Wednesday night ushers in the Jewish new year 5775 - and the next shemittah (sabbatical) year.

That is the year when agricultural fields lie fallow; fences are pulled down; private property returns to the commons; food that grows is available for all to pick - rich and poor alike; indeed wealth distinctions make little sense this year, for all food is free for the picking and debts are forgiven (or at least suspended); commercial life plays only a tiny role in the construct of society and socializing, and time is expanded as work is only a modest part being together.

For the first time ever, Jews around the world, not just in Israel, are wondering what it would be like to embrace the values of shemittah and live them for a year. Many of us are embracing this challenge and experimenting with alternate ways of constructing our daily lives.

We will learn much as we struggle to bring this age-old tradition into a world of 7 billion people, more than half of whom live in cities beyond the immediate reach of farm fields. What does shemittah look like in a world whose values are controlled more by commerce, growth and rushing than by enoughness, equality, slowing down? How can a 24/7 society accommodate a grand scale societal sabbatical? What would loan forgiveness mean, and do? How can an economy accustomed to and reliant on ever-more-production accommodate the values of less? How can shemittah help us re-evaluate and re-situate the true purpose of wealth and business? So many questions to explore.

I will write here over the year about  "my year of shemittah living," that is, my efforts to improve my relationship to the earth, to money, to possessions, companionship (people!), consumption and more.

But for now I offer my way into this year: the Rosh Hashanah Shemittah Seder below. (For a more user-friendly version, click here.

(To help in this celebration, I also had a shemittah seder plate created - the photo up above. Six "bowls" on a broad platter. More on this later!)

If you use and adapt any part of this seder, please do let me know how it went and how we can make it better. The idea is for us to use this seder (and the seder plate!) every Rosh Hashanah to remind us that not only our weeks but our years are framed in cycles of equity, celebration, rest and renewal.

May you enjoy a sweet and healthy year, and may we see the beginning of the full flourishing of healing that this aching world needs.

The Rosh Hashanah Shemittah Seder

Ever since the first breath of creation, time has unfolded in cycles of seven. Six days reach their crescendo in the seventh day, Shabbat - the Sabbath, the day of rest. Six years reach their crescendo in the seventh year, Shemittah - the sabbatical, the year of renewal. Seven cycles of seven years reach their crescendo in the Jubilee year, the ultimate enactment of re-creation.

All three call forth nostalgic images of Eden, when humanity lived in abundance, peace, equity and ease.  All offer a way of partial return. But there are differences among them: Jubilee is more fantasy than experience, more vision than practice. And while it remains part of our sacred narrative, it has nonetheless fallen out of our sacred calendar.

Shabbat, on the other hand, is a constant presence. It is celebrated weekly, as time apart, 25-hours of a lived dream dimension. We enter Shabbat by leaving the work-a-day world and cross into a domain that is edenic, “a taste of the world to come.”  We are at leisure, eat well, avoid strife and pretend to create one world, diminishing the boundaries that daily divide us.

Shemittah sits between these two. Neither a fantasy nor a constant presence, it is both a vision of a new reality and a practice to be lived in here-and-now. It happens in the same time and space as all other years, only we are to live this year differently, more equitably, more fully, more intentionally than the six years before. It is a year of harmony and celebration with the earth, when the land of Israel rests from the agricultural labors imposed upon her yet when she yields sufficient goodness for us all to thrive. It is a year of commonplace manna, when food is ours for the taking, but modestly, temperately, with a deep sense of gratitude and awareness; when debts are forgiven and there is equity for all; when property boundaries are suspended and all becomes once again part of the Commons. It is, in short, a year of rebooting, recalibration and realigning our assumptions about property, land use, economic justice and social equity. Not as a dream but as a reality.

Rosh Hashanah 2014 marks the next shemittah year (the Hebrew year 5775).  Jews around the world are seeking ways to enter into the laws and spirit of this sabbatical year as they have never done before. They are extending its message beyond the boundaries of Israel to wherever they live; and extending the thrust of its ethic beyond the agricultural sector. To mark this moment, to help us begin this historic revisioning, renewal and re-imagining of the ways to live a year of shemittah, we offer this Rosh Hashanah seder. It is modeled on the Jewish tradition of new year’s simanim, symbolic food, like the traditional apples dipped in honey, that represent the blessings we hope will be ours.

The seder consists of six small cups or bowls arrayed on a decorative base plate.

This base plate represents the whole, the sweep of time, the sphere that encompasses and defines every 7-year cycle. For shemittah is not just one segregated year, as Shabbat is not one segregated day. It is the year that frames and gives shape to all the other years, both those just past, and those yet to come. Upon this foundation plate rest the six cups or bowls. Together they represent the six attributes that define the essence of the shemittah year, and a life lived in goodness, sacred striving and delight.

Slices of apples (and other perennial delicacies of your choice) are arrayed in the center of the base plate. These recall the fruits of Eden that sustained us, and the Tree of Knowledge that launched us on the irresistible human enterprise of curiosity, desire, exploration and pursuits. And it represents the perennial foods (fruits, nuts and berries) that grow on their own during the shemittah year and that we gratefully eat at a time when we do not plow, sow, reap or commercially harvest the produce of the field.

On this base plate set the following:

Cup One: Honey representing Sova – Enoughness. Sova is the feeling of fullness without being stuffed; of contentment through what was given and not wanting anything more; of maximum satisfaction with minimum consumption and disruption. This first cup is filled with honey. Pass around the cup for all to dip the apples in the honey, say:

“In this year of shemittah, may we know no hunger, either spiritual or physical. May we be as readily sated with the delights of life as this cup is filled by these drops of honey.”

Cup Two: Wine (consider fruit wine, including Passion Fruit Wine from Israel or homemade date wine)* signifying Hodayah – Gratefulness. Hodayah is the feeling of gratitude, of deep satisfaction and elusive peace with what we have received. Wine is the age-old symbol of celebration, an expression of shared gratitude. It takes years for the vineyard to grow and produce grapes and time enough for the wine to ferment. On the human side, this requires steadfastness, peace, stability, and longevity; on nature’s side cool and heat and sun and rain and rich soil all in the right amounts - surely things to be grateful for. This cup is filled to the rim with the wine. (Wine cups at everyone’s place may be filled with this too.) Hold it up and say:

“In this shemittah year, may we know peace and be strangers to disappointment and disruption. May the earth find renewal amid its rest. And may gratitude fill us all as the wine fills this cup.”

Cup Three: Figs representing Revaya – Abundance. Revaya is the awareness of the vast resources of a healthy world, the earth’s ancient capacity of growth and self-renewal, and our call to keep it going. Figs are not like most other fruit crops. The fruits on one tree do not ripen all at once but one by one, each in its own time. They offer abundance without surfeit. This cup is filled with figs (either whole or cut, fresh if available though dried figs are fine too), speckled and spangled with seeds. Pass around the cup for all to take from it and say:

“In this year of shemittah, may we recognize abundance and know no waste. May we celebrate the vast goodness that lies within even the most modest cache of life; may we reverently receive life’s abundance and, like the continuous fruiting of the fig tree, give what we can, at the time that is right.”

Cup Four: Raisins representing Hesed – Goodness, Kindness, Generosity. Hesed is a response to our gratitude for the varieties of gifts we have received in this world. Having received we are moved to give. Such is the nature of the gift. The raisins heaped in this cup signify the sweet, satisfying substance that can be given even after other extractions of goodness have been taken. They recall the leaves, the juices, the wine, the vinegar, the shade, the wood and delight that are all gifts of the grape. In response to all that we have been given, we are moved to give more. Pass around the cup for all to take from and say:

“In this shemittah year, may we know no greed. May we recognize the gifts we have received and in return realize the manifold ways of giving that lie within each of us.”

Cup Five: Pomegranate representing Poriyut -  Fertility. Poriyut is the creativity, the dynamism, the fecundity that characterizes the majesty of nature. It is what allows us to eat during this year of fallowness and renewal. It is the dormancy that bursts forth, in the right conditions, inspiring the human gifts of imagination, discovery and awe. This cup is filled with pomegranate seeds, symbols of overflowing fertility. Pass the cup around for everyone to taste and say:

“In this shemittah year, may we know no barrenness, no emptiness. May this year of material enoughness bring forth overflowing acts of discovery, delight and spiritual bounty.”

Cup Six: Dates representing Otzar - The Commons. Otzar is earth’s shared resources, owned by none and gifted to all. It is the storehouse of the ages, the fundamentals of life that we all depend upon. It is the stuff of earth and society, natural and cultural, that we share now in our lifetimes and leave behind for others. Our stories, our knowledge, our goods, our homes, our earth. This cup holds stuffed dates, signifying all that we share in the giving to and taking from the Commons. (Another option: put a few symbolic dates in the center cup but in addition, array dates - pitted and sliced - on the outer edge of a serving plate, surrounding a center mound of stuffing: chopped almonds, walnuts, pistachios or pine nuts that have been soaked in honey and wine. Let everyone fill a date with the sweet filling and give it to someone else at the table.) Everyone takes a date and says:

“In this shemittah year, may we know no isolation, no loneliness, no selfishness. May we recognize that we are joined in partnership to the earth, and to one another through our common heritage, the Torah, our past and our future that bind us to one another forever, throughout the cycles of space and time.”

Then wash it all down with a drink of l’chaim.

Note: This multi-layered seder is a tradition that can be adapted to mark every year of the shemittah cycle. On Rosh Hashanah of the shemittah year (the seventh culminating year), all the cups are filled, celebrating the completion of one shemittah cycle. The following year, the first year, only the first cup with the  honey – and the apples – appear on the plate. The second year, the first two cups; the third year, the first three, and so on til the completion of the cycle and the celebration of the next shemittah year.

Biblical shemittah texts:

Exodus 23:10-11

Leviticus 25:1-7

Leviticus 25:20-22

Deuteronomy 15:1-6

* Only wine that includes grapes qualifies for the Kiddush blessing: borei pri hagafen, who creates the fruit of the vine. “Shehakol nihiyah bed'varo” is said over

fruit wines without a grape base. If the blessing over wine (Kiddush) and bread (Hamotzi) have already been said at the beginning of the meal, no additional blessings need to be recited over the foods of the seder plate.

 August 2014, Av 5774

Fruit and Hope

The teaching below was posted by Akiva Gersh, an Israeli who is on a list-serve that I am part of.

It is a comment about the law that says we are forbidden from cutting down a fruit tree in the midst of war and siege. The teaching is all the more poignant as war permeates the days and nights of the middle east.

The fruit tree of the field during war stands as a memorial to a very special and important tree in the history of the world...the Tree of Life in Gan Eden...it stands as a reminder to what the world once was, of a time when harmony, peace and perfection were tangibly present in this world...seeing the fruit tree during wartime, which itself is a sign and a result of the downfall of humankind since we were forced to leave Gan Eden, is meant to move the heart of the soldiers on the battlefield, to pause for a moment and to lift their heads up above the reality of conflict and fighting that they and their people (and all peoples) are enslaved to, and remember that there once was a time when things were different, things were better...this remembrance, even if for but a few seconds, can give those fighting on the battle field of yet another war the hope and the belief that such a reality will return to Earth once again...may it be in our lifetime...

the teaching continues with this beautiful thought...that there is an example of Hashem (God) also keeping this mitzva of bal tashchit in the Torah...where?...after the flood of Noah's generation...how do we know?...because the dove comes back with a living branch from an olive tree...how did this olive tree survive the destructive waters of the Flood?...because Hashem kept [the law of] bal tashchit [do not destroy the fruit trees] and didn't harm the trees!...he quotes a Hazal (the traditions of the rabbis of old) that say that the waters of the flood soaked the Earth only to the level of the roots of the vegetation, but not of the trees...amazing...

May this teaching indeed bring hope to all who are forced to fight.

Bittersweet days

We have entered the sweet but slightly desperate part of summer.

The days are bookended by mid-summer's antiphony of cicadas and crickets, the former's concerto beginning alone in the morning and slowly growing throughout the day, the crickets picking up a gentler saw toward evening, with katydids coming in on percussion.

Their songs are earnest and mournful, for they announce that the summer has crested, the days are shortening and the cold and more interior life will soon return. They remind us of how short and fleeting the longest and brightest of times are.

Of course there are the glories of autumn to anticipate: the symphony of leaves, the potpourri of fall fruits and vegetables, the cuddling in front of the season's first fires, warm cider, the splitting and stacking of wood for the winter.

With so much yet to do while the skies are still light til sometime past eight, it is easy to rush past the low ache of diminishing summer. But it is not good to do so.

For oddly enough, it is the ache in life's goodness that sharpens its joy; the preciousness of these moments that fuels their power.

August is the time we seem to dash about, trying to chase down and capture all the summer that got away in June and July. We seek to slow down time, or hold it still, by speeding up.

Yet sometimes - not always, but sometimes - the best way to slow down time is for us to slow down first. To sit on the porch, or the beach, or the edge of the woods with no more than a cool drink or a lover's hand in ours, and just watch. Let the words, thoughts and hours float. Three hours, from 6:00 to 9:00, will feel like a slice of eternity.

May this bittersweet time of summer - on the eve of the mournful 9th of Av and in the midst of a tragic war at home - somehow be  a harbinger of peace. 

Divesting from fossil fuel companies

 "The World Council of Churches, representing more than half a billion Christians worldwide, announced Thursday that it would pull all of its investments in fossil fuels, saying it had determined the investments were no longer ethical.

The World Council of Churches, a global coalition of 345 churches, made the decision to no longer fund oil, gas, or coal at its central committee meeting in Geneva, and recommended that its members do the same. 'The committee discussed the ethical investment criteria, and considered that the list of sectors in which the WCC does not invest should be extended to include fossil fuels,' read the finance policy committee report."  (July 11, 2014) (Read the full story here.)

This is very big news. It is time we urge the big oil, gas and coal companies to invest in renewable energy, to build that energy bridge to the future for the sake of both their financial health and the welfare of the planet. (And though oil company executives often seem to forget this, the former is intimately tied to the latter.)

Major financial exchanges like FTSE have developed fossil-fuel-free indices,  arguing that "stranded assets" ("fossil fuels deposits, including oil, gas and coal, that must remain unburned or in the ground in order for the world to avoid the worst impacts of climate change") will sooner or later negatively affect fossil fuel investments. Divestment is therefore both a sound financial as well as ecological strategy.

The very name "fossil fuel," though, prejudges the argument and makes it harder to speak up for letting those energy resources stay in the ground. It is as if we called trees:  "woody fuel," or children "nascent labor"; as if their very purpose was to serve us. In which case foregoing their contributions to our purposes is seen as wasteful, and their essential character is masked or erased.

But of course, neither fossil fuels nor our children were created for our exploitation.

Fossil fuels are buried sunlight; millions of days of budding, growth and decay in the life of our planet, captured in a carbon museum. We can no more safely release all the stored carbon of these past days into today than we can safely cluster all past accumulated rainfall in one storm today. The world simply cannot bear it.

It is time we took action like the World Council of Churches and had our synagogues, Jewish foundations and the Associated (and entire Federation system) divest from fossil fuel companies until such time as they become pioneering renewable energy companies.

This coming shemittah year (5775 which starts Rosh Hashanah 2014) is a perfect time to press this issue. Read more about the financial and ecological wisdom - indeed imperative - of fossil fuel free investments. Adjust your own portfolio. Then talk with your synagogue, the Associated and anyone else who has investments. It is for their own financial good, and the good of the world.

Milk and Honey

Why does the Torah choose these two foods as the symbols of the land of Israel?

They are (so I just read today) the only two food stuffs that are totally selfless, created for the sole purpose of nourishing their young - and nothing else. For them, being eaten and consumed is not a loss, a death, or a clever dispersal strategy.

It is rather the fulfillment of their existence.

Even more, they are fashioned in and brought forth from the parenting bodies themselves. They are seen by cultures around the world as nature's only two substances that are in their being-and-essence food.

And in their offering, they forge the unmediated bonds of one generation with the next.

For the land of Israel to be seen this way is stunning: it is the mother gathering us in her arms, sustaining us on food from her body that she desires to give us as much as we desire to drink from her. It is as if to say we are her natural offspring - there to celebrate and eventually tend to her.

And while milk sustains the life of the very young, honey sweetens and preserves the youth of the old.

This is a lesson we can also take beyond the boundaries of Israel to all humanity. For we need to regain our intimate relationship with the earth, and care for it in a tender and loving way so it can care for us the same.

Tree trimming

Three branches fell on my property recently. Two in the front and one in the back. I am thinking the week of rain that was so good for my vegetables was a death knell for the branches. It likely caused water to enter a crack of the weakened or dead limbs and hastened the inevitable. Maybe more fell that I haven't seen but I was home for the ceremonious fall of those three.

There is something arresting, even a bit alarming, in branches falling.

First you hear a rustling, as if someone is moving about in a distant part of the house. It is both faint enough, and familiar enough, that you hardly notice. Except, it dawns on you, that there is no one else at home; or the ones who are home are sitting right next to you!

Then there is that heart-stopping crack - and an aching, desperate pause as the last remnants of bark still clinging tenaciously to the trunk finally succumb to the will of gravity. The limb begins its graceful disembarking (if we can call it that), brushing past and through its neighbors below. In summertime, with the leaves plumped out, it is as if the limb is celebrating its liberation, giving high-fives - leaf to leaf - to all its tree-bound brethren as it now plunges past.

There is a delight in witnessing the drama of the wilds being played out in your presence. But the problem is - it is hard to discern exactly where this massive and potentially bone-crushing act of nature is happening. So it is with great relief and no small exhalation of breath that you soon discover that the noise has ended, and this time at least you were not a victim of nature's arboreal sloughing.

We buried a cousin of Avram's yesterday - a woman a few years younger than we. There had been a faint rustling of disease, the awful crack of awareness of the inevitability of its course, and the plunge into death through the outstretched arms of her family and loved ones. A limb of the family tree  loosed forever.

I suppose there could be a better way to shed our frail and spent bodies. But this is the hand we were dealt. I find that thinking of life through the symbolism of trees, such as those celebrated in Judaism, is comforting. 

We are but branches, offshoots, of a massive Tree of Life. When young, we are nurtured and held tight and protected by its massive structure. And as we age (if we are so blessed), we nurture and hold tight and protect those who come after us. And through it all, through our comings and goings, the Tree stands.

Lessons from my garden

I planted a vegetable garden again this year. Which should not seem like a big deal. Humans, after all, have been doing that since the era of agriculture began, which, according anthropologists was about 10,000 BCE and, according to the Bible was always. Adam, after all, was a tender of the soil.

But there are three reasons why this IS significant.

1) I have been bitten by the zeitgeist. Food is a hot topic today. Local food, homegrown food, organic food, foraging, food systems, genetically modified food, community gardens, CSAs, farmers markets So it is not surprising, but it is telling, that I planted a vegetable garden this year. It is only my second; the first being last year.

Now, I am not particularly adept at handling potted plants, so why I have been inspired to dig up part of my front lawn and put in two garden plots is a mystery. (And a no-no, for in suburbia, gardens should be tucked away in back yards - but my front lawn, all the way up by the street, is the only place I can put the vegetable garden. I think my neighbors regret not renewing our covenants.)

I am most interested in knowing what historians 50 years from now will say about this latest home-grown rage. We understand the Victory Gardens of World War II - which were said to provide Americans with 40% of their produce during the war years.

What is motivating and catapulting this homegrown movement forward? Distrust in and dislike of the chemical and production procedures of agro-business? Our government's inability to properly supervise the safety of our food? Healing and overcoming our alienation from the land? A desire to reclaim a sense of belonging to place even as we increasingly live in the cyberworld of portable screen technoogies? The desire to witness natural life - its majesty, mystery, rhythms, slowness - even as we live more and more in a quickening world of manufactured things?

Whatever it is, this movement is significant and powerful (especially if it has managed to snare black thumbs like me!), and we should not let it pass without acknowledging it and wondering why.

2) Gardening is a great teacher. I wake up every morning and wonder about the weather. Not so I know how to dress or whether to take an umbrella. Rather, so I will know how to tend to my plants. Will they need watering today? Will they get enough sun? How did they manage in last night's storm?
That is, one of my first thoughts is about something else, something other than me. Jewish tradition teaches us that if you have animals, before eating breakfast, you must go and tend the animals. I don't have animals but I do have my garden. And if I don't tend it first thing in the morning, I may not get to tend to it at all that day. So my first morning task is to tend to my plants.

It is a great spiritual exercise, even a spiritual discipline, to know that upon arising each morning, one of your first tasks is to think about the welfare of something other than yourself. How are they doing, why are they doing this, what do they need, what can you give them, what will it take?

It tends to color your whole day, so that in meetings or chance encounters or when speaking with colleagues and co-workers you find yourself asking, How are they doing? Why are they doing this? What do they need? What can I give them? What will it take?

3) Different gardeners have different attitudes toward "sharing" our harvest with our furry and feathered neighbors. Those who have fruit trees and fruit bushes seem more resigned to sharing their haul with their non-human companions. Often there seems to be enough to go around. Those who labor over vegetable gardens are much less forgiving of their non-human raiders. I lost my garden last year to furry robbers, despite double netting the plants. This year I put up a cloth barrier to try to protect my hard-earned veggies. Time will yet tell if anything survives for my family's consumption.

But either way, it reminds me that we humans must devise ways of sharing this earth. We cannot simply wipe out predators or competitors because they annoy use, like we did with the buffalo, or like we tried to do with the wolves, or weeds, or even insects and others that then created a cascade of food chain degradation that threaten the functioning of the chain of life. What is happening to the bees, the primary pollinators of our fruited food? And the plants surrounding the Round-Up Ready and infused grasses?

Annoying as my local deer and rabbits are, they remind me that accommodation and harmony must exist among all earth's creatures, else we upset the balance, and thus the healthy functioning of life.