I Dreamt it Was the End of Days - Omer Day 9

Gevurah of Gevurah
by Judith Felsen

I dreamt it was the end of days.

Our sun had swollen in what was our sky,

a giant ruby fire ball we  could no longer see.

Sockets where our eyes had been were

empty pockets now, both smoldering and blind.

The air was singed, there was no breath,

no water  here to moisten swollen tongues.

This cauldron of our world’s best charred remains

had yielded dust of eons’ makings, crumbled into soot.

And yet within annihilation was a presence,

that which uttered only sounds and lights,

creation of a  certainty  beyond our knowing,

showing in this dream of  devastation

that  You and only You,

as one and all in peace exist.

Today is the ninth day, which is one week and two days of the Omer.
Today is the ninth day, which is one week and two days of the journey from bondage to revelation.

Copyright 2015  Judith E. Felsen, Ph. D. Used by permission.

Judith Felsen holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, certificates in hypnotherapy, NLP, Eriksonian Hypnosis, and Sacred Plant Medicine. She is a dancer of sacred circle dance, an AMC kitchen crew, trail information volunteer, trail adopter, and daily student of Torah and Judaism. She is enrolled in Rabbinical Seminary International. She has studied Buddhism, A Course in Miracles, and other mystical traditions. She is a hiker, walker, runner, and lives in the White Mountains with her husband and two large dogs. Her life centers around her Jewish studies and daily application.

Invitation - Omer Day 8

Chesed of Gevurah 
by Judith Felsen

My Lord, we saw Your waves
and thought
You were enticing us.
We heard Your winds
and talked of
Your reminding us.
We felt Your rains
and whispered
Your inspiring us.
We fled Your floods
and dreaded
Your now chiding us.
Yet all the while,
with Love You were
inviting us.  

Today is the eighth day, which is one week and one day of the Omer.
Today is the eighth day, which is one week and one day of the journey from bondage to revelation.

Copyright 2012  Judith Felsen, Ph.D. Used by permission.

Judith Felsen holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, certificates in hypnotherapy, NLP, Eriksonian Hypnosis , and Sacred Plant Medicine. She is a dancer of sacred circle dance, an AMC kitchen crew, trail information volunteer, trail adopter, and daily student of Torah and Judaism. She is enrolled in Rabbinical Seminary International. She has studied Buddhism, A Course in Miracles, and other mystical traditions. She is a hiker, walker, runner, and lives in the White Mountains with her husband and two large dogs. Her life centers around her Jewish studies and daily application.

What Does it Mean to be Free? Omer Day 7

by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen

Every year at Passover, we read in the Haggadah,

“In every generation each individual should feel as if he or she had personally come out of Egypt. It was not only our ancestors whom the Holy One redeemed from slavery; we, too, were redeemed with them, as it is written: “[G!d] took us out from there in order to take us to the land promised on oath to our ancestors” (Deut. 6:23).

In the face of climate change, of bombings and shootings, floods and superstorms, of polluted air and poisonous water, of materialism and craving for more, what does it mean to leave Egypt? What does it mean to leave bondage? What does it mean to be redeemed? To be free?

If cancer is spreading throughout our body, we are likely to contemplate our mortality and be fully aware of the nearness of death. When we are healthy, working, raising our families, and involved in our communities, we have little time, incentive, or opportunity to consider the limits of our lives. We are too busy living to think about dying.

The specter of climate change forces upon us the recognition that not only are our lives finite, but the very planet upon which we depend is potentially mortal.

What does it mean to be free if our body is riddled with cancer? When we must say goodbye to all that we love?

What does it mean to be free when we hear of corruption deep within the institutions of our society? When racism and hate permeate our culture?

What does it mean to be free when a shooting robs us of a family member or close friend, and our sense of security? When efforts to protect our environment are undercut by those more interested in money?

What does it mean to be free….?

The answers are as myriad as the questions and the individuals upon this Earth. They dwell in the tiniest of spaces, the minutest of time spans, the deepest realms of spirit.

The answers inhabit the hugs, the moments of silence, the darkest of dark nights and the brightest of moonlit nights.

The answers lie in hearing the wind blow, in gently touching a loved one, in a smile, in a prayer, in a heartbeat.

The answers reside in the sacred beyond and the pureness within. They linger in a clump of soil, the twitter of a bird, the fall of a leaf, gently, slowly, twisting, turning.

The answers are in the heavens and in the sea, and always close at hand. They lie within us and around us and beyond us. Day and night, twilight and dawn, they are near at hand, ever present, ready to be received, ready to be intuited, by our open eyes, our attentive ears, our quiet minds, our vulnerable hearts, our sensitive souls.

The answers patiently await the ever-new awakening of hidden realms within us to all that is good and holy and sacred in this life.

Today is the seventh day, which is one week of the Omer.
Today is the seventh day, which is one week of the journey from bondage to revelation.

Rabbi Katy Allen is a board certified chaplain and serves as a Nature Chaplain and the Facilitator of One Earth Collaborative, a program of Open Spirit. She is the founder and rabbi of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope, which holds services outdoors all year long. She is a co-convener and coordinator of the Boston-based Jewish Climate Action Network.

This piece was originally published here as part of the Purim to Pesach project of The Shalom Center.

Why So Much Denial? Omer Day 6

 by Moshe Givental

I spend a lot of time reading and talking about climate change, about the the science of what's happening and is likely to happen without a concerted global effort, about heroic activist efforts to resist, as well as social, psychological, and theological attemps to try to explain why it's so difficult for all of us to respond. The science here is very clear, not simple, but clear, so we are not lacking scientific proof. There are millions of dollars being spent to protect financial interests, and this strategy is not much different than what the tobacco companies did to cast doubt on the clear science for decades. "It could be bad, it could be good, we don't quite know... let's just continue smoking some more." Apart from that, however, I'd like to test 4 partial explanations for what's happening socially and psychologically. Please add your thoughts, ideas, and critiques!

1) Modern life conditions us for NUMBNESS TO SUFFERING, especially large scale suffering.

- From the slave conditions in which much of our clothing, food, and toys are made
- To our tax dollars with which immoral wars fought with
- To the general awareness of the incredible suffering of millions around the world, suffering which we neither caused nor are even complicit in, but are now aware of in a way no generation prior could have been aware of
- Amid all of the above, it's a wonder that any of us are emotionally present to anything without being completely immobilized by sadness and sympathy! 

- I have to admit, I don't actually "feel" anything about climate change destruction the majority of the time. My response stems from an intellectual and ethical responsibility. I'd like to feel, but I don't know how to feel something about something like this.

2) The scale of what's happening and is likely to happen without a global world war scale kind of response feels TOO HORRIBLE TO BELIEVE
- Think of the ways in which people during WWII could not believe that the Nazis were killing Jews on the scale that they were, and in the ways that they were, long after the information was clear. People simply could not believe such an atrocity could be true. I'm in debt to Roger Gottlieb's most recent book "Political and Spiritual" for this scary parallel.
- To what extent is this playing out with Climate Change Destruction? To what extent is our lack of accepting the scientific facts the process of having difficulty believing that something on this scale of destruction could possibly be true?

3) The BYSTANDER EFFECT

-  If an individual seems someone suffering or sees someone doing something wrong and there is no one else around to help, they may very well step up. However, if there is a large group, and the individual looks around and sees everyone else going about their business as if nothing is happening, they will do so too, overriding their moral compass and assuming that they must somehow be mistaken. Or, they will hope/assume that someone else will step up, given that so many other people are present. Research shows this over and over. Google it. 

- People see majority of society doing nothing, or not doing anything big/extreme/loud enough that's in proportion with the facts scientists are presenting and assume, "well... it can't be so bad. If it was, then it would be obvious and everyone would be up in arms..."

- I contribute to this, I think most of us who are indeed doing everything that we can to wake up the world and turn us around are guilty of contribute to this. I often don't speak or speak (metaphorically) loud enough because I'm afraid of people treating me as an apocolyptic lunatic. In speaking in more measured tones and presenting the facts are more mild (or vague) than they are, in fear that the stark reality will be too frightening for people and then will simply shut down, I contribute to the Bystander Effect.

4) DENIAL is a stage of GRIEF. 

- According to Kubler-Ross, the basic stages are the following: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Of course it's more complex and we all cycle through.
- This is separate  from Denial that has to do with companies protecting their finances.
- How much of our actions and feelings (or lack thereof) are a response to a sense that this might be true, and the beginning of a process for Grief? I"m in debt to Jim Antall for this insight.

- How much of the anger/hatred that comes up against people bringing Climate Change destruction to the fore is part of people's process of Grief (in addition to fear and self-protection)?
- Perhaps this can also explain a part of what seems just as delusional, the idea that if we just change enough light bulbs, recycle, get enough electric carson the road, or tax the carbon... then everything will be okay?  How much are we trying to Bargain as a part of Grief? 

- See Bill McKibben's Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet for clarity on how the Eaarth's eco-systems (yes, there 2 'a's to represent the fact that our ecosystems are already drastically altered), and that just like a drunken teenager, we just don't feel DRUNK YET, and so we keep drinking.

Today is the sixth day of the Omer.
Today is the sixth day of the journey from bondage to revelation.

Moshe Givental is a 4th year Rabbinic student at Hebrew College in Newton Center, MA. Formerly a therapist, he is an educator, lover of G-d, animals, music, and play, and reluctantly becoming an Activist.

Around the World and at Home - Omer Day 5

by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen

In some parts of the world, whole nations are at risk of disappearing beneath the rising seas. In the words of Jetnil Kijiner, the 26-yr-old poet from the Marshall Islands, speaking before the U.N. last fall, “We’ve seen waves crashing into our homes and our breadfruit trees wither from salt and droughts. We look at our children and wonder how they will know themselves or their culture should they lose our islands.”

But the Marshall Islands are small and far away, and few if any of us know anyone living in there. We can read and hear her words, but we don't really understand how she is feeling.

Hurricane Sandy was closer to home. During this massive storm, 285 people died. Sixty-two billion dollars in damage occurred in the United States and another 300 million in the Caribbean. Many of us know someone impacted in some way by Hurricane Sandy. The story is told fully and completely by Kathryn Miles in Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, but even just a few sentences are chilling: "A woman in Toronto was killed when a large illuminated sign pulled from its supports, then plummeted thirty feet to the ground. An eight-year-old Pennsylvania boy died when a tree fell in his Franklin Township yard. Not long after, an enormous oak fell through a home in North Salem, New York, crushing two best friends, ages eleven and thirteen, but leaving the rest of the home’s occupants unharmed." 

With Hurricane Sandy, we may very well know someone whose home was destroyed, or who was injured or even killed.

But impacts of climate change are even closer to home. All of us in Eastern Massachusetts experienced the snowiest winter on record. The Washington Post quotes Penn State climate researcher Michael Mann, “There is [a] direct relationship between the surface warmth of the ocean and the amount of moisture in the air. What that means is that this storm will be feeding off these very warm seas, producing very large amounts of snow as spiraling winds of the storm squeeze that moisture out of the air, cool it, and deposit it as snow inland.” In other words, warmer oceans mean snowier winters, and yes, climate change has something to do with all the snow we got.

Getting to work this winter was a daily time consuming, frustrating, and potentially very expensive endeavor. People couldn't get to work. Some roofs caved in. Homes suffered water damage. Some of us suffered more than others, and some of us managed more easily than others, but all of us know someone who was impacted directly and significantly, and the most vulnerable among us were the most affected.

A young woman, fragile emotionally, physically, and financially, took a cab to get to work at a retail store one snowy day, spending about $50. An hour after she arrived, the store closed due to lack of customers. She lost her day's wages and had to take a cab to get home, too.

A young man with many health issues and struggling with addiction, couldn't get out of his home to get his medications, didn't realize how important they were, and ended up back in the hospital.

These are two small vignettes. The stories around the world are many and varied.

Change change is happening to the whole planet. It is in many ways impersonal, on the news. But it is also very, very personal; it is about our homes, our lives, our families, our livelihoods, our friends, for us, for our neighbors, for all of Earth's inhabitants. 

It is also about how we handle it.

We are all in this together .

Today is the fifth day of the Omer.
Today is the fifth day of the journey from bondage to revelation.

Rabbi Katy Allen is a board certified chaplain and serves as a Nature Chaplain and the Facilitator of One Earth Collaborative, a program of Open Spirit. She is the founder and rabbi of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope, which holds services outdoors all year long. She is a co-convener and coordinator of the Boston-based Jewish Climate Action Network.

Two Sides of Trees - Omer Day 4

by a Metrowest mother

Our home was destroyed by trees in the storm. As part of my acceptance and surrender to what happened, I am taking photos of trees to reconstruct my life. 

Feel her strength. 

Dear Lord, Let me find peace among the trees, let me melt into nature.

Today is the fourth day of the Omer.
Today is the fourth day of the journey from bondage to revelation.

This story and photo are posted anonymously.

The Omer Challenge - Omer Day 3

by Jeff Mazur

The Jewish calendar is largely agricultural, and beginning on the second day of Passover, we count the fifty days following the barley harvest, until Shavuot.  The Omer (“sheaf”) was a harvest-offering brought to the Temple. This ancient spring ritual of counting the Omer provides an opportunity to reflect on our relationship to the earth and the rhythms of the Jewish calendar. It creates a link between Passover, commemorating the Exodus, and Shavuot, commemorating the giving of Torah.

According to Rabbi Noson Weisz “Exodus and the Redemption were events that required no input on our parts -- we passively experienced being freed from spiritual bondage just as we experienced our physical release from Egyptian slavery -- and a Divinely implanted spirituality was sufficient to provide the underpinnings of these events. On the other hand, the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai required our active cooperation and participation.”

The Omer Challenge is a call for active cooperation and participation in the measuring of our carbon foot print. The Omer cCallenge is a chance to reflect on our environmental impacts and acknowledge the modern day plague of global warming, by counting for the climate.  Our work towards redemption is in the mindfulness of how we utilize the resources around us.

Earth Deeds invites the Jewish community to measure our carbon emissions that result from our travel during this forty-nine day period and to pay the social cost of those emissions forward.

It's as simple as:

1) Use this carbon calculator – (JCAN Calculator) developed by Earth Deeds, to calculate your carbon emissions and their social cost.

2) Pay those emissions forward to support the project of your choice. (Two local Boston projects are the Jewish Climate Action Network and Beantown Jewish Gardens.) 

As you progress through the Omer period, consider these questions:

What are you learning about your travel patterns and impact? 

What actions might you take as a result of what you learn?

How is what you are learning impacting your understanding of bondage, freedom, redemption, and revelation?

Today is the third day of the Omer.
Today is the third day of the journey from bondage to revelation.

Jeff works for Earth Deeds, a company that provides ways to onset local solutions to global warming, and is a teacher/naturalist for Mass Audubon. A certified Torah Trek guide, Jeff also cofounded the Green Planet Afterschool club at JCDS and Into the Woods, an afterschool program as Lexington Montessori School. 

10 Reasons - Omer Day 2

by Richard Schwartz

Here are ten reasons we all should be very concerned about a climate catastrophe:

1. Science academies worldwide and 97% of climate scientists believe that climate change is real, is largely caused by human activities, and poses great threats to humanity.

2. Every decade since the 1970s has been warmer than the previous decade and all of the 16 warmest years since temperature records were kept in 1880 have been since 1998. 2014 was the warmest year recorded and the last 330 months have all been warmer than the long term average for corresponding months. This means, for example, that July, 2014 was warmer than the average for all previous Julys since 1880.

3. Polar icecaps and glaciers worldwide have been melting rapidly, faster than scientific projections.

4. There has been an increase in the number and severity of droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods.

5. California has been subjected to so many severe climate events recently that its governor, Jerry Brown, stated that, “Humanity is on a collision course with nature.”

6. Many climates experts believe that we are close to a tipping point when climate change will spiral out of control, with disastrous consequences, unless major positive changes soon occur.

7. While climate scientists believe that 350 parts per million (ppm) of atmospheric CO₂ is a threshold value for climate stability, the world reached 400 ppm in 2014, and the amount is increasing by 2-3 ppm per year.

8. While climate scientists hope that temperature increases can be limited to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), to avoid disastrous climate change, the world is now on track for an average increase of 4 – 5 degrees Celsius.

9. The Pentagon and other military groups believe that climate change will increase the potential for instability, terrorism, and war by reducing access to food and clean water and by causing tens of millions of desperate refuges fleeing from droughts, wildfire, floods, storms, and other effects of climate change.

10. The conservative group ConservAmerica, formerly known as ‘Republicans for Environmental Protection,’ is very concerned about climate change threats. They are working to end the denial about climate threats and the urgency of working to avert them on the part of the vast majority of Republicans, but so far with extremely limited success.

Today is the second day of the Omer.
Today is the second day of the journey from bondage to revelation.

Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D., is the author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, Judaism and Global Survival, Who Stole My Religion? Revitalizing Judaism and Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal our Imperiled Planet, and Mathematics and Global Survival, and over 150 articles and 25 podcasts at JewishVeg.com/schwartz. He is President of Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) and the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV). He is associate producer of the 2007 documentary “A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World.”

Stuck in Egypt - Omer Day 1

by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen

According to a recent study by NASA, "droughts in the U.S. Southwest and Central Plains during the last half of this century could be drier and longer than drought conditions seen in those regions in the last 1,000 years." The Washington Post reported on this study: 

The long and severe drought in the U.S. Southwest pales in comparison with what’s coming: a “megadrought” that will grip that region and the central Plains later this century and probably stay there for decades, a new study says.Thirty-five years from now, if the current pace of climate change continues unabated, those areas of the country will experience a weather shift that will linger for as long as three decades, according to the study, released Thursday.

An article in the New York Times discussed where Americans might go to find relief from climate change:

Forget most of California and the Southwest (drought, wildfires). Ditto for much of the East Coast and Southeast (heat waves, hurricanes, rising sea levels). Washington, D.C., for example, may well be a flood zone by 2100, according to an estimate released last week.Instead, consider Anchorage. Or even, perhaps, Detroit.“If you do not like it hot and do not want to be hit by a hurricane, the options of where to go are very limited,” said Camilo Mora, a geography professor at the University of Hawaii and lead author of a paper published in Nature last year predicting that unprecedented high temperatures will become the norm worldwide by 2047.“The best place really is Alaska,” he added. “Alaska is going to be the next Florida by the end of the century.” 

It's all incredibly scary. Think Katrina. Think Hurricane Sandy. Think Midwestern and western drought. Think Boston's winter snowfall record.

Think not enough food to go around. Think being hungry. Think not being able to stay cool in summer or warm in winter. Think no clean water. Think not being able to breathe well. Think. Let your imagination go.

And remember, as you think, that this is just in our own part of the planet. This doesn't reach the expanding Sahara desert of the disappearing islands of the Pacific.

This, and so much more, is bondage. This, and so much more, is climate change. This,and so much more, is the world's future.

Today is the first day of the Omer.
The first day of the journey from bondage to revelation.

Rabbi Katy Allen is a board certified chaplain and serves as a Nature Chaplain and the Facilitator of One Earth Collaborative, a program of Open Spirit. She is the founder and rabbi of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope, which holds services outdoors all year long. She is a co-convener and coordinator of the Boston-based Jewish Climate Action Network.

Introducing the Omer for 5775

The Haggadah tells us that on Passover we are to feel that we ourselves are going out from bondage and in to freedom.

B'khol dor v’dor chayav adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatza mi’Mitzrayim.From generation to generation, each of us is obligated to see ourselves as though we personally came forth from Egypt.

Egypt, the place of bondage. Mitzrayim, the narrow places, where we get stuck. There are so many kinds of bondage - physical, psychological, financial, emotional. Going forth from Egypt, leaving behind our own version of bondage, is a personal journey. Yet it is one we do together, not alone. The Israelites left Egypt as a thronging mass of people. If you were at the People's Climate March in New York City in September of 2014, that crowd was smaller than the crowd of Israelites leaving Egypt. And yet, each person who left was just one individual, walking on his or her own feet, or, as an infant being carried by a mother or father, as a fragile elder being held up by his or her son or daughter. Individuals making up a crowd, surging toward freedom.

Today, in the face of wars, racism, violence, poverty, and - the one that touches all these and more - climate change, how can we possibly find freedom?

The answers remain both individual and personal, and also communal. Freedom in the face of climate change is about both personal and communal change, it is a journey we take as individuals, but also together.

As we count the Omer this year, 5775, we take the journey, first of redemption out from bondage to freedom, and then across the desert to Sinai and revelation, where all of us once again stand together. This year, with the help of writer friends of Ma'yan Tikvah, we will spend seven weeks journeying from bondage to freedom to redemption. Like all of our human journeys, and like the wandering of the Israelites in the desert, it will not be a straight line. There will be ups and downs and ins and outs and backs and forths. Once we achieve freedom, and afterward, as we journey toward a redemption we do not realize is coming, we will, as is so truly human, continue to struggle, but we will struggle from a new and very different physical and psychological and spiritual perspective. 

The Omer posts will begin on Saturday evening. Just as we leave Egypt together, cross the sea together, and stand at Sinai together, so too, let us count the days together. Until then, wishing you Chag Sameach, a joyous and blessed Passover.

Rabbi Katy Z. Allen

Rabbi Katy Allen is a board certified chaplain and serves as a Nature Chaplain and the Facilitator of One Earth Collaborative, a program of Open Spirit. She is the founder and rabbi of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope, which holds services outdoors all year long. She is a co-convener and coordinator of the Boston-based Jewish Climate Action Network.

Photo by Lisa B. Kaye