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Today we mourn the death of Dr. George Tiller, a physician who has been murdered for making it possible for women to actually use their constitutional right to choose an abortion. All honor to Dr.Tiller, who joins the list of martyrs for ethical decency and human rights, killed for healing with compassion. Dr. Tiller is a religious martyr in the fullest classical sense,  killed in his own church as he arrived to worship, killed for acting in accord with his religious commitments and his moral and ethical choices. (The American Jewish Congress has also condemned this murder). And all dishonor to those vicious attackers like Bill O’Reilly who have egged on the kind of violent acts that finally murdered Dr. Tiller.  And who have blasphemously invoked the name of God to justify these incitements to murder.  The Torah’s only comment on abortion makes utterly clear that it is not murder.  (In Exodus 21:22-23 we read that if someone causes an abortion but does no other harm to the mother, the agent owes a monetary recompense to the father for the loss of his potential offspring. If the mother is killed, however, a life has been killed. This passage makes clear that while the fetus is a potential person, not just tissue, it is not considered to be a human being.) I recognize that other religious traditions do claim abortion is murder, but I both disagree with their theology and think they have no right to impose it on mine,  by state power or by murder. Two real-life cases of abortion have shaped my judgement of the practice. One of these real-life cases of abortion happened in my own family. My father’s mother-my grandmother–had already birthed five young boys when she became pregnant again in 1914.  She hoped to be able to concentrate her energy on raising those five instead of birthing more. Because abortions were illegal, she had a "back-alley" abortion–and it killed her.  So she was unable to raise any of them.  Her early death cast a shadow over my father’s life till his own dying day. The second case is that one of my friends and teachers, a great and eminent rabbi, who was the child of a mother who fled Vienna after Hitler annexed Austria. His mother was pregnant when the family needed to leave, and they knew that the underground "railroad" to freedom was bound to be too arduous for a  pregnant woman. The choices were: staying in Austria, to die together; leaving her behind, to die alone; or aborting the fetus, so that all of the family had a chance to live. She had an abortion. Today my rabbi friend says they thought then and ever since that she had given birth to the whole family. I wish that President Obama, when he spoke at Notre Dame,  had said explicitly what these stories teach me: that women are moral beings, possessed of moral agency and responsibility in this unique situation where their own bodies are intertwined with another’s; and that the lives of women would be endangered if abortion were criminalized again. He chose instead to say only that the choices are difficult  and that unwanted pregnancies should be  minimized. The best way to minimize unwanted pregnancies would be if our culture and our government stopped running away from talking about sex! The U.S. government should subsidize comprehensive sex education and the provision of free condoms, the pill,  and other contraceptives in all American high schools,  and should require health insurance companies to cover the cost of birth control and abortion. And I wish that religious communities would begin providing comprehensive sex education as their children reach adolescence (and probably for adults as well). In the Jewish community, sex education should be part of the preparation for bar/ bat mitzvah. In fact, the ancient rabbis linked sexual maturity with adulthood. Rabbis originally defined the moment when a boy became an adult bound by the sacred commitments of mitzvot as the day when he had two pubic hairs. At some later point, the rabbis said that instead of checking individuals, they would settle on thirteen years and one day for all boys. But the point about puberty and sexual maturity was made. (Indeed, it is probably precisely because of the imperative need for ethical sexual behavior beginning with the onset  of sexual maturity that the rabbis thought Jews should at that point be bound by the mitzvot.) Unfortunately, in modern Jewish life this teaching is prudishly ignored.  What rabbi have you heard ever address the new Jewish adult and the adult community about sexual ethics, as part of the public ceremony of welcoming him/ her as a bar/bat mitzvah? Time to renew this ancient teaching! We will have fewer unwanted pregnancies, and less need for abortion.

Even so, abortion will still be necessary at times-to save the life of the mother, to save the mental health of a woman who has been raped, to allow a woman to live a full life she would not otherwise have if she birthed. And so we need more heroes like Dr. Tiller, who will stand ready to protect this important right. May his memory be a blessing.

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That’s the most secret Question at the Seder – nobody even asks it. And it’s got the most secret answer: none. The Haggadah explains about matzah, the bread that was baked so quick and came out so dry it blocks your insides for a week. The Haggadah explains about the horseradish, so bitter it blows the lid off your lungs and makes breathing so painful you wish you could just stop. The Haggadah even explains about that scrawny chicken neck or beet masquerading as a whole roast lamb. But it never explains charoset. Yes, there’s an oral tradition. (Fitting for something that tastes so delicious!) You’ve probably heard somebody at a Passover Seder claim that charoset is the mortar the ancient Israelite slaves had to paste between the bricks and stones of those giant warehouses they were building for Pharaoh. But that’s a cover story. Really dumb. You think that mortar was so sweet, so spicy, so delicious that every ancient Israelite just had to slaver some mortar on his tongue? You think it wasn’t leeks and onions they wailed for after their waters broke and they were born or borne across the Sea of Blood, but the mortar they were pasting on their masters’ mansions? You think they were whining, "Give me mortar or give me death?" Forbid it, Almighty God! OK, maybe it’s a midrash? Those bitter-hearted rabbis, always fresh from some pogrom or exile, claiming that to the Israelites, slavery was sweet? So sweet that it reminds us that slavery may taste sweet, and this is itself a deeper kind of slavery? No. The oral tradition transmitted by charoset is not by word of mouth but taste of mouth. A kiss of mouth. A full-bodied, full-tongued, "kisses sweeter than wine" taste of mouth. Charoset is an embodiment of by far the sexiest, kissiest, bodyest book of the Hebrew Bible —- the Song of Songs. (Check out the translations by Marcia Falk, by Chana and Ariel Bloch , and by Shefa Gold.) Charoset is literally a full-bodied taste of the Song. The Song is the recipe for charoset. X-rated Charoset

You think they were going to tell you that when you were six years old, just learning how to stumble through "Mah nishtanah"? Or maybe when you were fourteen, just beginning to eye that curvy cousin sitting right across the table, so lubricious you couldn’t even ask for the chicken breast without moaning? Or maybe the year you first noticed the drawings in that Haggadah where half-naked Pharoah’s servants were whipping the half-naked, well-muscled Israelite slaves? Or the ones where Miram and half-naked Pharaoh’s daughter were swimming in the Nile, ducking each other and giggling while they saved little Moses and tried to convince old Pharaoh he wasn’t their baby? Or maybe when you were 34 and they were all nagging you to settle down already, get married–that’s when you thought they might finally tell the truth about charoset? Or 52, when they were so embarrassed about your mid-life "crisis" and its little fling–just the moment for nibbling on the spicy raisins of the woman whose breasts were like twin fawns in beds of flowers, the man whose ivory belly held bright gems of sweet delight? Face it: They were never going to tell you. Maybe they might mention that the olden rabbis thought the Song of Songs should be recited during the festival of Passover, but quickly they’d explain it was about God’s loving effort to free the Israelites from Pharaoh. Indeed, they’d mutter, if you think you notice "two breasts" mentioned, it’s really about Moses and Aaron. After all, who could God want more to love, to suckle, than those heroes of freedom? Time to tell the passionate truth:  The Song of Songs is the recipe for charoset.

The Song of Charoset

Verses from the Song: "Feed me with apples and with raisin-cakes; "Your kisses are sweeter than wine; "The scent of your breath is like apricots; "Your cheeks are a bed of spices; "The fig tree has ripened; "Then I went down to the walnut grove." There are several kinds of freedom that we celebrate on Pesach: –The freedom of people who rise up against Pharaoh, the tyrant. –The freedom of earth, the flowers  that rise up against winter. –The freedom of birth, of the lambs who trip and stagger in their skipping-over  dance. –The freedom of sex, that rises up against the prunish and prudish. The text of the Song subtly, almost secretly, bears the recipe for charoset, and we might well see the absence of any specific written explanation of charoset as itself a subtle, secret pointer toward the "other" liberation of Pesach — the erotic loving freedom celebrated in the Song of Songs, which we are taught to read on Passover. The Song of Songs is sacred not only to Jews, but also to Christians and to Muslims, and especially to the mystics in all three traditions. Its earth-and-human-loving erotic energy has swept away poets and rabbis, lovers and priests, dervishes and gardeners. Yet this sacred power–"Love is strong as death," sings the Song–has frightened many generations into limiting its power. Redefining its flow as a highly structured allegory, or hiding it from the young, or forbidding it from being sung in public places.   Even so, long tradition holds that on the Shabbat in the middle of Passover, Jews chant the Song of Songs. Why is this time of year set aside for this extraordinary love poem? At one level, because it celebrates the springtime rebirth of life. And the parallel goes far deeper. For the Song celebrates a new way of living in the world. The way of love between the earth and her human earthlings, beyond the future of conflict between them that accompanies the end of Eden. The way of love between women and men, with women celebrated as leaders and initiators, beyond the future of subjugation that accompanies the end of Eden. The way of bodies and sexuality celebrated, beyond the future of shame and guilt that accompanies the end of Eden. The way of God so fully present in the whole of life that God needs no specific naming (for in the Song, God’s name is never mentioned). The way of adulthood, where there is no Parent and there are no children. No one is giving orders, and no one obeys them. Rather there are grownups, lovers–unlike the domination and submission that accompany the end of Eden. In short, Eden for grown-ups. For a grown-up human race. Whereas the original Garden was childhood, bliss that was unconscious, unaware, the Garden of the Song is maturity. Death is known, conflict is recognized (as when the heroine’s brothers beat her up), yet joy sustains all. So the "recipe" points us toward apples, quinces, raisins, apricots, figs, nuts, wine. Within the framework of the free fruitfulness of the earth, the "recipe" is free-form: no measures, no teaspoons, no amounts. Not even a requirement for apples rather than apricots, cinnamon rather than cloves, figs rather than dates. So there is an enormous breadth for the tastes that appeal to Jews from Spain, Poland, Iraq, India, America. Nevertheless, I will offer a recipe. RECIPE 1 pound raw, shelled almonds 2 pounds organic raises 1 bottle red wine ½ pound organic apricots 2 red apples (chopped) 5-6 figs 5-6 dates, pitted 1 tsp cinnamon or to taste ¼ tsp nutmeg or to taste ¼ tsp cloves or to taste  (if you don’t have cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, use 1 ½ tsp of "pumpkin pie spice) Either in an electric blender, or your great-grandmom’s cast-iron hand-wound gefulte-fish chopper brought from the Old Country, feed in almonds and raisins in about equal amounts (the point is to make sure the whole thing doesn’t get stuck). Whenever you feel like it, pour in some wine to lubricate the action. Stop the action every once in a while to poke around and stir up the ingredients. Freely choose when to add apricots, apples, figs, and/or dates. Taste every ten minutes or so. If you start feeling giddy, good!–that’s the idea. When the mixture is the right texture, add in the spices. Clove is powerful, sweet and subtly sharp at the same time; a lot will get you just on the edge of dope. Keep stirring, keep chopping, keep dribbling wine — not till the charoset turns to paste but till there are still nubs of nuts, grains of raisin, suddenly a dollop of apricot spurting on your tongue. You say this doesn’t seem like a recipe, too free? Ahh — as the Song itself says again and again, "Do not stir up love until it pleases. Do not rouse the lovers till they’re willing." Serve at the Pesach Seder, and also on the night when you first make love to a delicious partner. And on your wedding night. And on every wedding anniversary. And every once in a while, but not too often, on a night when you simply want to celebrate and embody your love. Copyright © 2009 by Arthur Waskow.  Seder Plate by Ken Goldman

18 kilos of rough stone from the nearby fields – requires the entire family- to lift !

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Forty years – like the forty days of rain before the Flood, the forty days and nights that Moses and then Jesus fasted before their revelations, the forty years of travail in the wilderness, the forty weeks of human pregnancy  — signal a new generation, a time for a pregnant pause toward a new birthing. What now most needs a birthing?

The most profound issue facing the world today is the danger of climate catastrophe — "global scorching." So this year, we need a new Freedom Seder, one that will address the challenge of environmental disaster through the presence in the Passover story of the Ten Plagues.

Each of the plagues is an ecological disaster brought on by Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness, stubbornness, and addiction to his own power. Swarms of frogs and locusts, unprecedented hailstorms, rivers that become undrinkable, three days of sandstorm darkness so thick  it could be touched —  these disasters for the earth were intertwined with economic disasters for the people: workers impoverished into slaves, foreigners turned into pariahs. 

We must ask ourselves, what are the Ten Plagues being brought upon us by the institutional "pharaohs" of today? Who and what are these pharaohs? How can we heal these plagues  so that once more we can till a land flowing with milk and honey?

The Shalom Center plans to create the first New Freedom Seder this year in Washington Dc. We will focus on how to move past the top-down pharaonic powers that today are blocking the path toward a promised land of justice and sustainable community, nourished by sustainable sources of energy. We intend for this Seder-and others organized simultaneously around the country–to be not a one-time-only event but part of a process of ongoing organizing to prevent climate disaster and work for a just and sustainable economy.

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If you would like to attend the flagship 40th Anniversary New Freedom Seder held in Washington, DC, on March 29, 2009, please register here. To sponsor or take part in your Freedom Seder for the Earth in your own community, please write Awaskow@shalomctr.org and  register your Seder here

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Lead image by Avi Katz, supplied by the Shalom Center. Main article art by Harriete Estel Berman.

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Wouldn’t it seem strange if you discovered that April 15, Income Tax Day, had been transformed into a festival for celebrating God’s reemergence? Yet that is what the Kabbalists of Safed did in the sixteenth century when they recreated Tu B’Shvat, which Jews will celebrate this year on February 8-9. Tu B’Shvat, the full moon of mid-winter, had been important only in Holy Temple days as a tax day. It marked the end of the "fiscal year" for trees, the key capital investment in an agricultural society. Fruit that appeared  before that date was taxed for the previous year; fruit that appeared later, for the following year. But the Kabbalists saw this New Year for Trees as the New Year for the Tree of Life itself–for God’s Own Self, for the Tree Whose roots are in Heaven and Whose fruit is the world and all God’s creatures. To honor the reawakening of all trees and the continued presence of the Tree of Life, they created a mystical Seder that  honors the Four Worlds of Acting, Relating, Knowing, and Being. These Four Worlds were enacted with four cups of wine or grape juice and four courses of nuts and fruit. The fruit moved from less permeable to more permeable. 1. To represent Acting, those fruits with tough shells and soft, edible insides, e.g. walnuts were chosen. 2. For Relating, fruits with soft outsides and hard insides e.g. peaches were chosen. 3. For Knowing, those that are soft and edible all the way through e.g. figs were chosen. 4. And to represent Being, fruits are chosen that are so "permeable" they are not tangible at all and exist only on the plane of Spirit. The symbolic system of this Seder held still deeper riches: echoes of the generation and regeneration that occurs yearly in the worlds of plants and animals. Nuts and fruit are the only foods that require no death, not even the death of a plant. Our living trees send forth their fruit and seeds in such profusion that they overflow beyond the needs of the next generation. The Kabbalists of Safed saw that God’s shefa, or abundance, would keep flowing only if a portion of it were returned as rent to God, the Owner of all land and all abundance. And who were God’s rent collectors? The poor and the landless, including those priestly celebrants and teachers who owned no piece of earth and whose earthly task was to teach and celebrate. Spiritual knowledge was tied to social justice through the Tu B’Shvat ceremony: The Kabbalists of Safed said that to eat without blessing the Tree was robbery; to eat without feeding others was even worse! Because without blessing and sharing, the flow of abundance would choke and stop. Returning our Rent Today, the poor of the world are still in need; the teachers and celebrants of the world are still at risk. But now, in addition, the trees of the world are themselves in danger. So Tu B’Shvat today must become a time of action to feed the endangered earth as well as the endangered poor. Both are in danger from the poisonous overload of carbon dioxide and methane that human societies are pouring into God’s wind, the ruach ha’olam, and from the destruction of trees that soak up the CO2. Already the spreading desertification and resulting genocidal hyperviolence in Africa; the unprecedented drought in the state of Georgia; the melting of polar ice and of the Himalayan snows that give water to moré than a billion human beings; the diminishment of the Great Lakes so they can no longer bear the larger vessels that bring food to the world; the Katrina hurricane — all these are caused in part by the global climate crisis, global scorching. Earth, air, water, fire — all are in danger. So today Tu B’Shvat must once again change as it has in the past, becoming a day to act – to demand new laws and interrupt old destructions. We must use this day as a time to commit ourselves to restoring earth’s abundance. We must tax ourselves through our labor, our investments, and our activism in order to restore the natural balance we have upset. This tax will reap dividends. It has already in Illinois, where the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation (JRC)  of Evanston will be celebrating both the re-birthday of the trees, and the first birthday of the sustainable re-construction of their own synagogue. Led by Rabbi Brant Rosen, JRC has built an entirely new, deeply green, building for the congregation-so green  that it has been awarded LEED Certification at the Platinum Level by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) –  the highest level of certification for green architecture. JRC is the very first house of worship in the world to receive this designation. In recognition of this fact, JRC will receive The Shalom Center’s third annual Green Menorah Award. JRC did not originally set out to build a green building. In 1998, the congregation realized its building needed drastic repairs, and after an in-depth investigation of options they decided that the most cost-effective solution was to tear it down and rebuild. What made this rebuild different was that the congregation then took the extra step and invested a bit more time, money and energy to make the new building as green as it could be. Your synagogue does not need to rebuild to honor Tu B’Shvat, nor do you need to renovate your home. Small changes can make useful differences. Replace incandescent with fluorescent light bulbs; open windows instead of using conditioned air; replace garbage cans with a trio of cans for garbage, recycling and compost. The biggest differences require that we act as a community to change public policy. Create a Tu B’Shvat seder that incorporates time to write a letter to the local papers and political bloggers, calling on Congress to pass strong laws capping the emission of C02, to tax fuels according to the amount of carbon each fuel releases into the atmosphere (coal and oil, very high; solar and wind energy, very low), and to end subsidies for coal and oil while greatly increasing them for solar and wind research. (You can find a sample letter here) Give! Share! Act! Or the flow of abundance will choke on the friction of its own outpouring, and God’s Own Self will choke on our refusal of compassion.

Rabbi Waskow is director of The Shalom Center and the author of many books on Jewish practice, including Down-to-Earth Judaism and three others on the history and practice of co-Judaism.  Victoria Finlay is Communications Director of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC), which is especially active in the United Kingdom. 

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Any Lie To hang these people by, On a gallows high That they the quicker die! And if you ask me why, To make my Power high Higher Higher Higher

But deep inside the palace there was a truth-telling network who thought the king and the President of Vice were addicts of the drug called Power and were, in their drug-infested mania, endangering their country. This network called themselves VASHTI—Vigilant Affirmers of Security, Honor, Truth & Intelligence. In the original story, the king tried to force his queen Vashti to dance naked before a great banquet. She refused. But in our modern story, it was VASHTI who wanted to reveal the naked truth to a puzzled people, and the king who tried to stop them. So VASHTI released to an intrepid reporter (probably named Esther, or maybe Mordechai) the true intelligence about the vicious lies about the foreign peoples. And even then, the King and his President of Vice insisted they must attack the dangerous foreigners.

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The time has come to end this bloody farce. The peoples of Iran and the United States must insist their governments meet directly to take up all the issues between them, and come to a mutually respectful peace. And the people and government of Israel must learn from the ancient Jewish satire on power turned addictive – and move beyond the knee-jerk resort to threats of war that has characterized the Israeli government's policy toward Iran. Together, we must all seek instead to examine what would be decent terms of peace. See The Shalom Center website for more.

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There are three levels of wisdom through which Hanukkah invites us to address the planetary dangers of the global climate crisis—what some of us call "global scorching" because "warming" seems so pleasant, so comforting.

We can encode these teachings into actions we take to heal the earth, each of the eight days.

1. The Talmud's legend about using one day's oil to meet eight days' needs: a reminder that if we have the courage to change our life-styles to conserve energy, it will sustain us.

2. The vision of Zechariah (whose prophetic passages we read on Shabbat Hanukkah) that the Temple Menorah was itself a living being, uniting the world of "nature" and "humanity"—for it was not only fashioned in the shape of a Tree of Light, as Torah teaches, but was flanked by two olive trees that fed olive oil directly into it.

3. The memory that a community of "the powerless" can overcome a great empire, giving us courage to face our modern corporate empires of Oil and Coal when they defile our most sacred Temple: Earth itself. And the reminder (again from Zechariah) that we triumph "Not by might and not by power but by My Spirit (b'ruchi—or, "My breath," "My wind!"), says YHWH, the Infinite Breath of Life."

We are taught not only to light the menorah, but to publicize the miracle, to turn our individual actions outward for the rest of the world to see and to be inspired by.

So we invite you to join, this Hanukkah, to join in The Shalom Center 's Green Menorah Covenant for taking action—personal, communal, and political—to heal the earth from the global climate crisis.

After lighting your menorah each evening, dedicate yourself to making the changes in your life that will allow our limited sources of energy to last for as long as they're needed, and with minimal impact on our climate.

No single action will solve the global climate crisis, just as no one of us alone can make enough of a difference. Yet, if we act on as many of the areas below as possible, and act together, a seemingly small group of people can overcome a seemingly intractable crisis. We can, as in days of old, turn this time of darkness into one of light.

Day 1: Personal/Household: Call your electric-power utility to switch to wind-powered electricity. (For each home, 100% wind-power reduces CO₂ emissions the same as not driving 20,000 miles in one year.)

Day 2: Synagogue, Hillel, or JCC: Urge your congregation or community building to switch to wind-powered electricity.

Day 3. Your network of friends, IM buddies, and members of civic or professional groups you belong to: Connect with people like newspaper editors, real-estate developers, architects, bankers, etc. to urge them to strengthen the green factor in all their decisions, speeches, and actions.

Day 4 (which this year is Shabbat). Automobile: If possible, choose today or one other day a week to not use your car at all. Other days, lessen driving. Shop on-line. Cluster errands. Carpool. Don't idle engine beyond 20 seconds.

Day 5: Workplace or College: Urge the top officials to arrange an energy audit. Check with utility company about getting one free or at low-cost.

Day 6: Town/City: Urge town/city officials to require greening of buildings through ordinances and executive orders. Creating change is often easier on the local level!

Day 7: State: Urge state representatives to reduce subsidies for highways, increase them for mass transit.

Day 8: National: Urge your Senators to strengthen and pass the Lieberman-Warner "America's Climate Security Act." For easy addressing and a model letter to send them, click here.

Make our planet's Hanukkah a happy one!

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