These remarks were delivered at an interfaith vigil in Long Island, NY on Hannukah.

Tonight is the fifth night of Hannukah.  Jews around the world are lighting candles to commemorate the miracle of a tiny band of Jewish freedom fighters resisting the oppression of the wicked ancient Syrian Greeks.  And tonight, a small group of faith based citizens are here to resist big gas interests in sacrificing the health and beauty of our state for more fossil fuel.  Similar bands of “people of faith” are meeting around the state.  As in days of old, I pray that the strong gas interests will be delivered into the hands of the weak, the impure into the hands of the pure.

When I was a child, my parents struggled to send me to Jewish sleep-away camps in the Catskills.  We swam in the lakes, breathed the clean air, hiked under G-d’s canopy of trees and evening stars.  We met G-d’s creatures who live upstate and listened to the concerts of the birds, cicadas, frogs and crickets.  We often prayed in open outdoor synagogues.  I fell in love with the beauty G-d created.

Tonight we are assembled together to commit that we will not allow a blight of gas rigs and roads to destroy this.  At the beginning of the Bible, in Bereishit (Genesis), we learn that G-d created the heavens and earth in six days.  Ladies and gentlemen, look around.  It is truly a masterpiece.  The Bible also commands us to be stewards of the earth, managing G-d’s property and creatures.  As stewards we must ensure its health and beauty forever.

I teach my children, students, and scouts to “leave no trace.”  When hiking or camping, leave only footprints and take only pictures.  Big Gas misunderstands this concept.  It is intending to leave “Big Foot” footprints all over New York State.  Footprints filled with drilling rigs and toxic chemicals that Vice President Cheney has insured they don’t have to disclose.

As the Jews wandered through the desert they always were concerned about fresh, clean, water – not realizing that G-d would provide it for them.  Today we must ensure that our water, New York State’s most precious natural resource, remains unpolluted.  Our towns, cities, summer camps, bungalow colonies, hotels, dairy industry, farms, and beer industry all depend on our clean water.

We are determined.  Our numbers are growing daily.  We have no choice.  Many of us are prepared to participate in peaceful, passive resistance if necessary.  I urge all houses of worship to become involved and show the movie Gasland to your congregations.  The prayers and actions of many people of all faiths are needed in this battle to preserve our State.

Joseph Varon is Past President, Northeast Queens Jewish Community Council, Past Treasurer and Board Member, Alley Pond Environmental Center, and Past President, NY State Marine Education Association.

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Since watching the documentary “GASLAND” I’ve become much more aware of the severe environmental degradation that is caused by hydrofracking – and it’s clear to me that there’s no way this drilling method can’t be wreaking havoc wherever it’s being done.

After grabbing a bite, I stood with the protesters in the light drizzle for the remainder of my lunch hour. Since they had a large stack of signs, I kept the one I had been holding up and brought it back to my desk. I tacked it up on the wall of my cubicle so people who walk by will see it.

Not many folks pass by during the day – so not a lot of folks have seen it – and I haven’t received much in the way of comments. Mainly, one person said that the style and colors of the sign make it look a bit like an Obama poster! So it really hasn’t sparked much in the way of conversation. But still, it makes a statement.

Note: The URJ (via the Reform Jewish Voice of New York State) “believes that the process of hydraulic fracturing must first be proven safe and a clear evaluation of ‘societal costs and potential long term environmental damage’ concluded before a moratorium can be lifted. In addition, proper regulatory standards and monitoring protocols, wastewater disposal methods, and drinking water protection measures must be implemented in advance of further drilling.”

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(Reprinted from a posting from the Shalom Center)

[Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, director of the social justice program of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and a member of The Shalom Center’s board, gave this talk as in effect the “sermon” of the multireligious “Blessing of the Waters” ceremony on September 20 in Philadelphia. The “Blessing of the Waters” was celebrated in connection with a major demonstration against fracking in the Marcellus Shale region running from Ohio and West Virginia to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. In the photo below, Rabbi Liebling is at the microphone among the leaders of the Blessing of the Waters. His talk links fracking to the larger picture of our social system. In light of the death (several days after the “Blessing”) of Barry Commoner, serious scientist and passionate advocate for justice and the Earth, Rabbi Liebling dedicates this talk to his memory and his teaching: “Commoner’s greatest contribution was his ability to see and to convince many others that these ‘two’  issues were in fact not only intertwined but one.”

I’m going to use the next few minutes to connect fracking to a larger picture. Fracking pollutes the water, air and land, it is harmful to animal and human health, and it destroys natural beauty – all for the sake of energy and profit. It is a logical outcome of the industrial growth society that we live in.

The industrial growth society is based on this system of values and beliefs:

·     That human beings are separate from each other and separate from the ecological system that we are part of.

·     That the Earth is a storehouse of resources that can be extracted at will with no regard for ecosystems.

·     That the individual, not the community, should be our focus.

·      That money is to be valued over people.

·     That our life-model should be domination or survival of the fittest, not cooperation or partnership.

·     That the needs of the present trump those of future generations.

This operating system promotes production, consumption, and profit. it works against peace, justice, sustainability, and a fulfilling life.

These cultural norms are one major factor keeping the system in place. The other is power.

Power in our time is held by the large multi-national corporations, many of whose economies are larger than the GNP of over 100 nations.  In our country, the Supreme Court has ruled that they have the rights of human beings. Never before has corporate power been so concentrated. Our current day Pharaoh is corporate power. Some of the largest corporations in the world are at the fracking industry conference in Philadelphia: ExxonMobil, Halliburton, GE —  as well as the politicians that they buy through corporate donations and revolving-door jobs.

Corporate power has neutralized government regulations of the fracking industry. Remember the Halliburton loop- hole exempting fracking from the clean water and air regulations, allowing them to literally spread poison. These are the same corporations that support the disinformation campaign about climate change, using the same tactics and even the same ad agency that was used in the disinformation campaign about the harmful effects of tobacco. Disinformation is the polite word for deliberately lying.

Fracking is part of the global warming problem. Even the industry admits that over 6% of the methane is released into the air, and methane is over a twenty-year period many times worse than CO2 for global warming. And the next 20 years are crucial for our planet.

Several studies have shown that global warming has the most severe effect on the poor countries. Between 1990 and 2009, 50,000 people died directly from extreme climate events, the majority in the poorest countries of world.  In addition many more died indirectly. We need just to look at New Orleans to see who is most affected by climate catastrophes.

Fracking is just one of the many ways that our system of production spreads poisonous substances. And the poisoning of the world does not affect us all equally:  In the US,  African Americans and poor people in general are disproportionately affected, and this is true the world over.  Cancer rates in neighborhoods close to toxic environments are much higher and these are much more likely to be in poor areas. We just have to look a few miles down the road to Chester, a largely African American city. Chester is a dumping ground for biohazards dangerous to human health. It has four toxic waste dumping/processing facilities

We have created toxic sacrifice zones to feed late capitalism, and those zones are predominantly where poorer people live.

Another example is the skyrocketing rates of asthma and other respiratory ailments in our inner cities, again disproportionately affecting African Americans — all caused by poor air quality.  And now this is happening in our rural areas as fracking pollutes the air.

Fracking is a link in the chain of environmental injustice.

The worldwide industrial-growth society is addicted to cheap energy in order to fuel profits and growth. The entire economic model is based on cheap fossil fuels.  As other fuels grow scarcer and more expensive, the industrial-growth system grows desperate for fracking, and so it is spreading all over the globe. Fracking can only thrive because of corporate power and the big lie that we are separate from each other and from nature.

To make a public comment on this letter, please click here:

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For more information:   http://shalegasoutrage.org/coalition/

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———————————-
Can You Keep Your Water Drinkable?
The Bible and its Wellsprings

The three Abrahamic traditions all emerged in a region of our planet where rain is scarce, water is precious, and wellsprings are miraculous.

The biblical tradition points to wellsprings as places where marriages are made (Isaac and Rebekah,  Jacob and Rachel, Moses and Tzipporah), where war is averted and peace is made (Abraham and Avimelekh, Isaac and Ishmael), where God saves lives (Hagar and Ishmael).

The well-springs of tradition are both physical memories recorded in the text, and the spiritual well-springs of the Tradition itself.
You would think these ancient teachings of the sacredness of water would teach us to treat water as sacred in our own day.

Not so. Now human actions all around our planet are making more and more regions water-scarce. Unprecedented droughts in Russia, in the corn country of the USA, in Australia. global scorching scorches our crops, withering what had promised abundance. Farmers despair as their crops die and their livestock starve, and those who have to pay higher prices for food despair as well.

The scarcity of water can bring despair. But it can also bring action, hope, vision, change.  In Tunisia, the first stirrings of the Arab Spring came  from a jump in the price of  bread when the drought in Russia forced wheat prices higher.  But newborn democracy cannot survive if  greedy corporations continue to scorch our lives, making huge profits that then get plowed into domineering political power, while everyone else gets poorer.

Newborn democracies — or long-established ones. Like the USA.

So to save our wellsprings of life, we should be investing not in a “man-on-the-moon” project but in a similarly large and devoted and creative “Humanity with the Earth” project, to replace fossil-fuels with renewable energy. That would reduce the droughts that deny us sacred, life-giving water.

But instead, some corporations are pursuing profits from fossil fuels in a way that not only scorches the planet in the long run, but directly and immediately poisons the waters of life to do it. That is “fracking” —   poisoning  deep wells of water with methane and many secret chemicals in order to use this poisoned water, under intense pressure, to “hydrofracture” the gas bound up in shale rock.  And burn it.

Fracking poisons the water of the nearby farmers, and scorches Planet Earth. Turn on the water faucets in some nearby farm-houses, put a match to the water, and it burns like a torch — from the methane that is part of fracking. What’s more,  Cornell scientists and other scientists are finding that fracked natural gas likely is releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than coal. Methane, the primary ingredient of natural gas, is a far more powerful scorch-Earth gas than CO2.

So much for “clean” natural gas.

What can we do about this corporate destruction of our waters and our planet? Between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur this year, during the profound Ten Days of turning our lives in a more compassionate direction, on September 20-21, the corporate bosses of the Frack-Your-Water industry are having a national convention in Philadelphia.

So a coalition of organizations committed to healing our Earth, our air and water, are gathering in Philadelphia on Thursday, Sept 20, for a rally, a march, and an interfaith service for “Blessing of the Waters.” For details, please click here: http://shalegasoutrage.org/shale-gas-outrage-2012-philadelphia/ <http://shalegasoutrage.org/shale-gas-outrage-2012-philadelphia/>

And on Friday morning, there will be a nonviolent direct action in which a group of independent activists, including me and others from The Shalom Center, will take part.

As we face fracking in these days ahead, there are two of the Biblical passages on wellsprings that may be especially powerful as teachings to us. (They are especially noteworthy in Jewish practice right now, because they appear in the traditional first day of Torah reading on Rosh HaShanah.)
In one, Hagar, weeping  in sorrow that her water has run out and that she and her son Ishmael may soon die of thirst in the desert, hears  a Voice tell her to open her eyes. And there is the wellspring  she had named “The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me”! Her own tears have watered into being the wellspring  of her life, and Ishmael’s. (Gen. 21: 14-20)

In the other reading, the nomad shepherd Abraham struggles with the chieftain Avimelekh over who is entitled to a wellspring. The chieftain’s armed marauders have taken possession of the well. But the disempowered nomad and the powerful chieftain pursue diplomacy, not war. They work it out and take an oath of amity. They slaughter seven lambs as a symbol of  agreement.  They name the well “Beer Sheva.” This is an ”action pun”: the word for “seven” is sheva, and the word for “oath’ is sheva . (Gen. 21: 22-34.)

What brought about the shift from violence by Avimelekh’s marauders to the oath of amity; the shift between verses 25 and 26? We might imagine (here be midrash!) that Abraham and his friends responded to the attack upon them by sitting in a silent circle at the well. Just sitting. Nonviolently, they protested the attack against them. And then Avimelekh in his turn responded, saying “I did not realize till this moment how much this meant to you.”

So we can learn that Abraham, facing a local ruler much more powerful then he, neither backed down nor resorted to violence. Like the civil-rights workers 50 years ago, he stood his ground — nonviolently. And that’s what we need to do, facing the Fracking Corporations that are more powerful than we are — so far.
There is still another profound teaching in our Rosh HaShanah Torah readings. Hagar saves her own and Ishmael’s lives by weeping.  Her tears stir God, her tears become the well of water.

Today, we might say that grief can open us to action.

Weep, REALLY weep, for our wounded Earth, and our grief can stir ourselves to heal it.

Weep, REALLY weep, and then come to Philadelphia on September 20-21 and join in the effort to heal the jagged wounds the Fracking Bosses have slashed upon our region, our country, our Earth.

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