bridge · sea; and flowing into the sea it makes its waters wholesome. ⁹wherever the river flows,...

The Council of Christians & Jews (Victoria) Inc.

The official journal of The Council of Christians and Jews (Victoria) Inc. | VOL 6 NO 1 | JULY 2020

Bridge

Religion & Ecology in a time of crisis

Gesher | June 2020 | 1

Gesher 2020 (Issue #1 of 3 planned issues)

Gesher ISSN 1037-2652Published by The Council of Christians and Jews (Vic) 326 Church Street, Richmond, Victoria 3121, AustraliaT/F: 61 3 9429 5212 E: [email protected] W: www.ccjvic.org.au

Disclaimer: The views, opinions or conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily reflect the views of the editor, the editorial committee or of the CCJ (Vic).

Editor David Schü[email protected]

Gesher 2020 Editorial Committee Dr Philip Bliss OAMNewton Daddow (Rev.)Faye Haskin-Dubrowin OAMAlex KatsRevd Dr Colleen O’ReillyMark David Walsh

Design Marchese Design, 7 Carinda Road, Canterbury 3126T: 0407 102 938 E: [email protected]

Front cover Autumn Evening © Bev Hardidge

Bev Hardidge is a mixed media artist who lives in Hoddles Creek, Victoria. She has been painting on a regular basis for eight years but has been interested in many types of art over many years. She mainly uses acrylic paints, acrylic inks and sometimes collage and texture paste. She lays down different colours and textures using all kinds of tools and brushes to create depth and interest. Often her paintings are created intuitively and nature is her inspiration.


ContentsEditorial – David Schütz 3 Greeting from the Patron – Her Excellency the Governor of Victoria 5Greeting from the Chairman – Thilo Troschke 6Art: An Australian Nativity in the Burning Bush, 2020 – Glenn Loughrey 7Five Years on from Laudato Si’: Inspiration and Aspiration – Dr Emmanuel Nathan 9Poetry: Seven Bible Sonnets – Philip Harvey 14Leading Jewish Voices on the Environment – Jonathan Keren-Black 18Crisis and Contemplation: Grounding an Integral Ecology – Sarah Bachelard 25Cartoon: Pope – Greg Foyster 29Psalm 8: Translation and Notes – Robert Alter 30Messages from the Presidents 33Support 36

The Council of Christians and Jews (Victoria) aims to:• educate Christians and Jews to appreciate each other’s distinctive beliefs, practices and commonalities• promote the study of and research into historical, political, economic, social, religious and racial causes of conflicts between people of different creeds and colour• promote education in fundamental ethical teachings, for the benefit of the community, common to Christianity and Judaism, that relate to respect and understanding between people of different creeds.

Our symbol is the gift of the late Louis Kahan to the Council of Christians and Jews (Victoria).

The shell is a symbol of eternity and of pilgrimage and contained in it are a number of things which are common to both faiths and traditions. The motifs of the tree of life, burning bush, and flames of spirit stand at the centre of the design. Behind the tree can be seen the cup of blessing, and surrounding the whole is the rainbow, the symbol of universal peace and a reminder to God and us of the covenantal promise.

The Council of Christians and Jews (Victoria) acknowledges the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People as the First Peoples of Australia, the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands and waters throughout Australia. As such, we recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community and we pay our respects to their Peoples, their Cultures and to their Elders past, present and emerging.


EditorialDavid Schütz

Recently, my parish celebrated the anniversary of the dedication of their church building. Because COVID-19 restrictions were still in place, the Mass for the day was live-streamed on YouTube. To this point, I had been privileged to be able to attend church services throughout the lockdown to help with live-stream in my role as cantor, but I missed this one. Listening to the recording on YouTube afterwards, I was struck by the first reading for the feast of dedication. I’ll give it here in the (appropriately named) Revised New Jerusalem Bible translation1:

47:¹He brought me back to the entrance of the Temple where a stream was flowing eastwards from under the Temple threshold, for the Temple faced east. The water was flowing from under the right side of the Temple, south of the altar. ²He took me out by the north gate and led me right round outside as far as the outer east gate where the water was flowing out on the right-hand side. …⁸He said: ‘This water flows east down to the Arabah and to the [Dead] sea; and flowing into the sea it makes its waters wholesome. ⁹Wherever the river flows, all living creatures teeming in it will live. Fish will be very plentiful, for wherever the water goes it brings health, and life teems wherever the river flows. …¹²Along the river, on either bank, will grow every kind of fruit tree with leaves that never wither and fruit that never fails; they will bear new fruit every month because this water comes from the sanctuary. And their fruit will be good for eating and their leaves for healing.’ (Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12)

The vision of Ezekiel is remarkable for its emphasis on life, health, growth, freshness. It is an image which is repeated in the final chapter of the Christian scriptures:

22:1And the angel showed me the river of life, rising from the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowing crystal clear 2down the middle of the city street. On either bank of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit in a year, one in each month, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22:1-2)

What is remarkable in both visions is the source of this ‘river of life’: from the altar in the temple, from the throne of God, in the new, restored Jerusalem.

Among the many crises that we in Australia have faced in the past 12 months, the first was the terrible ongoing drought that has been crippling our farming community. This drought was directly related to the devastating bushfires and to the growing threat of climate change. It is what inspired us to choose ‘Religion and Ecology’ as the theme of Gesher 2020.

The debate on climate change also reminded us that 2020 is the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis ‘environmental encyclical’ Laudato Si’. Usually these official papal letters are addressed to just the clergy and faithful of the Catholic Church, but Pope Francis addressed this landmark document to ‘every person living on this planet’. It caused a stir when it was released in 2015; we wanted to ask how its message continues to stand up as the environmental crisis worsens.

1 Henry Wansbrough, The Revised New Jerusalem Bible. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd).


When we chose the theme, however, COVID-19 was still a distant problem that seemed to pose no threat to us. But very quickly the impact was felt. Face-to-face meetings of the editorial committee were replaced with Zoom conferencing and the traditional print format of Gesher went to ‘Plan B’: a series of electronic issues for more immediate production and distribution in order to address the crisis in a timely manner.

We were also convinced that our Christian and Jewish faith traditions had something to say in relation to all these issues. We wanted to see what ‘rivers of life’ might flow from our spiritual sources if we turned on the taps and invited scholars, community leaders, artists and poets to contribute their reflections. The initial result is before you – the first of three planned issues of Gesher 2020.

I wish to thank our contributors for their offerings to this issue.

The Gesher 2020 cover image by Bev Hardidge calls to mind the image of the trees growing alongside the river of life. Although the bright orange colour was originally intended to convey the golden leaves of Autumn, they also reminded us strongly of the flame of fire and dryness of drought. The green colour also depicts regrowth following natural destruction, in keeping with the theme of this year's Gesher.

Emmanuel Nathan explores the possibilities for an emerging eco-theology in the light of the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical Laudato Si’. Jonathan Keren-Black presents a vivid overview of the contributions of Jewish leaders to the green movement. Sarah Bachelard calls us to contemplation and to consider our place as human beings within an ‘integral’ ecology.

Other genres and mediums include a cartoon by Greg Foyster, poetry by Philip Harvey, and artwork by Glenn Loughrey.

My thanks especially to our Patron, Her Excellency the Honourable Linda Dessau AC, Governor of Victoria for her message to us, and also to three of the Presidents of the Council of Christians and Jews (Victoria): Archbishop Philip Freier, Rabbi Philip Heilbrunn and Archbishop Peter A. Comensoli. The increased space of this electronic format has meant that we have been able to include more substantial reflections from our community leaders in relation to the current crises.

Amid all the distress of the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing went largely unremarked by all but our farmers: the prayed-for rains came. Beautiful, quenching, flowing, life-giving rivers of water flowed again through our paddocks and deserts. And wherever the waters flowed there was life.

May the gift of rain be an image of hope for us in these dark times, and may the prophecies of Ezekiel and John be a constant a reminder to us to glorify the Lord and Giver of Life.

David SchützEditor

Editorial continued

David Schütz served for 18 years as the Executive Officer of the Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, after ten years as an ordained Lutheran pastor. He is a foundation member of the Jewish Christian Muslim Association for which he has served as secretary. He has served as Chair of the Faith and Order Commission of the Victorian Council of Churches. A sessional tutor at Australian Catholic University, David is currently a full-time student at the University of Divinity. He is a cantor in his local Catholic parish.


Greeting from the Patron

As Patron of the Council of Christians and Jews (Victoria), I extend my greeting to the Council and to all its members and friends reading this first electronic issue of Gesher 2020.

The Council’s work – to help strengthen our society in dialogue and friendship – has never been more important than in this difficult year, when Victoria has faced the dual challenges of devastating bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic.

History shows us the importance of people from different faiths and cultures coming together to avoid the division that can emerge so destructively in trying times.

The theme of this year’s journal, Religion and Ecology, is also timely. We have the opportunity to reflect upon the earth as our ‘common home’ – a reflection that calls for solidarity with one another as we seek to find a way towards a united and sustainable future.

The perspective of faith and religion are important in this conversation so that we can see the deeper meaning and impact of our decisions and actions.

I commend this and the following issues of Gesher 2020 to you for consideration and enjoyment. And I thank the Council for its continuing contribution to cross-cultural and interfaith dialogue.

The Honourable Linda Dessau ACGovernor of Victoria


Greeting from the Chairman

We have all been affected by the COVID-19 restrictions and the coronavirus pandemic has brought about many changes in our everyday lives. The way we interact with those around us. The way we express ourselves.

And so this year the Gesher editorial board has decided to do something very different! We are going to publish three issues of the 2020 edition of Gesher electronically in PDF format, to be distributed through email networks and downloadable on the CCJ website. Each issue will consist of three to four essays which will be dealing with the subject matters of Religion, Ecology and the COVID-19 crisis.

Each issue will be about 6 weeks apart to allow everyone to read and absorb! Our new editor for Gesher 2020, David Schütz, will write about the details in his message to you.

The decision to publish Gesher electronically only, at least for the time being, was not taken lightly but it is the right one under the COVID-19 circumstances. And whilst these circumstances are dominating our news services, we must not forget that violent extremism is still rife around the world and our inter-faith work continues to be extremely important.

I wish to thank our editor David Schütz and the members of the editorial committee: Philip Bliss OAMNewton Daddow (Rev.), Faye Haskin-Dubrowin OAM, Alex Kats, Revd Dr Colleen O’Reilly and Mark David Walsh for their excellent and valuable work under challenging circumstances – I am most grateful for their energy and persistence in putting Gesher 2020 out to our national and international community.

Thilo Troschke LLMChairman of the Council


Art: An Australian Nativity in the Burning Bush, 2020Glenn Loughrey


An Australian Nativity in the Burning Bush, 2020 continued

An Australian Nativity in the Burning Bush, 2020 is one of my more literal pieces. It is Joseph and Mary in a bush hut which has been devastated by the January fires. They are standing beside the manger holding the baby Jesus. There is a sense of despair that all is lost but at the same time there is hope and that hope is found in the manger which is untouched.” – Glenn Loughrey

Please note that this painting is for sale. Glenn is offering 20% from the sale towards funding Gesher. Enquiries to the editor.

Glenn Loughrey is a Wiradjuri man and an Anglican priest at St Oswald’s, Glen Iris. He is an artist with a particular interest in exploring identity and story through the visual arts. He is engaged in the dialogue for treaty, sovereignty, reconciliation and self-determination for First Nation peoples.


Five Years on from Laudato Si’: Inspiration and AspirationDr Emmanuel Nathan

I have a confession to make. Roman Catholics my age were not even born when the Second Vatican Council was in session (1962-1965). And so, while my generation of Catholics has lived with the reforms of that Council as the only reality they have ever known, we grew up without an immediate sense of how momentous the Second Vatican Council was for the Catholic Church, in virtually every respect.

My sense, though, is that Pope Francis’ encyclical letter, Laudato Si’, carries a significance for my generation that I can only imagine is comparable to what my parents felt when the Council was underway. To echo the sentiments of my late, dear colleague, Denis Edwards:

“Given the state of our planet, given the climate change we already experience, given the devastating loss of species, given the terrible burden of ecological disaster on the poorest people of earth, I think Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ may well be the most important church document of the twenty-first century. At its heart is the idea that we are called to an ecological conversion that involves an indivisible commitment to suffering humanity and to the community of life on earth. Francis insists that earth is our common home, that everything is interrelated and interdependent, and that we are all kin, participants in a sublime communion of creation.”1

In what follows, I wish to offer three short inspirations and one concluding aspiration that I draw from Laudato Si’ to mark its fifth anniversary. While these are certainly not meant to be exhaustive or all-encompassing, they do mark a personal journey towards ecological conversion that will hopefully resonate with other journeys being made, individually and collectively, towards greater ecological awareness and action.

Inspiration 1: Developing a robust biblical eco-theologyLaudato Si’ very consciously dialogues with biblical texts (especially in paragraphs 65 to 100).2 This not only continues the practice of Church documents explicitly engaging with the scriptures, but also implicitly recognises the moves made in academic biblical studies towards ecological readings of the Bible.3 Within the concatenation of biblical passages referenced in Laudato Si’, I did find it striking that not more use was made of the text in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which speaks of creation groaning: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now” (Rom 8:22). Laudato Si’ only refers to this verse once in passing (albeit close to the start of the encyclical, in paragraph 2). What is positive about this is that scholars had already expressed their

1 Denis Edwards, Deep Incarnation: God’s Redemptive Suffering with Creatures (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2019) 128.2 All paragraph references and quotes from Laudato Si’ in this contribution are taken from the following English translation: Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for our Common Home (Vatican City: Vatican Press, 2015). 3 There are by now, thankfully, many biblical scholars involved in this work, but I wish to especially highlight the pioneering work done by the Australian-led international Earth Bible Project with biblical scholars from this part of the world (such as Noman C. Habel, Elaine Wainewright, Alan Cadwallader and Michael Trainor) making significant contributions.


concern that this Pauline verse is too easily taken out of its original context of Paul’s argument within that chapter and repurposed for an ecological reading to fit with today’s environmental concerns.4

One reading that has helped me balance the need for responsible exegesis and constructive biblical theology has been a future-oriented reading of Romans 8,5 that is to say, a reading that properly situates the passage within its historical and epistolary context, and also imagines the world that the biblical text invites its readers to inhabit.

“Paul constructs the pericope of Rom 8:18-27 around an alternative world where on the one hand, suffering exists that impacts creation and humanity; but, on the other hand, there is an anticipated liberation of creation and humanity that will come in the future. Thus, for Paul, the passage is holistic, for it wrestles with current reality, but also calls for responsible action. The message is one of action and responsibility and is a call to Christian responsibility. […] A future that is settled and a glory that is promised mandates an engagement with the world, for in so doing, the believer works in conjunction with God’s dream that will be fully realised in the future.”6

What I find illuminating about this quote is that it, on the one hand, shows the human biblical author, the apostle Paul in this case, at work as a constructive theologian. But it also shows the author of the article, Thomas Vollmer, doing the work of a constructive theologian. That is to say, biblical texts continually illustrate, but equally invite, constructive activity. As generators of transformative praxis, then, biblical texts offer fertile ground to develop a robust biblical eco-theology.

I have used an example from the Christian scriptures, but since Christians hold the Hebrew scriptures in common with Jews, I certainly view such a venture as an opportunity for Christians to engage in interreligious learning with Jewish scholars and practitioners. Here I would share, as an example, an encounter I recently had with Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, the founder of Shomrei Adamah, an American Jewish environmental organisation. We met at a session of the Religion and Ecology group during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego late last year. There Rabbi Bernstein shared news of the publication of her ecological Haggadah. This Haggadah uses the traditional references to eretz, normally translated as “land”, in its richer ecological sense as “earth”. In the process, this Haggadah takes on a deeper environmental meaning. Such an encounter is both inspiring and motivational to me in my own work in biblical theology.7

Five Years on from Laudato Si’: Inspiration and Aspiration continued

4 See, for instance, Cheryl Hunt, David Horrell and Christopher Southgate, “An Environmental Mantra? Ecological Interest in Romans 8:19-23 and a Modest Proposal for its Narrative Interpretation,” Journal of Theological Studies 59 (2008) 546-579. 5 Specifically, Rom 8:18-27. I am here drawing on the work of my colleague, Thomas A. Vollmer, “Creation and God’s Dream: Reading Rom 8:18-27 in a Normativity of the Future Perspective,” In: Reimund Bieringer and Mary Elsbernd (eds.), Normativity of the Future: Reading Biblical and Other Authoritative Texts in an Eschatological Perspective (Leuven: Peeters, 2010) 167-196.6 Vollmer, “Creation and God’s Dream,” 192.7 Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, Promise of the Land: A Passover Haggadah (Milburn, NJ: Behrman House, 2020).

A future that is settled and a glory that is promised mandates an engagement with the world, for in so doing, the believer works in conjunction with God’s dream that will be fully realised in the future.


Inspiration 2: Reimagining ourselves as interdependent ecosystemsLaudato Si’ also allows Christians to rethink their self-understanding as members of the Church and of the world, and not to see these two as entirely opposed, or in asymmetrical relation to one another. The Catholic theologian Judith Gruber argues that the language of ecosystems in Laudato Si’ extends the Church’s use of biological metaphors, readily evident in Second Vatican Council documents, from simply being used to indicate linear patterns of unidirectional growth or evolutionary shifts. Instead, Laudato Si’, in making the case for an integral ecology, begins to employ language that emphasises interconnectedness and mutual reciprocity (consider its refrain of “everything is interconnected” in paragraphs 70, 138 and 240). In doing so, Laudato Si’ becomes an invitation to think of the Church in a non-triumphalist, more interdependent, relationship with the surrounding world.

“[T]he metaphor of “ecosystem” highlights the foundational character of interrelations between organisms and their environment; the elements of an ecosystem shape and are shaped by each other in a constant feedback loop. Thus, when we view the church and its contexts through the metaphorical lens of “ecosystem,” inside and outside of the church can no longer be neatly separated, but are seen to mutually define each other; the (relation of the church to its) ecclesial “extra” becomes constitutive of ecclesial tradition.”8

This effectively means that we should become ever more aware, as communities of faith, of our rootedness in the world, not over against it. Ours is a shared responsibility, ethically and ecologically, to both care for and protect the world that is our common home. Here I think Christians can learn much from the Jewish idea of tikkun olam (repairing the world). Jewish thinkers who have influenced my own learning in this area have been Emil Fackenheim (To Mend the World) and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (To Heal a Fractured World).9

Inspiration 3: A God who suffers the negative effects of evolution with usI would be remiss if I did not draw inspiration from the vast theological oeuvre of the late, greatly missed, Denis Edwards. His contribution to eco-theology cannot be overstated, and I have often wondered whether the inroads he made in this area helped pave the way for Laudato Si’. The encyclical must have come as the greatest affirmation of his life’s work, and Denis wasted no time in plumbing the theological depths of Laudato Si’.10 But it is his last, posthumously published, work that resonates most closely for me, especially in the wake of his untimely passing.

In this last work, the publication of a lecture series, Denis applies himself to an examination of the notion of ‘deep incarnation’ developed by the Danish Lutheran theologian Niels Henrik


8 Judith Gruber, “Ec(o)clesiology: Ecology as Ecclesiology in Laudato Si’,” Theological Studies 78 (2017) 807-824, here p. 812. 9 The full details are: Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1982); followed by Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1994); Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (New York: Schocken Books, 2005).10 For instance, two articles appearing quite soon after Laudato Si’ was published: Denis Edwards, “‘Sublime Communion’: The Theology of the Natural World in Laudato Si’,” Theological Studies 77 (2016) 377-391; Denis Edwards, “Everything Is Interconnected: The Trinity and the Natural World in Laudato Si’,” The Australasian Catholic Record 94 (2017) 81-92.Edwards, Deep Incarnation, 131.


Gregersen. Gregersen extends the Christian theology of God’s incarnation deeply into the natural order of biological evolution. A consequence of this deep incarnation is that it then also includes the costs of evolution, which are pain, suffering and death. In this way Gregersen combines the Christian theology of incarnation with a Lutheran “theology of the cross”.

Journeying with this idea of the negative and violent sides of creation within the context of a Christian theology of the incarnation, Denis picks up various interlocutors along the way, at first his contemporaries in eco-theology, then circling back to the early Church Fathers Irenaeus and Athanasius, before entering into conversation with the 20th century Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. In his last chapter, in which he offers a synthesis of the insights gathered, Denis proposed that this theology of God’s incarnation-unto-suffering-death could be a contribution to Laudato Si’, which was relatively silent on the costs of evolution in our 3.8 billion-year history of life.

“Deep Incarnation adds that there are also aspects of the natural world that involve terrible loss and great suffering. It insists, however, that even in events of horror God is present in love as faithful, loving companion in our creaturely suffering and as promise of life. Perhaps the most important insight of deep incarnation is that the cross of Jesus, the Word made flesh, is the icon, or as I have said here, the sacrament of God’s redemptive co-suffering with creatures who endure horrors, and as promise of their participation in the healing and transfiguration of resurrection life.”11

There is much in this quote that is admittedly incredibly specific to Christian discourse (e.g., the theology of incarnation). But it is equally the case that theologians like Denis Edwards and Niels Henrik Gregersen are using the specificity of their own religious language to imaginatively construct a new vocabulary for an ecological theology that incorporates the insights of science. In this new endeavour religion and science are no longer viewed as irreconcilable language games, but rather engaged in mutual partnership with one another, in the way that Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has argued elsewhere.12

Aspiration: COVID-19 and the continuing task to care for our common homeI read Denis Edwards’ book at the start of the Australian summer as bushfires and lung-threatening haze enveloped the continent. I needed no convincing of the urgency with which Denis viewed his theological task at this tipping point in our planet’s future. At that moment I was confronted by two simultaneous, yet opposite, realities: incontrovertible science on the human contribution to global climate change and a despairing lack of political ability to get the world’s nations to agree on a


11 Edwards, Deep Incarnation, 131.

Deep Incarnation adds that there are also aspects of the natural world that involve terrible loss and great suffering. It insists, however, that even in events of horror God is present in love as faithful, loving companion in our creaturely suffering and as promise of life.


common strategy. But before we knew it, our planet entered into lockdown for an entirely different reason altogether and upended the normal order of things.

I shall leave it to others, more capable than I, to reflect on whether the COVID-19 pandemic should also be considered an ecological crisis. I am persuaded by the argument, however, that the ability of the novel coronavirus to jump species was in no small part due to the extent to which our human footprint has invaded every natural habitat on the planet. Our human contact with environments where formerly we had none, coupled with the dizzying pace of our mobility, only contributed to the speed with which the virus could spread. Experiencing in Australia the environmental devastation of the bushfires rapidly succeeded by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic only brought home, with full force, the negative and violent side of creation spoken of earlier.

During this time of pandemic we learned to grapple with unspeakable loss and suffering. It has been a harrowing and anxious time. But we also learned to experience presence in the absence; human communities of solidarity arose spontaneously in the midst of suffering. There have been moments of deep pain and sorrow, but also of soul-stirring beauty. Environmentally, the effects of lockdown produced stunning glimpses of a world prior to the onset of rapid urbanisation and mass-production. Yet lockdown has also strained us to the limits in terms of mental and physical health. The challenge, and aspiration, will be to remain as united in spirit and purpose past the pandemic as we were during it. With lockdowns easing across the globe, it will be easy to fall back into previous patterns of behaviour. Real challenges lie ahead and are already beginning to be felt. Only time will tell whether this moment we shared as a united human family will further spur us, individually and collectively, towards greater concerted action in caring for our common home.

Marking the fifth anniversary of Laudato Si’, in a year of tremendous global upheaval, the following words of the encyclical resound again with ringing insistence: “Today, however, we have to realise that a true ecological approach always becomes a so cial approach; it must integrate questions of jus tice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (paragraph 49). It is a task in which Christians can surely stand shoulder to shoulder with their Jewish sisters and brothers.


12 Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning (New York: Schocken Books, 2012).

Dr Emmanuel Nathan is Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies and Comparative Theology at the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University. He is the author of Re-membering the New Covenant at Corinth, and was named the inaugural Monsignor Professor Denis Edwards Visiting Scholar to the Laudato Si’ Research Institute at Campion Hall, University of Oxford. He is a member of the Australian Council of Christians and Jews.


Poetry: Seven Bible SonnetsPhilip Harvey

The Proportions

Genesis 18: 4

Loud proud floods cover the whole earth.Bitumenous storms bury long-lost cities.Headline plagues ruin everything of worth.They keep talking forever about all of theseEvents of biblical proportions:Fiery pits that finish off people we hate,Punishments to fit our fearful contortions.But turn the page, we find it’s not too late,Hearing the quiet voice of attention,Discovering our own passing blindness,Restoring the broken without mention.The simplest acts of loving kindnessAre real and now: wholly uncautionedEvents of biblical proportions.

The Moment

Psalms 19: 2

Other times it seems more elementary stillWith the rain lifting the creekbeds and seedbeds,The light at the windows turned off at daybreakAs the suburbs wake to serve again the city,This mass of instincts and desires heaving through space,Elementary; as the dogs race through the daisiesAnd children follow full of new ideas for puzzles.Our houses we pretend stand a thousand years.It is high time we changed our way of thinkingBut repairs and bills and old wounds intervene.The trees, more ancient even than us, sway thereFor miles as a new storm bolds its way forward.My book can barely keep up: their names are fictionsWho wrote these words to be remembered by.


The Soundscape

Psalms 33: 3

Laughing boys, laughing girls, mighty sneezes, lullabies,Nesting birds, feeding birds, mortal music, massacre,Grassy waves, wavy grass, single voices, wilderness,Stony sands, sanding stone, river water, gravity,Ancient tongues, crossroad trade, lampstand sermons, multitudes,Sunny rain, raining suns, holy tempests, thunderstorms,Rubbing hands, sweeping rooms, cortex feedback, ecstasies,Thumping dough, pouring wine, washing basins, theatre,Donkey bells, olive twigs, swishing branches, vocalese,Temple flutes, spilling coins, reverb building, instructions,Shouting men, shutting doors, kicking faces, infantry,Silver shots, pitting dogs, earthquake uproar, rupture,Silent flames, night-time air, wheeling heavens, whisperings,Beehive trees, rising roads, all-time stories, papyrus.

The Interpreters

Psalm 84: 3

Lorikeets in trees shriek joyously of Week One.The kookaburras’ laughter is a wake-up call.Cheeky beak wagtails will never have done.Cockatoos claw away To-Day in it all.Bowerbirds scavenge for their prized blue bits,Arrange them in lines to prove their love.Literal crows muscle in going, “It’s true it’sAll true, every word’s a fact!” Emus look above.Patriarch Tawny Frogmouths see one overwhelming purpose.Control freak wattlebirds construct a territory of signs.Rubicund rosellas like to warble it in their surplus.Gang-Gangs croak alone the few believable lines.Studying the ground for food or flipping through the canopyThey negotiate the urban scene and sing up the country.

Seven Bible Sonnets continued


The Toil

Ecclesiastes 3: 9

There is a time to stay in, time to go out:It is toil that our life is all about.Time to make love, then you stand back from thatAs toil alone feeds us who are begat.Time lets us collect, but we must let go:Toil can raise a great show, or yes, or no.War comes, peace comes, we’re somewhere in the middle:Toiling for some reason, following some model.Time to be cynical, time to get beyond cynicism:Toil doesn’t have time to think up witticisms.There is time future and time soon passed:Toilers, if we’re lucky, learn to make it last.Time for happiness, even elation, or a raw deal:Heaven’s talking our toil over a good meal.

The Wound

Lamentations 1: 7

The wound for years silences song and thought.Memory serves but to say you cannot return.Tomorrow will be the same, it cannot be bought.Climate sways and you are nobody. Burnt, spurned,You will start writing every last wordMemory provides, desire founts, need imagines.Fulfilment cannot be infinitely deferredNor accounts of origins for the generations.Captivity concentrates the mind, then some.You will myth your way into the present.Religion, it’s personal: that’s how it becomes.Nobody now, you recall your first assents.Even creation is no small matter, but againWill be written out like detention, again, again.



The Old

Matthew 13: 52

Old technology, old television, old planes,Old internet, old astronauts, old bombs, old bets,Old machinery, old automobiles, old trains,Old designer drugs, old real time, old debt.Old world orders, old gold, old printing, old ink,Old mountains, old forests, old deserts, old seas,Old pantaloons, old parasols, old cloth, old links,Old galleons, old pagodas, old palace’s old frieze.Old visionaries, old eagles, old lions, old cows,Old skeletons, old wars, old cities, old letterings,Old stones, old scrolls, old pruning hooks, old ploughs,Old summers, old autumns, old winters, old springs.Old women, old prophets, old thoughts, old elements,Old men, old dreams, old wounds, old testaments.


Philip Harvey manages the Carmelite Library (Middle Park) and the Library of the Community of the Holy Name (Cheltenham). He is Poetry Editor of Eureka Street and publishes widely and regularly, including at his words site http://wordsbyphilipharvey.blogspot.com/ and readings site http://clippingandcoining.blogspot.com/


Leading Jewish Voices on the EnvironmentJonathan Keren-Black

Even though there are various ‘Chief Rabbis’ (and not one but two in Israel!), the Jewish community does not operate with a hierarchy and a pope, as does the Catholic church. Whilst, for historical reasons of Empire, the current Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, based in London, is styled ‘Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth’, he is in reality only the Chief Rabbi of the orthodox community, and only part of it at that! We are a pretty anarchic bunch, and therefore I have chosen to present this article outlining a Jewish stand on the environment as a taste of positions and statements which I hope will give a flavour of Jewish leadership on this crucial issue of the survival of society as we know it.

Without intending to sound arrogant, this will include a small contribution of my own, since I am one of those in the Australian Jewish community speaking out as strongly and regularly as I can to draw attention to the issues to a community that often seems to consider other concerns to be more pressing (and this one to be too ‘political’!). I was involved in establishing JECO, the Jewish Ecological Coalition, back in 2003, a tiny Melbourne based organisation that may finally be starting to have more impact after its merger with the new Jewish Climate Network, itself a result of growing awareness within the community of the urgency of the threat facing us all.

I should also add that I know of no single leader or document to which I could point, of equivalent weight, authority or import to Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’. Furthermore, Judaism puts the stress on action more than words, and in compiling this article, that is strikingly clear again and again. Finally, it is important to point out that there are many Jews and many Israelis working in and sometimes very influential in the field, who do not consider themselves to be motivated by a religious obligation so much as a moral one.

So I’d like to start with two of these, based here in Australia. Eytan Lenko was recently named by Michael Gunner, Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, as one of the best brains in Australia when he announced Lenko’s appointment to the new Northern Territory Reconstruction Committee. Eytan is a technology entrepreneur, a clean-energy transition advocate and is currently the interim chief executive of influential Melbourne University-based climate think-tank Beyond Zero Emissions. He wrote in the Australian in January 2020 seeking large-scale mobilisation of our resources to deal with climate:

As large parts of Australia burn and smoke chokes our major cities, for many Australians the bushfire crisis is becoming our Pearl Harbor moment.

The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor marked the moment American citizens stopped seeing World War II as a distant threat and it became clear that not being involved was not enough to keep Americans safe. It hit home that, whether they previously believed it or not, the US was facing an existential threat that was coming for them.


Climate change is not a war between civilisations but it is a war for civilisation. However, for the past two decades, successive Australian governments and most of the public have regarded climate change as an abstract and lower-order priority.

The devastation of lives, communities, animals and our economy caused by the climate-driven fires have now shown that climate change threatens our security and way of life. Summer in Australia will never be the same again.1

Pablo Brait also worked at BZE, but has now moved on to another important Melbourne centre for climate action, Market Forces. Market Forces believes that the banks, superannuation funds and governments that have custody of our money should use it to protect, not damage, our environment, and they expose the institutions that are financing environmentally destructive projects, and help Australians hold these institutions accountable, for example by raising pertinent questions at their AGMs. He writes:

In 2007 I realised that climate change was the most important long-term issue humanity faced and I dived head-first into activism. But even before that, inspired by my grandfather’s experiences as a holocaust survivor and the life he led afterwards, I had been involved in many social justice and environmental campaigns, and sought to live morally as an individual.

When I found out that my bank and super fund were using my money to fund activities that worsen climate change, this was a blow at two levels. First of all, there was the issue of my personal finances contributing to a problem I was working to solve. Secondly it became very clear just how unaccountable our financial institutions were. We hand over our money to these corporations and they do what they like with it, without input from us. And when I started asking questions about where my money was invested I got the typical spin and obfuscation rather than straight answers. This was despite it being MY money!’2

In Israel too, we have significant leadership and development under way. Some 30 years ago, Kibbutz Lotan set out to become an environmental centre and educational resource for Eilat, and is now part of a dynamic cluster of organisations including the Arava Institute in the area spearheading environmental awareness, training and regional co-operation. One individual to highlight in Israel is Rabbi Yonatan Neril, who works with Canfei N’sharim (Eagle’s Wings) and Jewcology, and also offers hands-on experiences through Jewish Eco Seminars. He describes Shabbat as an environmental gift, writing:

Leading Jewish Voices on the Environment continued

1 Eytan Lenko, “This tragic bushfire crisis is our Pearl Harbor moment”, The Australian, January 14, 20202 Pablo Breit, “Is your money funding climate change?”, The Well, July 27, 2016. http://www.atthewell.com.au/article/is-your-money-funding-climate-change

The devastation of lives, communities, animals and our economy caused by the climate-driven fires have now shown that climate change threatens our security and way of life. Summer in Australia will never be the same again.


Shabbat offers great potential to reduce consumption and thereby benefit the natural world. The act of shutting off a computer or car for a day contains environmental meaning far beyond the energy saved from not using these devices for one day. The deeper significance of the act centres on the reorientation that can occur from outward focus to inward focus, from reading from screens and Blackberries to reading from scrolls and books, from communicating via technology to communicating face to face.3

This reminds us what we are currently missing out on as we sit, communicate and even run our services through computer screens to protect our physical wellbeing!

Environmental responsibility is not new. About 1300 years ago, the author of the Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah demonstrated remarkable prescience which chills me every time I read it:

In the same hour that the Holy Blessed One created the first human being, God guided the person before all the trees in the Garden of Eden and said: See My works, how fine and excellent they are! Everything I have created, I created for you. Think about this carefully so that you do not corrupt and devastate My world: for if you corrupt it there is no one to repair it after you. (7:13)

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has taken a strong position on environmental protection, highlighting the positions of the sages and statutes before us. He points to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in the nineteenth century, who

gave the most forcible interpretation of biblical law. The statutes relating to environmental protection, he said, represent the principle that ‘the same regard which you show to [humanity] you must also demonstrate to every lower creature, to the earth which bears and sustains all, and to the world of plants and animals.’ They are a kind of social justice applied to the natural world: ‘They ask you to regard all living things as God’s property. Destroy none; abuse none; waste nothing; employ all things wisely … Look upon all creatures as servants in the household of creation.’ (S. R. Hirsch, The Nineteen Letters, Letter 11).4

As politicians and dignitaries converged to agree on what became the Paris accord in 2015, Orthodox Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis released the following brief statement:

World leaders convene in Paris this week to agree a global response to Climate Change. The challenge before them is unprecedented in scale and of the greatest consequence. The planet is experiencing a long-term warming trend, with the 2011-2015 period projected to be the warmest on record; this due in part to the injurious actions of mankind. Many nations and major corporations are making admirable pledges to scale back greenhouse gas emissions and advance the use of sustainable forms of energy. These are vitally important steps in safeguarding our collective future. Our planet is a beautiful web of ecosystems, weather patterns and natural resources upon which we depend.


3 Yonatan Neril, “Shabbat and environmental awareness”, My Jewish Learning. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shabbat-and-environmental-awareness/4 Jonathan Sacks, “Environmental Responsibility (Shoftim 5775)”, Covenant and Conversation: Family Edition, 17 August 2015. https://rabbisacks.org/environmental-responsibility-shoftim-5775


With the freedom to sample the fruits of God’s creation comes the responsibility to protect and steward, not abuse, our environment. I pray that the efforts of those participating will be blessed with the far-sighted wisdom to agree outcomes that reflect what is, undeniably, in all of our best interests.5

At the end of 2019, the World Union for Progressive Judaism adopted the following resolution:

[W]e reassert that the modern Jewish concern for climate justice and the environment (in which many Progressive Jews across the globe are already engaged) is not only an authentic reading of our ancient sources but also urgent and essential, and that all our individual and organisational members should be urged to ‘act and to learn’ about the unfolding climate crisis. These commitments are ones that are essential to pass from generation to generation; as we aspire to pass on this world in good condition to those generations we will never know. 6

It then continued to offer a list of practical steps both for individuals and congregations to undertake to help move towards these commitments.

In the US, Rabbi Michael Lerner has been one of the outspoken leaders, both through his own powerful writing and the Tikun magazine and foundation that he established many years ago. The website has a very impressive Environmental section with over 300 expert articles.7

Rabbi Lerner has been arguing for many years for a ‘New Bottom Line’ for businesses, effectively meaning they could only continue to operate (and make profit for their owners or shareholders) if they had an environmental operating charter. In US terms he proposes “ESRA—Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution”:

The ESRA would require public funding of all state and national elections and ban all other sources of money in elections, not just from corporations but also from any person; it would require all the big corporations (incomes over $50 million a year) which are based in the US or based elsewhere but sell their goods or services in the US (including on the Internet), to get a new corporate charter once every five years, which they could only get by proving a satisfactory history of social and environmental behaviour to a jury of ordinary citizens, who would receive information from people around the world who have been impacted by the operations of that corporation.8


5 Office of the Chief Rabbi, “The Chief Rabbi’s statement on the COP21 Climate Change conference”, 30 November 2015. https://chiefrabbi.org/the-chief-rabbis-statement-on-cop21-climate-change-conference6 Adopted at World Union for Progressive Judaism International Assembly 11 December, 2019 – Chicago, USA 7 See: https://www.tikkun.org/category/ecological-transformation/environment8 Michael Lerner, “A new bottom line”. https://www.workableworld.org/uploads/4/7/5/0/47500125/rabbi_michael_lerner_a_political_ and_psychological_strategy_to_achieve_a_workable_world.pdf

...the modern Jewish concern for climate justice and the environment – is not only an authentic reading of our ancient sources but also urgent and essential...


Rabbi Arthur Waskow, founder and director of The Shalom Center, and a well-known activist, has been publishing on Jewish environmental responsibilities since the 1980s. He authored a petition signed by 500 Rabbis and titled “Elijah’s Covenant Between the Generations to Heal Our Endangered Earth”. The petition calls for a social transformation. This

is the fruit that can grow only from the roots of spiritual wisdom. We come back to the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit, the Interbreath. In planetary terms, that Interbreath is the interchange of Oxygen and CO2 that keeps animals and plants alive. It is precisely that Interbreath that is now in crisis, as the over-manufacture of CO2 by burning fossil fuels overwhelms the ability of plants to transmute the CO2 to oxygen – and thus heats, scorches, burns our common home.

Our sacred task requires affirming not only the biological ecosystem but also a cultural/ social ecosystem, the modern word for how the diverse Images of God become One. Jews, Indigenous Nations, Christians, Muslims, Unitarians, Buddhists, Hindus, and many others –each community must bring their own unique wisdom to join, in the Name of the ONE Who is the Interbreathing Spirit of all life, whose universal Breathing is the “nameless name,” the “still small voice” that supports and suffuses all the many diverse Names of God in many cultures and communities. That Interbreathing Spirit supports and suffuses all life on Planet Earth.9


9 Arthur Waskow, “Elijah’s Covenant - New Rabbinic Statement on the Climate Crisis”, The Shalom Centre, 1st February 2020. https://theshalomcenter.org/content/elijahs-covenant-new-rabbinic-statement-climate-crisis10 Jonathan Wittenberg, “A light footprint”, Heart and Mind, 19 May 2020. http://jonathanwittenberg.org/category/environment/

Rabbi Jeffrey Newman being arrested. Image: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/PA Images. All rights reserved.

Words are a starting point but not enough on their own. Like many before him, Rabbi Waskow also ‘puts prayer into practice’ and was arrested at the “Friday Fire Drill” climate protests in Washington, D.C. last October, alongside Jane Fonda and a number of rabbis.

In the UK, my colleague Jonathan Wittenberg is active in the field and on 20 May 2020 he wrote: ‘I believe we’ve relearnt how much we love the world. We need to translate that into caring.’10 My mentor Rabbi Jeffrey Newman has also been working for more than twenty years on this issue. He participated in Extinction Rebellion’s action in September 2019 in central London, where he sat on the middle of the road and refused to move. At the age of 77, he made the news and headlines, complete with the Sukkot symbols of lulav and etrog, by being carried away by four policemen. ‘We are in a period of enormous,



catastrophic breakdown, and if it takes an arrest to try to find ways of helping to galvanise public opinion, then it is certainly worth being arrested.’11

On 15 May this year I participated in an on-line interfaith service as part of the Student Climate Strike, explaining that in the Jewish tradition, we have used the ram’s horn to sound the alarm and wake ourselves from our slumbers, and then blowing it across the land for exactly that purpose. The following is an extract from what I said in that service:

The current predicament reminds me of the story of the frog. Apparently if you drop a frog in boiling water, it jumps straight out by reflex to live another day. But if you put it in cold water and then heat it to boiling, it stays, adjusting to the slow change, until it dies.

Coronavirus has come on us so quickly that our governments have responded very rapidly, throwing unimaginable amounts of money around to try to keep us alive, and business as normal as possible, or at least with the hope that it will return to normal service as soon as possible.

Image: Julian Meehan

By comparison, the climate has been heating, relatively slowly but certainly significantly, and I have been speaking about the unfolding dangers for over thirty years. But, like the frog in the warming pot, people have barely responded, and governments, who invariably seem to be as short-term in their thinking as the next election, have failed to act. Perhaps I should have started blowing the shofar sooner!

But in my faith and in others, we believe we are not only here to look after ourselves. Two thousand years ago, Hillel, from whom Jesus learnt a few things, said ‘Im ayn ani li, mi li – if I don’t look after myself, who will look after me – but if I only look after myself, what am I?

Hillel had one more thought to add to these: ‘If not now, when?’ If we don’t move quickly, it will be too late. So let us mark today, the middle day of May, as the turning point, when, led by the enthusiasm and skill of students and young people who have most to gain and most to lose, we shouldered the moral responsibility to protect our world and ALL its people and animals.

I do indeed hope – and believe – that humanity has reached a turning point. After the horrors and unprecedented scale of the bushfires earlier in the year, we booked a family weekend away in Lake’s Entrance to offer some support to the community reeling after the drop in tourism. That turned out

11 15 October 2019. You can see a video of his statement and arrest on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZggpNijm7E


to be the very weekend that the threat of COVID-19 translated into social distancing regulations – we ate at restaurants where the adjacent tables were left empty – and as we left, they closed behind us, perhaps in some case permanently.

Since then we have barely driven and certainly not flown anywhere. Skies around the world are clearing, animals are returning. Our busy lives have been calmed. We are all consuming less, spending less, cooking and hopefully communicating more. We are learning to use the technology available to us for spending time with friends and family overseas, for study groups and services, for business meetings.

There are positives to come out of this dreadful and challenging pandemic. I pray that indeed a re-evaluation of our impact and dependence on the environment at all levels will show that, from now on, we will address this threat with all the seriousness, with all the investment, that we have given to COVID-19.

Keyn y’hi ratzon – may it be so!


Rabbi Jonathan Keren-Black is the Rabbi at the Leo Baeck Centre for Progressive Judaism, East Kew, Victoria, and Environmental Advisor to the Assembly of Rabbis and Cantors of Australia, New Zealand and Asia.


Crisis and Contemplation: Grounding an Integral EcologySarah Bachelard

It is a year, it seems, of cascading crises . In Australia, we began with unprecedented and catastrophic bushfires, and a dread-filled sense that the drought might never end. Barely had the smoke cleared and the rain come, then news of an emerging global pandemic filtered through. This began (and in some places continues) as a public health crisis, but it has also precipitated a social and economic crisis whose consequences for national and international order are still unfolding. Yet barely has the resumption of some version of ‘normal’ been attempted post-COVID 19, then protests at the murder of an African-American man by a white police officer have erupted in Minneapolis, sweeping across the United States and well beyond. Curfews, confusion, cities burning, a President inciting violence against his fellow citizens and waving a Bible to justify himself. The façade of American democracy looks frighteningly shaky, a society trembles on the brink. And it’s only June!

Each of these crises is apocalyptic in the sense that they ‘reveal’ or ‘uncover’ the truth of things. They are the manifestation of pressures, fractures and suffering become so acute that they can no longer be suppressed or ignored. And my sense is that, as well as their particular origins and contexts, each crisis manifests something more generally and radically amiss in humanity’s relationship with life. They signify not merely an unlucky sequence of disparate ‘problems’ to be solved, but the revelation of a more fundamental malaise pertaining to us all.

‘This we know’, said Chief Seattle in 1854, ‘all things are connected, like the blood that unites one family. This we know, whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves’.1 The notion of the inter-connectedness of natural systems is by now a commonplace of ecological understanding. What we do to the soil by way of agricultural or mining practice affects the waterways that receive their run-off, which affects the oceans into which the rivers run, which affects marine life (both plant and animal), which affects the livelihood of coastal communities perhaps in quite far distant places, and so it goes. All this seems so obvious that we wonder how Western modernity has for so long been oblivious to the consequences of our heedless exploitation and disruption of the great chain of being, although Pope Francis among others has acknowledged that an ‘inadequate presentation of Christian anthropology’ has been a significant part of the problem.

Often, he has noted, ‘what was handed on was a Promethean vision of mastery over the world, which gave the impression that the protection of nature was something that only the fainthearted cared about’.2 And yet, as an earlier Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II had remarked: ‘Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble, for “instead of carrying out [our] role as a cooperation with God in the work of creation, [humanity] sets [itself] up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature”. ’3 This much we’re starting to realise.

1 Or at least, these are words attributed to him. The text of any speech, supposing there was one, has been lost and various versions of the speech are in circulation. 2 Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Australian edition (Strathfield: St Paul’s Publications, 2015), p.97. 3 Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, p.98.


However, in Laudato Si’, his Encyclical Letter on Ecology and Climate, Pope Francis offers a further significant insight: that our alienated vision of dominion over, and independence from, the larger whole affects not only our relationship with the natural world, but also affects how we are in relation to ourselves and each other. We live, for example, in a society that struggles to see itself bound together by any real sense of mutual belonging and interdependence, where the good of one serves and affects the well-being of all. In fact, it is as if competition and the rivalry to get ahead are considered more or less constitutive of civic and economic virtue. The consequences of such attitudes for the maintenance of public health, aged care and social welfare infrastructure have been laid starkly bare in some places by the disproportionate suffering of the aged and socially marginalised in the current pandemic.

The poor and vulnerable have become fodder for the capitalist machine through casualised labour or modern day slavery; while those unable to serve the system or keep up the pace because of ill health, age, disability or other forms of disadvantage are increasingly disregarded, considered expendable in the race to ... what? Prosperity? Economic growth? Efficiency? It is as the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah (7th century BCE) said: ‘scoundrels are found among my people: they take over the goods of others. Like fowlers they set a trap, they catch human beings’ (Jeremiah 5.26).4

This alienation from our humanity plays out in our personal lives as well. Many in our culture struggle to acknowledge and allow room for their own limits, vulnerabilities and needs. We fend off mortality, repress shame and sadness, and are impatient with failure. The same imaginatively stunted and alienated vision that leads us to destroy the life of the world leads us into increasingly destructive attitudes to the lives of other people and our own. ‘Your ways and your doings have brought this upon you. This is your doom; how bitter it is! It has reached your very heart’, says Jeremiah (4.18).

And so, Pope Francis writes: ‘We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental’. This means that ‘[s]trategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature’.5 Pope Francis calls this ‘integral ecology’, and insists: ‘there can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology’. ‘There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself’.6

I find this analysis profoundly helpful because it offers a holistic understanding of our situation. It shows how our cascading crises are different manifestations of one crisis. And it suggests that if we are going to respond truthfully and effectively, it will not be

Crisis and Contemplation: Grounding an Integral Ecology continued

4 Biblical quotations are from The Holy Bible (containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books) New Revised Standard Version (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1989).5 Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, p.98.6 Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, p.98.

Pope Francis writes: ‘We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental’.


enough simply to increase spending on public health systems or unemployment benefits, to address racist attitudes and historical injustice, invest in renewable energy and change environmental practices. All these are necessary, but by themselves they are not sufficient because they do not go to the root. For what is required truly to heal our malaise is that we become aware of and repent of the patterns of thought and habits of being that function to disconnect us so profoundly from ourselves, from our belonging to one another and to the whole web of life. What is required is a new imaginative sense of sharing a common home, and a new love.

So what might this integral awareness and repentance actually involve? Partly it means recognising how patterns of alienation actually show up in our own lives and in the systems of which we are part. Like Pope Francis, theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has said that ‘our ecological crisis is part of a crisis of what we understand by our humanity’, and involves the loss of ‘“feel” for what is appropriately human’. Williams speaks, for example, of ‘the erosion of rhythms in work and leisure, so that the old pattern of working days interrupted by a day of rest has been dangerously undermined’.7 Increasingly we treat ourselves and others, as we treat the natural world, like machines.

There is distortion too in our relationship with the passage of time which has itself become commodified. We are so anxious about wasting or losing time, that speed and immediacy in communication has become ‘a good in itself’. As a consequence, we find ourselves without ‘time’ for the very old and the very young, let alone for the unfolding of natural processes or for the time it takes to reflect, or grieve, or listen deeply to the cries of another. And this is part of a more general impatience with any kind of limit, including to our habits of consumption, and ‘a fear in many quarters of the ageing process – a loss of the ability to accept that living as a material body in a material world is a risky thing’.8

A thread running through all these attitudes and habits of being is a kind of relentlessness, a lack of tenderness, humility and forgivingness, a tendency to snatch at life and consume it rather than reverence it as gift. None of this is conducive (ultimately) to real enjoyment or to a fundamentally compassionate social fabric. No wonder underlying levels of stress and anxiety are at record highs.

If this is all part of the hinterland of our current crises, if this is what militates against sustaining our vision of the interconnectedness of the whole and our responsibility for the life of all, let me propose two necessary responses. The first concerns re-evaluating our continued consent to and participation in such ‘inhuman’ or ‘dehumanising’ forms of life. What rhythms of work and leisure characterise my life, for example? How about my relationship with limit and the passage of time? What habits of consumption or relationship to the material world characterise my daily existence? These might seem merely personal, lifestyle ‘issues’, irrelevant to the scale of the crises we face. But if these crises are symptoms of a fundamental spiritual malaise, a crisis in humanity’s relationship with life itself and with our fellow creatures, then every action to restore right relationship is a


7 Rowan Williams, ‘Climate crisis: fashioning a Christian response’ in Faith in the Public Square (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), pp.196-207, p.200.8 Williams, ‘Climate crisis’, p.200.


necessary part of the whole; ‘a step towards liberation from a cycle of behaviour that is keeping me, indeed most of us, in a dangerous state’.9

The second response, and part of what enables the first, is the (re)awakening of a contemplative consciousness. I believe that if we are truly to sustain a vision of our radical interconnectedness, some regular practice of silence and stillness, of listening, presence and other-directed attention is necessary. For it is only as we dare to let go of our anxious grasping, our self-assertion and self-protection, that we come truly to know ourselves ultimately to be part of and answerable to what is not defined or exhausted by an ego-ic agenda. And whether this belonging and answerability is conceived in theistic terms or not, what matters is that we undergo that radical shift from seeing ourselves as the centre of life, to knowing ourselves as ‘only one thing among many’. As the poet Czeslaw Milosz says:

Whoever sees that way, heals his heart Without knowing it, from various ills. A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.10

In engaging the crises of our time, I do not suggest that this awakening of contemplative consciousness displaces the necessity for wisdom, expertise and action across a vast number of fields – scientific, legal, political, social. Nevertheless, I believe that both Pope Francis and the prophet Jeremiah rightly see that alienation from nature, alienation from humanity (our own and others) and alienation from God are intrinsically bound together. Contemplative practice reconnects us, and at a level deeper than intellect and will. It grounds us in the real source of our life, which reveals itself as love. Only from this ground will speech and action flow that can address the root of our malaise, and so lead in the way of life for all.


9 Williams, ‘Climate crisis’, p.200.10 Czeslaw Milosz, ‘Love’ in New & Collected Poems 1931-2001 (New York: Ecco Press, 2017 reprint edition).

Rev. Dr Sarah Bachelard is a theologian and spiritual director of Benedictus Contemplative Church, based in Canberra, Australia. She is a teacher with the World Community for Christian Meditation, and gave the John Main Seminar in 2019 in Canada on the theme, ‘A Contemplative Christianity for Our Time’. Sarah is the author of Experiencing God in a Time of Crisis, Resurrection and Moral Imagination, and Poetica Divina (forthcoming).

...if these crises are symptoms of a fundamental spiritual malaise, a crisis in humanity’s relationshipwith life itself and with our fellow creatures, then every action to restore right relationship is a necessary part of the whole...


Cartoon: PopeGreg Foyster

Greg Foyster is a writer, illustrator and author of the memoir Changing Gears. His stories and cartoons have appeared in The Age, The Saturday Paper, ABC, Meanjin, Eureka Streetand others. He currently works in communications for an environment charity and is finishing a comedic novel. Visit www.gregfoyster.com


PSALM 8: Translation and NotesRobert Alter 1

¹For the lead player, on the gittith, a David psalm.²LORD, our Master, how majestic Your name in all the earth!Whose splendor was told over the heavens.³From the mouth of babes and sucklings You founded strengthon account of Your foes to put an end to enemy and avenger.⁴When I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars You fixed firm,⁵“What is man that You should note him, and the human creature, that You pay him heed,⁶and You make him little less than the gods, with glory and grandeur You crown him?⁷You make him rule over the work of Your hands. All things You set under his feet.⁸Sheep and oxen all together, and also the beasts of the field,⁹birds of the heavens and fish of the sea, what moves on the paths of the seas.”¹⁰LORD, our Master,how majestic Your name in all the earth!

1 Excerpted from The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter (c) 2018, 2019 by Robert Alter. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. We have received permission to reproduce excerpts from Robert Alter’s new and fresh translation of the Hebrew Bible for this edition of Gesher. We have retained the spelling and the pronoun usage of the original. We acknowledge that this may concern some readers, however we desired to maintain the integrity of the translation in this reproduction.


1. the gittith. This is another musical instrument that has eluded persuasive identification.

2. Master / . . . majestic. The alliteration seeks to mirror the strong alliterative effect between the two Hebrew words ‘adonenu and ‘adir.

was told. The Masoretic Text has tenah, which appears to be an imperative of the verb “to give,” and does not make much sense in context. I have revocalized it as tunah, yielding “was told.” The beauty of the night sky, which the psalmist contemplates in verse 4, speaks out God’s glory wordlessly.

3. From the mouth of babes and sucklings. The meaning of this phrase, however proverbial it has become, has not been satisfactorily explained. One distant possibility: God draws strength from consciously aware humankind, made in His image, even from its weakest and youngest members, against the inhuman forces of chaos. Perhaps the innocence of infants is imagined as a source of strength.

to put an end to enemy and avenger. Because this is a psalm celebrating creation, there is plausibility in the identification proposed by some scholars between this implacable foe and the primordial sea monster, who, in Canaanite myth, must be subdued by the god of order so that the world can come into stable being. Imagery taken from that cosmogonic battle between gods is borrowed by a good many psalms.

4. the work of Your fingers. The “work of Your hands,” as in verse 7, is a common idiom, but this variation of it is unique, probably meant to suggest the delicate tracery of the starry skies.

5. What is man. At the exact center of the poem, we find a poetic parallelism not based on any semantic development or focusing from verset to verset (as, for example, in the immediately preceding line) but rather on balanced synonymity, producing a stately emphasis through the equivalence between the two halves of the line.

6. the gods. The ambiguous Hebrew ‘elohim, which could refer to gods or celestial beings but probably not in this context to the single deity, sets humankind in a hierarchical ladder: God at the very top, the gods or celestial beings below Him, then man, and below man the whole kingdom of other living creatures.

with glory and grandeur You crown him. All these terms appropriate to royalty establish the image of man ruling over nature, with all things “under his feet,” a common ancient Near Eastern image of subjugation.

8–9. Sheep and oxen / . . . birds of the heavens and fish of the sea. The language of this compact but embracing catalogue is a deliberate recasting in somewhat different words of the first Creation story (even “fish of the sea” is a slight variation on degat hayam in Genesis 1, the phrase used here being degey hayam), but the audience of the poem is surely meant to hear in all this a beautiful poetic reprise of Genesis 1. The eye moves downward vertically in the poem from the heavens to the divine beings who are God’s entourage to man’s feet and, below those, to the beasts of the field and then to what swims through the sea (which

PSALM 8: Translation and Notes continued


PSALM 8: Translation and Notes continued

no longer harbors a primordial sea beast). The last term in the catalogue is a neat poetic kenning for sea creatures, “what moves on the paths of the seas.”

10. LORD, our Master, / how majestic Your name in all the earth. Although biblical literature, in poetry and prose, exhibits considerable fondness for envelope structures, in which the end somehow echoes the beginning, this verbatim repetition of the first line as the last, common in other poetic traditions, is unusual. It closes a perfect circle that celebrates the harmony of God’s creation. The “all” component of “all the earth,” which at first might have seemed like part of a formulaic phrase, takes on cumulative force at the very end of the poem. God’s majesty is manifest in all things, and the creature fashioned in His image has been given dominion over all things. The integrated harmony of the created world as the poet perceives it and the integrated harmony of the poem make a perfect match.

Alter’s Bible is an emphatically Jewish translation. There is a natural connection between the two qualities Alter’s translation strives for—philological accuracy and literary power. Both are expressions of his quest for the authentic meaning of the Hebrew text. And meaning, Alter believes, resides as much in a word’s poetic qualities—its music, its suggestive overtones—as in its dictionary definition. This approach is marked by Alter’s experience as a literary critic and a translator of modern Hebrew writers like Yehuda Amichai. (Adam Kirsch, “The Alter Bible”, Tablet, January 30, 2019.)


Message from Archbishop Philip Freier

An enforced Jubilee rest

The ancient Hebrew notion of Jubilee, ordained in the Book of Leviticus, was a fine example of God’s mercy and goodness. Coming at the end of seven cycles of seven years, the year of Jubilee was a holy year in which slaves would be freed, debts forgiven, and the land would have a year of rest. How the dispossessed and poverty-stricken in Israel must have longed for Jubilee to arrive.

Rest is also an integral part of another vital Hebrew theme, that of Shabat, or Sabbath, which we also get in the books of Moses. The fourth of the Ten Commandments given in Exodus and Deuteronomy requires God’s people to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

The Hebrew word “shabat” comes from a root meaning cease or desist. We are to lay down our tools, cease our labours and enjoy worshipping God. The Sabbath rest every seventh day also flows from God’s divine mercy, ensuring rest for the heavy-laden – it was a provision for the benefit of humanity, reflecting God’s own rest after the six days of Creation described in Genesis.

An unexpected blessing of the coronavirus pandemic is that so many Australians have been forced to cease or desist all sorts of self-imposed busyness and distraction. This is not to underestimate the real cost of the long lockdown to people’s lives and the economy, but at the same time many have rediscovered forgotten blessings, both communal and spiritual.

Modern society has rather lost that ancient understanding that calls us and the earth into rest. But the lockdown has been an enforced opportunity to reapply some of that profound wisdom, especially the right relations between people and their inheritance. The Black Lives Matter protests have provided another spur to re-examining how we can make society better.

The idea of Jubilee also invites us to consider contemporary questions such as climate change and how wealth is divided in our society, questions that have too easily been pushed to one side. We can avoid them no longer.

Grace and peace,

Philip FreierArchibishop, Anglican Diocese of MelbournePresident of the Council


Message from Rabbi Philip Heilbrunn OAM

As the production of the first issue of the 2020 Gesher journal nears completion, I extend greetings, best wishes and blessings for all the work, inspiration and creativity which goes into the preparation of this most significant Journal. Gesher is indeed a true bridge which has, over the decades, established an important connective means of disseminating teachings about interfaith work and mutual understanding.

The classic catch phrase of the Passover Seder ritual, where Jews probe the meaning of the dramatic events surrounding the Exodus, is epitomised where the child questions, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

Similarly, the cataclysmic events of the past six months or so, saw my own Passover Seder diminished from the banquet of two or three dozen participating guests, and especially devoid of children, to just my wife and I. As part of the isolation we were all practising, this awakened me to ponder that just as the Ten Plagues were a graduated call and warning to Pharaoh and the ancient Egyptians to probe their behaviour towards the Israelites, so must I have serious regard to the state of the world around me at this time. Perhaps this is a wake-up call for one to have regard to his place and role in this world, to understand how the ‘other side’ feels.

Was the rapid onset of widespread ongoing crippling drought, destructive conflagrations in our bush, and followed by an insidious lethal virus which, seemingly, is without cure and has rampaged through cities and countries which boast high sophistication and modernity a call from on High to grab our attention? Was or is it a prod for us to have greater regard to the state of our world – our relations with our fellow humans and with our treatment of our natural world, our ethics and morality?

At the time of the Exodus, the ninth plague, Darkness, is described as a palpable phenomenon: “They did not see one another… But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.” (Exodus 10:22-23)

Surely the theme, “Religion and Ecology” which is the focus of this year’s Gesher journal will give expression to ideas and thoughts at the highest level of the themes and challenges expressed above.

Indeed we look forward to much stimulation from the scholarly contributions about how religion plays a crucial role in defining our relationship with our G-d-given world.

Rabbi Philip Heilbrunn OAMPatron and President of the Rabbinical Council of VictoriaPresident of the Council


Message from Archbishop Peter A Comensoli

Warm greetings on behalf of the Catholic community in Melbourne.

COVID-19 has not merely changed the world. It has also revealed it more clearly to us. By calling for a great ‘stop’ to so many normal activities, and asking millions of people to avoid each other, to stay home if possible, to work from their own lounge rooms, to educate their children at the kitchen table, and to tune into their religious services via the internet, the world entered an unnerving time of ‘pause’. In this pandemic, the ‘pause’ revealed how fragile we are.

The pathologies and inequalities of our society have been laid to bare. In revealing the world in a moment of ‘pause’, the Coronavirus situation has forced us to look hard at the kind of world we created.

In Australia, it has turned out that our society includes some very good things. Generally speaking, Governments acted swiftly. By and large ordinary people have tried to do the right thing by others. Down Under, it has become apparent that ultimately the greatest risk to us has not been COVID-19, but the tendencies in our culture to protect ourselves against others and of assuming there is a safe ‘back to normal’ at some point in the future to which we will return.

One of the striking ways we have tried to keep going in the time of COVID-19 is the use of technology, and especially video-conferencing. In a matter of a few weeks, whole workforces and education sectors went from working and learning face-to-face to doing so via a flat, two-dimensional screen.

In this desire to use technology for connection with others, our Jewish and Christian traditions have a particular wisdom to share. We believe in a God who desires closeness with us, who has reached towards us to befriend, forgive and renew us. St Paul writes about the hope of one day seeing God “face- to-face” (1 Cor 13:12). In the Book of Exodus, we read of the Lord talking with Moses “…face-to-face, as one speaks to a friend” (Ex 33:11).

Using technology to connect with others is important, but the hope and the promise of God is that of closeness, friendship and intimacy. And because God reaches us profoundly through the interaction with other people, the desire for true face-to-face meetings is both human and divine. The Lord seeks us out in truth laid bare in the experience of the face-to-face. In the world that emerges from the pandemic, I hope we can grow closer to one another through faithfulness to this abiding truth, and may we not forget it in the world that is now ours to reshape and to which we give meaning.

Most Rev Peter A ComensoliArchbishop, Catholic Archdiocese of MelbournePresident of the Council


Support: Donors Gesher 2020

Arnold Bloch Leibler Sr Loretta Bani M E Calwell (Dr) Dr Anne Elvey Ian Fry John Hogan Tony Howe Alex Kats

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Support: Bequests

Will you help to support the work of the Council of Christians and Jews of Victoria?

The Council’s financial resources are predominantly drawn from members’ subscriptions and generous donations from some of the major church denominations and individual members. Our financial position continues to be tight and it is only due to a recent generous bequest to the Council that it will be able to continue its important inter-faith work.

If you support the Council’s work, you can help to preserve its future and financial sustainability by making a bequest to the Council and feel pride in knowing that your gift has helped to build a secure financial platform for the continuation of our important work.

We will treat your information with respect and privacy and would be pleased to provide a “Wording Your Will” form which will give some concrete options on how to go about leaving an all-important bequest and thereby a wonderful legacy to the Council.

Thank you for considering my request for helping to secure the financial position of the Council into the future. Should you wish us to provide a “Wording Your Will” form or have any queries in relation to a bequest to the Council of Christians and Jews Victoria, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our office.

Thilo Troschke LLMChairman of the Council

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