Verse – psalm for the green prairies

Isreali-Palstinian relations are getting worse. Rabbi Arthur Waskow speaks from within the Jewish community. His words have weight because they do not come from an outsider. They have no source in the historic anti-Semitism that makes Christian criticism suspect.
The best criticism is always self-criticism. Rabbi Waskow published this piece in the Shalom Report of the Shalom Center.

As War Looms, Can Jews & Muslims Join In 17 Tammuz/ Ramadan Fast on July 15 In “Hunger Strike Against Violence”?

Dear friends,

There are two crises in the world that call especially for Jewish responses:

One because it involves the future of a state that calls itself “Jewish,” and of its supporters in America — their spiritual, intellectual, ethical, and practical futures – at a moment when the relationship between Jews and our Abrahamic cousins of Palestine is filled with violence that threatens to kill more people, breed more hatred, and poison the bloodstream of Judaism and Jewish culture;

The other because it calls on Judaism as –- probably uniquely — a world religion that still can draw on having once been an indigenous people of shepherds and farmers with a Torah, offerings, festivals, and many other practices centered on the sacred relationship with the Earth. Can these roots regrow new flowering at a moment when all the wisdom of all human cultures is needed to cope with a planetary crisis that originates in human mistreatment of the Earth?

Reb Zalman addressed both of these, beginning from the deep spirit-place that was his calling in the world. In two Shalom Report letters this week, I will suggest ways to begin the spiritual turning necessary to address both these.

Let me begin with the first crisis, which every hour is worsening toward war:

Bottom line, a proposal, originating from Israelis & Palestinians; : That the traditional Jewish fast day of 17 Tammuz, which coincides this year with a day in the month-long Muslim fast of Ramadan, be set aside on Tuesday, July 15, as a “Hunger Strike Against Violence.”

Background: Murder, violence, and ugly threats of it have broken out in Israel, its settlements in Occupied Palestine, and in Palestine itself – at both the level of street mobs and the level of governmental rockets, bombs, and troop mobilizations.

The endemic violence of occupation has been intensified by the murder of three Israeli youngsters by some Palestinians, one lynching murder of a Palestinian youth by Israelis, Israeli street mobs threatening pogroms against Palestinians and Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin, and exchanges of rocket and missile/ bomb firing between Gaza and Israel.

Eliaz Cohen (an Israeli poet/ settler in Gush Etzion) has proposed that Jews & Muslims respond to the outbreaks of violence by joining in a Hunger Strike Against Violence. He suggested fasting on the traditional Jewish fast day of 17 Tammuz, this year on July 15, which is also a day in the month-long fast of Ramadan. (Both fasts are from sunrise to sunset.)

What is 17 Tammuz about? It commemorates the day when the Babylonian Army broke through the walls of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, three weeks before the Babylonians destroyed the Temple.

So it is, among other things, a day of sorrow for the dead and self-restraint from killing.

My thought: — It would be both a serious expression of commitment to peace and decency and also a serious memorial to Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who died last week, for us here as well in the USA to join with Muslims on 17 Tammuz in a Hunger Strike Against Violence, and to end the day together with Iftar, the evening break-fast.

To do this, we could ask a mosque near any one of us, and/ or a chapter of organizations like CAIR, the Council of American-Islamic Relations, to join with our own congregation.

What does this have to do with Reb Zalman? He schrei’d Gevalt, gevalt, about the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila; he visited the Tomb of Abraham in Hebron not in triumph but in Abrahamic peace; he became a Sufi initiate; he climbed the mountain known as Sinai with Muslims.

Why should we do this? The editorial board of Haaretz, not just an op-ed piece, has just warned that :

“There are no words to describe the horror allegedly done by six Jews to Mohammed Abu Khdeir of Shoafat [allegedly to “avenge” the murders of three Israeli youngsters]. Although a gag order bars publication of details of the terrible murder and the identities of its alleged perpetrators, the account of Abu Khdeir’s family — according to which the boy was burned alive — would horrify any mortal. Anyone who is not satisfied with this description, can view the horror movie in which members of Israel’s Border Police are seen brutally beating Tariq Abu Khdeir, the murder victim’s 15-year-old cousin.
…

“[We Israelis] belong to a vengeful, vindictive Jewish tribe whose license to perpetrate horrors is based on the horrors that were done to it.

“Prosecuting the murderers is no longer sufficient. There must be a cultural revolution in Israel. Its political leaders and military officers must recognize this injustice and right it. They must begin raising the next generation, at least, on humanist values, and foster a tolerant public discourse. Without these, the Jewish tribe will not be worthy of its own state.”

It seems to me that for the sake of God’s demand for justice, peace, and love for BOTH the peoples of Israel and Palestine, and for the sake of our own souls as well, we must support such a “cultural revolution in Israel” and in the American Jewish “organized” community — where idolatry for Israel is replacing love for Israel, despite deep disquiet and disaffection at the grass roots.
Below is what Eliaz wrote. And below that is a report from The Times of Israel (NOT a left-wing or liberal paper) about visits of sorrow and condolence between the bereaved families of the two peoples, including a Palestinian Muslim who affirmed the idea of sharing the Fast of 17 Tammuz/ Ramadan.

(If you want to know more about Eliaz Cohen, as I did, see http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/eliaz-cohen-in-translation-%E2%80%93hear-o-lord-poems-from-the-disturbances-of-2000-2009/)

Shalom, salaam, peace! — Arthur

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Thanks to Rabbi Eyal Levinson of northern Israel, who sent me Eliaz Cohen’s proposal:

“A day of fasting together, or in the language of civil protest: a hunger-strike day, next Tuesday, when the Jewish and Muslim calendars are united in a day of fast: the fast of 17 Tamuz and the fast of Ramadan, Jews and Muslims will unite in a day of fast.

“For both traditions/cultures – this is a day designated for soul-searching, an opportunity for people to take responsibility, for self repair and for self and communal purification and for repentance.

“This is an attempt to direct the consciousness of both peoples to this day as a “peak day” “in which each man and woman in their home and in their communities will be invited to take part, to fast in solidarity with the suffering, violence and pain of self and others, to ask how to end the cycle of bloodshed and draw a horizon of hope and vision.

“Afternoon gatherings and classes will be held between the two communities – sharing stories, studying and praying together, and by the appearance of the stars the people gathered will share an “iftar” – breaking the fast with a delicious meal.”

^^^^^^^^^

From The Times of Israel
http://www.timesofisrael.com/slain-israeli-teens-uncle-consoles-murdered-palestinians-father/
Earlier Sunday, two Palestinians from the Gush Etzion area … arrived at the Fraenkel’s Nof Ayalon residence where the family is in the midst of the traditional seven-day mourning period [for one of the three Israeli youngsters murdered by Palestinians].
Last week, the Fraenkels condemned the murder of Abu Khdeir [a Palestinian youngster murdered by Israelis], saying, “There is no difference when it comes to blood. Murder is murder; there is no justification, forgiveness or atonement for any murder.”

One of the visitors [said] that Fraenkel’s statements last week after Abu Khdeir’s murder “touched a large portion of the Palestinian people.”
“I come from a bereaved family, I lost my brother and I have family that were former prisoners, unfortunately we also threw stones at you. …
“The moment we learn to deal with each other’s pain and stop the anger against one another, the situation will be better,” the visitor said. “Our mission is to strengthen the family and also to take a step forward towards the liberation of my people. We believe that only through the hearts of the Jews will our liberation happen.”

He described the warm welcome the Fraenkels gave him, and said: “We are sorry for any harm against people, whether Jewish or Muslim. We don’t want anyone to be hurt, and want to reach a political agreement.”

The two Palestinians also described an upcoming initiative called the “Hunger Strike Against Violence,” next Tuesday, on which the Jewish fast of the 17 of Tammuz coincides with the ongoing Muslim Ramadan holiday.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I hope that as we mourn Reb Zalman, we turn the mourning not only into tzedakah (socially responsible charity) but also into tzedek (balanced justice), chesed (loving-kindness), and mishpat (justice on behalf of the poor and disempowered) . “Tzedek u’ mishpat ashira: l’cha YHWH azamaira. Of love & justice I will sing, to the ONE Breath of Life I’ll sing praises!”

Shalom, salaam, peace — Arthur

The Lark within the Song-less Egg

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Gordon C. Stewart

A sermon at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN.

Dead young men – a Rabbi’s perspective

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Gordon C. Stewart

Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow

Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia is one of the more interesting religious leaders of our time. Views from the Edge republishes this week’s “Shalom Report” with permission.

Dead Young Men: 50 Years Ago and Now

Spirals of Violence — or Nonviolence

Dear friends,

I spent several days last week in Mississippi –Mourning the murders of three young men

50 years ago (and many others before and since);
Celebrating a Mississippi that today is very different;
Facing the truth that Earth and human communities –– especially, still, those of color and of poverty –- are being deeply wounded by the Carbon Pharaohs’ exploitation and oppression;
Talking/ working toward a future of joyful community in which Mother Earth and her human children can live in peace with each other in the embrace of One Breath.

And then, a few days later, came the news of the murders of three young men just weeks ago –- three Israeli youngsters — their bodies, like those of Mickey Schwerner, Andy Goodman, and James Earl Chaney, hidden while the search went forward for them.

But not only them. The violent deaths of young Palestinian boys/men as well, during the Israeli Army crack-down on the West Bank. Their mothers also mourning. As the New York Times reported the day before the three Israeli bodies were discovered:

“Most Israelis see the missing teenagers as innocent civilians captured on their way home from school, and the Palestinians who were killed as having provoked soldiers. Palestinians, though, see the very act of attending yeshiva in a West Bank settlement as provocation, and complain that the crackdown is collective punishment against a people under illegal occupation.”

Is there a danger of “moral relativism” in mentioning these deaths together? Is the cold-blooded murder of three hitchhiking youngsters morally equivalent to killings carried out by angry, frightened soldiers faced with a protesting mob? At the individual level, No.

But at the level of decision-making and public policy, there is also no moral equivalence between a cold-blooded military occupation and the impotent rage of the occupied.

Above all, there is no “relativism” in the tears of mothers.

Some Israelis and some Palestinians have joined their sorrow over the killings of their own children to work in the Circle of Bereaved Families for a peace that would end the killing. (See http://www.theparentscircle.com/.)

Others –-including some Israeli cabinet ministers in the last day — have defined their deaths as the warrant for more killing.

But Mississippi did not change through threats like that. It changed because an aroused American citizenry from outside Mississippi allied itself with the oppressed community inside Mississippi to demand – through nonviolent direct action and through passing laws — that an oppressed population of black folk be freed to achieve some measure of political power.

As a result of that arousal, the deaths 50 years ago have made a visible difference. Fifty years ago, a scant few black Mississippians had been allowed to register to vote. As the “Freedom Summer + 50” gathering opened last week, thousands of black Mississippians who are devoted to the Democratic Party intervened in a Republican primary to prevent the nomination and for-sure election of a far-right Tea Party candidate.

Important change? Yes. Enough change? No.

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no sufficiently powerful outside energy has made the commitment to bring all its lawful, nonviolent power to bear to achieve a two-state peace. So the violence worsens in a downward spiral of injustice.

What the gathering in Mississippi showed was that even when change is still necessary, even when injustice still continues, there can be an upward spiral, growing from past transformations into future ones.

For the gathering at Tougaloo College addressed the future as much as the past. The memory of youthful deaths so many years ago –- we recited their names, we sang their songs, we welcomed their families — became the celebration of youthful courage that had led to serious change. So not only many veterans of 1964 were there, but also many many young activists, come to learn and be inspired.

So we addressed the injustices that persist, and we took up some levels of injustice that fifty years ago were not on anyone’s agenda. Even Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, did not envision a massive disruption of the planetary climate system and the web of life it has nurtured for millions of years.

So there was a confluence of issues almost unimaginable in 1964 when Jacqueline Patterson of the NAACP staff brought together two excellent workshops on ”climate justice.” They were the first climate–action settings I have ever seen in which people of color — Black and Hispanic and Asian and Native — were at least half of those present.

Many spoke of two clear cases in their own region when the fossil-fuel Pharaohs had shattered the lives of poor communities of color even worse than they had damaged prosperous whites:

How Hurricane Katrina (which was greatly worsened by the oil rigs that chopped up marshy wetlands that used to absorb much of the energy of hurricanes when they hit land) had most damaged the poor folk who were living closer to the river (because houses were cheaper there).
And how poor folk also were the slowest and still the least served by relief and reconstruction efforts after the BP Oil blow-out in the Gulf.

And we learned as well how on a global level the overheating of our planet was hurting and killing the poor even worse than others: How droughts in California, the US corn-belt, central Africa, and Russia had raised the price of staple foods so badly that those who were teetering on the edge in poverty fell into hunger, and those who had been hungry faced starvation. And some who were starving fought civil wars to get their hands on food.
We discussed alternatives for climate activism. Some of us talked about the model of the “Freedom Schools that emerged in 1964, teaching where the impulses to learn and teach were deeply interwoven with the impulse to heal the world. Those Freedom Schools helped give birth to the Teach-Ins against the Vietnam War that flowered in the spring of ’65.

Could we create new Freedom Schools, new Teach-Ins, to fuse the science of climate and the facts of Corporate Carbon domination with the strategies of change? Was our gathering itself a kind of Freedom School, a Teach-In, with the young and the old teaching each other?

And Freedom Summer inspired co-ops, the redirection of our money from feeding bloated corporate power to nourishing the seeds of a grass-roots economic democracy. In that spirit, I shared The Shalom Center’s campaign to Move Our Money/Protect Our Planet (MOM/POP) and handed out copies of our “Action Handbook” on specific steps for how to Move Our Money. See https://theshalomcenter.org/treasury/209.

All of us learned more deeply how important it is to recognize and act on the true linkage of what we might call eco-social justice.

And we learned that what happened fifty years ago in Mississippi sowed the seeds of our ability to recognize and resist new depredations of today. We saw how deeply the nonviolent movement of fifty years before had, even when some of its activists were killed, given continuing birth to nonviolent responses to make more necessary change.

I ended one of those workshops by invoking the spirit of Vincent Harding. If he had not died just a month ago, I said, he would have been deeply pleased by our intergenerational learning, and he would have brought his own deep listening and the quiet with which he surrounded his own wise words.

And most of all, he would have brought his willingness to invest his life in the effort to use nonviolence to expand democracy, to win justice for those who have been oppressed.

And now, in the wake of the news from Palestine and Israel, his ghostly, powerful presence actually reminds me of the Unity of that long effort. For just two summers ago, Brother Vincent took part in a delegation of American Jews and Blacks to visit the occupied West Bank and bring hope to Palestinians committed to nonviolence.

Brother Vincent would have wept over the deaths of the young men of both peoples. As do I.

May the tears we shed become the wellsprings of transformation, not revenge — as they did in Mississippi.

And may we teach the intertwinement of eco-social justice, learning anew from Freedom Summer’s creativity to go beyond our forebears — as they did.

Shalom, salaam, paz, peace! — Arthur

Verse – The Mama Rabbit

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Gordon C. Stewart

The Mama rabbit in the city
dug a nest in our back yard.
She pulled fur from her own body,
hiding babies in the grass.

She came to nurse them every hour,
but she watched them from afar.
Hawks and foxes might have found them
if she stayed there all the time.

I saw one baby rabbit crawling
when I mowed the grass above.
Then I saw the Mama watching
as I placed him in the nest.

The internet said she would feed him
even after touched by me.
My kids and spouse watched from the window
at the growing family.

– Steve Shoemaker, July 1, 2014

Do not forget! We ARE Nature – Nature Is Us

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Gordon C. Stewart

Text of sermon on sanity and madness visa a vis ourselves (homo sapiens) and the rest of nature preached at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN.

We need stories to keep us sane in a culture whose sanity is madness.

In Souls on Fire Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize concentration camp survivor, tells the story of “prophetic madness” that challenges the collective madness of a people who ignore the coming calamity of impending crop failure. “Good people…What is at stake,” says the prophetic messenger, “is your life, your survival! The summons falls on deaf ears and the calamity of starvation is not averted.”

Wiesel concludes, “God loves madmen. They’re the only ones he allows near him.”

Late in the year of 1964 a young geography student working toward his doctorate came upon a grove of Bristlecone Pines while doing research searching on Ice Age glaciers.

Wheeler Peak, on Nevada’s eastern border with Utah, reaches an altitude of 13,063 feet with a spectacular glacial cirque on its northeast side. Wheeler Peak cycles through five life zones, from the hot stony desert to alpine tundra, all within a five mile line. Along the edge of this cirque is the home of colossal bristlecone pines. Standing as they have for millennia, in their fields of stone, they overlook the desert far below.

When this student and his associate came upon the bristlecones at the timberline, they began to take core samples from several trees, discovering one to be over 4,000 years old! Needless to say they were excited, and at some point, their only coring tool broke. The end of the field season was nearing. They asked for, and were granted permission, by the U.S. Forest Service to cut the tree down.

They had just cut down one of the oldest living organism on the planet. An earlier group of researchers at Wheeler Peak and given names to the these ancient creatures whose lives reach back to the third century before Christ. They had named some of these trees. Ancient names like Socrates and Buddha. And then there was Prometheus, named after the god in Greek mythology who was punished for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humankind. Zeus has Prometheus chained to a rock for an eternity of perpetual torment.

It was the tree named after Prometheus that the geology students had killed. They had cut down a tree that was 4,844 year old.

What happened that day on Wheeler Peak is now viewed as a kind of martyrdom by some of the Bristlecone Pine researchers – in inexplicable horror of Prometheus’ death served to save the other Bristlecone Pines from extinction at human hands. You might even say it is to the Bristlecone Pines what the cross of Jesus is to the human species, a death that brings life to the rest of us.

The death of a 4,844 year-old tree and the death of Christ are two sides of a single coin. The death of Prometheus at the tree line on Wheeler Peak is the death of nature at human hands. The death of Jesus on The Hill of Skulls is the death of humankind itself, and out of both deaths, by God’s grace alone, a new human awareness – a new humanity within nature – is awakened.

In the death of that old Bristlecone Pine the other researches came to a new appreciation of nature itself. Not only its magnificence. Not only our dependence upon nature. But our oneness with nature. Homo sapiens do not stand above nature; we stand within it. We are nature; nature is us.

Elie Wiesel reminds us that there are two kinds of madness. There is the societal madness that continues business as usual but is actually insane; the other is what he calls “prophetic” madness that challenges the madness which sees the Earth as a landfill or playground with no value in itself apart from its use to us. Prophetic madmen cry out, “Good people, do not forget! What is at stake is your life, your survival! Do not forget!”

As we remember that story out of which our faith awareness is born around the Lord’s Table, I close with another story from Elie Wiesel.

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say, “Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.” And again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say, “I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place ad this must be sufficient.” It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune.

Sitting his his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient. And it was sufficient.

God made man because he loves stories.

Remember, Good people. Do not forget. God loves “prophetic madmen” who challenge the madness. Remember Prometheus. Remember the Hill of Skulls. Do not forget. We are not above nature. We are part of nature; nature is us. Thanks be to God.

New EPA Regs: Myths and Facts

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Gordon C. Stewart

Rabbi Arthur Waskow of The Shalom Center in Philadelphia shares this analysis of corporate and media claims regarding the EPA’s new regulations to reduce carbon emissions. Click HERE to read “Myths & Facts: New EPA Regs on CO2 Emissions from Coal Plants.”

Climate change is the number one issue facing every country across the globe. The brutal fact is that the United States is the second only to China on the list of carbon polluters. Rabbi Waskow calls the opposition to responsible climate change action the new Pharaoh.

This morning we posted a piece on Walter Brueggemann’s Sabbath as Resistance. Walter and Arthur share a biblical point of view on the sacredness of Earth and the human vocation.

Still Cookin’

Video

A Sermon by Rev. Gordon C. Stewart at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN inspired by Jesus serving breakfast, Martin the kitchen manager, and Stanley Gordon West’s novel Blind Your Ponies.

Views from the Edge

To See More Clearly

Category Archives: Environment

Verse – psalm for the green prairies

Sermon on Jacob, Esau, and the Birthright

Verse – Why in Nature

As War Looms: a Jewish-Muslim fast day July 15

The Lark within the Song-less Egg

Verse – The Mama Rabbit

Still Cookin’

Video

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