This article appeared in the Sept. 7, 2012 Jewish Advocate.

Earth Etudes for Elul offer introspective guide to the Holy Days

By Susie Davidson

Special to the Advocate

At Ma’yan Tikvah in Wayland, the furnishings are trees and bushes, the floor is dirt and the ceiling is the sky.

As the High Holidays approach, members of this shul without walls pay particular attention to the nature that surrounds them as they search their souls.

“Summer is still with us, and the warm days and early evenings convey a sense of urgency, for we also know that the call of the shofar not far away,” said Rabbi Katy Z. Allen, who founded the congregation. “It is time to begin to prepare, to unpack, unearth, and explore, to be ready to engage with the One on the holiest days of the year.”

Continuing a tradition she began last year, Allen is posting on the congregation’s blog a series of divrei Earth – teachings that connect Earth and Torah. She calls them “Earth Etudes for Elul,” the month of repentance leading up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. What follows are excerpts, beginning with one by the rabbi, “The Earth is Crying Out in Pain”:

The Earth is crying out in pain. Yet, its beauty and mystery shine forth, ever ready to calm us, inspire us, strengthen us, and remind us of our smallness in Creation. … Eagerly we bite into the delicious bounty of the late summer harvest. In awe we gain inspiration from the night sky, a sudden and unexpected rainbow, a brilliant sunset.

The Earth is crying out in pain. Yet, we climb in our cars and drive to the mall, spewing noxious chemicals into the air as we go. We buy what we need and what we want, gobbling up the Earth’s limited resources, entering eagerly or reluctantly into our consumer culture that tells us that this object will make us happier. …

The Earth is crying out in pain. Day after day, images flash across our TV and computer screens of floods and fires and famine and drought and war. We hear catastrophic predictions of the impact of climate change on our planet. …

The Rule of Context and its subset the Broken Windows Theory: … If the subway station is dirty and urine-soaked and the windows of nearby abandoned buildings are broken, no matter how upstanding we consider ourselves, we are more inclined to litter, to evade paying our fares, and even to commit a crime.

Bystander Syndrome: If we collapse of a heart attack in a public place we are more likely to get help if just one person is nearby than if there are one hundred. …

The Earth is crying out in pain. How can we fix the Earth’s “broken windows” and fill its “abandoned buildings” so that we stop committing crimes against it? How do we find the courage to be the first to stop and help the fallen stranger, our planet?

The Earth is crying out in pain. As we engage in teshuvah, as we re-turn, as we turn again and again and again toward all that is holy in life, let us hear the Earth’s cry and not be afraid. … Let us find the courage and the strength to stop rushing and to extend a helping hand to the broken Earth. Let us remember that although we may not be guilty, we are responsible.

Enfold me, Earth,” by Carol Reiman

Enfold me, earth,

Entwine your thick limbs

With mine;

Lift me up above

Your blushing beauty,

Opening me to your new day.

Show me how to know you

As we whisper in each other’s ear –

Willow rustle,

Sizzling spray upon the sand;

How I meant to help,

How I hurt you,

How we can heal

In easy forgiveness,

How I can keep you as

You keep me – whole. …

In Genesis we read that G-d places Adam in the garden “to serve it and to guard it.” In the rabbinic imagination there are many possibilities for what this description could mean. It could mean that the first human was given the practical task of keeping the garden watered so that plants would grow, or perhaps of protecting the vegetation of the garden by keeping the animals out of it. However I think there may be another, more thrilling motive to explore in imagining why this task is the task first given to human beings. …

Being connected to a piece of land over a period of time gives us constant opportunities for noticing, not just the big, beautiful changes like bursts of colors when the perennials pop up for the first time, but the subtle day to day or even hour to hour changes of seedlings growing, working their way up through the soil, unfurling tender green leaves and pulsing down grounding white roots.

Tending a garden can helps us to learn the value of patience, of waiting and watching and letting things happen in their own natural time. Over the cycle of the year the garden teaches us to understand that change and growth are constantly happening. … Tending a garden gives us the opportunity to be in contact with the inspiring strength and humbling fragility of life, and can help us to understand our place in the nature. …

There is an intrinsic relationship between cultivating the soil and cultivating the self. As we work on transforming the earth on behalf of plants, we are, ourselves transformed. Perhaps what we are meant to be serving and guarding is not only the garden, but also the nefesh, the soul.

This High Holy Day season, may we have the courage and strength to till and to tend our own souls. May we clear away the weeds that no longer serve us, may we have patience as the seeds within us germinate, and may this work cause the garden within us to flourish.

In his master work “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” Thoreau, largely credited as a forefather of the environmental movement, was issuing a dire warning that progress can, ultimately, lead to enslavement. He sensed that for all the conveniences that new modes of transportation, farming, communication and manufacturing could provide, we would ultimately become, for all intents and purposes, mere cogs entwined in our machinery. … One wonders if he could even have foreseen the detrimental effects of industry we have come to know - increased pollution, overuse of finite resources, and even global warming.

I could not help but think of Thoreau’s quotation when I heard the new report by government scientists naming this July officially the hottest month in the recorded weather history of the contiguous United States. This came as little surprise to many, given the current drought affecting two-thirds of the country and the generally scorching conditions across the continent. Indeed, three of the five hottest months in the history books have been recent: 2012, 2011 and 2006. It is no wonder that NASA scientist James Hansen has declared that we are now, definitively, in the midst of climate change.

In Midrash Kohelet Raba 7:28, we read: “When G-d created the first man. he took him and showed him all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said to him, ‘See my works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are. And everything that I created, I created it for you. Be careful not to spoil or destroy my world – for if you do, there will be nobody after you to repair it.’”

… In light of our Biblical teachings, we must nonetheless continue to respect the earth even when we feel we are but a tiny cog in the wheel of grinding, impetuous humanity. As stated in Pirkei Avot 2:21, attributed to Rabbi Tarfon, “It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work [of perfecting the world], but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.”