Emor post Earth Day 5783

A Tree of Life! What if each and every service where Torah is read can help to Turn our awareness to the roots of Judaism in the feminine.

Eytz chayim, the tree of life was in the center of the garden.

In being banished from that garden we were also banished from tree, Eytz chayim and estranged from the Goddess. Or were we? The worship of Asherah, the Goddess persisted in biblical times and today is hidden in plain sight: Torah, and the Wooden rollers are Eytzei Chayim hi, if only we would engender the Hebrew as it is written: She is a tree of life

The verses above in Deuteronomy instruct the Israelites to destroy sacred posts of wood, and alters made of Earth. These were the sacred pillars that are more earthy, oversexed, uncomfortable for some in this Biblical time

Yet they were not able to destroy the Goddess, as we see in Jeremiah during the time of the prophets, and in the Zohar in the 14th century. (text below)

This represents a tug of war that has been happening, equity vs. power.

Then there is the psalm we sing each time we take out the Torah. And isn't it intersting how we parade her around and kiss her? What if we returned the pronouns that were written for the psalm?

Melody M Wolfson re Pirke Avot

Eytz chayim hee, she is a tree

Offering us both life and wisdom

Eytz chayim hi, lamakazikim ba

v'tomhecha me'ushar

Her truths aren't always very simple

Deep ones are not easy, but sublime

Her roots reach high into the heavens,

with her wisdom you will shine,

With the help of words Divine she has borne us

Seeds of truth spring up from her

With the sap of love she still feeds us.

We must serve and return this care

Eytz chayim hee

Live righteously

who will remain after

you to repair this wondrous world?

In Zohar, the masculine “seed” impregnates Bina, wisdom, who becomes the cosmic womb. In Sefer Yetzira, Chapter 3:2

Three mothers: Aleph, Mem, Shin

A great secret veiled and mysterious…

From them come fire, water and air,

Enveloped in male and female

R Jill Hammer translation

Wangari writes: "“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come”

To rescue the Goddess just might connect us to the earth once again.

I invite you to take a deep breath. listen to your heart beat and the fluid rush through your veins. Feel the solidity of the bones. Imagine the organs each supporting one another. Supporting your life. More than the sum of their parts. Shechinah lives in you. Breathe again As you breathe out follow that breath, it is a part of a greater organism. Ecosystems are nested within biomes, and ultimately the biosphere, the living earth. The Greeks called her Gaia. The parts of the system support one another and become more than their sum - which is miraculous, magic, at every level. The whole earth is filled with Her presence. She is Shechina, or Malchut in Jewish tradition, the most immanent of the feminine sephirot, or facets of the Divine. Perhaps you have met and felt her essence in the beauty, awe, and wonder of natural world, or in being in loving presence with others, in soaring melody and harmony, or when your child was born. I am inspired by R Jill Hammer's work in introducing Shechinah and Goddess spirituality. She writes "There is a growing group of ecofeminist or "earth based Jews.. who draw on Jewish sources as well as on understandings of God/Goddess immanent in Nature. As we acknowledge the power and the need of rituals to heal and honor women's lives and journeys, perhaps we can extend these rituals to healing of Shechinah, of G*d Herself. All is not right with the world today, Shechinah is under assault. We are commanded to love the Divine One with all our Hearts, Yet She is a victim of abuse, even, dare I say, of rape. Perhaps feminine spiritual perspective is what has been missing, what is needed. Global issues are impossible for folks to get a handle on, or to think they can make a difference. So we turn away. Karma/ justice will ensue and we and our children all will suffer as Earth takes what is Her due`. (Eikev, 2021)

Follow your breath back into your body. What will you do? What can we do.

We come from the earth, and from a people with their roots in heaven and their hearts with the land.

also nearing a Holy day not often recognized by Jewish tradition, Earth Day. I suggest we adopt this day Jewishly in ritual. Yes its origin is secular, but we are Jews, we do it all for L'Dor VaDor, for our children we are commanded to choose life.

A feminist, earth-based perspective may be just what is needed,to pull back from the brink of a looming catastrophe which we are perpetuating, or not(!) with every choice we make.

First a story of a woman with a healing vision.

In urban DC is Wangari Gardens, where city folk tend a garden to feed their bodies and nourish their souls. Named for one of my heroines, Wangari Matthai who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for The Green Belt movement. This movement begun in Wangaari's native Kenya is a grass roots effort to ensure gender livelihood and community empowerment at the local level by planting trees, and harvesting water, and advocacy on the international level for action on climate change and more. From their website The Green Belt Movement began with the premise that degraded environment and poverty create a downward spiral for rural subsistence farmers, and in particular rural women. Climate change increases the downward spiral for rural communities.

Wangari was late starting school, but joined her brothers at age 8, went to one of the few girls HS, and studied here in the US on a Kennedy program Scholarship. When she returned to Kenya Her activism was not welcome. Wangari's husband filed for divorce in 1979, saying Wangari was "too strong-minded for a woman" and that he was "unable to control her".He called her cruel, accused her of adultery, and giving him high blood pressure and the male judge ruled in his favor. Wangari called the judge out as either incompetent or corrupt, so the judge sentenced her to 6 months in prison! (she was released 3 days later with help from her lawyer.) She was too strong minded for a woman, she didn't' know her place. If we have places to be trapped in how can there be equity?`

Can Jewish Ritual be a way to make a difference?

Ritual well has many beautiful resources

including adding to an "asher Yatzar" prayer

Blessed are You, G-d, Who has formed humanity with wisdom,
and commanded us to be stewards of the Earth. by R J. Warshowsky

A link from the mitzvah to honor parents to the Mitzvah of caring for the earth by R. Gila Crain

I have personally heard R Arthur's Eicha/ Tamara Cohen for the earth,

I have led Reb Zalman's Hoshanah for the earth.

Also there is Yael Levy's gorgeous meditations for each night of Chanukah.

Change has begun to some extent: TuB'Shevat has been transformed into a Jewish Earth Day in the winter. There is a gorgeous meditation in Penina Adelman's Miriam's well (p 47) in which we imagine ourselves as both human and as tree. Specifically a "Tree of Life"

“A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from.
― Wangari Maathai