“Don’t it
always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone:
They paved
paradise and put in a parking lot.”
“Jacob left
Beer-Sheva and set out for Paran” (Genesis 28:10). Unlike his grandfather
Abraham, Jacob does not just “go”, he “leaves.” At the end of Parashat Toledot,
both his parents tell him to “rise and go”, with a meaning of “flee”. But the
beginning of Parashat Vayetzei does not say, “So he went/goes” or “He fled.” It
says: “He left.” He left behind his tangible absence among his remaining family
members, and he left behind the struggle and the pain that he caused. Rashi
questions the use of this word, and answers it with what Avivah Zornberg calls
a “classic midrashic response.” He says, “This tells us that the ‘leaving’ of a
righteous person from a place makes an imprint [Zornberg’s emphasis]. As
long as the righteous person is in the city, he is its glory and light and
majesty. When he leaves, its glory, light and majesty are evacuated.” Zornberg,
in her commentary The Beginning of Desire, “The imprint, the full
awareness of the indispensable person, is known only after he has removed
himself from his place.”
Last week, the
Academy of Jewish Religion held its annual retreat, this year on the topic of
“Torah and Terra: Jewish stewardship of the environment.” We spoke a lot about
climate change and unstoppable destruction we’ve already put forth into the
atmosphere. Climate change science has been discussed for at least 20 years,
but only now is the mainstream starting to care. Only now are we starting to
realize that we have already passed the point of no return. We can still make
changes, make a difference, save the Earth, but the carbon we’ve already
emitted is enough to cause irreparable damage. The globe is already warming,
the ice caps already melting, the waters already rising. We are losing
shorelines. Without drastic changes on a governmental and international level,
life as we know it could be over by 2100 (not to say the world will end, but
that life will be unimaginably altered to adjust to the new face of Earth).
This is the lifetime of the generation being born now. People who are already
alive will see the devastation we have created for them. Even with drastic
changes, we could find large swaths of land under water and innumerable species
extinct by 2100. But we, as a human race/species, don’t seem to be making moves
to make those drastic changes in time. We won’t know what we’ve lost til it’s
gone.
Zornberg, with the
help of Rashi and the midrashists, continue in a more hopeful vein: the void
that Jacob creates is within him as well, and is necessary in order for him to
cleave to his mate. In order to find and attach himself fully to his wife,
Jacob must separate himself from his family, from his place of origin, from
“previous identities and fixities.” Perhaps we, too, can find something new to
cleave to in the absence of life as we know it. Maybe we need to be faced with
the paving of paradise before we can fully embrace the trees and the birds and
the bees. Maybe only after we’re left with the void of our current coastlines
will we be able to better develop – with clean building, recycled and
recyclable resources, and carbon-free energy – more of our currently
uninhabited land. Maybe being forced to move inward and shift boundaries will
force us to make peace with our neighbors and create global cooperation in the
name of saving what’s left of our planet. More than just hope and speculate,
let us work toward any of these options, work toward cleaner energy and ways of
development, urge our policy makers and fuel providers to listen to our rising
need for drastic change, and work toward peace with those who may be very close
neighbors competing for fewer resources in the not too distant future.
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