Fwd: [Chasidus w/o Borders] eco-Torah for Sukkot

[Aharon Varady]

Here is some wonderful Torah for the practice of Sukkot shared by Open Siddur contributor, Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid.org).

Ḥag Sameaḥ everyone!

Aharon

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Seidenberg <rebdu...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 10:38 AM
Subject: [Chasidus w/o Borders] eco-Torah for Sukkot
To: ha...@googlegroups.com


Here is some eco-Torah for Sukot that I've sent out before. It's been
revised a bit, and it's worth repeating in any case. May you all have
a sweet and joyous Sukkot that is full of blessing for you and your
families and communities -- not just your human communities, but also
the whole community of life, wherever you live. Chag Sameach!

David S
_______________

What is a lulav? Here's the executive summary:
Each of the four species of plant represents one of the four types of
habitats in Israel.

1) Lulav-Palm branch = desert
2) Hadas-Myrtle = mountains
3) Aravot-Willow = rivers and streams
4) Etrog-Citron = lowlands, agricultural land

Each one needs the most water of all the species that grow in its
region. Between them, they make a kind of ecological map of Israel,
and they represent last year's rainfall. And we use them to ask for
this year's rain. Read more below.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"When Israel was encamped, the pillar of cloud was...like a sukkah and
made a canopy over the tent (of meeting) from without, and filled the
tabernacle mishkan from within...and this was one of the clouds of
glory that served Israel forty years in the wilderness: one on their
right and one on their left and one before them and one behind them
and one above them and the cloud of the Shekhinah in-between them."
(ch. 14 of B'raita Dim'lekhet Hamishkan, also quoted centuries later
in Yalkut Shimoni, Pekudei)

In Kabbalah, God is called the soveiv kol almin, what surrounds all
worlds, and the m'malei kol almin, what fills all worlds. In this
ancient midrashic passage, the ultimate principle of God that fills
and surrounds all, the Shekhinah or the indwelling presence of God,
takes the form of a pillar of cloud that makes itself manifest within
and around the mishkan, the dwelling place created for God.

But the midrash also tells us that the Shekhinah dwelt "between" the
people of Israel--in other words, that Shekhinah dwells on this earth
when the people make a dwelling place for her "between them," that is,
in their relationships and connections. We will return to this idea
below. First, let's explore how the lulav itself draws God's presence
into our lives and relationships.

1) Lulav
Sukkot is about water. Everyday in ancient Israel the priests poured
water on the altar and prayers asking for the blessings of water were
sung. The four species (arba minim) of the lulav are all about water
too: The lulav itself, the date palm, was the most water-loving plant
of the desert; the myrtle (hadas) needs the most water of the mountain
plants; the etrog fruit among agricultural trees requires the most
rain to grow; and of course the "willow of the streams" (arvei nachal)
are synonymous with abundant water, often growing with their roots
right in the streams.

Each of these species represents one of the primary habitats of the
land of Israel: the desert, the mountain, the lowland (sh'feilah in
Hebrew), and the river or riparian habitats. Each of these habitats is
of course distinct in how much rainfall and how much groundwater are
found there. Together, the four species make a bioregional map of the
land of Israel, and they each hold in greatest abundance the rains
that fell in the habitat where they grow from the year that has
passed. That's why the tips of each species, the pitom of the etrog,
the unsplit central frond of the lulav, the end leaves of the myrtle
and the willow, cannot be dried out: it would be like praying for good
health while eating junk food.

Bringing these four species together, we wave them in all directions
around us, up and down, praying that the coming year will again bring
enough water for each of these species to grow and thrive, and with
them all the species of each habitat. All the other explanations you
may have heard for the four lulav species (like, we wave them to show
that "God is everywhere," or, they represent "the spine, eyes, lips
and heart") are lovely midrashim, but this is the real reason for it
all. We are praying, fundamentally, for the climate, for the stability
and sufficiency of the rain and sunshine, on which depends every being
living upon the land, whether plant or animal (or fungus or bacteria).

How can we make our prayers heard? We can make them heard by hearing
them ourselves. When we pray for abundance and sustenance while living
in ways that destroy our climate, it is like praying with a dried-out
lulav, or worse, praying for health while eating not just junk food,
but poisons and toxins. Since we need to pray for abundance and
sustenance, let us also pray for the wisdom and ability to act
consistently with our prayers, to change how we live so that we might
live sustainably on the earth. As the Torah enjoins us: Uvacharta
bachayim! Choose life!


2) Hoshanot
What does it mean to be a "nation of priests"? Abraham was told that
through his descendants, "all the families of the earth" would be
blessed. If you look at the liturgy and at midrashic teachings on
Sukkot, you will see that this means praying for all other peoples and
nations – according to the midrash correspond, the seventy bull
sacrifices brought over the holiday correspond to the seventy nations.
But it also includes, as we read in the Hoshanot prayers for each day,
the crops, the animals, the trees, the rains, and the sustenance of
all the earth. We cry out on each day, pleading for sustaining
blessings for all of these: "Please save human and animal! Please,
save! Please save flesh and spirit and breathing! Please save likeness
and image and weave! Please save the ripe fruit, sweeten and save!
Please save the clouds from withholding! Please the animals from
miscarrying! Please save the rooting of the breathing trees! Please
save, Renew the face of the earth!"

What species and habitats need our special prayers this year? Some
examples: Save the polar bears from drowning; save the fireflies from
becoming lost; save the honeybees from colony collapse; save the coast
live oaks from decay; save the old-growth redwoods from becoming
lumber; save the cloud forests from vanishing; save the seas from dead
zones. Not all environmental crises are our fault, but they are all
exacerbated by the pressure, stress and loss of habitat created by
both climate change and by our use of more and more land for our
purposes (which also accelerates climate change). What can each of us
do to protect the particular species in our own locale and
"bioregion"? How do each of our actions and choices about what to buy
and use and how to live affect species in other places? Finding out
the answers to these questions is part of what we need to do to make
our prayers real. All ecosystems are connected, and we cannot harm one
without harming the others, so any prayers we make for individual
species or places are also prayers for the whole Earth.

Our prayers help us to focus on this by asking us to be aware of the
fragility of life, on the fragility of all that is "suspended on
nothingness",t'luyah al b'li mah. Two of the lines from the Hoshanot
are especially striking: "Please save the soul from desperation!
Please save what is suspended upon nothingness! Hoshana nefesh
mibehalah! Hoshana t'luyah al b'li mah!" Behalah/desperation can mean
all the forces that turn us away from action, that make us believe
that we cannot make a difference. The way to save the soul from
"behalah" is to fulfill the mission described in the Hoshanot: to act
as priests and pray on behalf of all the other species, to fix what we
can. Part of this process includes mourning for what is being lost,
and celebrating what remains.


3) The month of Tishrei
We have been praying, fasting, purifying ourselves since the new moon
of Rosh Hashanah, for one overwhelming reason: to make ourselves ready
and worthy to pray for the well-being and fertility of the earth, the
crops, the animals, and all the peoples. Only now, after we have
completed that process through Yom Kippur, can we start to say those
prayers. That's why the tradition says the gates don't really close
until the last day of Sukkot, Hoshana Rabbah. That's why it's
traditional to wear a kittel on that day (kittel is the shroud many
men an some women wear on Yom Kippur, as well as on their wedding day
and in death), and why the Chazan (cantor) may don a kittel the first
time we say the prayers for rain, on the following day of Sh'mini
Atseret.

On Yom Kippur, in the Sefardic prayers, there are long confessions
that detail every possible sin. One of the sins confessed in this
list, among such varied items like "I have misled people in business"
and "I ate outside a sukkah on Sukkot" is so so deep: "I have not
chosen life / Lo bacharti bachayim." To do t'shuvah, repairing
ourselves and returning to God, means to choose life. Sukkot teaches
us how.


4) S'khakh
If you know how to build a sukkah, you know that its roof is made of
s'khakh, branches and leaves. This is not only the essence of the
sukkah, it is also the reason why it's called a "sukkah". S'khakh can
be made of anything that grows from the ground. To be s'khakh,
however, the material must both be cut off from the ground, and yet
not manufactured into something new and finished (e.g., one cannot use
a woven grass mat). S'khakh can't be held together by wire, and it
should not be tied down in any way. It should ideally rest on plain
wood, not metal. All these rules are referred to by the idea that
s'khakh cannot be made of anything that is "m'kabeil tuma," that is
able to become ritually impure.

An object can become "impure" or tamei only when it is fully part of
the human world. So, for example, if one is making a chair out of wood
and has attached only three of the four legs, the chair is not
finished and it's not able to become impure. The categories of ritual
purity are human constructs, as the Talmud explicitly acknowledges.
Nothing that is wholly part of Nature can become impure, and nothing
that is in process of being made into a human artifact, but that is
unfinished, can become impure. (Nevertheless, some materials, like
metal, just by being extracted and refined, are considered part of the
human world, even before they are made into something specific.)

The essence of what it means for s'khakh to not be "m'kabeil tuma" is
that it is in-between Nature and the human world, neither attached to
the ground nor manufactured or turned into a human object: it is cut
from the ground (or from a tree growing in the ground), but not yet
re-formed or shaped into something useful or woven or tied down. The
roof made of s'khakh represents many aspects of the "in-between": the
interface between heaven and earth, the space between atmosphere and
ground, the meeting place between us and God, but it also (and most
importantly) represents the trnsitional space between Nature and our
human-made world.

S'khakh is the "in-between," the filter and screen through which we
experience the greater reality of divinity and nature. It also
represents the atmosphere and climate that gives and tends and
protects us, and it represents the fragility of that protection.

Traditionally, s'khakh should cover more than half the space over the
Sukkah by creating more shade than light, but it should have openings
throughout, smaller than a handbreadth, but big enough to see some
stars. Though what is unseen appears to be less than what is seen,
what is unseen, invisible, hidden from the eye, is actually greater
than what is seen. The unseen permeates what we see, like the stars
that shine through the sky and the s'khakh. Shefa, the blessing of
overflowing abundance, pours in, whether we are aware of it or not.
The sukkah gives us the privilege and opportunity to sense this
happening.

An essential aspect of Sukot is to teach us to live in the
"in-between," to find shelter and comfort in vulnerability and in
making ourselves open to the elements, and to bear witness to the
Shekhinah-radiance that underlies all that we can experience. Being
aware of the fragile liminality of our separation from God and from
Nature, right over our heads, is an entry to thanksgiving, acceptance,
and joy.


5) Waving the lulav
We read in the midrash above: "When Israel was encamped, the pillar of
cloud was...like a sukkah and made a canopy over the tent from
without, and filled the mishkan from within...and this was one of the
clouds of glory that served Israel forty years in the wilderness: one
on their right and one on their left and one before them and one
behind them and one above them and the cloud of the Shekhinah between
them." We are surrounded by the divine presence, what is called
"glory" or kavod in the Bible, or Shekhinah in rabbinic and
post-rabbinic Judaism. If the lulav is meant to draw down shefa and
blessing to the Earth and all creatures, then we wave it in all
directions both because we want to draw blessing from all quarters of
creation, and because we need to simultaneously bring blessing to all
quarters and corners of creation. Right and left, before and behind,
up and down. But this last direction down is to the Earth, to what
exists...between us. Because the last direction, toward the Earth, is
really the direction of all that binds us together, all that we are
made of, the direction of adamah, our substance, and Shekhinah or
Malkhut, according to Kabbalah. The Earth is one manifestation of
Shekhinah, which truly rests in the "in-between," in the relations
between all creatures, in the "weave" of creation, and in the weave of
human caring.

Sukkot reminds us that our relationships are not just with other
humans, but with the world that is one step beyond the human, the
more-than-human world that gives us all that we need. All creatures
are our relations. Both the s'khakh and the lulav draw us by steps
toward the greater physical and spiritual reality which is the bed and
bedrock of our lives.

When we pray for all creatures, as our tradition bids us do on Sukkot,
we act this out ritually by waving the lulav. We wave or shake the
lulav three times in each direction, returning the lulav after each
wave to our hearts. A kavanah for each set of three waves could be to
wave the first time to receive blessing from the direction (and all
that comes from there), the second time to send blessing to that
direction (and all that dwell there), and the third time to express
gratitude or to unite our hearts in compassion with the One who cares
for all of them. (Note that there are different orders for waving the
lulav, and some end with shaking the lulav behind us, rather than
down.)

It's not enough to hope for blessing: we call for blessing by using
our whole bodies, using what we gather from the earth, and gesturing
and dancing towards all the directions. We need to make this physical
gesture into a real prayer by purposefully acting change our impact on
the planet, to change ourselves, instead of changing the climate. What
we give to the Earth must also become a blessing. A blessing for all
the families of the earth, mishp'chot ha'adamah, all the tribes of
species and genus, of region and ecosystem, all our relations of earth
and sea and sky. This is how we can choose to act, how we can measure
our actions, in an age of global climate change and uncertainty. This
is how we should measure government policies, community decisions, and
justice itself. This is how we can ask God to "renew the face of the
ground" chidush p'nei ha'adamah, and be answered.

The final dimension of action is joy: V'hayita ach sameach! And you
will rejoice! The gates are still open, and the way through them is
joy and service: both are the characteristics of acting as priests to
bring down blessing for all our relations. May we all be blessed to
rejoice, to receive the Shekhinah dwelling between us, in all our
relationships, with all the creatures of heaven and Earth.

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--
Aharon Varady, MCP,  MAJE (2013)
Environmental Educator, Public Domain Advocate, Community Planner
Writing | Research

Read my latest paper on the sacred space and spiritual praxis of vegetation in Judaism.