Passover -- 5776

Our Passover tables will soon be festooned with goblets, nibbles and dips.  Each mouthful tells a piece of our sacred story.

Karpas is the green vegetable we dip into salt water.  The sprig represents springtime and hope.  The salt water is our ancestors’ tears.

This year, both Passover and Earth Day occur on April 22.  So it’s fitting that we contemplate the health of our planet, and how many people are already suffering because of environmental degradation.

When I taste the salt water this year, I’ll be thinking of our planet’s oceans.  They are at risk in many ways.  For one thing, acidity is rising due to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide.   Acidification is proven to dissolve shells, leading to the deaths of those animals that inhabit them.  That’s bad news for the many creatures who consume mollusks and crustaceans.  Coral will perish, and along with it fish who call the reef home.  If the ocean’s acid levels continue to rise, the fishing and tourism industries will collapse.

What’s more, the proliferation of plastics, over fishing, the use of drift nets, and polluted run-off are causing additional damage in the oceans.  When is the point of no return?  Try to imagine life on earth if our seas perish.

The cup of salt water will also bring to my mind the 663 million people (1 in 10 globally) who lack access to safe water, according to Water.org.  A child dies from a water-related illness every ninety seconds, about the time it takes to fill our wine cups.  Women and children spend 125 million hours each day collecting water.  2.4 billion Human beings lack access to proper sanitation.  For these people, like those in Flint, Michigan, fresh water is the exception, not the rule.

What can you do?  This Passover, as you dip the karpas into the salt water, dip once, then pause.  In that moment, acknowledge with gratitude your access to plentiful, uncontaminated water.  Then, dip a second time for all those billions for whom clean water is a regular struggle.  Surely, they are in Egypt still; their plagues are real.  As you eat the salty parsley – a blend of suffering and hope -- commit to making a difference for others.  Double your efforts at reducing plastic, since it winds up infiltrating ecosystems.  Consume only sustainable fish, whether at home or in restaurants.  Reduce your carbon emissions.  Pledge to donate at water.org.

Perhaps you’ll offer this blessing over the second dip or over Miriam’s Cup:

Blessed are You, Be’er Chayim, Sacred Wellspring of Life.  You are the Source of Life, coursing through my veins.  May Your blessings flow through me into the world, and may I, like my ancestor Miriam, be an agent for sustaining the all that lives.

I’d like to thank Yael Dennis who has so inspired me to develop my thinking on Judaism and Environmental Justice.

Wishing you and your family a happy, meaningful Pesach.

About Acid Seas

About Plastics in our Oceans and our Bodies

Water.Org

At The Conclusion of Shloshim -- 5776

I got my hair cut the other day, as I have countless times.  It was no big deal for the barber – just another head in the chair, #2 on sides and back, finger length on top.  But it was significant for me.

I hadn’t cut my hair since before my step-mother’s funeral.  During the 30 days of mourning that followed, known as shloshim, I observed the tradition not to cut my hair.  (I tried not to shave, but my beard got so scraggly that I didn’t think it was fair to the couples I was marrying to show up unkempt at their weddings.  And besides, my throat was unbelievably scratchy.)

With each passing day, I saw my hair grown longer and greyer.  I didn’t bother me at first.  But then I grew uncomfortable with my appearance, of looking like a man who didn’t care.  My external appearance came to reflect what was going on inside me --  a sense of disorder, of wildness, even.  Each time I looked in the mirror, I was reminded that things were not as they were supposed to be:  not just my hair, of course, but in my father’s life especially.  His beloved companion, with whom he was supposed to travel the remainder of his days, had left him behind.  We were lost and uncertain just what to do next, out at sea without a compass.  I was beginning to look like a bedraggled sailor.

As I sat in the barber’s chair, I thought of all the experiences this month of mourning had brought me.  I had observed shiva with the older Religious School students, and remembered their thoughtful consideration of the feelings of loss:  “relief, orphaned, empty, regret, thankful, helpless, numb, unfinished, lonely, overwhelmed, heavy, closed off, confused.”  I had felt all of those.  I brought to mind the hundreds of cards, emails, and hugs I’ve received from you, and my deep gratitude for them.  I recalled officiating at another funeral, and staring at a coffin just like my step-mother’s, reeling as I contemplated the unbounded loss that sealed box represents.  I thought about the drawn out bureaucracy of getting my name added to a safety deposit box, and the bags of clothes we’ve hauled away.

And, most poignant of all, as the clippers cut away a month’s growth, I felt myself standing once again with my father at his wife’s fresh grave, exactly 30 days after she was laid to rest.  In that place, boundary of grass patch still visible, I tried to intuit what my father was feeling.  I pondered the depths of darkness in the soil below, and wondered what was happening to the memories of all we had shared, my step-mother and I.  And I felt the enormity of the truth that all roads lead here.

In Biblical and Prophetic times, the Nazarite was a person who voluntarily dedicated him- or herself to God.  For an amount of time they themselves determined, Nazarites would refrain from consuming grapes or wine, and from cutting their hair.  I now understand better what a constant reminder their growing locks were to them.  With every turn of the head, they’d remember the promise they’d made. They’d know themselves to be like the mourner: set apart from all others, all those who think that today is like any other day, and who live under the mistaken notion that this day is like tomorrow will be.  Both the Nazarite and the mourner know that nothing lasts forever.

Thank you for all the cards, messages, hugs, donations, and support.  They have meant the world to me, to Haim, to Jacob and to my father, with whom I shared them.

My hair is back to normal.  Our life, however, is not.