Rational Voter 6: ready for change?

Is it conceivable that a majority of Americans are content with more of the same?  More environmental degradation, continued dependence on oil, continued energy insecurity, inching ever closer to climatological catastrophe?  More Republican perks for oil and coal interests?

Isn’t it about time for change?
Isn’t it about time to exert some personal, and national, self-control?  About time to make an effort to leave a healthy planet for our children?  To invest in a green future rather than our filthy past?
Isn’t it time to find out what real plans look like?
Try here or here.

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Chayei Sarah: keturah & life beyond boundaries

I’m learning that Torah study does not always take a clear and straight path. Of course one can always walk in others’ footsteps, but I’m looking to avoid the potential ruts created by the tread of centuries of learned feet. This year, I hope to widen somewhat my path to understanding Genesis.

Parshah Chayei Sarah closes the story of Judaism’s “first (nuclear) family”. Sarah dies and Abraham buries her in a cave in Hebron purchased from the Hittites (Genesis 23). Isaac acquires a wife, Rebecca, from the family “in the old country” (Gen. 24), the divinely-supervised love story that typically gets all the attention. But the portion takes a turn seldom examined – it returns to consider Abraham’s “other” family, or families.

And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bore him Zimran and Jokshan and Medan and Midian and Ishbak and Shuah. And Jokshan begot Sheba and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were the Ashurim and the Letushim and the Leummim. And the sons of Midian were Ephah and Epher and Enoch and Abida and Eldaah. All these were the sons of Keturah. And Abraham gave everything he had to Isaac. And to the sons of Abraham’s concubines Abraham gave gifts while he was still alive and sent them away from Isaac his son eastward, to the land of the East. … (from Parshah Chayei Sarah, Genesis 25:1-6), The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, Robert Alter, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2004, pp. 127-32)

Except for one other similarly brief reference (1 Chronicles 32-33), this passage of Genesis is the only description of Keturah and her sons, the only information provided about the remainder of Abraham’s intimate life (which extended over a considerable time, producing six sons). Who was Keturah? What is the legacy of her union with Abraham?

Our text continues to relate the life of Ishmael, with whom Abraham appears (in spite of the gaping silence in the text since the expulsion in Gen. 21) to have managed to maintain a continued relationship. Upon Abraham’s death, Ishmael and Isaac together bury their father in the cave of Machpelah, and Ishmael’s 12 sons – 12 chieftains in their own rights – and their progeny people the land as far as Egypt (Gen. 25:7-18). But Keturah is a marginal figure. Indeed, she is nearly absent from tradition, as she is from our pictorial history. Even a cursory search turns up countless images of Sarah and Hagar, but only a single image of Keturah, in the Venice Haggadah of 1609:

Keturah and her six sons, along with Hagar and Ishmael, are relegated to flanking the “first family”, Abraham, Sarah and Isaac. And even here Keturah is only partially in view.

Rashi erases Keturah entirely by conflating her with Hagar via a contorted reading, restricting her status to concubine rather than wife since she had no wedding contract (Gen. Rabbah 61:4). This approach is mystifying; there’s no mention of wedding contracts for any of Abraham’s wives in Torah (unlike Isaac’s), although Sarah has priority in the text as a first partner. Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the U.K., is a familiar and welcome voice of tolerance in interfaith matters. But Rabbi Sacks, in his own exploration of the connections between Judaism and Islam raised by the parshah, relies on Rashi and “the sages” to slip past Keturah and focus instead on the midrash of Abraham’s role in Isaac’s choice of his second wife (Fatima) (Rabbi Sacks’ commentary can be found here). The D’var Tzedek commentary on Chayei Sarah by Rabbi Dorothy A. Richman, featured this week by the American Jewish World Service (located here) takes on the rabbinic debate about Hagar-Keturah’s identity. Yet even this progressive commentary grounds itself on the meaning of Hagar’s name – “stranger” – and suggests that Jews look to the fiction of the “strangers” of our world (such as Ama Ata Aidoo, Monica Ali and Khaled Hosseini) as well as midrash to “enlarge our sense of possibility and encourage us to identify with the stranger”. I agree with this view of the importance of a varied diet of good fiction, but even here Keturah is absent.

So what of Keturah, whose name means “fragrant”, with whom Torah tells us Abraham chose to spend his final years, who bore him six sons? How might a modern American Reform Jew make sense of the narrative of Abraham’s extended family and the implications of its web of relationships?

“Where Nature Knows No Boundaries”

My own search for Keturah turns up only bits and pieces. I am intrigued by a referencer to the “Yakult Midrash,” which suggests that each of Abraham’s three wives descended from a son of Noah: Sarah, a daughter of Shem; Hagar, a daughter of Ham; and Keturah, a daughter of Japheth. How tidily this medieval midrash connects the entire family which survives the Flood with the entire family of tribes who people the mideast; how remarkably generous, how “modern”. I suppose I am not surprised to find that the approach of this midrash is similarly employed in the roughly contemporaneous map of the world contained in the 15th-century Nuremburg Chronicle, in which Noah’s three sons support the perimeters of the (known) world.

A little more effort reveals a genuine surprise: Keturah “survives” in the Negev, transformed into the green oasis known as Kibbutz Ketura. It seems fitting that Abraham’s third and final partner, another woman from outside the tribe, should be the namesake of a kibbutz whose progressive policies towards religious pluralism have garnered national awards for religious tolerance, an intentional community that is also the home of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, which co-sponsors with Hazon the Ride for Peace, Partnership and the Environment.

Reports that Arava’s diverse student body is often challenged by Israeli governmental profiling of Palestinian and Arab students and scholars are disturbing (information here); I’m relieved that Israel’s Supreme Court has rejected such discriminatory practices, since it matters to me that Israel be a just society. The efforts of Arava’s alumni to launch their own peace and environmental projects through the Arava Peace and Environmental Network (APEN), and its blog (“Where Nature Knows No Boundaries”), are also encouraging. APEN’s steering committee includes Arab and Jewish alumni, who continue to meet in various locations in Jordan, the occupied Palestinian territories, and Israel. Since 2005, APEN projects have included Negev Bedouin Education, Galil Organic Farming, Acco Rain Water Harvesting, Aqaba Urban Planning and West Bank/Israel River Restoration, and similar peace and environmental projects in the West Bank and Jordan. These projects, grounded in an understanding of the shared interest in the environmental integrity of Israel and its neighbors, are wonderful examples of the peace-building visions of the post-Holocaust and post-independence generation of young people. That they are taking responsibility for an environmentally just Israel is something to celebrate.

Arava’s website is an amazing network of links between mid-east environmental & peace projects and organizations. Among these is a link to the Shalom Salaam Network, which offers the following guidelines:

We should look for things that we have in common and unite us, and not those that divide us
We should not defend positions, but aim to explain things others find incomprehensible
We should not accuse each other, but understand that members of the group don’t make political decisions for their group or country
We should aim to close gaps, and not open them

These help me make sense of the complications of Abraham’s lives (and wives), and the intricate dynamics of the Abrahamic “family”. I have a more complete picture of Keturah now.

 

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By Hand: a flood of noach, noe, noah

Genesis narratives possess me. Jewish tradition has few accounts of spiritual possession; Kabbalistic accounts speak positively of being possessed by divine spirit, and the dybbuk and golem are perhaps the most well known Jewish “ghost” stories (here is a review of a recent study of the history of possession in Judaism). But Creation, Eden, Cain & Abel, Noah, Babel … these stories grip me annually. I reread them, repeat my study of their iconographic histories, imagine art I might (and sometimes do) make, discuss them whenever possible. This year my tikkunknitting journey prompts me to frame my study of Parshat Noach through the lens of the work of hands. I’ve been rowing through the internet (what did we do without the Google Image search function?), my seat belt fastened and oars gripped tightly … to find the image sources, just click on the photos.

Imagining Hands at Work

As a student of early music and music history, I was delighted to find the science of music expressed theoretically in the Guidonian Musical Hand (after Guido d’Arezzo). Musical hands became the principal means by which musical literacy was taught to Catholic church choristers and other music students throughout the medieval period and beyond.

(l to r: Musical treatise by Elias Salomo (1274); Alphabetum Hebraicum; Graecum; Italicum . . ., 1682; CACSA 2001 Program).

The hand has held a similarly important place in Jewish vision. Like its Christian models, the Hebrew translation of a chant tutor by Judah b. Isaac (14th-15th c) also included a Guidonian hand with notes and syllables written in Hebrew. Hands are featured in a variety of ordinary and extraordinary ways in Jewish ritual and daily life: in the symbol of the hands of the Kohanim in priestly blessing (below left, Jewish tombstone), in Kabbalistic tradition (from the Shefa Tal, 1612; Library of Congress), and the popular folk tradition of the Hamsa (shared with Muslims as the Hand of Mariam, or Miriam; 19th-c Hamsa).

Of course, hands abound in the ritual life of Jews, as students and scholars approach the Torah scrolls with yad – in hand. This discipline and respect for the values transmitted by our text provides the motivation for the headers for these tikkun web projects (TikkunKnits, TikkunKnitter and The TikkunTree Project).

In the spirit of tikkun olam, hands are extended in contemporary efforts to realize peace (rather than just “Imagine” it, as John Lennon did).

 

The Visual Legacy of Noah’s Handiwork

From Parshah Noach (The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, Robert Alter, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2004, pp. 41-43):

Genesis 6:13 And God said to Noah: ‘The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with outrage by them, and I am now about to destroy them, with the earth. 14 Make yourself an ark of cypress wood, with cells you shall make the ark, and caulk it inside and out with pitch. […] 22 And this Noah did; as all that God commanded him, so he did.

Genesis 7:1 And the LORD said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, for it is you I have seen righteous before Me in this generation. 2 Of every clean animal take you seven pairs, each with its mate [….] 5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

What did Noah do? He built the ark and gathered family and species into it.

The popularity of this story has been, and remains, extraordinary. Over the years the internet has filled my files of images of illuminated manuscripts with Noah’s reach into the iconographic tradition in illustrated French, Dutch and German Christian bibles from the 13th-15th centuries:

 

But this week’s study turned up the facsimile of a rare medieval Jewish illuminated manuscript, a North French Hebrew Miscellany (circa 1278), the British Library’s Hebraic treasure. The manuscript is the product of collaboration between Benjamin the Scribe and French Gothic illuminators, likely commissioned by a wealthy Jewish scholar. Here Noah makes a cameo appearance; this ark, imagined as a building resting on a brick wall, is the only Ashkenazi example from this early period in our history. The contents of the volume documents the spiritual needs of its time, as it is peopled with various heroes and leaders of the tradition, including Moses, Samson, Judith, David, Daniel and Esther, as well as visual memorialization of the Temple. (The desciption of the extraordinary provenance of this manuscript, its travels from one collector’s hands to another’s, is alone worth a visit to the website).

It’s possible to travel quickly from the medieval sublime to the modern ridiculous. The ark has found its way into modern life in a flood of commercial products, as illustrated wood blocks, a box of crayons, pop-up books (here and here), complicated jigsaw and simple floor puzzles, nesting Matryoshka dolls (such as these: 1, 2, and 3). Models of all sizes circulate, from doll house miniatures to table-top kits. The flood continues on artistic levels, where the ark appears in film (the 1928 Warner Bros.’ Noah‘s Ark, a war flick full of romance in Paris, intrigue and international shenanigans, starring George O’Brien, Delores Costello, Myrna Loy) , the fictional account of Noe in The Preservationist, by David Maine), and The Black Ark, Noah Howard’s1969 release (now oop, but you can find information about him here and here, and listen to some of his music here).

Noah’s ark has reached into every corner of architectural history and kitsch, as British pubs (1, 2), a restaurant/ theme park in St. Charles, Missouri, a “Christian Place” next door to Condom Knowledge adult store in Panama City Beach, Florida, the sunday school of the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, West Chicago, preschool and daycare in Kansas City College and Bible School theme park ride, and is a Sunday school destination in Burlington, Washington.

The ark serves as a game lodge in Aberdare National Park, Kenya. The ark is being rebuilt in Frostburg, Maryland. In Malaysia, the ruins of the ark built by the Messianic cult Ajaran Sulaiman or Ajaran Bahtera Noah, that promised its “followers smooth sailing into the hereafter”, is scheduled for demolition.

The ark survives most creatively in an exhibit at the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles (featured in a recent JudaicaJournal essay).

 

Reality Check: What Would Noah Do?

As Rabbi Brant Rosen noted a while back (here), while the story of Noah and the ark is one of most popular bible stories for children, it is actually a very adult cautionary tale about human nature and the spiritual consequences of violence. I wonder how the American Sign Language version of the story expresses the inherent violence within the tale.

This year my study is drawn to how GreenPeace is telling Noah’s story of human violence to the environment. To dramatize the challenges of global warming and climate change, GreenPeace has built an ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey.

We are in front of a second universal flood. But it is not yet too late. If all the nations of the World make a turn in favour of environment one will be able to avoid the catastrophe “, indicated Andree Böhling, Greenpeace expert in energy.” “The politicians must assume their responsibilities and cannot continue to look at a world threatened to be submerged by the tides, the storms and floods, while hundreds of thousands people lose their houses, which plants and animals disappear by the diseases and the drynesses”, it said. (source)

The GreenPeace project strikes deeply, beyond its surface resemblance to our family’s sukkah and its evolution. I am reminded of what Noah did rather than what he did not do (which is typically the focus of “the rabbis'” attention, which looks to how Noah’s virtues are qualified, that he was “blameless in his age“, how he measures up against Abraham, etc). Noah did act on divine inspiration, he did build for the future, he did preserve natural life as he knew it, and he did look to signs of peace, the olive tree and the dove, to register human peace with nature and the divine.

So this year, after indulging my passion for iconography and biblical trivia, I’ll ask, “What would Noah do?” Build for human survival, seek the preservation of all species of life, take care to ensure that environmental dangers are avoided and overcome, and be thankful for coming out on the other side. This GreenPeace project really is worth a look (try here, here, or here).

According to the narrative, the earth endured the divine deluge more than 150 days. Here ends my Noahide flood, after approximately 1,450 words and (far too) many images. Time to dry off.

On a personal note: by 9:40 a.m this morning, these tikkunblogs achieved their own Ararat-like landings … TikkunKnits tallied 1000+ visits, TikkunKnitter’s Miscellaney tallied over 500 visits, and The TikkunTree Project registered 100+ visits. Thank you for your interest!

Oct 12th 2007: A few more thoughts …
While American Jews are usually proccupied with the violence of armed conflict in Israel, we seldom consider the circumstances of Jewish violence against the land. Reports of environmental degradation in Israel in general, and of its precious sources of water in particular, are profoundly disturbing. Nir Hasson’s recent report in Haaretz about the Israeli’ government’s proposals to stem the disastrous misuse of the Dead Sea is only one example (report here). Others by Zafrir Rinat document the environmental challenges created by under-regulated mining in Israel (report here), and the virus-like spread of invasive, non-native species of trees, like the blue Australian acacia, introduced into Israel in the early decades of the 20th century to help dry up swamps, create forests and stabilize sand dunes) (report here).

As in Noah’s story, the connection between inter-dependence of human and environmental security and peace is clarified by the decision of the Nobel Committee to award the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

 

Oct 24th 2007

Anyone interested in finding additional information about Israeli efforts to preserve scarce environmental resources and create sustainable environmental practices might check the NIF’s Green Environment Fund.

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Sukkot Meets “Knit Out 2007”: growing the harvest basket and the tikkunknitting community

Day by day my sukkah’s harvest grows as I grab moments to work on the basket of fruits and vegetables. My harvest bowl now contains etrogs, lemons, red and green apples, a cluster of grapes, and banana, cucumber, corn-on-the-cob, and acorn squash.

The acorn squash and red apple were completed during our field trip to Greensgrow Farm, and the banana and corn cob came to life during my Sunday afternoon demonstrations at the 2007 Philadelphia Area Knit (and Crochet) Out at the Philadelphia Convention Center. I was especially gratified by the enthusiastic responses of so many Knit Out participants to my demonstrations of plastic bag knitting (and crochet), and to the knitted sukkah decorations I’ve been working on. We scrambled to find enough plastic bags to slice and knot into yarn, and experimented with the “inside out” knitting technique I’ve extended from the double knit bears to the fruits and vegetables. There was also a chance to show one of the youngest visitors to the event how to fingerknit – it’s always a treat to introduce little ones to handcrafts. You can read more about Sunday’s Knit Out here.

It’s been difficult to get harvest baskets out of my mind, and the chance to return to Arcimboldo’s organic portrait paintings reminded me of another one that’s especially appropriate to Sukkot and the time of year. Arcimboldo’s many paintings were, in Mannerist style, visual puns that employed thematically-appropriate visual elements (such as a crowd of sea creatures in Water). The Vegetable Gardener (c.1590) (link) is another of these visual puns.

While some friends think my knitted harvest is amusing enough, I’ll have to see whether I can arrange my fruits and vegetables into a portrait by the time Sukkot arrives.

You’ll find updates on the progress of the sukkah and its knitted fruits and vegetables here (click this link)

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Seeing Double: greenfest philly and greensgrow farm

On Sunday, September 7th I joined a friend and 14,000 other environmental-enthusiasts for a walk through the Greenfest Philly environmental fair. A project of the Urban Green Partnership, Greenfest took over half a dozen blocks of South Street for demonstrations, information, and celebration of the state of green technologies and activities: biodiesel, green roofs, green development, recycled products, bicycle generators, wind power, solar power, health and food products, and agriculture … all available to or tailored for our urban community. Greenfest will return to South Street next year for “Be Green and Be Seen,” Sunday, September 7th, 2008, 11 am-6pm on South Street, and is looking for volunteers (contact here).Among the many surprises (including the So-Re-Fa Socially Responsible Fashions Show! extensive photo gallery here) was the impressive vegetable man sculpture executed on location (left), which bore an uncanny resemblance the famous Mannerist painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), Vertumnus (1590-91) (right; link to this image, and more of wonderful Arcimboldo’s organic portraits and bio).

Urban metamorphosis

Vertumnus is an allegorical portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) (Arcimboldo was court painter to three of them) as the Roman god of metamorphoses in nature and life. Metamorphosis is certainly an apt description of our destination this past weekend: Greensgrow Farm, in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. We attended Greensgrow’s PASA Field Day. In our five hours’ visit to the farm, we learned about the efforts of the Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture to promote the development of urban agriculture. A leader in adapting the CSA (community supported agriculture) model to urban living, Greensgrow’s “city supported agriculture” program was truly inspiring. We toured the hyroponic salad beds, greenhouses, CSA sheds, composting lot, beehives, green-roofed sheds and bio-diesel refining station, all contained on about 3/4 acre, on an EPA-remediated site that formerly housed a galvanized steel plant.

We had a terrific picnic lunch in the middle of (farm founders Mary Seton Corboy and Tom Sereduk were restauranteurs in their previous lives), amazed that so much could be achieved in ten years (long, hard years, according to descriptions). While we were there just to learn about the greening of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, we were especially encouraged by the presence of many others who were already trying to establish similar enterprises within Philadelphia and in outlying counties.

Two green fieldtrips in consecutive weekends, excursions that demonstrate tikkun in action and raise hopes for green metamorphoses for Philadelphia and environs in the new year.

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First Fruits: plastic and the green etrog

With the painting of our sukkah still in the planning stage, there’s also the matter of other decorations to consider. My challenge has been to approach the project with the environmental values provided by tikkun olam. I return to the central guiding text: Bal tashchit, or ”Do not destroy” (Deuteronomy 20: 19-20). For this tikkunknitter (I’ve written elsewhere about finding the points of contact between Jewish environmental values and knitting), the response is practically automatic: reduce, reuse, recycle. But how to decorate the sukkah?

On the first day, you shall take the fruit of a goodly tree [etrog], palm branches, myrtle boughs, and willows, and rejoice … Leviticus 23:40

Sukkot is a harvest festival, with ritual objects associated with the biblical text: the etrog (citron) and lulav (joined palm, myrtle and willow leaves), and a tradition of decorating the booths with harvest fruits. The historic use of the etrog and lulav is recorded in the few surviving traces of ancient Judaism, such as the Tiberias synagogue, from the first century of the common era (link)

I am troubled by the etrog. The recent film Ushpitzin documents the lengths, perhaps irresponsible, some traditional Jews go to obtain a suitable etrog (though it’s a splendid exploration of the friction between religious and secular Jews in Israel, and the reach of faith and the value of hospitality). Since I participate in the liberal Reform tradition, my task is to find a way to make sense of the inherited texts and traditions.

As a rare object of beauty (visual and odorous), the contribution of the etrog to the experience of the holiday is self-evident. But the fruit is expensive, of limited use after the holiday (when it is usually inedible), and the environmental costs of shipping the fruits to observant Diaspora Jews (to provide fruits at their best) are high. I am troubled by the conflict between my commitment to the integrity of the environment (all creation) and observance of the holiday in Diaspora. Fortunately, Rodeph Shalom’s etrog can stand in for me, and I’m left with the task of the remaining harvest fruits.

A Plastic Garden?

Plastic fruits and vegetables covered the sukkahs I recall from the synagogues of my childhood in the 1960’s, and they are still readily available (though the price is somewhat dear). But plastic presents its own challenges. I am reminded of Rabbi Marc Rosenstein’s June essay in his Galilee Diary, “Plastic,” in which he reflects on the way in which the dependence of modern Jewish identity on the land of Israel is challenged by the transformation of Israel from an agrarian to industrial society, in which the gardening of the land has been replaced by the production of – plastic. Rosenstein asks

…what do you do when agriculture is not profitable and cannot support the community? When increasing numbers of the post-pioneering generation find no satisfaction or challenge in agricultural labor? How central is the soil in our self-image? Well, there are 269 kibbutzim today – and they operate 377 factories. Only fifteen percent of the kibbutz workforce works in agriculture. Two thirds of Israel’s plastics exports come from kibbutz factories; and while I don’t have a statistic, my experience is that it is hard to find a kibbutz that doesn’t have a plastic factory: toys, Styrofoam containers, furniture, packaging, films, irrigation pipe, etc. etc.

The romance of working the land diminishes when your fields are tilled by Thai contract workers, and your primary income is from molding plastic widgets. I wonder: in the Plastic Age, what exactly is the meaning of the soil of Eretz Yisrael in our identity?

I share Rosenstein’s struggle to understand the place of Israel in my own Jewish identity. This year I’ll let my commitment to environmental action trump the live etrog, and guide my choices for our “native sukkah”. If plastic has become central to Israel’s modern identity, then this is a chance to make productive, environmentally-friendly, even “native”, use of it in Diaspora.

Sustainable Harvest

With reduce/reuse/recycle in mind, I’ve started to sift through my stash for the making of a knitted harvest. With the help of a simple pattern (here) as a general guide and a ball of bright yellow acrylic leftover from a community afghan project (reduce) was converted into a nifty lemon (below, far left) in

less than an hour. I quickly “greened” the process further, digging into my stash of colored plastic bags (saved for a variety knitting and crocheting) for the yellows. Ten minutes later I had yards of yellow plastic yarn (reuse) from 2 bags (far right), and the second fruit (2nd from left) was completed in short order. An ancient bag of polyfil provided the stuffing for the acrylic lemon; a third plastic bag filled the plastic lemon. As far as I can tell, they are washable and durable – we’ll see after they spend a week in the sukkah – but if not, then they’ll find their way into the blue bucket (recycle). The internet provides plenty of models for the rest of the harvest I’m planning: apples and pears, oranges, eggplants, carrots, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, celery, even broccoli! Squash, asparagus, grapes and others will easily be based on pattern modifications.

Information about making and working with plastic bag yarn can be found all over the internet – try here, here and here for a some of the clearest and best illustrated discussions of looped yarn, and “How to Knit a Plastic Bag” for making a continuous strand yarn.

Sept 12th, 2007 Pattern alert!

You will find a photo of my knitted etrog, along with directions for knitting (with either straight or double point needles) here. You’ll also find updates on the progress of the sukkah and its knitted fruits and vegetables here (click this link)

 

Sept 26th, 2007 Pattern alert!

My pattern for clusters of knitted grapes is now available here.

 

 

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Going Green: reduce, reuse, recycle

Reduce or Reuse

Jewish tradition clearly prohibits wasteful consumption of resources, which violates the mitzvah (duty) of Bal tashchit (“Do not destroy”), Deuteronomy 20: 19-20. No doubt about it, this is a serious challenge to many of us interested in needle arts. We frequently have far too much of the stuff of needlework. Thinking through how to meet one’s duty not to consume wastefully, but also meet one’s desire to explore beautiful fibers, create remarkable gifts for dear ones, and nurture ourselves, leads to a few simple ideas:

UFO’s . Unfinished knitting projects (UFOs) litter many of our lives. To use what we have, thoroughly and without waste, means at the very least to finish projects. If we can’t bring ourselves to finish, then find another use for the materials. Many of us make the break from our UFO’s and rip (or “frog”) completely (like Jenny), others can’t bring themselves to do it (like hege).

Inspired by the spirit of tikkun, I recently “liberated” two long-neglected, nearly-completed adult sweaters into material for upcoming tzedakah (social action, or charity) projects. The navy Takhi tweed (sport-weight) cardigan for my husband, left to languish in the basement for a decade, was unceremoniously frogged and re-wound, and will find new life in many hats for Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Greater Philadelphia (all fibers accepted) and The Dulaan Project (wools), including this Zeebee-on-the-needles (inspired by Brooklyn Tweed’s tweedy version).

Stash reduction – use or donate. If you are anything like me, your stash of new yarns and the bits and pieces leftover from old (finished!) projects grows and grows. Unused, they render ordinary yarn consumption wasteful. Some have been motivated to sort out the stash into two piles: (1) those balls, skeins and hanks that will never find a way onto needles or hooks, and (2) those we plan (really, really) to work with, whether for ourselves or others. The tikkun task: to find a productive home for the first batch: give it to a friend, teach someone with it, or donate to any of the many organizations that accept contributions of yarn and needles, such as Warm Woolies (which provides volunteers with materials for handmade items for orphanages world-wide), and The Warm Hands Network. You can find additional information about contributions to “charity knitting” organizations on the web (try here, here, and here).

Having made a couple of passes through the many “knitting stations” throughout my home, I’ve turned up these for sorting!

My donation pile will go to the “R.S Tikkunknitters,” the social action knitting group at Congregation Rodeph Shalom, Philadelphia, for use in hats, scarves and slippers for donation to local homeless family shelters and the Dulaan project.

 

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Starting Green: environment & the tikkunknitter

What are the possibilities for tikkunknitting? For pursuing tikkun olam through practical or creative needlework?

I’ve always wondered why it seemed so difficult for many to incorporate tikkun olam seamlessly into their lives. Most Jews profess that Judaism is a way of life, a set of values and behaviors that are right, righteous, and bring one closer to an understanding of the divine (though we may not agree about the degree of adherence to traditional practices, according to our commitment to more or less liberal, or fundamentalist, interpretations of our inherited texts).

Knitting (or needlework in general) is a simple starting point for thinking through the business of being Jewish, of acting rightly. First one has to start with the basic stuff of knitting (or crochet, weaving, spinning, etc): tools and fiber. So one can make specifically Jewish choices, or choices informed by Jewish values.

Concern for the environment in general, and issues like global warming, environmental pollution and degradation, and eco-social justice are addressed by all Jewish communities of which I’m aware: Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and Reconstructionist. As a Reform Jew, my approach to the question is usually directed by reference to a wide range of traditional and non-traditional texts and commentaries. A singularly useful place to begin to learn about our obligation to “green” our lives, homes, and places of worship is the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, especially their educational materials and projects. But if you don’t want to look into traditional sources, or explore briefly the suggestions of our leaders and educators, start simple, with the ubiquitous program shared by the entire international community:

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Tikkun Olam: beginning the work

Tikkun olam: {te-kün o-lam} to heal, repair and transform the world (Hebrew)

“This was a favorite teaching of his [Rabbi Tarfon]: You are not obligated to finish the task, neither are you free to neglect it.” – Pirkei Avot (The Wisdom of the Fathers), 2:21

So I’m putting an end to procrastination about “going public”. Is it possible to make an avocation (needlework) a point of departure for engaging with issues of Jewish identity, eco-social justice, peace?

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