Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5784

Rosh Hashanah Day 2 Sunday, Sept 17, 2023 2 Tishrei, 5784
Adath Jeshurun Congregation, Minnetonka, MN
Rabbi Harold J. Kravitz

Climate Change Denial

Last year during the High Holidays, my sermons provided me with an
opportunity to reflect on my career. Today, in giving what I expect will be my final
High Holiday sermons at Adath Jeshurun, I want to reflect on unfinished business
that nags at me. I feel the need for an Al Chet- a confession of things I have not
advocated for sufficiently over the years. At the top of that list, because it effects
the entire world and all that is in it, is the deeply troubling issue of environmental
climate change. I find it incomprehensible that there are still people who deny the
findings of climate science, even as the world has been experiencing record heat
waves, drought and unprecedented weather disturbances that scientists attribute
directly to global warming. I found it especially shocking this summer to have to
worry about being outdoors because of smoke from forest fires in Canada that were another symptom of this problem. While some are extreme deniers of the human contribution to climate change, it seems to me that all of us have been to some extent denying the seriousness of this issue.

This is a particularly relevant to address on Rosh Hashanah, which
celebrates the birthday of the world. Each time we sound the shofar in the Musaf
service we read, “Hayom Harat Olam, Today the world is created.” In a Rosh
Hashana sermon in 2006, I addressed serious problems posed by our reliance on
fossil fuels and it was gratifying to see our people respond. Until about 2014, we
had a very effective group of congregants working on environmental issues that we
called our Etz Chayim Committee, chaired by Carol Sarnat and Jonathan London. I
regret that we were not able to keep that effort going as there is no issue more
important than the state of our planet, on which every one of us depends.

There are many aspects of the environment on which we could focus. I want
to focus today on the issue of climate change denial and I recommend to you a
fascinating book published in July, getting many positive reviews, that has already
become a best-seller. It is The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of
Denial, by award winning journalist and author David Lipsky. The title comes
from a 1956 warning in the New York Times that envisioned a carbon-warmed
future: the “polar regions” grown to jungles, with “tigers roaming about and gaudy
parrots squawking in the trees.” (p. 467). That image of parrots in what should be
ice covered polar caps explains the first half of the book’s title, The Parrot and the
Igloo. The Igloo refers to a stunt pulled by Sen. Jim Imhofe, who in 36 years
representing Oklahoma in Congress was noteworthy for the extent of his fervent
denial of climate change. During a snow storm in Washington, he had his family
build an igloo on the grounds of the Capitol to deride those who insist on the
human cause of climate change. He was adamant in his denial despite vast
scientific evidence to the contrary, as is confirmed every 7 years by the Noble-
winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has carefully
documented human causes of climate change.

Lipsky deftly takes us through the stages of how this problem developed
from civilization’s earliest awareness of the possibilities of electric power. Given
my Philadelphia roots, I took special pleasure in reading about Ben Franklin’s
experiments with kites and keys, showing that lighting could be channeled in
constructive ways. This summer, Cindy and I were at Niagara Falls for the first
time and we were awed by the power of that natural wonder. We learned there
about the race between innovators Thomas Edison, Nikolai Tesla and George
Westinghouse for how best to channel that massive energy source into electric
current. Lipsky recounts that competition and explains how Tesla’s winning
solution, utilizing alternating current (AC), won and came to power New York
State, and eventually our country, and the entire world.

Consider how much we depend on electricity to power every aspect of our
lives. Alas, with the wonder of that technological innovation there were also
negative consequences, as most electricity to power homes and businesses comes
not from water power, but from carbon-based fuel driven engines. Lipsky carefully
documents the dire consequences for our planet because of our reliance on coal, oil and gas to drive the vast majority of modern machinery.

The warnings have long been there for us to consider. On May 28, 1956, one
year to the day before I was born, Time magazine ran a feature article warning of
the consequences of our reliance on fossil fuel. “In the future,” Time explained, “if
the blanket of CO2 produces a temperature rise of only one or two degrees, a chain
of secondary effects may come into play.” It spoke of “the greenhouse effect,” the
science of which was already established 130 year earlier.

That same year, 1956 (p.73) Life magazine, ran an article headlined: “Our
New Weather: Scientists believe more hurricanes, more tornadoes, higher
temperatures, and unseasonal storms are part of a long-term change in world
climate.” Does that sound familiar? It exactly describes the reality in which we are
now all living.

What happened that these warnings were ignored, or more accurately that
they were denied? The basic thesis of Lipsky’s The Parrot and the Igloo is that
since the 1950’s there has been a concerted effort of powerful business and
political interests to deny the proven science of climate change and to minimize the
seriousness of this crisis. We are all familiar with another example of science
denial by business in the pursuit of profit, from when the tobacco industry relentlessly opposed the science proving the link between smoking and cancer.
Today, no one who denies that connection would be taken seriously.

Not only does Lipsky invoke the comparison between denial of the dangers
of smoking to that of climate change, he makes the case that often it was the very
same people who engaged in both kinds of denial. When cigarette companies
found themselves on the losing side of the research, they launched an all-out attack on science itself, whose consequences we are still living with today. While the scientific process is limited by observable reality and tested by peer review, the
deniers require no such thing. They can make any claim they want in a speech, an
interview, or on the internet. They do not need to win the argument; they just need
to stir up enough doubt to call scientific methods and conclusions into question.
It was the tobacco industry that coined the term “junk science” to plant
doubts about scientific research that posed problems for their bottom line. (p. 243).
In their well-regarded 2004 study, Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Eric
Conway demonstrate how tobacco marketers, and the few allies in science they
could recruit, would sandwich smoking and climate changes among the hoaxes to
be rejected, understanding “that if you could convince people that science in
general was unreliable, then you didn’t have to argue the merits of any particular
case.” (p. 245). Oreskes and Conway could not locate a single paper denying
climate change that had been peer reviewed. By 2010 the National Academy of
Science asserted that among active-duty climate researchers, acceptance of man-
made change ran at 97%. (Lipsky p. 316).

As science alerted the world to the problem, Lipsky documents the
responses of various US presidential administrations. Some were more receptive
and others were deeply antagonistic. Richard Nixon actively engaged the issue by
establishing the Environmental Protection Agency. Al Gore stands out as
extraordinary in his advocacy as is captured in his film An Inconvenient Truth. He
was recognized in 2007, together with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, with the Noble Peace Prize for informing the world of the impending
danger. Regretfully, Lipsky documents how consistently environmental concerns
gave way to political and short-term economic considerations. Even Barrack
Obama, whose first presidential campaign emphasized the need to address climate
change, dropped the issue in the face of the resistance they encountered. Noble
Prize-winning Physicist Dr Steven Chu, who resigned in frustration from the role
of Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration, later told a Stanford
University audience vividly, “It’s Russian Roulette. Every decade you put in
another bullet. And you give it to your grandchild and say ‘Pull the trigger.’ . . . We
would never do that to our grandchildren.” “We’re doing it.”
Let me add a Jewish dimension to this issue that you will not find in
Lipsky’s book. Jewish environmentalism is hardly new. No sooner had people in the 1960s begun to focus increasingly on the environment than Jews were lifting
up relevant Jewish sources from the Bible and rabbinic literature. In the 1980s,
Jewish organizations such as Shomrei Adamah (Guardians of the Earth) and the
Shalem Center were organizing a Jewish response. In 1992, the leadership of
major American Jewish organizations joined together to form COEJL- the
Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, to deepen the Jewish community’s
commitment to the stewardship of creation and to mobilize the resources of Jewish
life and learning to protect the Earth and all its inhabitants.

Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological
Seminary, actively advocated for care of the environment as a Jewish and human
imperative. As he spearheaded the formation in 1999 of a National Religious
Partnership for the Environment, Rabbi Schorsch wisely observed that change,
“requires the fundamental transformation of human hearts and habits, the ultimate challenge for religion.” Paul Gorman, who served as executive director of that effort put it succinctly that, “Environmentalism started with Genesis, not Earth
Day.” (LA Times, 5/29/1999).

Another Jewish organization doing important work on environmental
sustainability is Adamah. That organization began as Hazon, started in the year
2000 by Nigel Savage, who has spoken here. I encourage you to explore their
website. https://adamah.org/

As we experience the mounting hardship that we and our children and their
children will face, and as we contemplate the impact on parts of the world that are
even less well equipped to respond, it would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking
that it is too late to have a significant impact on global warming. Leading figures in
the movement to raise awareness about the environment Rebecca Solnit and
Thelma Young Lutunatabua challenge that idea in their recent anthology, Not Too
Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, which brings
together the voices of activists and leading climate scientists who argue that
humanity’s best hope to avoid the worst outcomes is immediate collective action.
Solnit absolutely rejects climate change deniers, but she also pushes back on what
she refers to as climate change “doomers” who say that all is lost. Solnit is
heartened by a recent Pew Research study that, “Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the
country should prioritize developing renewable energy sources, such as wind and
solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas…”
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-
americans-views-of-climate-change/
She writes, “I keep saying I respect despair as an emotion, but not as an
analysis. You can feel absolutely devastated about the situation and not assume this predicts outcome; you can have your feelings and can still chase down facts from reliable sources, and the facts tell us that the general public is not the problem; the fossil fuel industry and other vested interests are; that we have the solutions, that we know what to do, and that the obstacles are political; that when we fight we sometimes win; and that we are deciding the future now.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/26/we-cant-afford-to-be-
climate-doomers

It is time for all of us to fully acknowledge the problem and to take
responsibility for the solutions by absolutely rejecting denial and at the same time
not succumbing to despair, or doom. The scale of change that is needed requires
that we band together in political action and that these efforts be international.
Some thirteen centuries ago our rabbis tried to impress upon us our responsibility
in a rabbinic interpretation, a midrash, on Ecclesiastes 7:13:
When God created the first human beings, God led them around the garden of Eden and said: "Look at my works! See how beautiful they are-how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it. quote;
Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah I on 7:13 C. 800 CE trans Rabbi David Stein,
A Garden of Choice Fruit, p. 98.
​
If we continue to spoil and destroy God’s world, there will be no one else to
repair it. Let us dedicate ourselves to this goal in the New Year and address these
challenges with resolve in the years ahead.
Intro to Shofar Service
My colleague Rabbi Lawrence Troster z’l wrote brilliantly on the link between
Judaism and the environment. He provided an important insight into the meaning
of the Shofar (Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh Hashanah Readings, p. 186)
“One the greatest of Jewish philosophers, Saadia Gaon, once listed ten reasons for
the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. One rea­ son he gives is that the
shofar reminds us that Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of creation by recalling
that it is God who is the true sovereign of the universe not human beings. Often we
live our lives as if God does not exist. This is not only a theological problem, but
an ethical and moral one as well. If the world only centers around our self (and let's
face it, we spend most of our time in that kind of mindset), then we also forget how
we are connected to the environment and all the other kinds of life that help sustain
us. Putting God back at the center is a humbling experience, which forces us out of
ourselves.

6

The Shofar is one of the most ancient musical instruments known to humankind. It
is human made, but out of the rough horn of a ram. This combination of natural
material and human artifice reminds us not only of our humble origins as a people
but also how indebted we are to the rest of creation for all that we have, eat, wear,
and celebrate with. The music it makes is loud and not subtle. It is as if the voice of
the Creator is sounding out the beginning of time. It is a call back to our origins
and to the better future that we must bring about. God is calling us to restore
ourselves as we restore creation.
Intro to Malchuyout, Zechronot and Shofarot Section of Musaf
Comment on Hayom Harat Olam Machzor Lev Shalem p .166
The phrase Hayom Harat Olam is found in each of the three special sections of the
Rosh Hashanah Musaf service. Let’s take a moment to focus on that phrase Hayom
Harat Olam. What does it mean?
It could mean, “Today the world was born.”
It could mean, “Today the World is born.”
It could mean, “Today the World is being born.”
The first translation looks back to the beginning of time. The others suggest that
creation is something that is taking place now and we have a role to play in what
occurs. A colleague Rabbi Mark Greenspan observes (Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh
Hashanah Readings, p. 305-06) that while we generally speak of Rosh Hashana as
the birthday of the world, according to one rabbinic tradition it was not the world,
but rather the first human beings who were created on this day. And with that as
human beings we have responsibilities for the world.
This helps us better understand the rest of the paragraph of the Hayom Harat Olam
prayer which speaks of God’s judgement of people’s behavior. Rabbi Jeffrey M.
Cohen in his commentary to the High Holiday Machzor (Prayer and Penitence,
96) raises the question of how a holiday commemorating the act of Creation,
evolved into an occasion for introspection, remorse for sin, and atonement. Rabbi
Cohen explains that (one) ‘cannot commemorate Creation without contemplating
this role allotted to (us) within in it and without lamenting the damage that
(our) sins perpetrate” upon God’s creation. This, he suggests, is “the logical
association between the anniversary of the Creation of the world on Rosh
Hashanah and the themes of sin, remorse, and forgiveness that are its predominant
motifs.”

7

Each year as we contemplate the Birth of the World- Hayon Harat Olam
let us also consider our role in harming the Earth and our responsibility for
repairing it.
Intro to Zechronot:
As we reflect on the next section of the Musaf that calls us to remember,
Zechronot, I call your attention to the window of our foyer next store. It was built
with a large picture window facing out to the natural beauty of our lake out back,
the sky above and the beautiful trees and vegetation. It was decided to etch into the
glass over that large window the words from Psalm 19:
The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky proclaims God’s handiwork.
הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם מְֽסַפְּרִ֥ים כְּבֽוֹד־אֵ֑ל וּֽמַעֲשֵׂ֥ה יָ֝דָ֗יו מַגִּ֥יד הָרָקִֽיעַ׃
As we look out on Lake Windsor, those words are a constant reminder of God’s as
creator and of our responsibility for being good stewards of that creation.