls.”

...“Each year I am surprised that it is still so difficult,” wrote Rabbi Miriam Terlinchar of Temple Beth Shalom in Cincinnati. “How can it be after over a decade of high holy days, can this process still drive me to madness?”

She planned to talk about Joseph, shunned then loved for what made him different. Her colleagues invoked Shifra and Puah, Abraham or other Biblical characters. They quoted the scholar Deborah Lipstadt and the philosopher Martin Buber. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Muhammad Ali. They told of trips to Israel and visits to the Mexican border.

Several said they found writing sermons this year different, harder. It feels more urgent. Too many topics to choose from. “The hardest part is trying to distill a clear, values-based message that rises above current political discourse, while not running away from the cry of the moment,” said Rabbi Joshua Hammerman of Temple Beth El in Stamford, Conn. At the same time, Rabbi Ron Stern of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles said it is “difficult because I can’t say what I really want” about the Trump administration.

“I don’t remember ever before feeling so uncertain, and so concerned,” shared Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Brooklyn’s Cong. Beth Elohim.

...“I first meet mother and son in the waiting area outside the courtroom. Samanta is holding a large bag filled with papers in one hand and Joshua’s small hand in her other. I greet her and learn she fled Mexico when Joshua was a baby, to be with her parents and sisters here in Atlanta. I bend down to meet Joshua. Volunteering to accompany asylum seekers at their hearings, I’ll spend the next few hours keeping 3 year-old Joshua occupied and quiet in the courtroom.

“Accompaniment is not easy for those of us trained as problem-solvers. There is nothing I can do for Samanta and Joshua, or for the other asylum seekers I’ve accompanied in immigration court. Their cases are complicated, and often rejected by lawyers as unwinnable; many of them face almost-certain deportation. I can’t fix anything or change their circumstances. I can’t offer advice or false hope. All I can do is meet them where they are and be present with them, so they’re not alone.

“In this morning’s Torah reading, we learn this lesson of accompaniment from God, who meets Hagar and Ishmael where they are. When Hagar is overwhelmed by anguish and fear, the angel of God calls out to Hagar, to tell her she is not alone. If we relate to Hagar’s suffering, if we feel compassion for people around us who are suffering, we can imitate God and be present with them where they are: maybe we can ease their pain, diminish their despair.” — Pamela Gottfried from Cong. Bet Havarim, Atlanta

...”The first-day-readings of Rosh Hashanah have both Hagar and Chana crying. Only God hears. I plan to compare this to the tekiyat shofar. The obligation to hear. Even when there is no sound through the breaks of the shevarim and teruah sounds.” — Dina Najman from The Kehilah of Riverdale Riverdale, N.Y.

[Read the full piece at Forward]

[eug]

So great to be back on the stage at the Walter Reade Theater last night, I was thrilled to host a screening of “Last Flight Home” with filmmaker and friend Ondi Timoner (right). We’ve hung out and chatted at festivals so many times over the years but it was particularly meaningful to be able to connect with Ondi yesterday. Last night felt special. It was the eve of Ondi’s 50th birthday, she sat alongside her sister Rabbi Rachel (left) and Ondi’s wife Morgan was in the audience (they met during the making of “Last Flight Home” and married in Telluride this fall when the film screened at the Festival there). Early on in her career Ondi was at Lincoln Center and MoMA with her breakthrough music documentary, “Dig!” The insightful film, about The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, played at New Directors/New Films in 2004 after winning Sundance’s Documentary Grand Jury Prize that year (she won the award again in 2009 for “We Live in Public”). Ondi’s latest trip to the Sundance Fest was in January with this new doc, “Last Flight Home,” a daring, intimate look inside the Timoner family as terminally ill father Eli decides to end his own life. Ondi shared that being a filmmaker served and supported her as she navigated the harrowing experience of her Dad’s end of life decision. Watching the powerful, emotional film again, I was struck by the bravery of Ondi and her family as they opened up their lives to share, with such love and humanity, the complex individual decision at the heart of the film. Shout out to icon Sheila Nevins and her team at MTV Documentary Films as well as my friends at Cinetic. It was a memorable New York night. Happy birthday, Ondi! Congratulations! 💜 (at Walter Reade Theater) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl1PNxyOzBv/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[tristansherwin]

THE GOOSE CHASE | RUAH (PS. 139; GEN 3; ACTS 17)

THE GOOSE CHASE | RÛAH (PS. 139) The Holy Spirit: the inescapable and immediate, attentive, besotted presence of God. God’s self, brooding over us.

Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 24th Sept. 2023). You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded). ‘God then is infinite and incomprehensible and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility ’ —St. John of Damascus[i] ‘Oh, I wanna be just as close as…

[latest-update-movie-news]

A Moving Look at a Father’s Final Days – The Hollywood Reporter

A Moving Look at a Father’s Final Days – The Hollywood Reporter

Late in Last Flight Home, Ondi Timoner’s heartbreaking documentary about the last two weeks of her father’s life, the director and her sister, Rachel, sit beside their dad, Eli, as he confesses what he believes are his greatest sins. He reaches for decades-old memories, dusts them off and lays them in front of his daughters. Rachel, a rabbi tasked with spiritual soothing, quietly lets Eli…

[movienation]

Documentary Review: Family says a Long Goodbye to Dad before his Assisted Suicide -- "Last Flight Home"

Documentary Review: Family says a Long Goodbye to Dad before his Assisted Suicide — “Last Flight Home”

We’ve had plenty of time, thanks to the many scenes that precede it in “Last Flight Home,” to get used to the idea of how Eli Timoner plans to shake off this mortal coil. But a line, casually spoken by his rabbi daughter, still packs a gentle jolt. “Daddy, on March 3, when you die…” Documentary filmmaker Ondi Timoner’s latest film — after works on controversial artist Robert Mapplethorpe…

[rabbicreditor]

"Despair is not an option for Jews. We are required to hope. The next time you feel like giving up because it seems like gun violence will never stop in America, the next you feel like there’s no point in protesting, in marching, in calling your legislators, in community organizing, remember that we are the people who witnessed the impossible become possible. We are the people who do not give up. Ever. Hope is who we are." - Rabbi Rachel Timoner tinyurl.com/AllWhoCanProtest #AllWhoCanProtest #EndGunViolence #FaithMatters https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf4Ekb3rHj_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sjecblogarchive]

FROM THE GREEN CORNER: RABBI RACHEL TIMONER ROSH HASHANAH 5782

09/29/2021 BY SJECWARRENTON FROM THE GREEN CORNER: RABBI RACHEL TIMONER ROSH HASHANAH 5782 Earlier this month, Rabbi Rachel Timoner, of Brooklyn, shared the following beautiful sermon/poem about our relationship with God’s creation for Rosh Hashanah. For Jews, this is the Year of Shmita, the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah. It is a time of intentional awareness of God’s gift of creation.

Oh, Beauty

We were supposed to be together today.

All together.

We were supposed to be looking back at a year and a half

of fear and grief

having reached the other side.

We were supposed to be returning to our lives, changed.

But that’s not what’s happening today.

The pandemic continues.

We are bone tired.

And some of us have lost hope.

Last year we were praying for a vaccine.

What are we praying for now?

In Talmud Berachot (32b)

Rabbi Ḥama, son of Rabbi Ḥanina, said:

A person who prayed

and was not answered,

should pray again, as it is stated:

“Strengthen yourself, let your heart take courage,

and put your hope in Gd” (Psalms 27:14).  

Rashi says,

“Hope – strengthen yourself and don’t give up,

hope and hope again.”

You might expect that today

I will list what’s wrong in our world

And urge us to change it.

I could make a big list,

but not this year.

Not today. You already know.

Today, I want to offer you a glimpse of hope.

I want to give you a taste of beauty.

I want to write you a love poem,

a poem that makes you fall in love

with the world that birthed you

and to which you belong.

I want to write you a get-well-soon card

For us and the earth itself

–we’re so sick–

I want to give you words that heal.

I don’t want to bring fear; we’re already too afraid.

I don’t want to bring grief; there’s already too much grief.

In fear and grief we  recoil, we  withdraw.

What the world needs now is our love, our devotion.

In the well-known words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel:

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…

to get up in the morning and look at the world

in a way that takes nothing for granted.”

We’re in a moment of convergence:

what our souls need

and what the earth needs

are one and the same.

I want to help you fall in love with this world again.

I want us to fall in love with the life we’ve been given;

I want us to plant seeds in fresh soil,

to caress a new leaf and watch it grow.

I want us to walk under a cool canopy of branches

I want you to fall asleep on wet sand to the sound of ocean

I want you to be cradled on dark earth with roots reaching beneath you

to dream of your place among all the growing things,

how you belong here, alive.

I want you to fall in love with vine and tendril and shoot and blossom, and life itself

I want us to wake in reverence to the misty curve of blue planet

Seeing suddenly how we fit here.

I want to write a sermon that shows us a whole new way to live

I want us to believe that we belong in the land of the living,

to imagine that there is a future for us, through hellfire and rising tides,

that we are worthy of this earth and can live up to its promise.

And from there, from that deep belonging:

collective divestment

from the way that leads to death;

collective investment

in a way that leads to life.

For these Holy Days, we chose the theme Nashuvah,

Let us Return,

Nashuva is like Teshuvah, same root.

We return, but not to the way things were before,

We see how the way things were before wasn’t right,

wasn’t the best we could be,

We return with an aspiration, a yearning, a commitment,

to change.

Hashiveinu Adonai v’Nashuvah, we sing

Return us, Adonai, and we will return.

Resensitize us

to the beauty of our world,

Reorient us

to being alive in this living system,

Return us

to delight, pleasure, awe.

In Judaism, beauty is a window

into the mystery and wonder of Creation.

When we see something beautiful

we say Baruch Atah Adonai Elo-heinu Melech ha’Olam,

she kacha lo b’olamo.

“Blessed are You, Adonai our Gd, Sovereign of the Universe,

for this is how it is in Your world.”

In Psalm 27 we say,

“One thing I ask of YH-VH, only that do I seek:

to live in the house of the Eternal all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty…”

In Ecclesiastes (3:11), we see in the ephemerality of beauty

the eternality of its Creator.

In contrast to the shallow Western association of

beauty with youth,

Torah (Leviticus 19:32) commands us:

“v’hadarta p’nei zaken. See beauty in the face of the old.”

We see beauty in persistence, in longevity.

According to the Talmud (Shabbat 133b),

we are to find a beautiful shofar,

beautiful tzitzit,

a beautiful sukkah,

beautiful parchment for a Torah scroll

written in beautiful ink with a beautiful quill,

and wrap it in beautiful silk.

This is called hiddur mitzvah.

We are to feed the hungry

shelter the homeless

visit the sick

as these acts beautify the world.

One reason, then, to do mitzvot, says Rabbi Elliot Dorff,

is to make life more beautiful.

Perhaps you found yourself, in this year and a half,

resensitized to beauty you never saw before.

You walked amongst trees, feeling their company

Your eyes lingered on a butterfly sipping nectar from a lush blossom,

slowly opening and closing its resplendent wings.

As Mary Oliver says:

“It was what I was born for—

to look, to listen, to lose myself

inside this soft world—

to instruct myself over and over

in joy and acclamation.”  

There are wonders in this soft world

we’re only beginning to see.

One hundred and eighty biofluorescent species live under the sea.

These shimmering creatures emit light.

We do not know what purpose their light serves

other than beauty.

The iridescent mantis shrimp has twelve to sixteen types

of photoreceptor cells in its eyes

compared to our three.

It can see light and color far beyond our rainbow

Reminding us

that our eyes perceive

only a tiny fraction

of what is happening in our world.

The golden crowned-kinglet

is a bird

that weighs less than two-tenths of an ounce

and its song is pitched so high

that many human adults cannot hear it.

However, experiments have shown

that we can sensitize our ears

to hear the golden crowned kinglet and other sounds in nature

that are currently beyond our range.

If you get very quiet and listen,

you can even hear the sound of flowers growing.

The hyacinth with its close-packed blossoms and glossy leaves

makes a sharp juicy noise when it stretches.

A sensitive listener can feast on many tiny sounds, even the wind.

Psithurism is the word for the sound of wind whispering through trees.

And what about the trees?

German forester Peter Wohlleben

writes about the hidden life of trees.

Trees form colonies with one another,

Sharing nutrients, caring for those who are ill or weak.

Trees communicate through electric impulses and chemicals

that travel across the fungal networks in the soil between their roots.

Trees have a sense of balance —

if its crown is tilted, a beech tree will grow

special wood to turn it upright.

And plants can….hear.

Pea roots grow toward the sound of rushing water

even when that water is in a pipe.

And when a recording

of munching caterpillars

is played near sunflowers,

they release defensive chemicals.

There are even some scientists

who theorize that plants see

and have consciousness.

The cuticle layer of leaves

is not only able to absorb light but to focus it,

which is not necessary for photosynthesis, only for vision.

Charles Darwin proposed that root tips act as brains.

Scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer is

a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation,

and author of Braiding Sweetgrass:

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

She tells the story of her first day of college.

Her advisor peered over his glasses and asked,

“So why do you want to study botany?”

“I told him that I chose botany because

I wanted to learn about why asters and goldenrod

looked so beautiful together….

I wondered, why do they stand beside each other

when they could grow alone?

Why this particular pair?  

Why is the world so beautiful?

It could easily be otherwise:

flowers could be ugly to us

and still fulfill their own purpose….  

[My advisor] laid down his pencil

as if there was no need to record what I had said.

“Miss Wall,” he said, fixing me with a disappointed smile,

“I must tell you that that is not science.”

It turns out that that is science.

Asters, which are purple,

and goldenrod, a deep yellow,

grow together because their colors are complementary

(remember the color wheel?)

so butterflies and bees find the combination

particularly beautiful.

This means that they grow near each other

to get more pollination visits.

And it means that beauty happens

between us and among us.

Richard Prum is an ornithologist

and evolutionary biologist at Yale.

In his lifelong study of birds,

Prum has been drawn again and again

to a simple question:

Why are birds so beautiful?

Why does the peacock have its astonishing display?

Why does the Blackburning Warbler have its stunning

yellow orange throat

and the Great Argus

3D gold spheres on its secondary wing?

Why does the Club-winged Manakin

produce a tonal song by vibrating its wings?

Why does the Satin Bowerbird

decorate its court with royal blue objects found in the forest?

Why does the Vogelkop Bowerbird display

an array of carefully-curated,

color-coordinated

stones, flowers, feathers, fruits and berries?

Why do groups of Blue Manikins

perform spectacular cartwheels together?

Why is there so much beauty?

In his book, The Evolution of Beauty

Prum demonstrates that beauty

does not provide any advantage for survival.

Beauty does not have any correlation

with the quality of the genes that are passed on

from the perspective of natural selection.

Beauty is not a predictor of an adult’s capacity

to care for or protect the fledglings or eggs.

Beauty serves no function,

other than beauty itself.

Birds and all creatures evolve to be beautiful,

to create beauty for ourselves and each other.

In the Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible

the beloved is compared to the earth itself.

Not only is the beloved beautiful, but so is the world:

“Ah, you are beautiful, my darling, Ah, you are beautiful,

With your dove-like eyes! …

Like an apple tree among trees of the forest,

so is my beloved among the youths.

I delight to sit in his shade,

And his fruit is sweet to my mouth…

My beloved is like a gazelle

Or like a young stag.

There he stands behind our wall,

Gazing through the window,

Peering through the lattice. …

Arise, my darling; my beauty, come away.

The blossoms have appeared in the land,

the song of the turtledove is heard.

The green figs form on the fig tree,

The vines in blossom give off fragrance.

Arise, my darling; my beauty, come away.”

Our story starts in Eden

and returns there too

Where once upon a time we lived

Among all the beautiful growing things

Tending

the grasses, the trees, the animals.

We once knew,

as Rabbi Nahman describes:

to go outdoors each day

among the trees and the grass

Among all the growing things

And there be alone and enter into prayer

To talk with the One to whom we belong.

And there we express everything in our hearts

And all the foliage of the field,

all grasses, trees, and plants

awaken at our coming,

to send the powers of their life

into the words of our prayer,

so that our prayer and speech are made whole

through the life and the spirit of all growing things,

made one by their transcendent Source,

Then we pour out the words of our hearts like water,

and lift up our hands in worship,

on our behalf,

and on behalf of our children,

and on behalf of all growing things.

Once upon a time we knew how

and one day soon

we will again.

We were born to inhabit this earth,

we are of it;

we belong in this biosphere.

But we have two modern stories

that make us believe

that we do not have what it takes

to live in balance with our earth.

Neither of these stories is true.

First, we say that our genetic instructions

are geared toward survival of the fittest.

Perhaps, we fear, we are designed

to dominate and destroy,

to bend the world to our demands

regardless of our impact on the rest of life,

eventually snuffing out our own.

This is wrong.

Fit does not mean strongest, most powerful, most dominant.

Fit means adaptive.

We have evolved to adapt.

We are specifically designed to adapt

to changes in our environment.

Mask-wearing is adaptation.

Vaccination is adaptation.

Investment in clean energy is adaptation.

Ceasing harmful industry is adaptation.

Restraint in resource use is adaptation.

We have never before been able to adapt

so quickly

and we have never needed

that speed and purpose

more than now.

But even this is not the whole story.

Because Darwin had not one

but two theories of evolution.

The second, Aesthetic Evolution through Mate Selection,

was rejected in its time,

for positing female sexual autonomy,

and many of us have not learned that

Darwin said that species evolve through

“a taste for the beautiful,”

that all animals shape evolution,

by choosing what we find attractive.

There are billions of beauty standards on the earth.

We and all creatures decide what is beautiful,

mutually designing our evolution through our choices.

Every living thing was chosen.

Every living thing evolved the way it did because

someone thought it was beautiful. Many someones.

To summarize Darwin:

We survive by adapting,

And while we are alive,

We evolve by delighting.

Can you see the beauty in your own face?

More than 100,000 generations of homo sapiens

have evolved to make you that beautiful.

Can you see the beauty in the faces of your neighbors–

two legged, four legged, six legged, winged, rooted–

on your block, in the park, in the forest, on the street corner —

Can you hear the beauty in the voices nearest you — chatter chirping song?

Did you forget to look up today at the beauty in the light in the leaves in the sky?

Did you forget to look down and take off your shoes in the grass?

Did you forget to go outside and touch the bark

and lean your body against a trunk?

Did you forget that all of these are your cousins?

We are kin, we are of them, we are made of earth.

Our second misconception

is that we have nothing to offer our ecosystem.

Dr. Wall Kimmerer surveyed her students

who said that humans are bad for planet earth,

pointing to clear cutting and mining,

toxins in air and water,

species extinction and climate change.

Most could not think of a single benefit

that humans offer the living systems around us.

Can you?

Early colonists in the Americas were stunned

by the plenitude they found here,

attributing the richness solely

to the bounty of nature.

But in truth, Native American practices

were responsible.

Settlers didn’t understand

that the abundance was created

in partnership with humans.

In the Great Lakes wild rice harvest,

the new arrivals were puzzled when

(quote) “the savages [sic] stopped gathering

long before all the rice was harvested,”

assuming that the Native Americans were lazy.

But the indigenous people knew

not to take more than 50 percent of the harvest,

and science has now backed up their knowledge.

Kimmerer explains that “if we remove 50 percent of plant biomass,

the stimulus of compensatory growth

causes an increase in population density and plant vigor.”

However, “In the absence of disturbance [of plants],

resource depletion and competition

result in a loss of vigor and increased mortality.” (p. 165)

In other words, many plants need human intervention in order to thrive.

“By our use of their gifts,

we and the plants both prosper

and life is magnified.” (p. 185)

This is an Honorable Harvest.

In Potawatomi, Kimmerer’s indigenous language,

all living things: bodies of water, rocks, plants, animals,

are verbs: “to be a tree”, “to be a flower”

They are not objects but subjects.

Rather than ask “What is it?” or “How does it work?”

We’d ask “Who are you? What can you tell us?”

We’d listen to growing things,

looking for threads that connect us all.  

Kimmerer asks, “Can we imagine a democracy of species,

not a tyranny of one?

Can we acknowledge intelligences other than our own,

teachers all around us?” (p. 58)

We can live out the Song of Songs,

We can restore Eden.

This would be our version of Nahman’s prayer,

This would be the new form of hiddur mitzvah,

acts that make life more beautiful.

If we always asked:

Is what I’m doing

depleting or magnifying life?

Is what we’re doing

diminishing or enhancing beauty?

And then, if we listened.

We have known, we can re-learn,

how to benefit the earth as it benefits us.

We have known, we can re-learn,

how to adapt to be in mutuality,

a symbiotic relationship,

in which we and all living things

prosper

and life is magnified.

This is our prayer this Rosh Hashanah, 5782,

this shmita year in which Jews allow the earth to rest:

Please, God,

Adapt us to our changing earth.

Sensitize us to its beauty

Help us fall in love with each other and the life we’ve been given

–vine and tendril and shoot and blossom–

Make us plant a new world in fresh soil,

caressing leaves and watching them grow,

Cradle us on dark earth with roots reaching beneath us.

Let us dream of our place among all growing things,

seeing how we belong here, alive,

how we fit,

Wake us up in wonder at the misty curve of blue planet.

Restore in us reciprocity with life itself,

So that we live in love and reverence

for all    the magnificent    beauty.

Baruch atah Adonai Elo-heinu Melech HaOlam, shekacha lo beolamah.

Blessed are You, YH-VH our Gd, Sovereign of the Universe,

for this is how it is in Your world.