Due to my son being an only child with little perspective on living with siblings- friendships, fights and loyalty, my husband and I adopted mans “best friend” with the hope it would become Jonah’s “little brother”. The big hope was that our gorgeous red and white cocker spaniel rescue dog was to would teach my son the responsibilities of caring for another dependent being. We had images of my son walking and feeding our new addition to the family.
What actually transpired was far from my vivid imagination. Flynn gravitated to me – I became his world and he, my shadow. Irrespective of my mood, Flynn was always happy to be with me and tail wagging to prove his point.

Being a rescue dog from an abusive environment, Flynn arrived at our home, skittish and fearful.  It was clear that my sweet Flynn with his honest spirit had been subject to tsa’ar ba’alei chayim : the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals.  Whenever I would offer my hand to pet him, his eyes would squint and his face would jerk, weary of a strike.

My Flynn with his expressive eyes, beckoned me to love, hug and protect him unconditionally. Flynn became my “baby”. Rather than Flynn becoming another sibling for my son, he became my toddler who needed all my attention and would reciprocate with loyalty, hugs and kisses.
Then it was almost two and a half years ago, that my husband and I were sitting around the Sabbath table with a roasted free-range chicken in front of us for dinner that I was struck with an epiphany. Looking at this headless chicken in its full form with the legs and everything intact, made me think of Flynn.

I asked myself, “How can I eat an animal and simultaneously live and love an animal?” I was definitely a product of our society, disassociating the head with the animal, not connected to a fellow mindful creature I was about to eat, but Flynn changed that all for me.

Before Flynn, I did not think too much about tsa’ar ba’alei chayim nor the innocent chicken living in cramped quarters, pumped up with hormones with the sole purpose to be my dinner.  It took Flynn’s gentle soul, my fellow companion to teach me that we are all connected to living creatures.

Suddenly eating this chicken became extremely unappetizing, and I just could not eat it.

My interspecies relationship with Flynn eventually raised my awareness that vegetarianism is life affirming. This was characterized by abstaining from all animal eating, embracing a vegetarian lifestyle related to gratitude for our animal kingdom, rather than entitlement and ownership.

Although I adopted Flynn from the harsh treatment of living with an abusive owner, Flynn in turn adopted me as well. He taught me that we are a part of nature rather than apart from nature. Flynn’s innocence and sweetness evoked a compassion for embracing cohabitation and respect for all animal life that I am grateful and has forever changed my life.

Tuv Ha’aretz Reflections on Parshat Ekev, by Rabbi Marc Soloway

The intuition to make some kind of blessing or prayer before eating, either traditional or spontaneous, transcends religions and cultures.  Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and probably every religion has its version of making a spiritual connection to the food we are about to eat, whether an established formula or a moment of meditation.  The Talmud has a strong statement that anyone enjoying the physical pleasures of this world without first saying a bracha, is like someone who steals from the Temple! (Berachot 35a).

There are so many traditional blessings for the world of our senses; eating and drinking; seeing mountains, rainbows, oceans; smelling spices or fragrant fruits; hearing thunder.  These blessings affirm the majesty of creation and our appreciation of the great gifts of nature, by reciting these brachot as we see or smell, or before we eat anything. Being part of our Jewish CSA, Tuv Ha’aretz along with its weekly offerings of delicious, local produce has certainly heightened our sense of appreciation for the fruit of the land.  For vegetables, the traditional bracha is baruch atah HaShem elohaynu melech haolam borei p’ri ha’adamah – blessed are You Eternal One, sovereign of the universe, creator of the earth’s fruit.  For fruit, we say p’ri ha’etz, the tree’s fruit.

Making a blessing after we have eaten seems to be less intuitive and, to my knowledge, does not play such a major part in many religions.  Jewish law makes a distinction between halachot (laws) that are d’Oraita – derived directly from the Torah, and d’Rabbanan – coming from rabbinic law.  Clearly a mitzvah that is seen to be from the Torah has more weight and authority than one that comes from the rabbis.  Interestingly, birkat hamazon, grace after meals, is seen as d’Oraita and the myriad blessings before food are d’Rabbanan.  The proof text for this is from this week’s parsha, Ekev, and is a verse, which is included in these after food blessings, “V’achalta v’savata u’verachta… – you will eat, you will be satisfied and then you will bless…” (Deuteronomy 8:10)  The order in the Torah suggests that from that place of satisfaction comes the obligation to offer blessings of appreciation.  When we are full and sated after a wonderful meal, our instinct may be to go to sleep or lounge around on the couch too full to be grateful, yet it is exactly in this state that the Torah asks us to be mindful of gratitude rather than victims of complacency.

Those of us who are more inclined to make a blessing before we eat and tend to forget the blessings afterwards, could try to remember that the gratitude that we express after we are satisfied, rather than before we have tasted what lies in front of us, has a greater force. So much of the Torah’s power comes precisely from the fact that it is often contrary to our impulses or intuitions, demanding consciousness in those moments when we feel unconscious.  This is how the Torah helps us to refine our characters and reminds us that we are just a little lower than the angels. Either way, it has been a source of great pleasure and satisfaction to receive our weekly yield from the farmers’ hands and they deserve our blessings of appreciation along with our own personal way of thanking the ultimate source with whom we are in partnership!

In this week’s parasha, Beha’alotcha, Bnei Yisrael continue their journey from Egypt to the promised land. They are provisioned during their desert wanderings by manna, a mysterious food which appears on the ground with the nightly dew, and, according to midrashim,[1] exhibited a variety of tastes. It is against this background that we read the Israelites’ astounding complaint:

�If only we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for free, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic.� [2]

The Israelites had only just been redeemed from tortuous oppression, so it is most perplexing that they would now long for the ‘free’ foods of slavery. Commentators have offered a number of explanations, claiming that perhaps the fish were so cheap or easy to catch such as to be considered free.[3] The Sifrei, however, provides a more profound interpretation. �What does chinam (free) mean? Free from the commandments.�[4] The Israelites did not miss Egyptian cuisine, rather the lack of moral autonomy and responsibility that slavery entailed.

It seems shocking that a nation would choose bondage over freedom, all for the sake of avoiding its incumbent moral and spiritual tumult. A people who spurn independence and responsibility are poor candidates for the creative enterprise of building a nation, much less a holy nation. Thus we find that the so-called dor hamidbar, the generation of the desert, is forced to wander and die off before the Jewish people are allowed to enter their homeland.

Maimonides, in his Mishne Torah, expounds upon the importance of responsibility by drawing upon a seemingly unrelated verse in our parasha. In the chapter preceding that of the �free fish,� we find that Moses is told to construct two silver trumpets which will serve a variety of purposes, including gathering the congregation, moving the camp, as well as wartime and celebratory uses. Maimonides , commenting on the verse �you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets�[5] asserts that �there is a positive Torah commandment to cry out and to blow trumpet blasts regarding every calamity that befalls the community.�[6] The trumpets and crying out are intended to awaken the realization that these troubles are a result of our actions and we must seek to change our ways. If however, Maimonides warns, �you will say ‘this thing is the ways of the world… it is happenstance,’ — this is derech achzariut (the way of cruelty).�[7]

Maimonides here offers a sharp critique of our understanding of our relationship to the world around us. We look around and see an unredeemed world and distress within our own nation and community. One natural response might be, ‘it is not my doing, it is simply the way of the world.’ Another response might be, ‘it is not my responsibility to fix it, nor is it within my power to do so.’ As someone who does not shy from calling opposing positions the ‘ways of ignoramuses’ and the ‘ways of fools,’ Maimonides does not say that these approaches are wrongheaded. Rather, he employs the language of cruelty. It is not just intellectually, and for Maimonides, theologically false to imagine that we can disconnect and isolate our actions from the world around us, it is primarily cruel.

The Israelites who complained about the manna provide a stark picture of the desire to flee from moral responsibility. The burden of freedom is such that they would rather return to a system of institutional disempowerment, a decision that seems unimaginable to us.� Maimonides, in contrast, writes of a far more subtle and seductive flight from power and responsibility � an imagined isolation and powerlessness.

We may like to think that our prosperity, opportunity, and freedom were created and exist in a vacuum disconnected from the poverty, oppression and disenfranchisement of other individuals, communities and nations around the globe. We live, however, in a world of incredible interconnectedness. Much of what we rely upon for our day to day lives � our food, clothing and household goods � was produced by someone else, often in some far off land. Unfortunately, many of the people involved in the production process may not have worked under ethical conditions or did not receive a fair price for their goods or labor. Those of us who are lucky enough to enjoy freedom and prosperity face a choice. Do we continue to purchase goods at their �free market� price, a discounted price because it does not factor in a decent wage for workers, safe working conditions or fair prices for commodities? Or, alternatively, do we choose to purchase products that are fair trade certified and support businesses that pay a living wage? True, no single act of conscious consumption will reverse an unbalanced system. It may soothe our restless soul to imagine then that we are powerless to tackle the great disparities of power that govern global trade, that they are simply ‘the way of the world’.� Our tradition, however, warns otherwise � that irresponsibility and inaction are not holy, or even neutral, but ways of cruelty. Furthermore, we should not imagine that our action is merely spiritual or reflexive. For although the marketplace is a seemingly uncontrollable torrent, it is naught but the aggregation of billions of individual drops. We can choose to divert ours to a stream which promotes a more just society.

The mission of the Jewish people is radical and extensive. Deliverance from Egyptian slavery was not an end in and of itself. It was the first step towards building a nation striving to embody a prophetic vision of justice, a venture which demands great commitment and responsibility. Those who spurned that responsibility, who could not bear the yoke of freedom, never got to see the promised land. Will we too seek respite from that burden, preferring �free� food and goods and refusing the challenge, expense and complexity of ethical consumption? May we be strong enough to achieve a more complete liberation.

The iridescent colors reflected off an oil slick are like a twisted and distorted rainbow.

There is a special correlation between this week�s Torah portion and the rainbow covenant of Noah�s time. And there is a foreboding contrast between the rainbow covenant and what�s happened in the Gulf of Mexico. The tension between these dynamic relationships in many ways defines the predicament of our time.

Just as this week is the week we read about the central covenant of the Torah encoded in the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, it is also the week when the anniversary of the rainbow covenant falls. It is no random happenstance: the covenant represented by the Jubilee is in many ways a response to the covenant with Noah and the animals.

How so? The covenant of Noah�s time�the first covenant recorded in the Torah�includes the land and the animals as covenant partners with God alongside the human family. This is also the case with the Jubilee covenant: the land is promised her Sabbaths as a condition for the Israelites to settle upon the land, while the people are required in the Sabbatical year, when the land is resting, to open their fences to allow the wild animals in to eat their fill.

The first condition�to let the land rest�is a fulfillment of the promise in the rainbow covenant that God will no longer destroy the land because of humanity: here God promises to exile humanity in order to save the land from being destroyed. The second condition�allowing the wild animals into the fields�is a tikkun for what happened after the rainbow covenant: even though the animals were partners in God�s covenantal promise not to destroy the earth, they afterwards became fodder for the humans (�like green plants I give you them all�).

Instead, here, in the Sabbatical year, the humans are required to allow their agriculture to go wild and to invite the wild animals to share what grows. This is not only a tikkun for the permission granted to human beings to eat animals. It is also a return to the Garden of Eden, where animals and human beings shared the same food.

And the Gulf of Mexico? In the rainbow covenant God promised not to destroy the Earth because of us, but God did not promise that we wouldn�t destroy the Earth. As the oil laps at the shore and threatens vast ecosystems, important food sources, and endangered species, we must realize that God�s covenant is not enough to save us. The iridescent colors reflected off an oil slick are like a twisted and distorted rainbow. The tragedy and horror of this accident remind us that we have reached a point where we can undo God�s rainbow covenant at the expense of our own lives and the lives of other creatures.

These are the worst of times, because the threat is that close and that enormous. And these are the best of times, because we can wake up to our potential for love and righteousness and create a sustainable world, a world that reflects the rainbow covenant as it was meant to be: a promise to honor and cherish all beings, as God does, and so to act in God�s image.

Then, to quote a medieval prayer (from Pri Eitz Hadar), may we be privileged to see �the whole return to its original strength�and to see the rainbow, joyful and beautified with his colors.� Yashuv hakol l�eitano ha rishon, v�niratah hakeshet, sas umitpa�er b�govanin.

David Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org and a teacher of Judaism and ecology.

Listen to our new PODCAST, Episode 5 by clicking here!

Co-Founder Julie Wolk sits down with me on the latest Hazon Podcast. Listen to what Wilderness Torah is doing to revitalize the American Jewish Community. Also, don’t forget you can subscribe on iTunes by searching “Hazon”.

Also, don’t forget that it is Earth Day this week, so check out all the options going on in your area. For a good listing, check this website out

They have a map where you can choose where you live and find out what is going on near you!

And finally, for those in the New York area, come see “Tapped: The Movie,” a documentary about water usage and safety in America. It is screening at 5 pm at the Cowin Center at Columbia University (between 120 and 121 streets on Broadway). If you are one of the first 100 people to arrive at 4 pm, you can exchange a plastic bottle for a FREE Klean Kanteen! So look into your recycling bin and grab a plastic bottle. If you come after the first 100 people, you will get a great discount on Klean Kanteen.

Check out this new special Ride Edition Podcast! If you haven’t heard, Hazon is allocating funds raised from the Bay Area Ride a bit differently than past rides. It’s pretty exciting and really putting the power in the hands (or cycles) of Ride participants, who will get to decide where to allocate the funds they raise.
Also, if you didn’t hear about last year’s NY Ride engagement story, Marc tells us what he was thinking the day he proposed on the Ride.

Check it all out by clicking here!

You can also subscribe to the podcasts through iTunes! The last episode has listeners all the way near the Philippines, so join the global community!

Happy passover!

The month Nisan begins tonight and with it, so many associations. Last year, I wrote about the practice of refraining from eating Matzah from Rosh Hodesh Nisan (i.e. tonight) until Passover. Most people make, if any, the association of dreaded Pesach cleaning and preparation. I’ll be writing some about that in a few days or next week, God willing, but for now, let’s stick to things connected specifically to Rosh Hodesh Nisan.

One association fewer people make is that Birkat haIlanot, the blessing over blooming trees, is typically said in the month of Nisan:

ברוך אתה ה” אלוהינו מלך העולם שלא חיסר בעולמו כלום וברא בו בריות טובות ואילנות טובות ליהנות בהם בני אדם

Barukh Atah Adonai Eloheynu Melekh haOlam, sh’lo hisar b’Olamo kloom, uvara vo b’riyot tovot v’eelanot tovot lehanot ba-hem b’ney adahm

Blessed are you, Hashem our God, King of the universe, for nothing is lacking in His universe, and He created good creatures and good trees in it so that people can enjoy them.

( * There are a few variations of the blessing. This is the way it appears in the Shulhan Arukh. I suppose if you’re learning this for the first time, you’re learning it from me; say it the way you were taught it.)

The occurrence and wording of the blessing make sense: we tend to bless God for those things that benefit us and happen at specific times (think holidays.) We also make blessings on anything enjoyable (Birkhot haNehenin.) But there is more to this practice than simply making the blessing. First, you have to see the tree. It is not enough to know that this is when it will happen or to hear that someone else saw it. Second, it is the blossom or flower of the tree that you must see. Third, we say the blessing only when we see this happen to/on a tree that produces edible fruit. Finally, each person says this blessing only once per year, upon seeing such a bloom for the first time.

Among the purpose of blessings is to compel us to see the beautiful in the ordinary and in the extraordinary and to appreciate these as gifts from God. Birkat haIlanot has a particularly beautiful way of doing this. “One who goes out,” says the Shulhan Arukh, “in the days of Nisan and sees trees from which a flower is blossoming, says [the above blessing.]” (OH 226:1) Truthfully, the later scholars tell us, the blessing is not connected only to this month, but that this is the time when trees typically bloom in warmer countries (the Shulhan Arukh was probably compiled in Tz’fat and was based on material “the Mehaber” previously compiled there and in Adrianople, Turkey.)

This blessing fits into a category known as Birkhot haRe’iyah, blessings of seeing, made when seeing things: rainbows, lightning, certain people, oceans and, of course, trees in bloom. Sometimes it is hard to look at something in nature and see a spark of God in it, have a spiritual experience from it. How much harder it is to look at people, especially the ones you don’t like, and see God in them. All the soft-spoken rabbi talk about “the image of God” in the world won’t make that easy. These blessings help. Notice that the rule isn’t that one should go out looking for such a tree. When you go out, starting around now, it says, you have to observe everything around you; don’t necessarily look for a tree, but when you spot one–which means you have to observe everything around you–say this blessing.

Of course, the timing of the blessing makes sense because people mark Rosh Hodesh Nisan and it’s around now that trees start to bloom in many parts of the world (at least in the northern hemisphere.) But I posit that there is another reason. We start paying attention to blossoming trees tomorrow because in a certain way, that’s what tomorrow is all about. Rosh Hodesh Nisan is a time to remember that redemption is on its way. Just as we must do with trees, beginning tomorrow, if not all the time, we have to start looking around. Miracles can (Nisan from Nes, miracle) happen at any time anywhere. Maimonides even defines a miracle this way: when something unusual but within the limits of the natural order happens at precisely the right time. Usually we don’t notice miracles until after they’ve happened. Most scholars hold that you can’t say Birkat haIlanot after the actual fruit comes out; the whole point of the blessing is to thank God for potential. Right now (Rosh Hodesh begins in a few minutes here on the East Coast) is a particularly auspicious time to be thinking about potential. Our redemption as a people and as individuals is as close and as evident as the blossoming trees. Only by remembering to bless it will we remember–and merit–to see it.

Hodesh Tov!

This week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, opens with the commandment that the Israelites should bring ‘pure oil of beaten olives’ to the Sanctuary, so that Aaron and his sons can kindle a ner tamid, or a lamp which will be kept always burning.

The ner tamid is rich in symbolism, but for today, let’s focus on its fuel.  The commandment is to bring pure – we would call it, ‘extra-virgin’ – olive oil.  In the ancient world light was created from any number of substances.  In some forms of the Shabbat evening service we read a passage called Be-Meh Madlikin, from the Mishnah (Shabbat 2:1-7) which proves that pitch, wax, cottonseed oil, fat from sheeps’ tails or tallow, sesame oil, nut oil, radish oil, fish oil, gourd oil, tar or naptha were all possible sources of fuel.  But there Rabbi Tarfon rules that only olive oil may be used for Shabbat candles.

What’s so special about olive oil?  Perhaps the fact that it is a substance which is exceptionally good for human beings.  The health benefits of eating olive oil and the ‘Mediterranean Diet’ are still being extolled, even as various eating regimes come into, and slide out of, fashion.  According to the Mayo Clinic’s website, the FDA has found that eating about two tablespoons of olive oil a day can reduce the risk of heart disease.  It also contains polyphenols, which are powerful antioxidants, which also promote heart health.  And it tastes good, too!

Which rather begs the question: if olive oil is such a wonderful food, why are we supposed to use it for lighting and not just ingest it?  After all, latkes are a good way to honor olive oil, too…

Perhaps one answer is that food is sometimes more than food.   Sometimes it is focused outwards as well as inwards.  Take, for example, the three types of food – Pesach, Matzah, Maror – which must be indicated and talked about publicly on Pesach, as a way of remembering our story.   And there’s a tradition, closer to us in the calendar, that Esther ate garbanzo beans while at Ahasuerus’ court, both revealing and concealing her Jewish identity.

So the question for this week, in whichTetzaveh coincides with Purim, is: how can our food be, or help us to be, a light?  One answer, perhaps, is in the way we carry out the two mitzvot which are related to food on Purim: to give ‘gifts’ – traditionally, of two types of food – to our friends, and also to give to the poor.  That figure of one in eight people in America suffering from hunger is still very real, and Purim presents us with the opportunity to display our openhandedness both to those we know and those we do not.  Indeed, the Shul is taking the initiative this year to slightly reduce our gifts to our friends in order to enable us to give more to those in need – an enlightened decision, indeed.

I wish us all a delicious, joyous, and generous Purim!

Rabbinic Intern Deborah Silver

Shomrei Torah Synagogue

At the beginning of this portion, we have a piece of Torah that gives rise to one of the most ancient traditions we possess:

6  So say to the people of Israel, I am God, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will save you from their slavery, and I will redeem you with a outstretched arm, and with great judgments; 7  And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. (Exodus 6:6-8) 

The Rabbis of our tradition use this text as the basis for establishing that a Seder has to feature four cups of wine.  Each of the expressions of redemption (bring/save/redeem/take) corresponds to one of the cups (Jerusalem Talmud Pesahim 68b).  Even the poorest of Jews, we are told, must drink no less than four cups at a Seder, even if these have to be supplied by the food kitchen (Mishnah Pesahim 10:1).

There’s a good deal of discussion about the rule in the Talmud .  Rabbi Joshua ben Levi points out that women, too, are obligated to drink these four cups of wine, because they were also part of the miracle of the Exodus.  Rabbi Yehudah takes issue with the idea that not only women but also children have to drink the wine – ‘What use is it to them?’ he enquires.  The anonymous editor of the Talmud recollects that Rabbi Akiva used to distribute snacks to the children at his Seder table, so they would stay awake long enough to say the Ma Nishtanah.  The discussion winds on, finally providing advice on what to do if you meet a demon, which proves – as if we needed proof – that there is no knowing where a Talmudic conversation will end up (Babylonian Talmud Pesahim 108a ff).

But the four cups of wine also invite us to delve deeper into their meaning.  Other sages provide other explanations for their symbolism.  One mentions the four ‘cups of punishment’ that God will force the nations who persecute Israel to drink – and, corresponding to these, four ‘cups of consolation.’

What does a ‘cup of consolation’ look like?  A cup of fresh water for the survivor of an earthquake?  A warm drink for a homeless person, when it’s below zero outside?  The few drops of precious liquid used to moisten the lips of a person suffering from fever?  The bottle grasped by a thirsty baby?  Apparently we can survive up to four to six weeks without food, if we are forced to, but to be able to survive without water for more than a week is a miracle. 

The story of the birth of our national identity is riven through with the tension between abundance and deprivation.  On the one hand, the spaciousness of deliverance: on the other, our vulnerability when it comes to the basic materials of survival (it is not an accident that the complaints of the children of Israel are at their loudest when it comes to not having water).  Even as we contemplate fulfilling the commandment to drink the four cups, let us not forget their inverse – for, as the events of this week in Haiti have shown, it is never far away.

Rabbinic Intern Deborah Silver

Shomrei Torah Synagogue