Opinion

WATER FOR BLESSING OR CURSE? IT’S OUR CHOICE

By Mirele B. Goldsmith, Ph.D.

Sukkot is my favorite holiday. I love the joyful time I spend outdoors in the sukkah, and I appreciate the emphasis on enjoying the gifts of nature. While many Jews recognize that on Sukkot we celebrate the harvest of the fields, the rituals of Sukkot teach us that for our ancestors, this holiday was as much a time to celebrate the water that made the crops grow.

Before the reinvention of Judaism following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the highlight of Sukkot was the Simchat Beit HaShoevah (Rejoicing of the Water Drawing House). Water was drawn from the Siloam Pool each day during the festival and poured on the altar. The Talmud records that “one who had never witnessed the Rejoicing at the Place of the Water Drawing had never seen true joy in his life.” Today, during Sukkot we wave the lulav, a bouquet of branches and fruit associated with water: willow, which lives on the banks of streams; palm, a symbol of the oasis in the desert; myrtle, which grows on the slopes of hills near water; and citron, or etrog, a fruit tree that requires heavy irrigation to thrive. water. We are just as dependent, despite the vast infrastructure that separates us from the sources of water that sustain us. Until recently, it may have been easy to ignore this dependence, but now climate change is disrupting the water cycle. Drought in California is leading to unprecedented wildfires. In Kansas, extreme rainstorms result in record-breaking floods. Rising sea levels are inundating Florida coasts. Melting permafrost is destabilizing soil in Alaska. All these changes are affecting people directly through destruction of homes, livelihoods, and communities.

Fortunately, protecting people from the changing climate is stimulating creativity all around the world. The city of Rotterdam is building parking garages, plazas, and basketball courts in neglected neighborhoods that can serve as emergency reservoirs. Israelis, long-time leaders in adapting to dry conditions, are continuing to innovate in drip irrigation to help farmers grow crops with minimal use of water. Right around the corner from the JCC, New York City has installed rain gardens in the sidewalk to absorb runoff from rainstorms.

The Jewish Earth Alliance led a Sukkot Climate Caravan to Washington, D.C. in September 2021 to meet with Congress and local leaders, including Montgomery County (Maryland) Executive Marc Elrich.

Preventing more damage to the water cycle by reducing the use of fossil fuels is equally critical. There is good news on this front, too. Governments at every level are taking steps to accelerate the transition to renewable solar and wind energy in place of coal, oil, and gas. For example, New York City passed a green building law requiring large buildings to reduce planet-warming emissions. This past August, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which provides incentives for companies to generate more renewable energy and for individuals to make their homes more energy efficient and switch to electric cars. This is a big deal—the largest investment the United States government has ever made in climate solutions.

Climate change is such a big challenge that everyone can find a way to contribute, whether at home, in your community, or through advocacy for systemic solutions. As a leader of Jewish Earth Alliance, I have found my calling in helping Jews raise our voices for action by Congress. Jewish Earth Alliance collaborates with many groups, organizing Jews to respond to the climate crisis. Our partners include Higher Ground Initiative, focusing on empowering congregations to address sea level rise, and Tikkun HaYam: Repair the Seas, raising awareness of how climate change and other human impacts threaten the oceans.

Sukkot reminds us that we must not take the gift of water for granted. As the festival comes to an end, there is a change in emphasis from gratitude for the past year’s bounty to concern about the future. On Hoshanah Rabah, worshippers circle the synagogue again and again crying out “Hoshanah—save us!” As Rabbi Arthur Waskow teaches, this cry should rightfully be translated as “Save the Earth! Save us!”

of Assembly), worshippers recite the prayer for rain for the first time in the new year. This prayer, which will be included in the daily prayers throughout the rainy season of the Land of Israel, concludes with a plea that the rains will come only for blessing. As we now understand all too well, water is not always a blessing. In the wrong place, at the wrong time, or in the wrong amount, it is a curse: “You are our God, abundant in your saving acts, who makes the wind to blow and rain to fall. For blessing, not for curse. For living, not for death. For plenty, not for scarcity.” This Sukkot, let’s keep in mind the sense of urgency about climate change that our ancestors felt about the coming of the rains. With our actions, we can choose blessing.

Mirele B. Goldsmith, Ph.D., environmental psychologist and activist, is co-chairperson of Jewish Earth Alliance. Find more information about how you can help call on Congress for action on climate, visit JewishEarthAlliance.org.

The Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan is proud to host regular forums for ideas that allow for open conversation and dialogue on topics related to Israel and the world. We present this op-ed section in a similar vein: in the hope that open, honest dialogue will take root, and that we may participate in that dialogue with you, our community. To reach us with your thoughts, email Rebecca Grossman at rgrossman@mmjccm.org.

FOR ISRAEL AND ITS NEIGHBORS, ENVIRONMENTAL COOPERATION MEANS SURVIVAL

By Gidon Bromberg, co-founder and Israeli director, EcoPeace Middle East and Yuval Ben David, international advocacy coordinator, EcoPeace, Tel Aviv office

This summer, for the first time in years, the sea in Gaza was clean enough to swim in. Home to 2.2 million people, the densely populated, 41-kilometer strip has been under an Israeli/Egyptian blockade since 2007, when Hamas first rose to power. With movement of people and goods in and out severely restricted, the beach is one of the few outlets available to Palestinians in Gaza—but untreated waste flowing into the Mediterranean Sea had made that a dangerous pastime.

This year is different, thanks to three new waste treatment plants funded by the international community. Those donors had nearly pulled out after over a decade of delays, largely due to Israeli concerns that the cement needed for the construction would end up in the hands of Hamas to build tunnels to attack Israel. What eventually turned the tide of Israeli government policies was an understanding that military security was not the only security interest or issue at stake.

We at EcoPeace demonstrated that Gaza’s raw sewage was forcing the intermittent closure of the Ashkelon desalination plant, only seven kilometers to the north—and responsible for 15 percent of Israel’s domestic water supply! Through satellite images, we learned that the Ashdod desalination plant—for a further 15 percent of water supply—was also at risk of closure.

Faced with additional new facts related to health security, researched by EcoPeace, all the mayors on the Israeli side of the Gaza border, from both left and right, wrote a letter to the Prime Minister expressing concerns about the local public health implications of Gaza’s water and sanitation crisis. Ultimately, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a public statement underscoring that Israel’s water and health security is bound up in Gaza’s. As a result the cement needed to build the treatment plants quickly moved into Gaza.

The lesson learned—you can never disengage from a shared environment, and from your neighbor’s ability to manage it.

A trilateral Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian

organization active for nearly three decades, EcoPeace seeks cooperative solutions to protect our shared environment, advancing concrete solutions that bring real benefit to people on the ground. We have worked to attract investment critical to rehabilitating the Jordan River, helping leverage more than $100 million to clean up its waters. While the peace process is stalled—and that there is “no partner” for peace has become a regular mantra of politicians on all sides— every day our work demonstrates that there is a partner on the other side.

Too often, the people of the region are held hostage to a zero-sum mentality that makes it easier to point fingers than build solutions. This was the mindset of how water was negotiated in the Oslo Accords in the mid1990s between Israelis and Palestinians. Water was left unresolved as one of five final status issues, because coming to an agreement over sharing scarce natural water was difficult and would produce winners and losers.

Today, advancements in water technologies, often led by Israeli innovation, present the opportunity for Palestinians to obtain their rights to a fair share of natural water sources without reducing water availability for the Israeli side. Israel’s global leadership in

Gidon Bromberg addresses the United Nations Security Council.

desalination and wastewater reuse paves the way for creative, mutually beneficial solutions that could help unlock the stalled peace process.

Of course, technology is not a panacea, especially as climate change exacerbates the region’s existing challenges. The Middle East is heating at twice the pace of the global average, with catastrophic consequences for food and water security, livelihoods, health—and regional stability. Israel’s eastern neighbor, Jordan, is the second most waterscarce country in the world, with increasingly intense and destabilizing droughts dominating the kingdom’s anxieties. By expanding our traditional notion of “security,” the climate crisis—the most acute, existential threat of our time—can bring the peoples of the region together.

In our Green Blue Deal report, published in 2020, EcoPeace called for the countries of the region to leverage their comparative advantages in renewable energy and water to improve collective resilience. Jordan, with vast desert areas, enjoys a comparative advantage in solar energy. Israelis and Palestinians, with access to the Mediterranean, both enjoy a comparative advantage over Jordan in the production of fresh water via desalination. Regional exchange of water and energy would boost efforts to mitigate climate change, ease water scarcity and promote healthy interdependencies, giving each side something to sell and something to buy. That vision is becoming a reality. A breakthrough was the “water-for-energy” deal signed by Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates in November 2021, in the presence of U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. The agreement, which will see Israel exporting desalinated water in exchange for solar energy produced in Jordan, was a major step towards realizing our vision for the region. As a next step, we are advocating for Palestinian solar energy from Area C of the West Bank to be wheeled across Israel and power a new desalination plant in Gaza, where 97 percent of the water in the enclave’s sole aquifer is no longer drinkable.

In our offices in Tel Aviv, Ramallah, and Amman, EcoPeace demonstrates that environmental cooperation is not only necessary, but brings real benefits to all sides. In the face of the climate crisis, we need the whole region to cooperate. Our common survival, in fact, depends on it.