On November 20th, Jeff Levy-Lyons and I co-facilitated a virtual gathering on the topic: “What We Mean When We Talk About Climate Justice: Preparing for Jewish Climate Action.” Our aim was to connect Jewish teachings and values to the issue of climate justice, and to inspire Jews living in New York State to take bold communal action, specifically to embrace the work needed now to fully fund the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (the CLCPA).
In talking about climate justice, we started with the idea that climate change impacts different people differently and that these differences are not simply happenstance. Rather, historical and societal oppressions are at play that place some communities in greater danger. These communities are hit first and worst by climate change and lack the resources needed to mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis.
Luz Velez, a woman who had come to my attention through my research on this issue, lives in one of these communities. Luz suffers from severe respiratory illness as a direct result of environmental factors such as pollution unfairly foisted on her black and Latinx neighborhood in Buffalo. For Luz, the poor housing stock in her community translates into black mold and an uninsulated home which exacerbate her health issues. To further illustrate the impact of climate injustice I also shared stories about the disparate effects of extreme heat, storms and flooding on communities within New York.
As Jews, we have many points of reference from our tradition and our teachings that can help us understand the oppression that individuals like Luz face and to gather the strength to fight injustice. At our meeting, I shared two stories from the Torah which have great meaning for me–the first concerns our bondage in Egypt and subsequent redemption. Our liturgy and our holidays consistently point to the Exodus story in which individuals, such as Moses, who overcomes his feelings of inadequacy to stand up and speak up for an oppressed people, and Shiphrah and Puah, the two midwives who, despite their fear, defy Pharaoh's edict to kill Hebrew boys at birth and save the lives of Moses and other male infants. I believe that Moses, Shiphrah and Puah can serve as role models for us as we find our voices and dare to challenge a system that extracts resources from Mother Earth with utter disregard for the harm it causes to the planet and its inhabitants, especially those impacted by climate injustice.
We are also commanded in the Torah to love those who have been “othered” because we too were “othered” when we were slaves in Egypt. This story, then, not only points us inward, it also points us outward. We must love those who are “othered,” we must take note of them and hold them as precious human beings, and we must stand with them and fight alongside them as we fought for ourselves when we were oppressed.
The second story I shared at our meeting takes place when we stood at Mount Sinai and entered into a covenant with God and with each other. If the Exodus story is a story of liberation from– from slavery, from oppression, from greed, from de-humanization and from being “othered,” the story of standing at Har Sinai is the story of moving towards– towards covenant, towards commitment, towards partnership, towards relationship, towards balance and reciprocity, towards justice. At Sinai, we accepted a radically new way of doing things–despite our fear of the unknown, we moved forward.
As we travel forward in time, from slavery in Egypt and standing at Mount Sinai thousands of years ago to New York State today let’s take our collective memory, experience and understanding as Jews to inspire us to follow in the footsteps of our ancestors to find our voices and to choose bold action, despite our fear and uncertainty. We are fortunate to live in a state whose residents fought hard and ultimately prevailed in pushing our representatives to pass landmark climate legislation in 2019, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, also known as the CLCPA.
The name of this legislation reflects central Jewish values that are needed at this time. Regarding, “leadership,” the world is in dire need of bold leadership to tackle the climate crisis, and, as Moses, Shiphrah and Puah demonstrated, each of us, no matter how small we may feel standing up to the most powerful industry the world has ever known, can each find our voice from deep within and stand up as leaders in this fight for our planet. As for “community protection,” the term reminds us of the Jewish value of loving those who have been “othered” and ensuring that they and their needs are centered as we move forward in building a world that is sustainable and just for all.
The task this year is to fully fund the CLCPA so that we can rapidly bring down emissions, build out renewables, and invest in communities, especially low income communities and communities of color, that have been hit hardest by the climate crisis. The campaign that was launched a couple of weeks ago by NY Renews, the Climate Jobs and Justice Package, champions a number of bills designed to fund each component of the CLCPA by raising capital and empowering state agencies to build renewables and shut down fossil fuel infrastructure. Those who join this campaign will be making calls to and meeting with elected officials, showing up at rallies across the state, and participating in social media days of action in order to get these bills passed. Let’s show up to these actions as Jews, with a strong sense of who we are, where we come from and what kind of a world we want to build.
As we prepare to celebrate Chanukah and light candles next week, let us re-commit to finding more ways to bring light, hope and possibility into the darkness and transform our world.
- By Rachel Landsberg