This past April, when NYC was the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, JCAN-NYC joined (virtually) the global environmental movement to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. It was a bit hard to feel celebratory, but also a good time for the Jewish community to reflect on what environmentalists have been doing for the past 50 years and to help us reimagine our place in that work.
Of course, we happen to be living through a preview of the kinds of impacts that we’ve been warned will become more of the new normal if we fail to mitigate the worst effects of a warming planet. At the same time, we draw strength remembering all those who have celebrated 50 Earth Days with meaningful action. Those efforts haven’t been nearly enough, nor have they included sufficient numbers from the Jewish community, but they call to us to rededicate ourselves to this work.
I want to lift up the work of addressing environmental injustice, or climate justice as it’s more frequently called. Long before this virus came to our shores and hit our most vulnerable communities hardest, brown, black, and Hispanic communities had long been breathing bad air, living closest to polluting sites, and struggling to stay cool in heat islands. This is environmental injustice and the impacts are very real and paint an ominous picture of what lies ahead if the climate crisis unfolds unchecked.
These vulnerable communities need to be at the center of environmental work. As Jewish climate activists, who are predominantly white and likely privileged, this understanding will lead us to expand our circle of concern to these neighboring communities and build stronger alliances with them. We need to work on behalf of all humanity.
But I want to invite us to expand our circle of concern even wider. The celebration is called Earth Day, not People Day. It asks us to include all life and the planet itself in our work. As Jews, it asks us to be Shomrei adamah (guardians of the Earth), to remember and restore our reverence for the planet; to see it as a living dynamic being, having value far beyond what it can provide us; and to give it love and care for its own sake.
When we drain a wetland to build a strip mall, we are desecrating the planet and damaging its vital organs. When we cut down a forest, we are attacking the very tissues of our sacred home. These ecosystems support millions of species that are now dying out in staggering numbers. And, of course, when we extract and burn oil and gas, we are changing the delicate balance of our climate that makes life possible on Earth. However, when we see ourselves as being in some way deployed by the divine to do climate justice, we include and even center the Earth within our circle of concern. Science gives us the facts, but we need faith to be clear of purpose. We must marry the sacred and the secular, and that is the call to the Jewish people in this time of COVID-19 and climate change.
We now stand on the shoulders of those who have honored 50 Earth Days with the hard work of changing how we live on this planet. It’s our turn now. Rather than fighting against the world we don’t want, let’s create a vision of the world we do want, where all the creatures of the Earth, and the Earth itself, are held in our hearts with love, and we live in community with all life. Love and reverence can be the renewable energy, the regenerative power that will show us the way out of our current plight and create a real inheritance for all who come after us.
Jeff Levy-Lyons
Climate activist and member of Jewish Climate Action Network NYC Steering Committee