We are in a moment - a time when it’s hard to feel that the earth below our feet is solid ground – a moment so intense, so portentous, so big, that it’s hard to find the right frame for it or the right words to use to describe it. Precarious might be the word that best describes my feelings these days.
So many people I talk to are filled with fear, even dread, almost afraid to look at the news and at the same time unable to look away from it. The words I hear are “grief”, “despair”, “bereft”, just “sad”.
We also find ourselves in the middle of Sukkot. A rabbinical student I know described it as, “a holiday where we are especially aware of human vulnerability in the face of our changing climate and our dependence on regular rainfall, the changing of the seasons, and healthy soil.”
Finally, we’ve also just followed the Jewish calendar through Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. In other years, many of us leave these holidays with greater resolve to do better by the people in our lives and by the divine power that animates our lives. For many of us in the climate movement, we come away from the high holidays resolved to work more diligently on behalf of all life and our sacred mother, the Earth.
How do we hold all these feelings? What can we do to express them? How, particularly, do we keep the wolf of despair from our door? How do we keep hope alive?
My own antidote for despair is action, keeping my mind, my heart, and my body engaged in trying to fix the causes of despair. This is how I keep the flame of hope alive.
Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian sociologist famous for his quote that the medium is the message, less-famously also said, “There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” If there was ever an all-hands-on-deck moment, it’s this one. The good news… yes, there is good news, is that there are so many ways to work to confront the causes of our despair. Our small but mighty JCAN NYC offers multiple pathways for taking meaningful action in our city and in our state. Let me share one way you can take action right now; action that can literally help shape the future.
My mantra for the past year has been “Election work is climate work”. While I won’t go so far as to say that HaShem heard me (though I wouldn’t rule it out either) a new, national, Jewish climate group called Dayenu: A Jewich Call to Climate Action appeared on the scene and kicked off Chutzpah 2020, a text banking (Tuesdays) and phone banking (Thursdays) campaign to invite the Jewish community to help elect politicians who see that we’re heading into the abyss of climate chaos and who are committed to take bold action on the day they are sworn into office.
I want to encourage you to join me in this work. Yes, phone banking is uncomfortable for a lot of people, but it makes a difference when you help a person (or a hundred people) work through a voting plan, particularly in the face of all the efforts to discredit and sow doubt about this election's voting process. I also want to say that in this moment, please consider stretching outside your comfort zone – we need more people who will step into discomfort. This moment asks that of us all. If you’re intimidated by phone banking (and, again, please give it a shot), then sign up for text banking. I’m partnering with Dayenu to train new Chutzpah 2020 volunteers on the process of texting and calling and will make sure you are well trained and well supported. Sign up to volunteer for an event.
Yes, this is a moment unlike any other. Everything is on the line – the future is in fact on the line. Let’s all take meaningful action, stretch ourselves, push ourselves to do just a little bit more, and do it in community with people who are also trying to keep hope alive. Individually we are a drop, together we’re an ocean.
Jeff Levy-Lyons
JCAN NYC Steering Committee Member