Conservative Movement appoints woman to chair Rabbinical Assembly

cross-posted to Jewschool

Last Wednesday the Conservative Movement announced Rabbi Julie Schonfeld will succeed Rabbi Joel Meyers as Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Assembly--she has previously been functioning as the Director of Rabbinic Development for the movement. Rabbi Schonfeld is the first woman to be appointed to the head of a rabbinic body--she said to the Forward, “I think that my rabbinate is really defined by the ideals that I share with all of my colleagues and with all Conservative Jews worldwide, regardless of my gender.”

This announcement, to me, is a welcome surprise. Some personal thoughts after the jump... (click below)

I did not grow up in the Conservative Movement (or any movement). I did not grow up in a synagogue; and when my family did join a synagogue it was a breakaway shul with 80 families and no synagogue--monthly Kabbalat Shabbat potlucks were held at the rabbi's home, which was also used for B'nei Mitvah lessons and ceremonies and perhaps a wedding or two; high-holiday services were at the JCC, and featured the aging male rabbi and a middle aged female part-time cantorial soloist, part-time Opera singer (in my imagination). My female Jewish role models were my mother, grandmothers, great-aunts, aunts... and I guess Bette Midler and Barbara Streisand...

Today I have many female Jewish role models in my biological and spiritual families, including many rabbis whom I am blessed to have as guides and teachers. I remember a discussion my first semester of rabbinical school in my halakhah class (taught by one of said rabbis who have been instrumental in shaping what will be my rabbinate). We were discussing the practice of including the imahot (the Matriarchs--Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah). We were maybe three weeks into school, and I built up the hutzpah to ask this rabbi why she did not include the imahot when she was the shlihat tzibur (prayer leader). Her response was unexpected and it has helped me understand the movement which I chose to affiliate with. She said, more or less, that it gave the appearance that something had changed and been fixed, when in fact it hadn't.

What I understood her to be saying was that adding the imahot may be enhancing to one's prayer and a beautiful act (albeit questionable in Jewish law, in my opinion) it does not help bridge a very wide gender gap which manifests itself in name (we have "rabbis" and "female rabbis," it is a bizarre and uncomfortable phenomenom which can only be remedied by having "male rabbis" and "female rabbis" or, preferably, "rabbis"), in pay, in appearance, opportunity and so many other ways.

Rabbi Schonfeld's appointment as Executive VP of the RA is a much more meaningful testament to working towards gender equality in the Jewish establishment. As I've been writing this article, I've been thinking about how gender has played into my rabbinical school experience as I enter my fourth year, and I am surprised to be feeling (maybe I'm candy coating it) that I don't feel like the school I attend has "female rabbinical students" and "rabbinical students." (Ladies, gentlemen, what do you think? Am I nuts?) I'm thinking this may be, in the likes of homosexual inclusion and minority inclusion, a generational issue. That progress towards this end is inevitable in the near future.

As Rabbi Elliot Dorff, of whom I'm proud to have as a teacher and role model, said in the Forward that "It’s 23 years after the first woman was ordained in the movement. That’s a generation, basically. We’re finally at the point at which woman could be appointed to a major administrative post within the movement.” Likewise, it was around as long ago that the issue of homosexual inclusion was first brought up and it took around as long to begin to make meaningful change.

As I think of those that I have met who, in the next 1-10 years, will make up the field of American rabbis across the movements (beyond the "three"), I think we are in for a lot of progress in American Judaism. We love to shower ourselves with a dismal outlook on the future of our people in its spiritual expression. We bemoan intermarriage as our death, and in the wake of tears, we forget that people desire to be moved and engaged. We go back and forth over "legal" minutae for months on end, as if the title "rabbi" gives us true jurisprudence to dictate people's lifestyles. Again, maybe I'm looking through rose-colored glasses, but I want to believe that as this current generation of new rabbis grows and evolves into leadership positions amongst the administrative wings of the movement there will be much progress in our spiritual expression towards melting some of these cultural barriers that tend to erode and divide community.

I don't know Rabbi Schonfeld, or anything about her, but I look forward to meeting her, which I suppose is inevitable either in her capacity as Director of Rabbinic Development or otherwise. I trust that she can guide the Rabbinical Assembly for the next 20 years as ably as Rabbi Meyers has done for the previous two decades. Obviously, having a woman functioning as the chair of the RA does not mean that gender issues in the Conservative Movement will disappear. Nonetheless, it is a powerful symbol of the advancement of women in the Jewish establishment. I think it is also representative of a sentiment rising for more substantial moves towards justice and equality issues (a la Hekhsher Tzedek and Uri L'Tzedek).

It's not that I expect Rabbi Schonfeld to wave a feminine wand and fix everything, but I hope her appointment holds true as an example of a shift towards more true egalitarianism, "beyond the bima," so to speak.
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Pimp my Browser--Need some Chrome for your ride?

I love Google.  I can't say it enough.  I really, really love Google.  If I could have my dream job, it would be as Google's rabbi.  As much as I dislike advertising and consumer tracking, I can forgive them for that, thanks to all their wonderful, free stuff.  I can thank Google for free email and searching and I can thank Google for nearly everything I've found on the internet.  I can thank Google for free word processing, database, spreadsheet and slideshow software.  And most importantly, I can thank Google for hosting this blog for free.  I love Google.  Now I can check my Google Mail, write my Google Docs, and search Google's infamous search engine in Google's new browser, Chrome.

The browser is still in beta, but it is nice (and I bet will be even nicer soon).  It is flashy and minimalist at the same time.  It is fast and easy to install, and fast and easy to use.  It makes searching easier by stream-lining your most common searches and uses an algorithm to determine what searches you have not made that you may want to and didn't even know you did.  So, for example, when you type a 'G' into your URL bar, whether you've been to Google.com or not, it will, for example, show you that website (and many others that may be of interest to you based on your web traffic).

There's no menu bar, which takes time getting used to.  The basic premise of the browser software is that, according to Google's blog,  "the Web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser."

Keeping with their image of being young, hip, innovative and fresh, Google has written up this comic bookto help adjust you to Chrome.  So give it a download and pimp your browser with some Chrome!  
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Bill Nye the Science Guy is coming back to TV

While I no longer own a television, a deplorable percentage of my childhood was spent in front of the television despite my mother's best efforts. One show which kept me engrossed well into my high school years was Bill Nye the Science Guy, recently profiled here. He taught us about simple science by doing fun, wacky experiments in a bow tie and a lab boat.

Well, he's back. Discovery Communications has brought a new network on the air, Planet Green, which touts itself as "the first and only 24-hour eco-lifestyle television network with a robust online presence and community." According to Treehugger.com (great site!), Bill Nye will host "Stuff Happens," a new show premiering in early September that examines the origins of our consumer products.

Bill Nye is going to examine, in his bow tie and lab coat, the chemical and scientific elements of our household consumer items. I think we can imagine what he might find...

According to the network's site, the premiere show will be on "Breakfast," however, according to Treehugger.com, the sister site of the Planet Green network (I think it's there "robust online presence"), the premiere episode is about the bathroom. [despite the report on the network's website, the network's schedule agrees with Treehugger.com editor's note: A preview airs tonight, August 26, at 9pm Eastern on Planet Green, which focuses on breakfast.]

While I think that the nature of television continues the thoughtless consumer culture that has evolved in our society, the fact that Discovery Communications feels it is in their economic interest to create a television network dedicated to programming about sustainability and ecologically sensitive development shows the consumer demand is rising. Ultimately, the consumer is responsible in a market economy to accept or reject products--for better or worse, corporations can only be expected to produce what we demand. As the demand for ecological sustainability increases, the corporate structure will need to refine and reform accordingly in order to survive. Take, for example, T. Boone Pickens, who is investing the two-thirds of his $3 billion dollar energy empire in wind (which he clearly sits to profit from handsomely, since he owns the largest wind farm in America--an oilman can change to a "windman," but a profiteer is a profiteer).

Traditionally, business has been about growth and consumption. This has ultimately led to a depletion of resources and environmental abuse that is amounting in worldwide catastrophic effect. Yet, even by assuring the good ratings of this network and this program, we can make an inevitable impact.

I can't believe I'm writing this, but, watch your TV and turn your channel to Planet Green!
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Is medical botany the answer to 'Silent Spring'?

In the book that is credited with triggering the American environmentalist movement in the 1970s, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) claimed that the widespread use of chemical pesticides and herbicides were having an irreparable effect on our natural environment and our health. The New York Times reports on Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a research scientist studying medical biochemistry and botany at the University of Ottawa school of medicine.

The article opens:

Diana Beresford-Kroeger pointed to a towering wafer ash tree near her home.

The tree is a chemical factory, she explained, and its products are part of a sophisticated survival strategy. The flowers contain terpene oils, which repel mammals that might feed on them. But the ash needs to attract pollinators, and so it has a powerful lactone fragrance that appeals to large butterflies and honeybees. The chemicals in the wafer ash, in turn, she said, provide chemical protection for the butterflies from birds, making them taste bitter.

Many similar unseen chemical relationships are going on in the world around us. “These are at the heart of connectivity in nature,” she said.

The main focus of the report is on the many uses of trees and the many effects they have on our health and environment. Ms. Beresford-Kroeger has a somewhat radical idea in how we can incorporate medical botany into our urban planning and sustainable development. Again, from the NYT:

She favors what she terms a bioplan, reforesting cities and rural areas with trees according to the medicinal, environmental, nutritional, pesticidal and herbicidal properties she claims for them, which she calls ecofunctions.

Wafer ash, for example, could be used in organic farming, she said, planted in hedgerows to attract butterflies away from crops. Black walnut and honey locusts could be planted along roads to absorb pollutants, she said.

This theory, if researched and implemented correctly could spell the end of the need for chemical pesticides and herbicides, if the same result could be achieved by creative foresting.

Ultimately, the article leaves the reader with the notion that we really know very little. "Dr. Wilson, at Harvard, said that more research into the role of trees in the ecosystem was imperative and that it was alarming how little was known. 'We need more research of this kind to use the things we have, such as trees, to their fullest,' he said." "We," of course, are urban westerners. Indigenous peoples, have incredible knowledge of their native botany and its medical uses.

This knowledge is not lost and we can learn it from others. The important research that Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger is incredibly important for the future of our food production and could be key in producing urban farming as a reality.

Millions of pounds of synthetic chemicals are dropped on our food supply, and therefore into our soil and water, to protect crops from bugs. These chemicals are not harmless. 'Bioplanning' provides an alternative to the wasteful and harmful practice that utilizes our natural ecosystems instead; cycles and processes 'built in' so that our planet functions in balance and order.

Check out the article, it's a good read!
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'Texas to Tel Aviv'

Thomas L. Friedman has a great Op-Ed in the New York Times, where he imagines:

What would happen if you cross-bred J. R. Ewing of “Dallas” and Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club? You’d get T. Boone Pickens. What would happen if you cross-bred Henry Ford and Yitzhak Rabin? You’d get Shai Agassi. And what would happen if you put together T. Boone Pickens, the green billionaire Texas oilman now obsessed with wind power, and Shai Agassi, the Jewish Henry Ford now obsessed with making Israel the world’s leader in electric cars?

You'd have the start of an energy revolution.

You can read about T. Boone Pickens here, Shai Agassi is the founder of Better Place Project which seeks to make Israel fully equipped with an electric car "system" in the not too distant future.

Agassi's concept, backed by the Israeli government, is this--the electric car system will work similar to pay-by-minute cell phone subscription. Subscribers to the program would get a car and a battery. The roadways will be scattered with charging stations and garages where batteries can be replaced. The first cars, built by Renault, will be on Israeli roads next year.

Israel, because of its small size but large percentage of undeveloped land is an ideal place to develop the infrastructure for a countrywide electric car makeover. It will also serve as a great model for other nations to follow suit.

And I believe Mr. Friedman to be correct, combining the efforts of Shai Agassi and T. Boone Pickens together would make for amazing possibilities.

In days of hardship and strife, it is always nice to see positive news coming out of Israel.

Thank you, Shai Agassi, for striving to bring electric cars to the Jewish State.
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Will LA City Council ban plastic bags?

Shoppers of Whole Foods Markets are already used to this trend, but now the city of Los Angeles is taking action--and good thing. When people refer to 'plastic bags,' we are talking about polyethylene bags, a petroleum product. These plastics are made from the same oil as our gasoline and add substantially to worldwide pollution and waste.

The LA Times reports that the City Council of Los Angeles voted today to ban plastic carryout bags in the city's supermarkets and stores by July 2010, if the State of California fails to impose legislation requiring a $.25 fee on each bag requested from a store or market. The city hopes to reduce the number of plastic bags in LA by 30% by 2010.

Estimates say that almost 400 billion plastic mags are manufactured for use in the United States each year, 100 billion are thrown away. The fact of the matter is that plastic bags, while a nuisance and a danger to birds and sea life, are incredibly useful and practical. They are lightweight, compact and reusable--in other words, shipping and producing them is relatively easy. However we all need to be more responsible with how we use our plastic bags.

The simplest way to more responsibly use plastic bags is to use them as sparingly as possible. The most successful and sustainable form of recycling is reusing. By reusing we reduce waste and keep harmful product out of landfills. Plastic bags are great to take to the market to bring home your local fruits, veggies and flowers; they are handy trash bags for small bins and can even be used to dump organic kitchen waste to your backyard compost bin or heap, and then wash the bag and use it again. I just used a number of plastic bags to bundle clothes to donate. There uses are endless, and with so many billions of them being made all the time, isn't it time to stop using and producing new ones? The other way to help get rid of some of these bags is to buy reusable bags that are more durable and made of recycled plastic and/or glass or use baskets.

The LA City Council is taking a positive step to create a serious reduction in the amount of plastic bags in just two years. Regulating citywide business, in this regard, is not a solution. However, the statement to actively reduce the use of plastic bags by a substantial amount in a relatively short amount of time is a good model and sends a positive message.

Thank you, people of Los Angeles, for beginning to reduce plastic bags in our city.
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Winona LaDuke talks about Thunder Beings

One of my favorite people, 1996 and 2000 Green Party vice-presidential candidate and activist Winona LaDuke, has an interview in Yes! Magazine. Ms. LaDuke has made her name with an amazingly impressive and positive resume as an activist for indigenous rights, and environmental and anti-nuclear movements as well. Born to a Jewish mother and Ojibwe father in LA, Ms. LaDuke now lives on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota, and is the executive director of Honor the Earth and White Earth Land Recovery Project (YOU REALLY NEED TO CLICK HERE!!!), in the interview Winona LaDuke spins a tale of traditional belief, traditional food and how to live and not destroy.

Ojibwe is a language of 8,000 verbs. The word for “work” is a strange construct for us. It doesn’t mean we aren’t a hard-working people, but in our language, the word is anokii, which means that whether you are fishing or weaving a basket, what you are doing is living—which is not the same thing as being paid a wage to do something.
After the harvest, we have a big feast, and we dance and tell stories. The anthropologists watched us, and they didn’t like that. They said we would never become civilized because we enjoyed our harvest too much. We did too much dancing, too much singing.
When you no longer enjoy your relationship to your food, to your plant relatives, to the harvest, to the dancing and singing—when you end up with a harvest that has no relationships or joy, I think that must be the mark of civilization and industrialized agriculture.

Ultimately, Winona LaDuke sets out a very positive look at possibilities. She tells it like it is, and unfortunately, "it" is a depressing tale of how governments, corporations, and pure consumer ignorance has led to the absolute depletion of indigenous food practices and indigenous food knowledge--worldwide. But LaDuke shows us this positive example from her own homestead,

We are growing more of our own food. About seven years ago, we got a handful of Bear Island flint corn from a seed bank and now we have about five acres of it. The corn is higher in amino acids, antioxidants, and fiber than anything we can buy in the store.
The traditional varieties of food that we grew as indigenous peoples—before they industrialized them and bred out much of the nutritional value—are the best answer to our diabetes. A third of our population is diabetic. We give elders and diabetic families traditional foods every month: buffalo meat, wild rice, hominy.
My 8-year-old, Gwekaanimad, and I started a pilot project with the school lunch program after I saw that they were eating pre-packaged food from
Sodexho, Sysco, and Food Services of America. We try to give our school kids a buffalo a month and also some deer meat, some local pork, and local turkeys. We started growing and raising our own. It’s just a start. We had to de-colonize our kids, too, because they got used to thinking that their food was that other stuff.
We plowed 150 gardens last year on our reservation. I’m a big proponent of gardens, not lawns. It turns out in most reservation housing projects you can’t grow food. That spot in front of your house is where you park your car, or your dogs will trample it, or your cousin will drive over it. So we’re putting two-foot-tall grow boxes up there, and you can grow a lot of vegetables in them.
Our goal is to produce enough food for a thousand families in five years. And these foods we are growing in anishinaabe akiing are not addicted to petroleum, and they don’t require irrigation or all those inputs. These strong plant relatives just require songs and care for the soil. And in a time of climate destabilization, that is what you want to be growing. You don’t want to be guessing with some hybrid.

Personally, I'm going to listen to Winona LaDuke about rice LONG before I listen to Uncle Ben.
Really, click above, read the interview, buy some rice and other goods (Minnesota's closer than Thailand or India, even if it isn't local!), but more importantly, you can trust it came from a positive source.

Thank you, Winona LaDuke, for a lifetime of positive action, creation and living.
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One MORE reason to move to Hawaii

The Honolulu Star Bulletin editorializes:

"The 50th state is the first in the nation to require solar water heaters to be installed on new single-family homes,"

and a good thing! Hawaii is setting themselves up as a model of positive development, following countries like Israel--who has had mandatory solar heating on all residences except for towers with inadequate roof-space since the 1970s. This means that 90% of family homes in Israel have solar water heaters.

Why every city in America doesn't do this, is beyond me. But here's one example of someone who took the matter into their own hands--literally.
Or if you're not feeling up to that challenge, they're actually pretty reasonably priced.

I'm writing Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles today. Why not write your mayor, too? Even if you're in Israel or Hawaii! Just to say, Thank you!
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Vertical Farming--are 'living buildings' the future of the urban landscape?

What if our skylines were vibrant, lush living eco-systems? What if local produce meant a few blocks, rather than dozens of miles? What if our farms were protected from element, wind contamination and infestation, thereby securing absolutely chemical-free food? What if the urban landscape was transformed from twisted and riveted metals and steel into a green paradise?

If Dickson Despommier of Columbia University can get his Vertical Farm Project off the ground(literally) this vision might become reality. Click below to find out more about vertical farming and some tips on what you can do to make a difference.

According to a write-up recently published in the New York Times, the idea for vertical farming was created in 1999 and was born in discussion with his graduate students studying medical ecology. The facts from the Vertical Farm Project website are staggering:

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

For this concept to work, it would take a rethinking of the entire concept of the urban arena. It seems that Mr. Despommier's work has been noticed by important folks in important places, most notably Scott M. Stringer, the president of the borough of Manhattan. He likes the Vertical Farm Project so much, he has embraced it and wants to put it into action. According to the New York Times report,

"Mr. Stringer’s office is “sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm,” and plans to pitch a feasibility study to the mayor’s office within the next couple of months, he said."

The article also references Jerry Kaufman, an urban planner at the University of Wisconsin, who queries, "Why does it have to be 30 stories? Why can't it be six stories?" And this question serves a great point. We need not wait for the city planners of Manhattan to build a multi-million dollar 'living building;' we can bring our own buildings to life by some simple home gardening. Climate change can be combated at home without buying a hybrid car or purchasing wind power. Start by taking some simple steps at home, like these listed below, toward a carbon-neutral climate.

• Use window boxes to grow small herbs and leaves instead of decorative flowers; hearty greens and lettuces can be gorgeous in addition to delicious!
  
• Lawns do not have to be grass; flowers and vegetables can make beautiful and useful additions that help the ecosystem, reduce toxins, purify the air and provide something useful and beautiful
• Flat roofs and patio/decks can be used to grow food in large pots
• Sandboxes, barrels and wagons make great vegetable, herb and flower beds; just fill with dirt and plant!
  
• Backyard and kitchen composting are helpful for the environment, useful for planting and gardening and even fun and educational for kids!

Keep posted here for more information about urban gardening, including an exclusive interview with a professional urban gardener with plenty of tips for your own gardening. In the mean time, it is important to acknowledge the important work that the Vertical Farm Project is doing. Thank you, Dickson Despommier, for making our cities more sustainable and more livable.

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