Later generations will ask [when they] see the plagues and diseases that God has inflicted upon the land … they will say, ‘Sulphur and salt has burned all its soil. Nothing can be planted. Nothing can grow. …’ All … will ask, ‘Why did God do this to the land? Why this great anger?’ They shall answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant that God … made with them’ (Deuteronomy 29:21-24).
As the moon of Elul dwindles to a sliver, just before the New Year of 5776, the words of Parshat Nitzavim regarding environmental disaster entwine my memories of a decade ago with my fears for the future.
These words of warning catapult me back to what I saw in 2005, as I skimmed quickly under its diminishing Elul moon. I read these words from the devastated ground in Mississippi, where I was working in a Red Cross shelter after Hurricane Katrina. As the new moon of that new year got closer, I also was haunted by the terrible fear that I was looking into the future.
As is well known, the warming of ocean waters — which raised sea levels and accelerated the loss of the Gulf Coast’s barrier islands, making Katrina more damaging — is linked to human activity. Moreover, responsibility for the breach in the levees that devastated New Orleans rests squarely on human negligence. These facts are eerily resonant with Nitzavim’s warning, for they describe the land that I saw in 2005, with its miles and miles of destruction.
I have been re-traumatized by media commemorations of the Katrina catastrophe and accounts of both resiliency and betrayal, as parts of my hometown of New Orleans thrive while others fester. It began a few weeks ago, in early Elul, when my copy of The New Yorker arrived. My unconscious was accosted by the cover illustration: An African-American boy stands on top of some steps. He is blowing a trumpet.
Before my brain processed what I was seeing, my stomach turned over. Only after that visceral reaction did my mind decode the image: The boy is standing on the ruins of a home in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, which has not been rebuilt. Is this boy trumpeting resilience in the midst of the fecund renaissance of nature that frames him? Or is he trumpeting alarm? Sadly, I confess that I hear the latter. Each day, during the month of Elul, we hear the trumpeting sound of the shofar, urging us to awaken to lives of meaning and responsibility. Shortly before the Jewish year begins to turn, we also hear Nitzavim’s words, as piercing as the Shofar’s sound.
I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life — if you and your offspring would live (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Can we even hear the shofar’s sound above the cacophony of the political rhetoric that is piercing our eardrums this Elul? Do we believe anymore that we have the power to heed the words of Nitzavim and choose something better? An erosion of hope accompanies the erosion of the barrier islands.
We should be hearing discussions of what must be done to avoid a fate like that of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, or to protect against another disaster like the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf that came five years after the levees broke. Instead, our ears are bombarded by clamorous voices.
The promise that we can choose a better future is hard to hear over bullying words targeting our greatest fears. They reach our ears through media addicted to the sensational and strident and complicit in the dumbing down and numbing over of the electorate. But Nitzavim offers reassurance:
Surely, this Instruction, which I enjoin upon you this day, is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. … No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)
The empowering warnings of Nitzavim, telling us that it is upon us to preserve a world for future generations, are of such importance that Reform Jews read them both near the close of Elul and again on Yom Kippur morning. We must seize Nitzavim’s encouragement that we have the power to choose a better future than the one that will be delivered by demagogues.
I send you toward 5776 with the above words. I wish you a shanah tovah, reminding you that the Hebrew word for year, “shanah” is related to the word for change, “shenui.” As we listen to the shofar trumpeting the new moon of Tishrei, let’s begin to make a change.
Rabbi Anne Brener, a Los Angeles-based psychotherapist and spiritual director, is a professor at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California
