Eco-Judaism
Jewish Education News, Fall 2008
Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education
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Inheriting the Planet: Judaism, Ecology and Art
A High School Curriculum
by Karen Dresser
The Cry of the Earth
The Earth is crying; her creatures moan in despair over
their slow and painful demise through human exploitation
of her resources. We humans do not hear her or the
shofar blasts of environmental prophets who guard the
earth. They are drowned out by noise pollution on the
webs of highways below or above the sky. We need to
rehear the sacred texts of Judaism that tell us we are
partners with God in creation. Anne Martin posits that
“powerful stories are crucial to turn us from the excesses
of modernity. Among the worst of these excesses is the
destruction of human and biotic communities.
Unfortunately, . . .education regularly speeds their demise
by promoting. . .hyper-individualism and hyperconsumerism.”1
H. Zvi Shapiro (2005) likewise writes, “We are in desperate need of a change in
consciousness that will allow us to see nature as something other than a limitless set of
inert resources that can endlessly ‘feed’ our system of production and profit making. . . .
We need not add that school, to a very great extent is the very embodiment of the
culture of production; doing, performing, showing is the very axis of school life.”2
Woven as we are into the sometimes nature-less landscapes of our environments, how
can we break through the noise pollution to hear the warning cries?
David Orr suggests that “[a]ll education is environmental education. By what is included
or excluded, emphasized or ignored, students learn that they are a part of or apart from
the natural world.”3 How can Jewish educators persuade our students to look beyond
chat rooms and billboards, to take off headphones and ignore cell phones to hear the
absence of birds and animals in our overdeveloped cities? To venture outside as
children of the natural world in order to save it? How can we sound the shofar of
warning?
Eco-Judaism
Jewish Education News, Fall 2008
Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education
At the American Hebrew Academy, I, along with three other teachers, wove together
spiritual, philosophical, and artistic strands in one class, “Eco-Judaism,” that just
completed its second year. We developed a curriculum that integrates not only
disciplines, but also our own knowledge and instructive passion as we brought together
Jewish studies, environmental philosophy, and the arts to jar students into an active,
personal, and, hopefully, political praxis of earth-care. The class was our shofar, and
we wanted the notes to be loud and, at some times, annoying. We wanted to make
sure the students heard the cry of Earth as loudly as the sound of the shofar during the
Days of Awe.
Shapiro writes, “The sound of the shofar is the call to us to wake up and be attentive to
our lives; it represents the demand that we overcome our very human tendency to
resignation and passivity in the face of life.”4 Our shofar was sounded as we asked
students to engage in their own personal relationship with environmental philosophies
and spiritual texts for the sake of the earth — from hearing to reading to wrestling to
writing to drawing to acting.
Our class model placed students, chavruta-style, in dialogue not only with their peers,
but also with rabbinic views of humanity’s responsibility to the earth, and with words and
visions of philosophers and artists. Students compared and contrasted Jewish views,
engaging them with other spiritual and cultural traditions. “[T]o be intellectually serious
means a readiness to always contest and challenge the knowledge presented to us. . .
that all truth is partial at best; that there are always new meanings to be mined as our
situations, lives, and experiences change.”5 It was our hope that students would
challenge and wrestle with everything they read.
We selected texts and materials that gave homage to the past in a way that encouraged
students to create from it, thus transforming possibilities for their future. We discussed
accounts of damages committed against the earth by the industrial revolution and
stories of individuals who acted heroically, politically, actively during environmental
catastrophes. We planned multiple ways of reacting to the material via the arts and
creative projects to inspire an embodied response, hoping for students’ imaginings of
their own praxis in a world that needs human intervention in human destruction. We
envisioned that what students could do beyond the requirements of class would involve
bodily participation in some earth-saving activities.
The Academy’s own campus (www.americanhebrewacademy.org) provided our starting
point, with its deliberate, environmentally-sound and energy-protective architectural
decisions for all its building. The Academy is truly a work of art in all its manifestations,
centered in Torah and an awareness of the natural world on which it is built. The
Academy “boasts the world’s largest closed loop geothermal alternative. Pipes under
our track and soccer stadium draw upon underground energy to heat and cool buildings,
using 50 percent less energy than traditional sources.”6 In addition, its holistic and
integrative mission is included on the website.7
Eco-Judaism
Jewish Education News, Fall 2008
Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education
Influences and Models
Our curriculum integrated the contents of Jewish studies, environmental philosophy,
and the arts. We looked for Jewish studies that particularly related human responsibility
for and awe of the earth and how both are interpreted in various sacred texts. Our
environmental philosophy texts ranged from historical/theological accounts of human
misappropriation of the created world to stories of men and women who offered forms of
resistance to modernity’s destruction of particular sites of the earth. The arts
component introduced students to artists’ activist work in visual, theatrical, musical, and
dance arts for the sake of preserving or enhancing the environment, or protesting its
misuse.
Articles were read and artists introduced at particular times in the trimester, then
students were encouraged to spiral the concepts outward and upward throughout the
course in conversation with new material; students began to use the model in their own
interpretive writings, conversations and artistic expressions. The spiral model recalls
the traditional rabbinic methodology that quotes one source, remembers an earlier one,
and brings it into conversation, then moves to new interpretations that again spirals
through the hermeneutic process.
Course objectives were rooted in understandings of a complex world of knowledge
organization, webbed and interrelated, that demand broad perceptions as we attempt to
make sense of experiences and information. The integration of subjects offered an
effective, efficient means for motivating students to learn about and care for the earth
not only through a Jewish lens, but also through global experiential stories of other
activists, philosophers, theologians, and artists who have loved and worked for their
planet. In addition, we deliberately included numerous methodologies through which
students could integrate the material hermeneutically: reflections, personal narratives,
observations, journaling, visual arts, Power Point or movie making, poetry, songwriting,
and even costume design using recycled clothing.
We were influenced by the interconnected model of study presented by Dr. Roger
Gottlieb, professor and author of numerous articles and books on the environment that
have been invaluable to us as we developed our class.8 He incorporates meditation,
outdoor observation, journaling, and writing into a curricular framework of history,
theology, private praxis, and social activism. We also wanted our curricular model to be
integrative and holistic: “Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower
students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place
where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot
happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks.”9
The ideal site for this in-depth kind of collegial learning was the integrated, team-taught
classroom.
Eco-Judaism
Jewish Education News, Fall 2008
Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education
Beginning Questions: Benefits and Drawbacks
We began to dialogue by asking questions:
What do the Torah and Jewish sacred texts
teach about the natural world? How did Jews
throughout history change their attitudes
toward the earth, depending on their particular
sites of dwelling and oppressions? How does
a Jewish view of ecology (and is there really
such a thing?) compare and/or contrast to
other cultural and spiritual traditions? Who are
the philosophers and artists who promote care
for the earth? Do they identify with a spiritual
view? What can students gain by taking a
team-taught integrative class centered in Torah, ecological philosophy, and the arts that
could not be addressed in a non-integrative class? What might impede learning in such
a class?
We came up with a list that included the following benefits of an integrative course as it:
1. Weaves different ways to address a Jewish view of human responsibility toward the
created world.
2. Webs various philosophical and theological views of environmental theories through
multi-vocalities of religion, age, gender, nationality, etc.
3. Offers possibilities of a multiple intelligence path to students’ learning.
4. Strives for active student presence in group and individual activities.
5. Challenges and/or expands students’ current understanding of Jewish environmental
views.
Spiraling Elements
The first day of each new trimester was devoted
to making journals, since they were to be a
centering site for personal reflection and
wrestling. Journals were created from a stack of
recycled cardboard collected in the art room;
some students collaged the outside of their
journals; others painted or applied handmade
papers. One student used twigs as a clasp for
her journal; another, a found button. Each was an
individual work of art that reused material found
on the Academy grounds.
Students were asked to draw, write, and question in their journals (as ongoing
conversation with themselves) what they saw in nature or encountered in readings,
films, discussions or group work while they engaged with the material. They were
encouraged to use the Tanakh, siddur or other texts, including on-line web searches, to
Eco-Judaism
Jewish Education News, Fall 2008
Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education
discover sources about how nature is used and abused by humankind. The journals this
past year were artistic, creative, questioning, meditative, and provocative. One student
wrote:
Eco-Judaism is not one concept that applies to one people. It is a. . .value
of every day living and has different meanings for each person who
chooses to follow its teachings. . . .Though a person may not be a Jew, or
is, and does not want to follow the commands of the Torah, [he or she]
can use the power of interpretation to change these ecological concepts to
fit [his or her] own way of life. I have taken it upon myself to make this very
idea part of my life . . .without it I would be limiting my abilities to help
change the world.
MG, 2008
In addition to Tanakh and rabbinic texts, readings
were as varied as Arthur Waskow’s “What is EcoKosher?,” Arthur Green’s “Vegetarianism: A
Kashrut for our Age,” John S. Mbiti’s “African Views
of the Universe,” Paula Gunn Allen’s “The Woman I
Love is a Planet; The Planet I Love is a Tree,”
selections from Martin Buber’s I and Thou, and
Chatsumarn Kabilisingh “Early Buddhist Views on
Nature.”10 We expected higher-level thinking and
reasoning skills, as well as emotive expression, from
these academically gifted students, many of whom
would be applying to prestigious colleges and
universities.
Students were given the option of working
collaboratively in small groups, or creating on their
own. Everything was shared with the entire class.
J. A. Beane observes that when “students present,
demonstrate, and exhibit their work for the group, knowledge is not simply something
individuals accumulate for themselves. Rather it is put to use for the group’s further
understanding of the problem or issue.”11. For this reason, it was important that we
required and encouraged sharing and collaborative opportunities in and outside the
classroom.
Students created their own mandala sand-painting in one of the open hallways and, two
weeks later, swept it up themselves. One student wrote about the course and the sandart:
I was exposed to [a] plethora of ideas concerning our interactions with our
mother planet. Just as one is commanded to honor one's father and
mother for the gifts of life and sustainability they have endowed us with, so
too must we treat the earth as a caregiver. This connection to a motherly
earth comes not from statistics or ecological charts, but from a fresh
perspective into how we must respect our own planet. . . .I particularly
Eco-Judaism
Jewish Education News, Fall 2008
Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education
enjoyed the sand art that each student was invited to make. Each grain of
sand, the ultimate material of simplicity, could yield a beauty far greater
than the sum of its parts. Moreover, if one could appreciate the majesty of
earth's tiniest building blocks, one must ask how much more can one
appreciate the entire masterpiece?
AY, 2008
The excellent PBS video series Art: 21 was shown to
introduce students to visual and performance artists
who use their art as commentary, political statements
or protest for the sake of tikkun olam. As their final
projects, students in Eco-Judaism 2008 created their
own environmental protest art and organized a public
display of it on a Sunday afternoon at a park in the
center of the city. There, they met others with whom
they shared their art and artist’s statements. This was
their personal and communal environmental shofar
cry. A student comments:
Students took many different paths [to] creating projects [ranging] from
paintings to plant exhibits. After all the projects were submitted, we
gathered on a Sunday to. . . exhibit them to the public . . .[at] a downtown
park. . . . The projects themselves were extremely diverse and expressed
what each individual student felt was an important environmental issue,
but the reaction from the public was just as important. People throughout
the day came to learn and spoke about their current knowledge, adding to
the information presented in the class. [Everyone] learned new things that
helped enhance their Eco-Judaic knowledge and created [an] addition to
the environmental education in the area. The class itself changed the way
I go about my daily routine; I now consciously take a few seconds out of
my day to make the extra effort to pick up a piece of trash, turn off a light,
or recycle a can. Additionally, it has changed the way I think about my
religious duties factoring in the ecological duties included in them. Overall,
I believe this movement is one that can help create the much needed
change in our world and the spread of it will do just this.
MG, 2008
Anne Martin posits that “how education occurs is as
crucial as content. [David] Orr wants us out of the
classroom, away from our taken-for-granted relationship
to basic life-support systems. Otherwise, he believes,
the hidden curriculum will teach students that it is
enough to ‘intellectualize, emote, or posture. . .without
having to live differently.’”12
We Academy educators try to get students out of the
classroom into the woods on campus, by the lake, in the
Eco-Judaism
Jewish Education News, Fall 2008
Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education
fields, under the pines, beside the city park streams that are blocked with people’s
garbage, or even to the city landfill to smell the stench of mountains of trash. Let the
shofar sound: Humans have been given one earth; we hold its future in our hands.
What will our students do with their inheritance?
Endnotes:
1. Martin, Anne. “Telling into Wholeness” in Teaching Sociology, 28 (1), pp. 2, 3.
2. Shapiro, H. Z. Losing heart: The moral and spiritual miseducation of America’s children. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2005, p. 198.
3. in Martin, op. cit, p. 4.
4. Shapiro, H. Z., op cit, p. 190.
5. Ibid, pp. 191-92.
6. From the American Hebrew Academy website:
http://americanhebrewacademy.org/applying/tour.asp. Accessed 12/27/2007
7. Ibid., under the heading “Mission.”
8. See Gottlieb’s impressive accomplishments and numerous books at his WPI website:
http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/ HUA/People/rsg.html. Accessed 12/28/2007
9. hooks, bell. (1984). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York and
London: Routledge, 1994, p. 21.
10. These and many more helpful articles are collected in R. Gottlieb’s This Sacred Earth: Religion,
Nature, Environment. Second Edition. (Routledge, 2003).
11. In Krug, D. H. and N. Cohen-Evron (2000). “Curriculum integration positions and practices in art
education,” in Studies in art education, 2000, p. 270.
12. Martin, Anne. Op cit., p. 4.
Karen Dresser is the Chair of the Fine Arts Department at The American Hebrew Academy in
Greensboro, North Carolina.
[email protected]