Monday was Tu B’Shvat, the day our tradition calls the Birthday of the Trees. Throughout this week, the Daily Kavanot will focus on nature, the environment, and sustainability practices.
JDAIM Spotlight: Rabbi Elliot Kukla
Most often, calls by climate change activists are just that—active. We are given ideas of what to do and to change, products to buy and discard, marches to attend, and letters to write. We are told, rightfully, that we are likely the last generation(s) who can do something about climate change. But, what if doing something meant … doing less?
My colleague, Rabbi Elliott Kukla, is a disability justice activist, and provides spiritual care to those who are grieving, dying, ill, or disabled. Currently working on a book about the power of rest in a time of planetary crisis, Rabbi Kukla took to the pages of the New York Times in defense of laziness. Because, as he said then:
America in 2022 is an exhausting place to live. Pretty much everyone I know is tired. We’re tired of answering work emails after dinner. We’re tired of caring for senior family members in a crumbling elder care system, of worrying about a mass shooting at our children’s schools. We’re tired by unprocessed grief and untended-to illness and depression. We’re tired of wildfires becoming a fact of life in the West, of floods and hurricanes hitting the South and East. We’re really tired of this unending pandemic. Most of all, we are exhausted by trying to keep going as if everything is fine.
He notes some of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic—both the ways in which our culture’s embrace of productivity (and the resulting lack of systemic support for caregiving) made aspects of the pandemic so much worse, and the ways in which the world slowing down, for the time that it did, had meaningful results for individuals and for the environment. And those lessons—both the hard and the beautiful—need to carry us forward. As he writes:
Even as we look with hope toward a postpandemic future, we will still be living on a fragile, warming planet with increasing climate disruptions. It’s urgent that we find ways to work less, travel less and burn less fuel while connecting and caring for one another more. In other words, it’s critical that we un-shame laziness if we want our species to have a future. The world is on fire; rest will help to quench those flames.
Today is my challah baking day, or it was for most of 2020 and 2021. Now, I rarely find myself with the time. And while Trader Joe’s challah is delicious, it is just not the same as proofing the yeast, watching the dough rise, and braiding it with my children. Nor is it the same as tearing into it, still warm from the oven. Our tradition has always understood the need for rest, for ceasing, for stepping back from the pressures of the moment and of the world. It is, perhaps, one of the great gifts that Judaism has given to the world. Rabbi Kukla writes the following, about how he is teaching rest to his son:
Laziness is more than the absence or avoidance of work; it’s also the enjoyment of lazing in the sun, or in another’s arms. I learned through my work in hospice that moments spent enjoying the company of an old friend, savoring the smell of coffee or catching a warm breeze can make even the end of life more pleasurable. As the future becomes more tenuous, I want to teach my child to enjoy the planet right now. I want to teach him how to laze in the grass and watch the clouds without any artificially imposed sense of urgency. Many of the ways I have learned to live well in a chronically ill body—by taking the present moment slowly and gently, letting go of looking for certainty about the future, napping, dreaming, nurturing relationships and loving fiercely—are relevant for everyone living on this chronically ill planet.
So, today, I am going to make challah for my family. I am going to savor the yeasty smells, and give the dough the time it needs to rise. I’m not going to get in my car, not going to browse the aisles, not going to open a plastic bag. And tomorrow night, when Shabbat begins, I am going to enjoy the pleasure of not only the sweet bread, but the presence of Shabbat in my family and community. And maybe, just maybe, that is my activism for this week.
—Rabbi Sari Laufer