We Are the Weather Discussion Guide

“We are the flood, and we are the ark.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

WE ARE THE WEATHER Discussion Guide for Jewish Communities

“Changing how we eat will not be enough, on its own, to save the planet, but we cannot save the planet without changing how we eat.”

– Jonathan Safran Foer, We Are the Weather (p83)

Table of Contents Introduction......................................................................3 Our Planet is a Farm........................................................5

Do My Choices Matter? What Can I, Just One Person, Really Do?.........................................................11

Are You a Climate Change Denier or Do You Just Act Like One?....................................................................7

Where Were You?...........................................................15

Walking the Walk...........................................................13

Responsibility, Equality, Justice..................................9

About Hazon Hazon is the Jewish lab for sustainability. We work to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, and a healthier and more sustainable world for all.

The word hazon means vision. We are turning Jewish life outwards to make a difference in the world and, in that process, we are strengthening Jewish life. Our work engages individuals, institutions, and the wider community. And we renew Jewish life by exploring three millennia of Jewish wisdom to address some of the most complex challenges of our time, including climate change, environmental degradation, and food justice issues.

Excerpts from We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Copyright © 2019 by Jonathan Safran Foer. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from Living Underwater: Venice, Climate Change & Jewish Tradition, published by Beit Venezia and Hazon.

Open source copyright, 2019.

Thank you to EJF Philanthropies, without whom this work would not be possible. info@hazon.org • 212.644.2332 • hazon.org

Introduction “Talking about the weather” is shorthand for meaningless small talk. “Talking about the weather” implies boring and shallow. Yet “the weather” is one of the most meaningful and consequential topics we can discuss.

In We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, Jonathan Safran Foer explores the central global dilemma of our time in a surprising, deeply personal, and urgent new way. The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves—with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have, he reveals, turned our planet into a farm for growing animal products, and the consequences are catastrophic. Only collective action will save our home. And it all starts with what we eat—and don’t eat—for breakfast.

Foer writes, “This book is not a comprehensive explanation of climate change, and it is not a categorical case against eating animal products. It is an exploration of a decision that our planetary crisis requires us to make.” (p70) This discussion guide for Jewish communities will help you explore that decision and other themes of the book, whether that be on your own, in chevruta (pairs), or as part of larger community programs like book club discussions, “lunch and learns,” or other formats. Then, the guide will turn you toward action. We are in an environmental crisis and Jewish tradition compels us to respond.

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Introduction HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE This guide will be especially helpful for those who have read the book and assumes you have done so. However, those who haven’t read the book, or have read only part of it, should still find it useful, especially for those familiar with the connection between climate change and animal agriculture.

There are six sections, each with three sets of texts and questions to spur conversation. There’s no right or wrong way to use this guide, though it was not designed to be gone through completely in one sitting. Rather we offer a large menu from which you can select, à la carte, what resonates most. You could meet multiple times and work your way through every text and question. For one-off gatherings you may pick just one or two sections to focus on, or select one set of texts and questions from each of the six sections. When selecting what to use, consider the amount of time you have, the number of people in your group, and the context and purpose of your gathering.

If you are newer to organizing and running learning opportunities, we encourage you to check out the “Cultivate a learning community” section (p111) of Hazon’s Food for Thought sourcebook. It is full of ideas and tips to help you create a memorable and meaningful educational experience that is right for you and your community. It also has an array of additional resources connecting Jewish wisdom with food and climate. Download it for free at hazon.org/foodforthought.

We also recommend Hazon’s discussion guide for Jewish communities for the film Eating Animals, based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s book of the same title. It covers the intersection of Judaism, food, and animal welfare, including: teachings on when and how God permitted Jews to eat meat, keeping kosher and Jewish dietary laws, and tzaar baalei chayim (the prohibition against causing unnecessary suffering to living beings). This resource is a deeply relevant complement to this We Are the Weather discussion guide.

Download it for free at hazon.org/eatinganimals.

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EATING ANIMALS

Starting the Conversation Watching the movie Eating Animals can be an intense experience. The name alone – Eating Animals – is thought-provoking. The movie may have brought up a range of feelings and ideas, some familiar, some uncomfortable. These texts and questions may help you, as individuals and as a community, explore what arose and start a conversation about, well, eating animals. Whether in pairs (chevruta), small groups, or as a large group, we encourage you to spend some time exploring the intersection of Judaism, food, and animal welfare.

Our Planet is a Farm “Our planet is a farm.

‫ָאדם ָע ָפר ִמן ָה ֲא ָד ָמה וַ ִּי ַּפח‬ ָ ‫ֹלהים ֶאת ָה‬ ִ ‫ וַ ִּי ֶיצר יְ הוָ ה ֱא‬7 ‫ָאדם ְלנֶ ֶפׁש ַח ָּיה׃‬ ָ ‫ַאפיו נִ ׁ ְש ַמת ַח ִּיים וַ יְ ִהי ָה‬ ָּ ‫ְּב‬

“We’ve misunderstood what our planet is, and therefore misunderstood how to save it.

“Our singular focus on fossil fuels leads us to visually represent the planetary crisis with smokestacks and polar bears. It’s not that those things are unimportant, but as mascots for our crisis, they have given us the impression that our planet is a factory, and that the animals most relevant to climate change are wild and far away. Not only is that impression wrong—it is disastrously counterproductive. We will never address climate change, never save our home, until we acknowledge that our planet is a farm.”

Jonathan Safran Foer, We Are the Weather (p160)

‫ָאדם‬ ָ ‫ֹלהים ַּגן ְב ֵע ֶדן ִמ ֶּק ֶדם וַ ָּי ֶשׂם ׁ ָשם ֶאת ָה‬ ִ ‫ וַ ִּי ַּטע יְ הוָ ה ֱא‬8 ‫ֲא ׁ ֶשר יָ ָצר׃‬ ‫ָאדם וַ ַּי ִּנ ֵחהּו ְבגַ ן ֵע ֶדן ְל ָע ְב ָדּה‬ ָ ‫ֹלהים ֶאת ָה‬ ִ ‫ וַ ִּי ַּקח יְ הוָ ה ֱא‬15 ‫ְּול ׁ ָש ְמ ָרּה׃‬ And Adonai God formed the man from the dust of the earth and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

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And Adonai God planted a garden in Eden to the east, and placed there the man that had been formed.

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And Adonai God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and guard it.

15

Genesis 2:7-8,15

Jonathan Safran Foer proposes that our planet is a farm. The Torah teaches us that our planet is a garden. How does it shape your perspective of our planet when you think of it as the place that feeds us?

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Our Planet is a Farm “We don’t need to reinvent food but to uninvent it. The future of farming and eating needs to resemble the past.”

Foer, p133

‫ְלדֹור וָ דֹור‬ L’dor vador From generation to generation.

What aspects of our farming and food systems do you think need to be “uninvented”?

What growing and eating practices of your parents’ and grandparents’ time should we be trying to resemble?

“We do not simply feed our bellies, and we do not simply modify our appetites in response to principles. We eat to satisfy primitive cravings, to forge and express ourselves, to realize community.

We eat with our mouths and stomachs, but also with our minds and hearts. All my different identities—father, son, American, New Yorker, progressive, Jew, writer, environmentalist, traveler, hedonist—are present when I eat, and so is my history.”

Foer, p67

What identities are most present for you when you eat? And how do those identities shape what you eat? How does what you eat shape your identities?

How does thinking about being a person on a planet that’s a farm, a person whose faith says our species was birthed in a garden and that our task is to work it and guard it, shape your identity as an eater?

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Are You a Climate Change Denier or Do You Just Act Like One? “So-called climate change deniers reject the conclusion that 97 percent of climate scientists have reached: the planet is warming because of human activities. But what about those of us who say we accept the reality of human-caused climate change? We may not think the scientists are lying, but are we able to believe what they tell us? Such a belief would surely awaken us to the urgent ethical imperative attached to it, shake our collective conscience, and render us willing to make small sacrifices in the present to avoid cataclysmic ones in the future.

“Intellectually accepting the truth isn’t virtuous in and of itself. And it won’t save us. As a child, I was often told, ‘you know better’ when I did something I shouldn’t have done. Knowing was the difference between a mistake and an offense.

“If we accept a factual reality (that we are destroying the planet), but are unable to believe it, we are no better than those who deny the existence of human-caused climate change—just as Felix Frankfurter was no better than those who denied the existence of the Holocaust. And when the future distinguishes between these two kinds of denial, which will appear to be a grave error and which an unforgivable crime?”

Foer, p20-21

“Thou shall not be a perpetrator, thou shall not be a victim, and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander.”

Yehuda Bauer, historian and scholar of the Holocaust

What do you think of the parallels Foer draws between Holocaust deniers and climate change deniers – and between “knowing” and “believing” as they apply to both? Do you find them useful? Inappropriate? Accurate?

In what ways are you a perpetrator, a victim, and/or a bystander in relation to climate change?

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Are You a Climate Change Denier or Do You Just Act Like One? “It feels obvious to me that I am not a climate change denier, but it is undeniable that I behave like one.”

Foer, p30

Busted? What might it look like to act as if you really did believe in climate change?

How would your day-to-day life change? How would our society change if we acted collectively on this belief?

“First of all: no one got out of bed and decided to change the climate. Climate change isn’t happening because anyone wants climate change. That’s not how this started happening. It happens because we are who we are: just people, living our lives. We’re a mess of desires and traditions, wants and needs, fears, appetites, habits. The things we grew up taking for granted, behaviors that we think of as ‘normal’ are in fact doing real damage to the world….

“And we eat meat because… that’s what we do. It’s how we grew up. My mother’s spaghetti sauce.

Brisket. Chopped liver. Friday night dinner. A burger. But it puts methane in the air. And when enough of us do that, it starts to heat up the planet. Since the year I was born, global meat consumption per person has doubled—and the world’s population has grown by four billion people. The animals that we breed to feed our meat habit now account for at least 15% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide). The food on our table is contributing to rising seas and extreme weather events.

“We cannot so easily claim a high moral ground. There is no obvious external enemy. We are all complicit in simply living our lives. In literally unsustainable ways.”

Nigel Savage, Living Underwater: Venice, Climate Change & Jewish Tradition

What do you make of this combination of innocence and complicity? How can someone lack intent but still be culpable?

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Responsibility, Equality, Justice “On average, Americans consume twice the recommended intake of protein.”

Foer, p83

“People who eat diets high in animal protein are four times as likely to die of cancer as those who eat diets low in animal protein are.”

Foer, p83

“[C]itizens of different countries have dramatically different CO2e footprints—the average American’s is 19.8 metric tons per year, the average Frenchman’s is 6.6 metric tons per year, the average Bangladeshi’s is 0.29 metric tons per year.”

Foer, p101

“By looking at the natural resources required to produce what we consume, as well as how much greenhouse gas is emitted, the Global Footprint Network calculates a budget that lets us know to what extent we are living within our means. The answer depends entirely on who is referred to by ‘we.’ If the 7.5 billion people on the planet had the needs and the outputs of the average Bangladeshi, we would require an earth the size of Asia to live sustainably—our planet would be far more than enough for us… For everyone to live like an American, we would need at least four earths.”

Foer, p123

“The richest 10 percent of the global population is responsible for half the carbon emissions; the poorest half is responsible for 10 percent.”

Foer, p164

“To all our brethren, beloved sons of Israel, who fear God and revere [God’s] name: From the time of our inception as a nation we were distinguished as a people of spirit and nobility, leading modest and wholesome lives... ‘Nothing is more beautiful than modesty’, our rabbis proclaimed, and a life of modesty was the crowning pride of our people throughout the ages. As of late, the stress on luxurious living is taking an ever-increasing toll on our resources of time and money, and as a result the health and stability of entire families suffer.”

Public declaration of the Rabbis of Bnei Brak, (reprinted in The Jewish Observer June, 1971)

‫ַה ֶּד ֶרְך ַהיְ ׁ ָש ָרה ִהיא ִמ ָּדה ֵּבינֹונִ ית ׁ ֶש ְּב ָכל ֵּד ָעה וְ ֵד ָעה ִמ ָּכל‬ ‫חֹוקה ִמׁ ְּש ֵּתי‬ ָ ‫ וְ ִהיא ַה ֵּד ָעה ׁ ֶש ִהיא ְר‬.‫ָאדם‬ ָ ‫ַה ֵּדעֹות ׁ ֶש ֵּיׁש לֹו ָל‬ ‫ ְל ִפ ָיכְך ִצּוּו‬.‫רֹובה ֹלא ָלזֹו וְ ֹלא ָלזֹו‬ ָ ‫ַה ְּק ָצוֹות ִרחּוק ׁ ָשוֶ ה וְ ֵאינָ ּה ְק‬ ‫עֹותיו ָּת ִמיד ְּומׁ ַש ֵער‬ ָ ‫ָאדם ׁ ָשם ֵּד‬ ָ ‫ֲח ָכ ִמים ָה ִראׁשֹונִ ים ׁ ֶש ְּי ֵהא‬ .‫אֹותם ַּב ֶּד ֶרְך ָה ֶא ְמ ָצ ִעית ְּכ ֵדי ׁ ֶש ְּי ֵהא ׁ ָש ֵלם ְּבגּופֹו‬ ָ ‫אֹותם ְּומ ַכ ִּון‬ ָ “The proper path is the middle road from every choice a person has in front of him. It is equidistant from the two extremes, and is not ‘almost’ one or the other. Therefore the early scholars commanded us to review our choices and adjust to follow this road of moderation in order to live a more fulfilling existence.“ Maimonides Mishneh Torah, Hilkchot De’ot (Laws of Human Dispositions) 1:4

‫ָארץ ֲא ׁ ֶשר‬ ֶ ‫ת־ה‬ ָ ‫ֶצ ֶדק ֶצ ֶדק ִּת ְר ּדֹף ְל ַמ ַען ִּת ְחיֶ ה וְ יָ ַר ׁ ְש ָּת ֶא‬ ‫ֹלהיָך נ ֵֹתן ָלְך׃‬ ֶ ‫יְ הוָ ה ֱא‬ “Justice, justice you shall pursue, that you may live, and inherit the land which Adonai your God gave you.“ Deuteronomy 16:18

Judaism advocates a path of moderation: neither excessive consumption and materialism, nor asceticism and deprivation. And, it elevates the pursuit of justice (and even connects that pursuit directly to our relationship to the land). Reading this cluster of data points and Jewish teachings together, what ideas and questions arise for you?

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Responsibility, Equality, Justice “My older son is about to have his bar mitzvah, the Jewish rite of passage into adulthood. Among other things, it marks the transition from being a recipient of what the world has to offer to being a participant in the maintenance and creation of what the world offers others.”

Foer, p140

What do you think of this take on what it means to be a Jewish adult? How does this particular aspect of adulthood affect your thinking about what it means to you to be an adult?

‫נַ ֲע ֶשׂה וְ נִ ׁ ְש ָמע‬

“We need to do certain things even if we don’t feel like doing them—we can’t wait for the right feelings.”

Na’aseh ve-nishmah

Foer, p159

We will do and then we will understand.

Exodus 24:7

Do we need to believe before we act? Could we model ourselves after the Israelites, who say at the base of Mt. Sinai when God offers the Torah, “na’aseh v’nishmah” – that they will do first and then understand? What if we committed to action, regardless of the belief, and through the doing, we understand?

What are things you do that you don’t feel like doing, and maybe never feel like doing?

Perhaps it’s brushing your teeth, shoveling your walkway after a snowstorm, doing your taxes. Why do you do those things?

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“How bad for the environment can throwing away one plastic bottle be?”

30 million people wonder.

Headline from The Onion, satirical “news” outlet Reprinted with permission of The Onion.

Copyright © 2010, by Onion, Inc. www.theonion.com

Do My Choices Matter? What Can I, Just One Person, Really Do? “The Jewish response [to climate change] begins with twin gifts from our tradition: the gift of hope and the gift of human significance… Our tradition teaches that our lives have significance, and means this and believes this. This is not obvious. Not everyone agrees with this… [O]ur G!d, we believe, gave the Torah, a book of stories, almost every one of them a story of hope and of human significance.

Avraham and Sarah, opening their tent, going on a journey, welcoming angels.

Fighting to save the towns of the plains— failing, but fighting nonetheless.

Hagar, protecting her son (and succeeding).

Rebecca, Rachel, Leah—each the author of her own story.

Jacob, wrestling the angel (wounded, but surviving the encounter, learning from it, growing, changing).

Pharaoh’s daughter—saving one life, and thus saving the world.

Moshe—the accidental hero, hearing the commanding voice, rising to the challenge, saving his people.

“These stories of hope and significance in the Torah went on to inspire us for twenty centuries more… Our people’s stories are the stories of how one person really can change the world. That’s what it is to be heir to Jewish tradition.... This is so central to Jewishness that it is easy to forget its power and significance…

This is how we start to address climate change and our unsustainable ways. We never forget our significance. We believe in ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our communities…

We trust in our significance… and with this sense of our own significance, we can start to face climate change and the challenge of sustainability.”

Savage, Living Underwater

“Is there anything more narcissistic than believing the choices you make affect everyone?

Only one thing: believing the choices you make affect no one.”

Foer, p149

How significant did you feel regarding your ability to impact climate change (both for better and for worse) before reading We Are the Weather? Did the book impact your sense of significance? How does Judaism shape your sense of individual significance?

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Do My Choices Matter? What Can I, Just One Person, Really Do? “Social change, much like climate change, is caused by multiple chain reactions that occur simultaneously. Both cause, and are caused by, feedback loops. No single factor can be credited for a hurricane, drought, or wildfire, just as no single factor can be credited for a decline in cigarette smoking—and yet in all cases, every factor is significant. When a radical change is needed, many argue that it is impossible for individual actions to incite it, so it’s futile for anyone to try. This is exactly the opposite of the truth: the impotence of individual action is a reason for everyone to try.”

‫יֹוד ַע ַמ ַּתן‬ ֵ ‫ַאתה‬ ָּ ‫ ׁ ֶש ֵאין‬,‫מּורה‬ ָ ‫וֶ ֱהוֵ י ז ִָהיר ְּב ִמ ְצוָ ה ַק ָּלה ְכ ַב ֲח‬ .‫ְש ָׂכ ָרן ׁ ֶשל ִמ ְצֹות‬ “Be as careful in doing a small mitzvah as a great one, because you do not know the reward of mitzvot.”

Pirkei Avot 2:1

Foer, p51

Share examples from your own life in which you caused an unexpected ripple effect by your actions. Share ways in which you have been impacted in unexpectedly large ways by others’ small actions.

“Unless you buy your food in secret and eat it in a closet, you don’t eat alone. Our food choices are social contagions, always influencing others around us—supermarkets track each item sold, restaurants adjust their menus to demand, food services look at what gets thrown away, and we order ‘what she’s having.’ We eat as families, communities, generations, nations, and increasingly as a globe. Individual consumer choices can activate a ‘complex, recursive dynamic’—collective action—that is generative, not paralyzing… We couldn’t stop our eating from radiating influence even if we wanted to.”

Foer, p201

Many feel hopeless, impotent, and overwhelmed in the face of climate change. How does it feel to consider that your choices, in particular your food choices, radiate influence—in fact, so much so that you couldn’t stop your influence even if you wanted to?

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Walking the Walk “The word halacha means Jewish religious law. Its etymological root is lalechet—to walk.

“So halacha really means the path, or the way, or—we might say—walking the walk.

“There is a rich and ancient behavioral psychology encoded in Jewish tradition. Mitzvot, blessings, the Talmud, tzedakah, the multiple and many rules and traditions and customs and byways of Jewish life—together they add up to an ongoing centripetal force, acting upon our psyche and upon human behavior. “… The central daily intent of the tradition is to control instinct, to constrain lust and appetite in the widest senses, and to encourage us to do right, in ways small and large. ‘Halacha’ is short hand for this entire process.

believe that freedom means that you can do your thing and I’ll do my thing and so long as you don’t directly injure me, I have nothing to say to you about your behavior—and maybe nothing even to say to constrain myself, let alone you.

“But the carrying capacity of planet earth now challenges us all to rethink this. Halacha offers a very particular antidote to the tragedy of the commons. It suggests that some combination of values, rules, laws, customs, and the daily reinforcement of education and of social sanction is a critical key not only to a good life but to a good community, a good society and— perhaps—a good world.”

Savage, Living Underwater

“Halacha as an idea raises significant challenges for liberal western society. We have come to

Halacha poses a critical question to each person, community, school system, institution, country: how can we engender self-restraint and good behavior? How do you align your actions with your values?

What is your personal relationship to Jewish law and how, if it all, does it shape your behavior?

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Walking the Walk “Conversations about meat, dairy, and eggs make people defensive. They make people annoyed. No one who isn’t a vegan is eager to go there, and the eagerness of vegans can be a further turn off.

But we have no hope of tackling climate change if we can’t speak honestly about what is causing it, as well as our potential, and our limits, to change in response. Sometimes a fist needs the word ‘fist’ written across it, so I’ll name it now: we cannot save the planet unless we significantly reduce our consumption of animal products.

“This book is an argument for a collective act to eat differently—specifically, no animal products before dinner.”

“For two thousand years we have asked: is this food fit for me to eat…?

“And the word for ‘fit’ is, as we know, kosher.

“How did we teach our kids, generation after generation, to restrain their food choices? To eat certain things, but not others. To control their appetites and ours, literally, rather than have them control us.

“Within Jewish communities and beyond we must now say: we are living proof that limiting our food choices doesn’t diminish our happiness, it increases it.“ Savage, Living Underwater

Foer, p64

“No animal products before dinner” is Foer’s specific call to action. Juxtaposed against the Jewish legacy of kashrut, (whether you keep kosher or not) what is your response?

Are there examples in your life of limitations that have increased your happiness?

“Yes, there are constraints on our actions, conventions and structural injustices that set the parameters of possibility. Our free will is not omnipotent—we can’t do whatever we want. But, we are free to choose from possible options. And one of our options is to make environmentally conscientious choices. It doesn’t require breaking the laws of physics—or even electing a green president—to select something plant-based from a menu or at the grocery store. And although it may be a neo-liberal myth that individual decisions have ultimate power, it is a defeatest myth that individual decisions have no power at all. “… [W]e would have no chance of achieving our goal of limited environmental destruction if individuals don’t make the very individual decision to eat differently. Of course it’s true that one person deciding to eat a plant-based diet will not change the world, but of course it’s true that the sum of millions of such decisions will.”

Foer, p199-200

Share a major behavior that you have changed at any time in your life. What inspired that change? What supports enabled you to make the change and stick to it? What role did facts play in the change? Emotion? Larger structural or societal shifts? Laws?

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Where Were You? “There is something we can do. Choosing to eat fewer animal products is probably the most important action an individual can take to reverse global warming—it has a known and significant effect on the environment, and, done collectively, would push the culture and the marketplace with more force than any march.

“We must engender in as many people as possible what in Jewish tradition is called kefiyat yetzer— focusing our will, our drive, our energy, our lust; sometimes this means re-channeling our ‘evil inclination.’ Government actions are vital, but not everything can or should be legislated. The tragedy of the commons requires us, all of us, to learn the habits of voluntary self-restraint.”

Nigel Savage, Living Underwater

Some people think of “taking action” as activities like voting, signing a petition, and marching with banners. Others think of “meaningful action” as being large (and perhaps expensive) actions like buying an electric car, or adding solar panels to one’s home. And, some may think of “making a difference” as huge and permanent gestures—becoming zero waste, becoming a vegan, never flying again. Those are certainly meaningful actions that make a difference. And, the choices that we make day after day, and which add up year after year, can have as much or greater of an effect. How do you feel and respond when hearing that one of the biggest changes you can make—eating fewer animal products—is so simple, immediate, and affordable?

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Where Were You? ‫ַאתה ֶבן‬ ָּ ‫ וְ ֹלא‬,‫אכה ִלגְ מֹר‬ ָ ‫ ֹלא ָע ֶליָך ַה ְּמ ָל‬,‫אֹומר‬ ֵ ‫הּוא ָהיָ ה‬ .‫חֹורין ִל ָּב ֵטל ִמ ֶּמ ָּנה‬ ִ “He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.”

“The important measurement is not the distance from unattainable perfection, but from unforgivable inaction.”

Foer, p153

Pirkei Avot, 2:16

There’s a large spectrum in between “finish” and “neglect.” These teachings help us overcome the cognitive distortion of thinking in extreme, all or nothing terms. Where do you think your actions around climate change fall on the spectrum between “finish” and “neglect”, between “unattainable perfection” and “unforgivable inaction”?

“Climate change is the greatest crisis humankind has ever faced, and it is a crisis that will always be simultaneously addressed together and faced alone. We cannot keep the kinds of meals we have known and also keep the planet we have known. We must either let some eating habits go or let the planet go. It is that straightforward, that fraught.

“We’re in a global environmental crisis. Jewish tradition compels us to respond.”

Hazon

“Where were you when you made your decision?”

Foer, p71

Rabbi Mark Cohn, after reading We Are the Weather, reflected: “Adam and Eve chose to eat the apple and as a result they had to leave the Garden of Eden. If we keep supporting the factory farming industry—we will be forced to leave the garden and there might not be a garden left at all.” After reading the book and having some conversation, do you feel compelled to make a decision now?

What is your decision?

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