The Birthday of the World

Delivered by Rabbi Joshua Heller Second day of Rosh Hashanah 5769

I've never really been one for birthdays. Since I got married, Wendy does her best- we go out with a few friends or hang out with the kids, once she even threw a surprise party.

Most of high school and college, fell right during exams, or that awkward time between school and vacation.

For my 16th birthday, I got chicken pox.

I've looked ahead June 15th of 2009- on the schedule is a meeting in New York call Eit Ratzon- a training session for congregational rabbis to get together with their new associate rabbis. That wouldn't be a bad birthday after all.

Today is a different sort of birthday- the birthday of the world. The scientists talk in terms of billions of years, but our tradition marks 5769. As far as I'm concerned mother earth doesn't look a day over 5150.

So today as we sing "Hayom Harat Olam"- today is the birth-day of the world- what do we mean by that. What kind of birthday do we think the world is having? What kind of birthday wish can we make for 5769? How do we make sure the world gets to 5770?

Today we sing Hayom Harat Olam, Hayom Ya'amid Bamishpat- today God will sustain in judgment. How do we ask God to sustain us in judgement on the birthday of the world? How do we stand up in a confusing world. A world where we have more power than any generation before us to understand the natural world? We have more power to predict storms, but also a greater ability to change the world, for better or for worse.

Today, on the birthday of the world, what relationship are we meant to have in the natural world? Look back at the story of creation.

In Genesis Chapter 1, God says “ Let us make Man in our image, and he will rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds in the heavens.” So Adam is supposed to dominate nature. But then, in chapter 2, Adam is put into the Garden of eden to work it, and to guard it. It's a double-edged sword. We can work the world, derive benefit, but we also have an obligation to tend and protect it.

But then, what happens? Adam’s descendents corrupt the world, and God obliterates it with cataclysmic flood. After the flood, in Genesis chapter 9, Noah gets a third set of instructions entirely.

“God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth- the fear and dread of you will be on every animal, on every bird, every creepy crawly thing, all of that is put into your hand.”

Which of these views is the Jewish view? Are we supposed to dominate nature?

Are we here to rule the world and to exploit it, to conquer it, to provoke fear in God's creatures, or are we here work it and protect it?

How do we start to answer that question, today, on the birthday of the world?

The first step is that we recognize that the power that is described in these verses truly is in our hands. We are created in God's image. We have a taste, a shadow of God's power. We can do what He does, albeit on a smaller scale, Just as God can make the world, we can make the world- he planted a garden by Eden, and we can make the deserts bloom. God created a world that would spring forth with a variety of species, and we can mix genes to spin together new combinations and permutations. We have not only God's creative capacity, but also His destructive capacity: Just as God destroyed Sodom and Gemorrah with fire and brimstone from heaven, we can rain down fiery destruction on our cities. Just as God unmade the world with a flood, so too, we can raise sea levels by heating up our earth.

What do we promise, on this birthday of the world?

God promised us he would never flood the world again. Could we make and keep a similar promise? My guess is that there are some people here today who don't believe in global warming. Not my role to convince you on this issue. If you believe that the weather channel is a tool of the liberal elites, I probably can't help you. But look out the window. Some places are getting rain and storms more powerful than ever before, so you need to send a diver down to get to the basement. While places that need 10 inches of rain aren't getting it. Glaciers and sea ice around the world are melting. At the top of the world. for the first time, ships can sail around the polar ice cap.

We have the ability to change our world in a dozen different ways. If you watched the olympics this summer, everything in the outdoor shots looked hazy. I thought it was just because I wasn't watching in HD. No, it was real. That haze comes from the factories that make the stuff that we use.

Does it matter? After all, God created the world. Can't He fix it? Can't we just add a prayer for rain, or gasoline, to the daily liturgy and wait for God to step in? Today is the birthday of the world, but it is not recreated each year. The Midrash Kohelet Rabba imagines the scene, 5769 years ago- Adam, newly created, is getting the grand tour of Eden. God showed him every tree, the flora and fauna. And God said to him: “Look what I've made - how beautiful it all is - everything I've made, I've made it for you. Take care, lest you spoil and destroy my world, because if you do, there is no one after you to repair it.” Unlike Nordstroms, God will not take back ruined merchandise.

The world is here for us to use, not to abuse. We have the ability to harm our world by exploiting it, rather than using and protecting. We are commanded in Deuteronomy that when we are taking eggs from a nest, we must first send away the mother bird- make sure that even if you are taking a species for food, you mut leave it with the ability to reproduce. Humans don’t always follow that command. Take overfishing. The sturgeon is being drive to extinction. I’m not in a position to worry about caviar. But salmon are being overfished as well- what would we put on our bagels if we ran out of lox? Forget those fancy fish you say. What about a “piece herring?” Herring stocks already collapsed off the coast of New England back in 1984, and are only now returning, thanks to careful management and fresh infusions of cream sauce. (Audience Groans)- should I have said Matjes?

We create a society that demands more fresh water than we have available from our nearby lakes and rivers. Soil- we need more and more fertilizer to make the same yield. In our Jewish traditional we just completed the shemita year- once every seven years, you had to let the land of Israel, its soil, rest and renew itself.

And then, of course, there are resources that are not renewable. The issue that was on everyone's minds this past week (at least until the economy collapsed) was gas and oil. The shortages have sent everyone into a panic. I’ve heard lots of suggestions, some more reasonable than others. My favorite: "Kilometers are shorter than miles. Save gas, take your next trip in kilometers."

The oil shortage this week is not directly a product of environment. There's plenty of gas elsewhere, for now. There's only so much oil out there. As my friend's son put it "mommy, there's no more gas because they don't have any more dinosaurs." You can drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. You can drill on the continental shelf (and by the way, as of last Friday, you could start). You can drill in the catskills (people are already doing it). You can even drill on the Clampett family farm. But it's all just a stop-gap. Consider this fair warning. No matter where you put your straw, eventually, there's no more milkshake, and every street in America looks like Roswell Road did this weekend, long lines and empty pumps.

And even while there is oil, keep in mind that most of it comes from inconvenient places, places that don’t like us, places that might cut us off long before we actually run out. Like, you know, Texas. I don't get it. God told Moses he would lead us to the promised land. And then he gave us the one patch of land in the whole Middle East whose largest supply of oil is behind the counter at a falafel stand. So instead you have a good chunk of the oil in the world under countries like Iran. Even Iran would tell you that they are reducing their dependence on fossil fuels, with a nuclear program. Now, the primary use for fossil fuel that they are looking to replace is destroying Israel, but I suppose it's the thought that counts.

And leaving Iran out of it- you deal with countries like Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela. They can make our gas prices jump and all the while they are dancing in the street, rolling in our money. Why is some much of the oil in places that don’t like us? Why can't it be in friendlier countries, like Denmark, or Panama, or Australia? Why must it be that on whatever continent, whatever the religion or the nationality of the oil-producing country, they always seem to be against us. It actually makes a certain amount of sense. When God was deciding where to put the oil, he looked at where all the dipsticks would be. Every gallon of oil we use today puts money in the hands of people who are not our friends, and is one gallon we won't be able to use later.

And the Torah definitely tells us that we have an obligation to be wary of not destroying the world. Even if you don't want to save the world for its own sake, save it for your own. How do we do that, today on the birthday of the world?

I’ve got to admit that I’m not a tree hugger. I guess that's the one place where I'm not a "hugging rabbi." A kind glance, a firm handshake, but I don't like to get personal with the elms and the maples. I'm shy that way. And I'm smart enough to recognize that not everything that is touted as good for the environment really is. There's a lot of what is now being called "greenwashing" out there.

Take, for example, Ethanol. It would seem to make a lot of sense- replace oil from the ground, that takes milions of years to make, with corn-based ethanol, which only takes millions of ears to make. Well, it turns out that depending on how it is done, clearing new cropland, fertilizing, manufacturing, and transporting corn ethanol can create far more greenhouse gas emissions than would be saved by its beneficial quality of absorbing carbon as it grows. It does supports the electorally important state of Iowa. There are lots of inconsistencies. One of the best movies I've seen all year is Wall-E. It’s a visually stunning story of an earth ravaged by human waste. There’s almost no dialogue. What there was was probably written by Al Gore. And when I took my kid to see it- they were giving out plastic watches, in plastic packaging, shipped over from Asia.

So what are we to do? Even if I were to become a hermit and live off the land. I'm just one person and everyone else is still doing their thing. What if I throw my own personal party for the world's birthday, and nobody comes?

In pirkei Avot, Rabbi Eliezer teaches:

You are not obligated to finish the work, but neither may you abstain from it.

You've got to start, even if you can't finish what ya started.

Each of us can play a part. Deuteronomy 20 commands that when you are besieging a city, you can't cut down fruit trees to build your siegeworks The commandment, called "Bal Tashchit" is expanded by later sages, to include any behavior that wastes things that are useful in the world. Don't throw something away if it still has a use. Deuteronomy 23 tells us to be careful where you put your waste.

In the Heller home, we've started recycling-

We’ve done that in a few ways. First of all, portions of this sermon are recycled- my colleagues Rabbi Stewart Vogel, Chai Levy, Richard Plavin, Gil Steinlauf all wrote on similar topics recently, and I have to give credit that their thoughts consciously or unconsciously, influenced my own.

But seriously, at the Heller home, we’ve started separating our garbage- cans and bottles and paper. And earlier this summer, we a spent a few hundred dollars updating fixtures and replacing most of the light bulbs in our home with compact fluorescents. We've saved $100 a month in our energy bills over last year. We get the Best of both worlds, helping the environment, and saving money. It doesn't mean that I don't occasionally still leave the lights on when I leave a room, but I can still feel good about myself. In a recent New Yorker there is a cartoon of three angels standing amid the clouds. Two angels have glowing halos above their heads. The third angel with what is clearly a fluorescent light burning above his head, says, “It saves energy and makes me feel holier than thou!”

The synagogue is doing things as well. Several years ago Phil Hayet, our VP facilities, worked with Don Kaye to begin a relationship with Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, an organization that helps house of worship become more sensitive to their energy use. We did what’s called an energy audit and learned that we were among the least energy efficient houses of worship in Georgia. We modified the air conditioning system with new thermostats so that we can keep the sanctuary too cold much more efficiently, and so that if I'm working late we don't have to heat or cool the whole office to keep my office at a comfortable temperature when I'm burning the midnight oil. We replaced many light bulbs with compact fluorescents or LEDS. We now know how many Jews it takes to change a lightbulb. Just one.

Individuals make a difference. Congregant suggestions have reduced our use of plastic water bottles at kiddush. A family in our preschool inspired our staff to make a change in how we handle preschool lunch- to use real plates, and not disposable. We save money in the long run, and every plate we don't throw away is less in landfills, and more oil that stays in the ground until we need it.

There's more that we can do as a synagogue. We can start recycling. We still generate a huge volume of paper and plastic bottles. There are even some folks are talking about putting solar panels on the roof of the building. As you have read in the B'nai Today, we are in the beginning phases of figuring out how we can upgrade this building, which is our environment, to accommodate our growth in activity and in membership. We want the synagogue to still be here in another 25, 50 70 years. It is an important goal. We want there to be a synagogue to sustain us into our old age, to support our children, and our children's children. Our synagogue has to be sustainable. We have to be aware of the environment around us- the people, the finances. We have to be able to subsist for the long haul. We have to use, and not over-use, our staff and our facilities. We want our synagogue to be here, but not at the expense of the larger world.

So, what can you do? Lo Aleicha Hamelacha Ligmor- it is not up to you to finish the work, but you may not refrain from it. I'm not suggesting that you must always wash and reuse your plastic silverware like my grandma used to do. And you know what, there are some things that I'm not ready to do yet either. For example, Wendy and I tried environmentally friendly diapers. To the environment, they were friendly. To us… not so much. Wendy is threatening to start composting- when you leave materials to decay with the right combination of light and shuffling. I’m already doing that on my desk!

But you don't have to do everything at once. You can start Right now, you can pick one thing and build from there. Maybe you make sure your next car or appliance is more energy efficient. Or maybe you unplug a few that you are not using. Or maybe you choose products that were produced locally, and don't have wasteful packaging. Maybe you start recycling at your home or at your office. Maybe you risk scorn and check your tire pressure. Maybe you even change a few light bulbs.

Or, for that matter, take Shabbat. Take Shabbat off. If you want to be closer to God- do as God did, and take one day off. The essence of shabbat is not just making kiddush and having your challah and matzoh balls. Its about taking a break from creating and consuming. The 39 categories of work-planting, sowing, reaping, weaving, sewing hunting, burning, baking and so on, are all about changing the world and using its resources. Shabbat is about the need to recognize and limit the power we exercise over the natural world. Imagine if you didn't drive on the Sabbath, or drove only to synagogue. Could you cut 1/7, or at least 1/10 off your weekly gas consumption? If you didn't buy on shabbat, if you didn't spend shabbat watching ads that encouraged you to buy stuff you don't really, need could you cut 1/7 or 1/10 off the things that you buy and the packaging that they require?

It's true that celebrating shabbat takes energy. Burning those candles adds a tiny bit of carbon- 15 grams to the atmosphere per candle. And most Shabbat candles are made from fossil fuels! Picture 5,000,000 homes lighting shabbat candles. That’s 160 tons of atmospheric carbon. There's a group in Israel that's worried about that. What will they think of next- the greenhouse gas as a result of eating cholent? There are other options- the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs is offering renewable soy-based candes (www.ecoshabbat.com) But you know what, each person who keeps shabbat by staying off the roads balances out 333 sets of candles. So, light shabbat candles and stay off the road, and you are not just carbon-neutral, you are spirit-positive.

After all, you have a personal spiritual enviroment, too. Do you use up our personal resources? Do you totally run down Your spirit, your energy, or do you take a day to recharge and replenish them.? When we sing V'shamru, on Shabbat, we are quoting Biblical verses. When we sing ovayom hashevi'i, shabbat vayinafash, we are saying that on the 7^th day God rested and it was done. But a Nefesh literally means a soul. It was Shabbat and God rested. God got soul. What would you do to restore your soul?

There is a famous story (Talmud, tractate Ta'anit) of Honi Hama'agel who sees a man planting a carob tree, which does not bear fruit for seventy years. Honi asked the man, "How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?" The man replied, "Seventy years."

Honi then asked the man, "And do you think you will live another seventy years and eat the fruit of this tree?"

The man answered, "Perhaps not. However, when I was born into this world, I found many carob trees planted by my father and grandfather. Just as they planted trees for me, I am planting trees for my children and grandchildren so they will be able to eat the fruit of these trees."

Will we leave the world in as good a state as we found it? Will we borrow against our children's future, or will we leave the world with resources for them to live their lives? We can be like modern day maccabees. We can take oil that might only last few a few decades and make it last much longer. We can be like the Jews in the sinai desert, who did not leave piles of garbage and waste for archeologists to find.

Today is the birthday of the world. We recognize that the world is a gift from God. We have the right to use that gift. Will God forgive us if we squander that gift, if we don't take it seriously? Will God give us a “do-over?”

Today is the birthday of the world. Our tradition teaches that we must act to preseve it that world. Let us begin the work of preserving it, so that we can wish it, and us, many happy returns.