reclaiming Jew as am ha'aretz

For the past 2,000 years, the Jewish social elite have been the learned folk. First among them, occupying the inner circle, are the rabbis. They are the keepers of the tradition, the arbiters of our sacred texts. But since rabbinic Judaism has a democratizing tug, almost anyone who chooses to learn, whether in the company of others or by themselves, is also be considered part of the elite, even if only on the margins.

The opposite end of the social spectrum is occupied by the so-called am ha-aretz, the intellectual boor, unlearned and crude in habit. They were considered not only ignorant of Jewish learning and Jewish law, but indifferent or perhaps antagonistic to it as well. Or at the very best, sloppy about keeping it.

But here's the thing: Am ha-aretz literally means the people of the land.

While the rabbis epitomize the people of the book, the life of the mind, the timeless and placeless pursuit of religious imagination and learning, the amei ha-aretz are associated with land, the earth, the body located in time and place.

These two are complementary elements of life. They are the aleph (eretz) and taf (Torah), the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Life can exist only in the combination of the two, when lived nestled between the two. Yet somewhere along the way, they became severed from each other.

Even back in the talmudic period, when Jews still lived in Israel and were mostly comfortable in Babylonia, the rift between the rabbinic class (the haverim - the "brethren," the initiated) and the amei ha-aretz (the distrusted and sometimes reviled "lower class") was profound.

Internecine divisions are clearly nothing new for Jews. But my point for the moment is not how we must overcome class distinctions and name-calling, as important a subject as that is. My point on this blog is to call for a reclamation, a redemption, of the very idea of am ha-aretz.

First of all, we as a people have returned to our land. We are literally as much the people of the land - especially today - as we are the people of the book. We need to burnish both sides of this coin of identity: the mind and the body, the intellect and the labor.

Even more, we need to reconnect with the romance and appreciation of the land itself. All land. Nature. The Jewish people were nurtured on the land of Israel: its geography, its images, its trees, its watercourses, its climate, its produce, its agricultural laws. Our religious cradle, our spiritual expression was bound up in nature. The vocabulary with which we spoke to God was that of nature: the first of the harvest, the first of our flocks, the final harvest all were taken up to Jerusalem to celebrate with our people. We are bidden not to go to Jerusalem empty-handed, for the bounty of our land was a demonstrated of our bondedness with God.

Now more than ever, we need to remember that part of our heritage. Now, when humanity has the capacity not just to degrade one area, one region, one watershed, but the entire earth, Jews must reclaim the lofty and sacred name Am Ha-aretz, the people of the land. It will change the way we think of ourselves, what we teach in our seminaries, our day schools and synagogues. It will expand our legal categories and impact the questions we ask of our laws. It will inform our behavior, enhance our lives, help heal the earth and reconnect us to the sacred traditions of our landed past.

Interestingly, the phrase am ha-aretz was a laudable title in the biblical world. How appropriate for this generation, then, to renew it even as in doing so, it promises to renew us.

The Future

Sarah Saxon is a senior at Roland Park Country School working as a BJEN intern this spring. She authored this guest entry.

When I was little I used to think that the only thing that could jeopardize the future of the planet, thus my future, was that the sun was going to explode…eventually. As I got older, in school I started to learn about the infamous green house gasses and the hole in the ozone layer. I learned that the polar ice caps are going to melt and the sea level will rise flooding the coastal states…some day. These things always seemed so far away to me and really not that bad; considering I would already be gone by the time the sun exploded, and if the coastal states flooded I would move inland.

But now I (and the entire world) am faced with an immediate problem that really will affect my future in a drastic way. The truth is I am terrified by what might be the future of this planet. I am terrified by the fact that a large percent of the general public, including corporate executives and officials, know and understand the dangers of their actions and just carry on in their merry way like nothing is happening.

We are using up the world’s resources, we are wasting half of the resources we use, we are polluting the air and water, and all the while becoming less and less humane. So the question is, how can we get word out about what to do to fix this problem? How can we convince people that they need to start changing the way they think about things?

The media is always a good way, but it is not necessarily as effective as we would like it to be. Take a movie, for example. How about “An Inconvenient Truth”. Yes it did have a huge effect on the public, and Al Gore even won the Nobel Peace Prize for his effort. But, how many people are still talking about it today?

I think it is more effective to start small. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Lead by example. I have a friend who never used to recycle. He saw me doing it a lot and he started to become more conscious of the things he was throwing away. Of course he did have a little extra encouragement from me. We were at a restaurant the other day and he saved a plastic bottle just so he could take it home and recycle it. I was a little dumbfounded actually. You never know how much your actions can affect other people. That’s why it is important to set a good example.

Sometimes when I write for this blog, my fear about the future of our society and the planet is somewhat assuaged. I know there are people out there, especially those of you reading this, who genuinely care, like me, about the future and the environment. I urge you to set the example for your friends and family. Maybe they will catch onto it too.

india's farmers go organic

In case you missed this amazing story, it seems that 300,000 farmers in India are bucking the fossil fuel/artificial fertilizer trend of the past 40 years that both degraded the soil and put them into debt to companies such as Monsanto, and returning to the "old fashioned" way of organic farming. India's leaders are calling for scientists to do a rigorous study of the best practices for various regions so that soil, harvest yield and standard of living all continue to rise. A fascinating development we should all keep our eyes on. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104708731

on stamps and due dates

Shavuot is a time to be awash in words. So, to oblige this tradition, and to be well tucked in for the holiday with a riotous companionship of words, I paid a visit to the Johns Hopkins University Eisenhower library.

One of the things I like most about the place, besides their enormous collection, is the way they check out books. They have a hand-held dispenser that adheres a tiny tag with the due date right on the back of the book. The most obvious advantage to this triviality is that you know when the book is due at a glance. Once upon a time, this piece of knowledge was available on any library book. You could look inside - or more recently outside - any borrowed book and know when it was due. It was stamped right there with the date. The convenience of this no doubt was unheralded but nonetheless welcome. I dare say it may also have aided the timely return of borrowed books. Unlike today, when even a thorough inspection of most public library books will not reveal the secrets to avoid overdue fines. Instead, the due date is most likely crumbled up somewhere on that little tasteless receipt that substitutes for the satisfying plunk of a stamp. At best the receipt is lost in a sea of papers at home or more likely lying wounded and discarded in the landfill with other tossed receipts for cold medicine and gum. How ignoble a fate for a badge of borrowed wisdom, a prod to keep one's promise, and a symbol of communal trust and belonging.

For that is what libraries and their stock in trade, books, represent. To borrow a book is to temporarily be entrusted with a piece of communal wealth, whose use we are granted, serially and individually, just for the moment. When we are done, we are return the book, no worse for the wear, indeed perhaps better infused as it is with our spiritual patina, so it may be sent on to the next member of society. Libraries are symbols of this bonding we have, one with the other, a shared ownership that reveals - or at least hints at - shared interests, with at least a few others in the neighborhood.

The record of due dates could tell us that. We could see how popular the book was, how often it was taken out and how frequently. We could imagine this book in other hands, on other laps, playing in the imagination of other minds. We would know that this book had a life before we handled it, that someone read and took care of it, and then passed it back so we could enjoy it too. And we would know that we too are not the last to lay claim to this book but that we must tend well to it and send it back so that others after us may take it home for a while. We would be reminded of this all because of the quiet cascade of dates on the cover.

Today, we check out a book with the same heartless routine with which we purchase a consumable: scan the UPC and get a receipt. A transaction solely between consumer and machine.

JHU library, on the other hand, still affords that bit of humanity in checking out their books. Past due dates are visible on the back of the boks. These bits of seemingly disembodied information place us not only in physical communion with our neighbors and their appetites, even if only in our imagination, but they also remind us of the value of communal structures. No one of us could readily possess all those bounded volumes of words and graphics. And even if they did, what good would it be to hoard them?

I learn five lessons of life and sustainability from this quaint tradition of stamping due dates on books.

(1) It reminds us that we are all in this together. That all property is in some sense common property, that it all comes from a common source and will return to the common source, no matter how long we ardently profess to exclusively possess it. We therefore have the obligation to treat it well, not to degrade the principal, so that others after us will find stocked shelves just as we did.

(2) We may not always know when the due date is, but there is always a due date. We must always ultimately relinquish our "books" back to the source.

(3) That just as the wisdom and generosity of others built the library, so we must continue to add and build for others.

(4) That hoarding - be it knowledge, wisdom, possessions, wealth of any nature - is not only unkind, it is wasteful. What good are all those books if they are locked on the shelves? What value has knowledge or wealth if it is not used for the benefit of others?

(5) There must be some commonly-agreed upon, artful mechanism for sharing, returning, borrowing and organizing, else all would be chaos, fighting ensue, and great potential would be squandered. Though not everyone can have everything all the time, neither do we all need everything all the time. Therefore, we would not feel compelled to personally possess, and hoard, so much if we knew there were good stewards, whom we supported and guided, who were taking care of these precious, shared resources. Both for our generation's use, and for those who come after us.

All this from a silent witness to our shared source of plenty, if we but keep its trust: a running list of dates of when this book is due.

William McDonough

Sarah Saxon is a senior at Roland Park Country School working as a BJEN intern this spring. She authored this guest entry.

In 2006, a man named William McDonough came to speak at my school. I have to give some credit to him on this blog, because his speech introduced me to the world of environmentalism, and he had a very profound impact on my way of thinking.

There are two main things I remember about his speech (Besides the fact he is a very persuasive speaker):

1. “Waste is Food” – This is one point that William McDonough mentioned multiple times. He talked about the cycle of stuff. And by stuff, I literally mean stuff. McDonough talked about a circular pattern off stuff instead of the linear pattern that exists today. This is both in the technological world and the environmental world. McDonough’s idea is that we should eliminate the idea of waste all together (not just reduce it). For example, why shouldn’t we be able to use our TV until it is too old, go back to the TV supplier, turn it in, and say “I would like a new one please?” Then the supplier could use parts from the old TV for something else.

2. “All children of all species for all time” – The other thing that McDonough mentioned that really stuck with me, is that the point of making the world better isn’t just about helping humans, it’s about creating a safe place to live for “all children of all species of all time”. To me, this pretty much covers it. If we strive to make a place that is safe for all children of all species of all time, we haven’t let anyone out.

In the time since McDonough spoke at my school (3 years ago), I like the rest of the general public have become a lot more aware of the environmental issues that exist today (besides global warming and greenhouse gases). I have also become a lot more aware of the political side of “saving the environment”.

I have learned more about William McDonough and his effort to help the environment. He talks about “remaking the way we make things” (in his book Cradle to Cradle) and “the Second Industrial Revolution”. McDonough states that the first industrial revolution was what got us into this mess and second one will be about getting us out of it. Both, he claims, are simply about design.

If you don’t know or haven’t heard anything about William McDonough, I suggest looking him up. He is very insightful. You may not agree with everything he says; he is very strong willed. However, I think he has a lot of good things to say.

LEED Certification

Sarah Saxon is a senior at Roland Park Country School working as a BJEN intern this spring. She authored this guest entry.

When I was brainstorming with Rabbi Cardin about some of the things I could talk about as a guest writer on the blog, we came up with the idea of the new athletic complex at my school. In particular, the new types of landscaping and water management systems that have been employed. When my school reconstructed the building and surrounding area, they made sure it was LEED certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. Some examples of LEED criteria involve storm water management, building orientation, irrigation and use of potable water, and resources involved in building construction.

The interesting thing about our athletic complex is how we went about dealing with some of the criteria. First of all, I have to say that the school did not just reconstruct our gym. They took the two grass fields next to the gym and turned them into turf fields. Also, they did a lot of new landscaping. And, second of all, the school had to do all of this keeping in mind that there is a natural habitat (which we call the back woods) that exists behind the building.

Here is the # 1 coolest fact about the new landscaping – it does not require any irrigation. What most people don’t realize is that if you plant flora that is native to the area in which it is being planted, it does not need to be watered. It is already acclimated the natural climate.

Here is the # 1 coolest fact about the new storm water management system - the two turf fields I mentioned above, both have cisterns underneath of them. When it rains, the storm water is absorbed by the fields, filtered, and then stored in the cisterns. The cisterns then release the storm water slowly out into the back woods over time.

Landscaping and storm water management are both very important when considering a building’s effect on the environment. Non-native landscaping uses a lot of unnecessary water that comes right from the municipal water supply. And, poor storm water management can lead to serious soil erosion and runoff.

Bittersweet Truth

Sarah Saxon is a senior at Roland Park Country School working as a BJEN intern this spring. She authored this guest entry.

My parents recently cancelled the newspaper. Their decision to do so was mainly because the paper was becoming more expensive yet contained less material by the day. They also cancelled the newspaper because these days you can find everything about the news online.

From the environmentalist’s point of view this great! Today’s progressive society is constantly coming up with new and improved ways to reduce the use of natural resources; such as the trees that go into making a news paper. However, this triumph is bittersweet.

What about the traditions that we lose? What about being to wake up every morning, opening the newspaper (with coffee cup in hand), and reading the comics?

Sometimes I feel like because we are in the “age of technology”, we lose sight of the simple things in life that make it quirky and unique. Environmentalism doesn’t necessarily have to be such a serious business. These days it is so easy to get caught up in changing your everyday life for the greater good.

So my advice is: don’t lose sight of the simple things. It’s good to keep the environment in mind when buying something or wasting something, etc., but it is not good to lose sight of what makes you happy. If you like reading the newspaper, then read the newspaper. Just make sure you recycle it. Don’t change to an online paper because you think you need to, change because you want to.