Noach 5771

Parashat Noach can be read as a story of the first environmental hero: a man who took upon himself extraordinary measures to save life and preserve the remnants of civilization after a cataclysmic Flood. I have taken to studying the Noah story with children in our Religious School through the lens of environmental protectionism, and I am always impressed at our students' awareness of the dangers of climate change and our shared human responsibility in responding to it, a challenge that may indeed prove the preeminent moral issue of their lifetimes.

In that spirit of environmental sensitivity, I am offering this week a copy of remarks that will be shared with the "Let's Get Sustainable" blog recently initiated by the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism (www.rac.org), the Social Action arm of the Reform Movement. WRT was the first congregation asked to present a blog entry about our synagogue's green efforts, and I thought that it would be worthwhile to share those comments with you here, first. I am confident that members of WRT and non-members alike will learn much from the information contained in the following piece, and your comments and questions are, as always, most welcome.

Happy studying,

Rabbi Jonathan Blake

Here is the full text of the article (which may be abridged in its final published form):

It’s an honor for my synagogue, Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York, to have been asked to offer the first congregational profile in Reform Judaism’s “Let’s Get Sustainable” green blogging initiative!

Westchester Reform Temple (WRT) is a 1,200-household congregation in Scarsdale, New York, a “bedroom community” near New York City. At its present membership WRT is the largest Jewish congregation in Westchester County. When I came to work as a rabbi at WRT in July 2003, I began in a building last significantly upgraded in the 1960’s, and configured at that time to serve a congregation half our size. It was clear that we had outgrown our space: our Religious School was overflowing (over 800 students grades K-12 are enrolled) and was uncomfortably sharing space with our Early Childhood Center; our Sanctuary could not accommodate more than a couple hundred worshippers at an average Shabbat service without setting up temporary chairs; and the look, feel, and functionality of our physical plant had long since become due for a comprehensive rethinking.

As we--synagogue professionals, thoughtful lay leaders, architects and designers all acting as partners and collaborators--engaged in years of envisioning and imagining our future space, we made a determination early in the process to create a space that was not only functional, beautiful, and inspiring, but also embedded with Jewish meaning and consonant with the highest principles of Reform Judaism.

Among these principles we count sustainability and responsibility to God’s world. Concurrent with our capital campaign, we organized a Green Task Force that immediately went to work on some “low-hanging fruit,” developing a long-overdue recycling program years before we would break ground with new construction.

The biggest part of the greening of WRT, however, has taken place in the context of new construction, and thus we are presently on track as a candidate to become the largest synagogue in North America to achieve LEED certification, and only the second synagogue to do so.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification is the preeminent benchmark for sustainable construction and requires systematic attention to using sustainable materials, designs, and methods throughout the construction process. We are proud of our visionary synagogue leaders--in particular WRT’s Board of Trustees--who early on, after much thoughtful discussion and debate, made our goal to achieve LEED status a core commitment of our campaign, requiring a significant investment of money, time, effort, and a significant sacrifice of convenience.

Green considerations in our building include, but are not limited to the following seven elements.

1. Local and Certified Materials

Building materials are from a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified forest, using environmentally responsible forest management wood-based materials.

Materials were also purchased from within a 500-mile radius of WRT, reducing carbon emissions while supporting local employment.

2. Water Conservation

By selecting faucets with aerating delivery systems and automatic shutoff sensors, mounting low flow toilets and installing efficient shower heads, this project has reduced potable water use by 37.5% from a calculated baseline.

3. Air Quality

All the adhesives and caulking in the Sanctuary and Social Hall, from the flooring membranes to the glues used on the pews, are low VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) with minimal off-gassing. The paints in the new sections of the building, including the Beit Midrash, are also low VOC, and the carpets are Green Label or Green Label Plus, the Carpet and Rug Institute's standard criteria for low emissions.

To reduce the addition of everyday VOCs throughout the building, the majority of office equipment, such as copiers and printers, has been moved to one location and our maintenance team uses green cleaning products. WRT is also committed to a 100% smoke-free environment for its employees, congregants, friends, and neighbors.

WRT also installed walk-off grills at the entrances to the building help to eliminate outside pollutants from coming into the building.

4. Reuse & Recycling

The carpets you walk on in the sanctuary, social hall and Religious School use recycled textile fibers and plastics, often found in soda bottles.

Outside the building, our concrete includes fly ash - a byproduct of coal manufacturing. The fly ash strengthens the concrete and reduces the amount of this by-product that often ends up in land-fills.

WRT used a green disposal plan during construction to reduce our impact on the local environment.

5. Heating and Cooling

WRT's sustainable design is resulting in energy savings near 5.5% below the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) baseline each year.

The new roof was designed to reflect the sun's heat away from our building and the new spaces have a high performance building envelope, including cavity walls, increased insulation and insulated glass panels. The result is more efficient heating and cooling for the building.

The team installed a new, high efficiency HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning) system for the entire complex. In addition, the sanctuary uses an under-floor air distribution system creating a tempered comfort zone while not needing to heat or cool the entire volume. Since the air is distributed low in the space, the air speed is reduced, therefore reducing energy usage.

6. Alternative Energy

The new spaces were designed to create physical connections and views between indoor and outdoor areas, and since 75% of these spaces use of windows and glass to introduce daylight, the result is the reduced need for artificial light sources.

Light is also a power source at WRT. The eternal flame, above the Ark in the sanctuary, uses solar or photovoltaic (PV) cells to harness the ever present energy of the sun. In so doing we symbolically present a powerful Jewish and ecologically conscious message: so long as we care for the environment outside the temple, the light inside the temple will continue to shine.

That’s right: 100% of WRT's energy use is alternative! By purchasing energy from wind and solar farms, we are preventing 283,854 pounds (129 metric tons) of carbon dioxide emissions from being emitted into the atmosphere, the equivalent of 289,647 miles not driven by an average passenger car.

7. An Environmentally Conscious Campus

When the new site plan was developed, no additional parking requirements were created, thus protecting the existing habitat and having minimal impact on the existing eight-acre wooded site. The design also encourages alternate means of transportation to the campus by providing congregants and local users with bicycle racks and a shower in the building.

Concerned about storm-water management, the new system was designed to detain, treat, and filter watershed on site before out-falling to the Village streams and brooks. This limits pollution and sediments that contribute to flooding and erosion.

In the evening, visitors notice that our site lighting uses faceted light poles that focus light in the direction needed and emit no light above 90-degrees. These elements mean that WRT is "Dark Sky Compliant." Not only are we using less energy, but we can see the stars and have reduced the effects of unnatural lighting on nocturnal animals.

Green values continue to inform our undertakings even as construction draws to a close. This year we built an environmentally conscious Sukkah, replicating the award-winning design developed in 2009 by architecture students at Wesleyan University.

More than ten years after our initial dreams of the project began to take shape, we are presently putting the finishing touches on the Beit Midrash--the Center for Lifelong Jewish Learning--that sits at the heart of our new WRT campus. The Beit Midrash (built 2009-2010) was created in the second phase of our construction within the footprint of our old sanctuary; a beautiful new Sanctuary and Social Hall constituted the main components of the first phase of the construction (built 2007-2009).

Having engaged the services of New York-based Rogers Marvel Architects (for what would become their first synagogue project), we arranged the construction in two phases so as not to disrupt any functionality of the synagogue, which, in any given week, accommodates hundreds if not thousands of people and dozens of services, classes, and programs of every type.

Already our redesigned facility has been distinguished by an Award of Merit from the New York City American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Best in Class Award, Houses of Worship, from the 2010 Brick In Architecture Awards Competition.

Anyone who is interested in creating a sustainable synagogue for the 21st century is warmly invited to visit Westchester Reform Temple, and I or my colleagues would be happy to help you experience our congregation’s green campus firsthand.

Many blessings,

Rabbi Jonathan Blake

On behalf of the clergy, professional staff, and volunteer leadership of

Westchester Reform Temple

Scarsdale, New York

Morality and War, Then and Now - Thoughts for MATOT-MAS'EI

Shalom, Internet!

This is a first: I am posting this week's blog commentary from a couple hundred miles north of Albuquerque, 36,000 feet in the air. (See photo to the right, which I took with my laptop camera.) I spru

ng for the WiFi on Virgin Atlantic ($12.99/flight) so I ought to at least get some work done, you know, for tax deduction purposes. Or something.

This is a vacation week for me, so in lieu of a new video I am posting a link to a commentary written last year for Parashat Matot, the first of the double-portion (Matot-Mas'ei) read this week. The "D'var Acher" commentary by URJ Chairman Peter Weidhorn is also worth reading and I'm sure that somewhere in these words we'll find ourselves prompted to engage in a vigorous discussion. As always, your comments are most welcome.

Let me add, upon the conclusion of the Book of Numbers: Chazak, Chazak, v'Nitchazeik! Be strong, be strong, and let us give strength to one another.

Shalom to all of you from above -- way above!

Rabbi Jonathan Blake

Here is the article. The originally posted link to the URJ website seems to be under construction.

D'VAR TORAH

Morality in War, Then

and Now (Originally published in "Reform Voices of Torah,"

2008)
Jonathan E. Blake

Photo Credit: Jordana H.

We begin our parashah in the fortieth, and thus, final year of Israel's desert trek toward the Promised Land. The people are encamped on the eastern side of the Jordan River, opposite Jericho. The Israelites are preparing to enter Eretz Yisrael as a trained fighting force, ready to dispossess the native Canaanites and take possession of the land promised on oath by God.

Moses initiates a war against the Midianites (Numbers 31:3–4), purportedly to avenge the people for the sin of the Midianites. Recall that a Midianite woman, Cozbi, used sex to lure an Israelite named Zimri into illicit carnal relations—a deed abruptly ended by the spear of Pinchas, which dispatched both participants at once (Numbers 25:6–8, 25:15). Presumably her transgression spurred the men to acts of idolatry. (Some confusion lingers over this passage, because we learn that Moabite women, not Midianites, used sex as a lure and then "invited the [Israelite] menfolk to the sacrifices for their god") (Numbers 25:2).

But here our text targets Midianites. The Israelite warriors slaughter all their males and especially their kings (Numbers 31:7–8), as well as "every woman who has known a man carnally" (Numbers 31:17), sparing only the virgin females (Numbers 31:18).

After the slaughter, Moses instructs that "every one among you or among your captives who has slain a person or touched a corpse shall purify himself . . ." (Numbers 31:19).

W. Gunther Plaut regards this "ritual atonement" as "a unique provision in any human code" (The Torah: A Modern Commentary, rev. ed. [New York: URJ Press, 2005], p. 1,111), one that "introduces certain meliorating rules" (like tithes on the spoils claimed in battle). Parenthetically, Plaut continues:

(These may be compared to the various Geneva conventions of modern times applying themselves not to war as such but to the treatment of prisoners and civilians whose fate is to be bettered in conflicts still to occur.) . . . The realities have not changed greatly to this day, except that in many ways modern war may have increased the cruelties practiced in ancient, more "primitive" times. (Ibid.,emphasis added)

How sad, and true, is this last remark.

Many of us who read this section of our Torah portion understandably shudder at the religiously commanded slaughter, especially when Moses remarks in disgust, "You have spared every female!" (Numbers 31:15) before ordering their deaths, too.

But we should approach cautiously in contrasting our twenty-first-century sensibilities against biblical views of warfare. A compelling case could in fact be made that the wars of the last century and this century display humankind at our most brutal since the dawn of time. Certainly the cumulative wartime death toll since 1900 lends evidence to this claim.

Our increasingly sophisticated technologies of warfare have enabled us to wreak unprecedented destruction from an unprecedented remove—a remove both geographical and emotional. Increasingly commonplace "shock and awe" tactics of aerial bombardment do present less of a risk to military personnel than does a ground assault, but at the cost of death and injury to how many civilians?

Furthermore, we have seen in our most recent conflict in Iraq evidence that protracted war may erode basic morality. The crimes at Abu Ghraib alone should cause us sufficient discomfort in alleging any moral superiority of present-day wars over biblical wars.

The War on Terror has also been exploited by our government to justify the torture of detainees. The current [read, "former," i.e., Bush - ed. 07.2009] administration's morally dubious defense of torture (on the grounds that the practice is warranted by the threats posed by "enemy combatants") further tarnishes any disparaging claims we might make about the "primitive" wartime practices of our biblical forebears.

In 2005, the Reform Movement passed "a Resolution on Torture that affirms the validity of international treaties to which the U.S. is a party and the legal definitions of torture present in international law, and demands that the U.S. enforce and uphold domestic laws and Supreme Court rulings that make torture illegal" (as cited on the Web site of the Religious Action Center,www.rac.org). Thoughtful, influential leaders from across the political spectrum—both Republicans and Democrats—endorse this position.

That URJ resolution cites a case presented before the Supreme Court of Israel. The contours of the argument go like this: "On the one hand, the prisoner is a human being, created b'tzelem Elohim (in the image of God), and as such is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. On the other hand, there may exist a clear and present danger to the lives of innocent persons, whose death and injury might be prevented by information that the suspect can provide" ("Resolution on Torture," submitted by the Union for Reform Judaism Board of Trustees to the 68th Union for Reform Judaism General Assembly, passed—Houston, November 2005, as cited on www.rac.org).

It turns out that "the Court held that even in a ‘ticking bomb' scenario, torture or physical coercion is banned without exception. Experience has taught that there are more effective and moral ways of extracting information from detainees that do not reach beyond the bounds of law" (ibid.). "Israeli Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak stated in an article after the Court's decision: ‘The war against terrorism also requires the interrogation of terrorists, which must be conducted according to the ordinary rules of interrogation. Physical force must not be used in these interrogations; specifically, the persons being interrogated must not be tortured'" (ibid.).

This Israeli ruling highlights the complexity of legislating moral conduct during warfare. Yet instead of despairing of our capacity to compel moral behavior in wartime, it insists all the more that ethical standards must be applied and enforced— especially in war.

War has always been a brutalizing, dehumanizing affair, both for combatants and civilians. Our Torah portion this week makes this fact abundantly clear.

But have we really come so far?

DAVAR ACHER |

Challenge and Responsibility: Finding Modern Meaning in Biblical Text
Peter J. Weidhorn

As a Reform Jew and a layperson, I have always marveled at the ability of our rabbinical leaders to lead us to see ideas within the Bible that are not always apparent to us. At the same time, however, I have been taught by some of my teachers to be very careful lest we go overboard in reading into the text ideas and concepts that are not present. Such would be my conclusion relative to this parashah of Matot and the extension drawn from its words to the politics of our moment in history.

Like so many laypeople, I am concerned about the use of the biblical text to lead people to take particular political positions for or against specific personalities. What can be read into the text by one may not be read into the text by another. So for me, I am instructed by what we learn from our Reform commentary, The Torah: A Modern Commentary, rev. ed. (ed. W. Gunther Plaut [New York: URJ Press, 2005]).

Rabbi Plaut has been very specific in suggesting to us that Jews throughout history have been challenged by the moral questions of the requirement to slaughter combatants, women, and children, as occurs here in the text. Is Moses angry that the women were kept alive as a way of enhancing the amount of the spoils of war to be distributed? Or was he angry just because the women and some of the children were kept alive? Plaut points out that we should always keep in mind the time and place of biblical writing. These thoughts and acts were in keeping with the context of the time (ibid., pp. 1,110–1,111).

But even more, Plaut teaches us that this historical narrative was probably written long after the fact and is not meant to be taken literally. The numbers are much too large to be actual. Long after this event, Israel still encountered Midianites and so had not utterly destroyed them. Plaut writes, "The biblical account . . . represents a reconstruction of history as a statement of what should have happened rather than what actually happened. It doubtlessly came from an age when Israel had trouble with the native inhabitants of its conquered peoples . . ." (ibid., p. 1,111). I take from this a number of lessons concerning Reform Judaism and Torah.

First, Reform Jews read Torah differently than many other Jews. We are able to maintain its sanctity while challenging its literal words. Second, we can ask moral questions about the actions suggested in the text as to how they might or might not relate to our times. Surely, this section in Matot applies. What about other sections of biblical text? For example, how about the morality of Jacob's stealing the birthright? What about the notion of slavery?

Finally we must be very careful in how we might use the text. The third commandment ofAseret HaDib'rot ,which suggests we should not take the name of God in vain (old translation), might be understood in the following way: certain sacred things should be used very carefully and not taken lightly. Extracting political doctrine from the biblical text may be just such an example.

Peter J. Weidhorn is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Union for Reform Judaism, the top lay leadership position in the Reform Movement.