Earth Day, A Jewish Holiday?

A meditation:

I invite you to take a deep breath. listen to your heart beat and the fluid rush through your veins. 

Feel the solidity of the bones. Imagine the organs each supporting one another. Supporting your life.

More than the sum of their parts. Shechinah lives in you.

Breathe again As you breathe out follow that breath, it is a part of a greater organism. Ecosystems are nested within biomes, and ultimately the biosphere, the living earth.  The Greeks called her Gaia. The parts of the system support one another and become more than their sum – which is miraculous, magic, at every level. 

The whole earth is filled with Her presence. She is Shechina, or Malchut in Jewish tradition, the most immanent of the feminine sephirot, or facets of the Divine. Perhaps you have met and felt her essence in the beauty, awe, and wonder of natural world, or in being in loving presence with others, in soaring melody and harmony, or when your child was born.

We come from the earth, and from a people with their roots in heaven and their hearts with the land.

We are also nearing a Holy day not often recognized by Jewish tradition, Earth Day. I suggest we adopt this day Jewishly in ritual. Yes its origin is secular, but we are Jews, we do it all for L’Dor VaDor, for our children we are commanded to choose life.

A feminist, earth-based perspective may be just what is needed,to pull back from the brink of a looming catastrophe which we are perpetuating, or not(!) with every choice we make.

We read in Gen 3:23) So God יהוה banished humankind from the garden of Eden, to till the humus from which it was taken:(24) The human was driven out; and east of the garden of Eden were stationed the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life. Link to Sefaria Source Page with text

A Tree of Life! What if each and every service where Torah is read can help to Turn our awareness to the roots of Judaism in the feminine.

 Eytz chayim, the tree of life was in the center of the garden.



In being banished from that garden we were also banished from tree, Eytz chayim and estranged from the Goddess. Or were we? The worship of Asherah, the Goddess persisted in biblical times and today is hidden in plain sight: Torah, and the Wooden rollers are Eytzei Chayim hi, if only we would engender the Hebrew as it is written: She is a tree of life

Then there is the psalm we sing each time we take out the Torah. And isn’t it intersting how we parade her around and kiss her? What if we returned the pronouns that were written for the psalm?

Tree of Life MWolfson

Eytz chayim hee, she is a tree

Offering us both life and wisdom

Eytz chayim hi, lamakazikim bav’tomhecha me’ushar

Her truths aren’t always very simple

Deep ones are not easy, but sublime

Her roots reach high into the heavens,

with her wisdom you will shine,

With the help of words Divine she has borne us

Seeds of truth spring up from her

With the sap of love she still feeds us.

We must serve and return this care

Eytz chayim hee

Live righteously

who will remain after you to repair this wondrous world?

Proverbs 3:13-20

(13) Happy (ashrei) is the man who finds wisdom/chochma
The man who attains understanding/ bina. (14) Her value in trade is better than silver,
Her yield, greater than gold. (15) She is more precious than rubies;
All of your goods cannot equal her. (16) In her right hand is length of days,
In her left, riches and honor. (17) Her ways are pleasant ways,
And all her paths, peaceful. (18) She is a tree of life to those who grasp her,
And whoever holds on to her is happy (ushar).
(19) The LORD founded yesod aretz the earth by wisdom/chochma
He established the heavens by understanding bina; (20) By His knowing the tehomot (the depths) burst apart,
And the skies distilled dew.

The Zohar believes that oneness underlies all things, even pagan goddesses. Yet the mystic of the time knows the Jews cannot recognize this. So, the Zohar says, in the world to come, we will be allowed to call the Shekhinah by Her name -Asherah. Then, She will be one and Her name will be one. R Jill Hammer

In Zohar, the masculine “seed” impregnates Bina, wisdom, who becomes the cosmic womb. In Sefer Yetzira, Chapter 3:2

Three mothers: Aleph, Mem, Shin

A great secret veiled and mysterious…

From them come fire, water and air,

Enveloped in male and female

R Jill Hammer translation

Wangari Mathai, a heroine of mine, founder of the Green Belt Movement, and winner of 2011 Nobel Peace Prize writes: ““Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come”

To rescue the Goddess just might connect us to the earth once again.

From the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard
The Mother Trees.
When Mother Trees—the majestic hubs at the center of forest
communication, protection, and sentience—die,

they pass their wisdom to their kin, generation after generation, sharing the knowledge
of what helps and what harms, who is friend or foe, and how to adapt
and survive in an ever-changing landscape.

It’s what all parents do.

It’s what Jews do, L’dor vaDor