Can you imagine a world without teshuvah?
This holiday season holds critical significance in light of anthropogenic climate change. The Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashana approaches, a time of reflection and new beginnings. Teshuvah, defined as repentance, return, or turning, is the mechanism by which during this contemplative season a person may perform an internal accounting of their past mistakes, remedy those mistakes often founded in misperception or wrong thinking, and seek to ensure proper future action. With this coming of Rosh Hashana, we also enter shmita, a septannual sabbatical year of biblical origin for specific prescribed lands. During its observance, shmita invites a hermaneutical investigation of such terracentric issues as work-rest balance, commoditization of land, land ownership, food systems, and community and food security. Specifically, within teshuvah and shmita, are opportunities to cultivate a re-alignment in our attitudes towards the failing earth, and modification of our behavior aimed to reverse the changes that have taken place recently in the earth's environment.
The science of climate change is beyond the scope of this blog. Suffice it to say that there is overwhelming evidence of the human etiology of temperature rise, wildfires, drought, floods, greater frequency of extreme weather events, rising rate of extinction of species, and weather-related human suffering and deaths we are experiencing today. According to the latest figures, between 2000-2019 an average of 5 million human deaths per year were caused by climate change1. Then, pikuach nefesh, the Jewish principle that there is no greater obligation than the preservation of human life, calls for an immediate change in peoples' relationship with and actions involving the global natural world. Global warming necessitates returning of all people, not just Jews, to a greater consideration of the land. Global warming necessitates repentance in the form of behavior modification towards not just eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, but more generally, the land of the earth. God's earth. Global warming necessitates our turning to shmita in Torah to draw forth radical understandings of text to guide us. Global warming necessitates teshuvah with the earth. And we must delay no longer. Data indicates that we are rapidly approaching a point of no return; a point where no reparative action--no teshuvah--no matter how heartfelt, how desperate, or how aggressively enacted, will reverse the impact of prior human actions upon our earth.
Teshuvah is the derech, the path in our tradition by which we may posture ourselves, then take the steps that we must towards repair of our world. Shmita is a gateway in our tradition to proper relationship with the eretz, with the earth. This blog, Derech Eretz, is offered during what is almost undoubtedly the most critical shmita year in world history, insofar as the potential for shmita to impact human-earth symbiosis. If we are serious about maintaining the land as an inheritance—eretz l'rishtah-- for our children and others who come after us, we must keep--shamor-- this shmita year—Shabbat la'aretz. In the re-understood words of the commandment, “vshamru bnai Yisrael et haShabbat, la'asot et haShabbat l'dorotam brit olam.”1https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-07/climate-change-linked-to-5-million-deaths-a-year-new-study-shows
This holiday season holds critical significance in light of anthropogenic climate change. The Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashana approaches, a time of reflection and new beginnings. Teshuvah, defined as repentance, return, or turning, is the mechanism by which during this contemplative season a person may perform an internal accounting of their past mistakes, remedy those mistakes often founded in misperception or wrong thinking, and seek to ensure proper future action. With this coming of Rosh Hashana, we also enter shmita, a septannual sabbatical year of biblical origin for specific prescribed lands. During its observance, shmita invites a hermaneutical investigation of such terracentric issues as work-rest balance, commoditization of land, land ownership, food systems, and community and food security. Specifically, within teshuvah and shmita, are opportunities to cultivate a re-alignment in our attitudes towards the failing earth, and modification of our behavior aimed to reverse the changes that have taken place recently in the earth's environment.
The science of climate change is beyond the scope of this blog. Suffice it to say that there is overwhelming evidence of the human etiology of temperature rise, wildfires, drought, floods, greater frequency of extreme weather events, rising rate of extinction of species, and weather-related human suffering and deaths we are experiencing today. According to the latest figures, between 2000-2019 an average of 5 million human deaths per year were caused by climate change1. Then, pikuach nefesh, the Jewish principle that there is no greater obligation than the preservation of human life, calls for an immediate change in peoples' relationship with and actions involving the global natural world. Global warming necessitates returning of all people, not just Jews, to a greater consideration of the land. Global warming necessitates repentance in the form of behavior modification towards not just eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, but more generally, the land of the earth. God's earth. Global warming necessitates our turning to shmita in Torah to draw forth radical understandings of text to guide us. Global warming necessitates teshuvah with the earth. And we must delay no longer. Data indicates that we are rapidly approaching a point of no return; a point where no reparative action--no teshuvah--no matter how heartfelt, how desperate, or how aggressively enacted, will reverse the impact of prior human actions upon our earth.
Teshuvah is the derech, the path in our tradition by which we may posture ourselves, then take the steps that we must towards repair of our world. Shmita is a gateway in our tradition to proper relationship with the eretz, with the earth. This blog, Derech Eretz, is offered during what is almost undoubtedly the most critical shmita year in world history, insofar as the potential for shmita to impact human-earth symbiosis. If we are serious about maintaining the land as an inheritance—eretz l'rishtah-- for our children and others who come after us, we must keep--shamor-- this shmita year—Shabbat la'aretz. In the re-understood words of the commandment, “vshamru bnai Yisrael et haShabbat, la'asot et haShabbat l'dorotam brit olam.”1https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-07/climate-change-linked-to-5-million-deaths-a-year-new-study-shows