David Lewis

December 8, 2006

Rabbi Sidney Akselrad Lecture

It is an honor to be back on the bimah at Beth Am where I grew up, with you Lisa and Marge, with family, Hebrew school car pool drivers, and friends. 

Rabbi Akselrad had a big influence on my family, at Congregation Beth El in Berkeley in the 1950s, where my grandmother was active in the sisterhood and my uncle became bar mitzvah.  My mother-in-law knew him when she was a child in Detroit .  He was the chief person who shaped my conception of Judaism, through his services and sermons here, but even more through the example of his life, his commitment to social justice, diversity, compassion, and – most of all – to action.

I left the Bay Area for college and spent nearly 20 years on the east coast.

When I would return here for visits and see Rabbi Akselrad, he didn’t ask “how are you?” “are you living a Jewish life” or “what do you believe?” but “what are you doing?”  “What are you doing?”  he probably repeated it – his trademark way of emphasizing something really important.

In some places that is an impertinent question, but to rabbi Akselrad, “what are you doing” was the most interesting and relevant question.  What are we doing with our beliefs?  How are we acting on our values, including our Jewish values?  

Our acts shape our community, and determine what kind of family we build.

Our deeds define who we are in the eyes of others and in our own eyes, during our lives and even after death – Rabbi Akselrad’s mourners kaddish always included the phrase “the departed still live on earth in the acts of goodness they performed.”

The Jewish principles Linda cited and many more resonate deeply with us as Jews.  Our most important Jewish teachings in the liturgy are not offered as suggestions or choices for contemplation – they are commandments to action:

Pursue justice

Love your neighbor.

The entire v’ahavtah we just read.

These are all in the imperative voice.  And on Yom Kippur, the Haftorah reading from Isaiah even chastises us for feeling virtue in fasting – if that fast means merely going without food: 

“…to bow the head like a reed and be covered in sackcloth and ashes -- do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to God?  This is the fast I have chosen: To loosen the chains of evil, to free the oppressed, feed the hungry and clothe the afflicted.”

We are being commanded to be full participants in Tikkun Olam, repairing the ills of the world that we have caused and that people continue to cause.

It’s a tall order – there is much to repair, especially as humans continue to degrade our environment, and threaten to damage the planet’s ability to sustain life.   We have the ethical traditions, the commandments … it is “Jewish” to protect the environment.

So what?  Why don’t we take more action in accordance with our beliefs?   The reasons are not complicated, and they’re not unique to Jews:

-        I can’t have an impact on such enormous and difficult problems.

-        It seems too hard. 

-        I don’t have time.

-        It’s not really that important.

-        I can’t be bothered.

-        I’ll do it later.

-        I’m lazy.

These are cop-outs, especially for us, living in the Bay Area, surrounded by the examples of what individuals can do and have done to protect and restore our environment.  Why aren’t all the ridges of the Bay Area covered with homes?  Why are redwood forests still standing in these hills?  Why isn’t the coastline one solid city from Santa Cruz to San Francisco ?  Why isn’t the Bay paved over?

Individuals, working together saved those open spaces from destruction, preserved a special quality of life here for people and nature.  It wasn’t easy – that didn’t stop them.

How many of you realize that by the time I was born, in 1961, San Francisco Bay was already one-third smaller, the result of a century of landfill, 90 percent of its tidal marshes diked and drained for agriculture and salt evaporation, paved for cities.  And there were plans to fill 60 percent of what remained – all the shallow areas – leaving just a narrow river north and south for shipping.  The Bay was choked with untreated sewage and industrial pollution.

Three women started a movement to save the bay – after men told them it couldn’t be done.  They mobilized tens of thousands of people, stormed Sacramento , won a moratorium on more filling of the Bay, and created the first government agency in the world to manage coastal resources … all in just 4 years.

Their example inspired other local, national and international efforts, proving that individuals can make a difference on seemingly impossible environmental problems.  It inspires me today as two of these founders, 90 years old, are still actively working to save the bay. 

Their example still shapes the efforts my organization takes to protect and restore San Francisco Bay .  Instead of being paved over, the Bay contains 30,000 acres of wildlife refuge – the largest urban refuge in the country – in the midst of 7 million people

For those who think action is too hard or don’t have time – we make it easy.  At Save The Bay’s website, for example, you can take a simple survey (www.ikeepitclean.org ) … answer ten questions about your daily activities, learn how much you are polluting the Bay, and simple things you can do to cut the pollution that runs off from our cities into the Bay every time it rains:  Don’t wash your car in the driveway, pick up pet waste, reduce fertilizer and pesticide use in your home.

Do you have a couple of hours on a weekend once or twice a year?  You can come to the Palo Alto Baylands or the Redwood City shoreline, or ten other sites around the Bay and help restore wetlands with your own hands.  We grow and sow native plants and remove weeds to create habitat for endangered fish and wildlife.  Beth Am havurah and social actiongroups have done this with no prior training or experience – it’s making a difference, and it’s fun and educational. 

Here are more intractable environmental problems that “couldn’t be solved:”

-        The population of Los Angeles doubled since 1970 – yet the city consumes the same amount of water today as 30 years ago, because of aggressive conservation.

-        The bald eagle and pelican were threatened with extinction because of the pesticide DDT.  The U.S. banned it, and the birds are flourishing.

-        The growing hole in the ozone layer, which let in dangerous radiation, is now shrinking because the whole world stopped using the propellants that were destroying that part of our atmosphere.

Even for global environmental problems, like climate change, many of the solutions are local – Rabbi Citrin’s Rosh Hashana sermon outlined the Jewish response to the threat of climate change in terms every individual could understand:  Make a Brit Adamah, a covenant of small steps: vote, recycle, plant trees, use less gas, and more energy-efficient light bulbs.  These are acts of self-interest – they save us money – with global benefit.  Our actions can be examples to others.  And the very local act of voting translates our individual concerns to shape the actions our state and federal government take, which can affect international change as well. 

There is now a Jewish organization, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (www.coejl.org), working with whole congregations to help them be more energy efficient.

Ultimately, protecting and restoring the environment is not hard or time consuming.  The biggest problem is laziness.  Too many of us – even if we’re busy – are lazy about acting on beliefs, fulfilling our responsibility as Jews and as residents of the planet to repair the world.

So the most important step is to wake up and get up.  Get up off of the couch, get outside, and open up our eyes, let ourselves be amazed and inspired at the beauty and variety of our surroundings.  Studies show one of the most important indicators of environmental sensibility in adults is whether as kids they spent time outside, especially unstructured time in nature to discover its intimate, exquisite detail, and its awesome, magnificent power.  The sandbox at the park is good – an ocean beach is better.  The backyard is good – a walk in Yosemite Valley is better.  The pool is nice, a canoe or rafting excursion is better.

That’s why Save The Bay’s education program takes 5000 middle and high school students out on the Bay in canoes every year to learn its science, study its wildlife and help restore its shoreline … and to just get outside.  Learning how our local environment works, how the land and the people on it are connected to the Bay’s health, is the best way to learn how we are all connected to each other – and dependent on the planet for our lives and well-being.  By the way -- it’s not too late for adults … we offer excursions on the Bay for you as well (www.saveSFbay.org).

Our education program is successful if it teaches students to be an active part of their community – to get involved and make a difference in something, whether it’s the Bay or schools, helping the homeless or the aged.  We want to make tikkun olam a good habit, a regular and integral part of everyone’s life.

So get up off the couch and take action – make a secular New Year’s resolution – pick something easy and fun to start with.  And then proselytize.  Tell a friend, help a neighbor or a student understand how important it is not just to believe, but to take action to improve the environment and make our local community healthy as a step toward repairing the world. Remind others to vote and demand of our leaders that they do more.  It’s not rude – it’s essential to enlist others.  We all are too lazy – we all can do more.

Tonight we sang “open up our eyes, teach us how to live” – we need to do this ourselves and teach our kids to see the world, and seek out ways to repair the environment, to  experience the joy of trying and fulfillment of succeeding at tikkun olam. 

Beth Am is blessed with the example of Rabbi Akselrad’s life and the values he taught to others by living them so visibly:  compassion, kindness, involvement, and ultimately:  participation.  He helped ensure that Beth Am would be a community of action. If you need a Jewish reason to get up off the couch, get outside, and take action to improve our environment, just hear Rabbi Akselrad continuing to ask you “what are you doing?”

Thank you.