Shabbat Shalom, BAI!
My Instagram ‘feed’ knew I was thirsty. Or at least, it must have known I’ve been thinking about water, and specifically, clean drinking water. I know this, of course, because ads for all kinds of ‘clean drinking’ solutions started popping up. I make no apologies: sometimes I buy stuff I see on Instagram. Like the five ‘lifestraws’, I just purchased, a small straw that can be placed into any water source, no matter how polluted and by the time it reaches your mouth, is clean and ready to drink.
And despite that, I started thinking about how much I don’t think about water; about it just being there, plentiful, drinkable, potable, about how in the area we live, how drinking water is quite abundant, it’s mostly clean, accessible and sometimes, overflowing to a fault. I also know that is not true for many parts of the country let alone the world. Water scarcity is real and getting more acute with every passing day.
I came across a powerful d’var torah (torah teaching) from Rabbi Yonatan Neril writing for the website, “Canfei Nesharim [On the wings of eagles], Sustainable Living Inspired by Torah.” This week’s Torah portion, Chukat, mentions water 22 times, and, as Tabbi Neril writes, “Chukat can be viewed as a narrative about the Jewish people and water.” Although written in the ancient times of 2014, its message resonated with me as I think about my own relationship with water. Rabbi Neril continues:
“Environmental problems are not problems of the environment. They are not problems of air pollution or global warming or species extinction or water scarcity. Those are merely symptoms. As long as we only treat the symptoms, the problems will continue popping up and getting bigger. Henry David Thoreau said, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” [9] Today we generally hack at the branches: in many counties we spend significant amounts of wastewater treatment and desalinization plants to produce more usable water, and in some states we enact Draconian measures like water rationing when the aquifer just gets too low. [10]
I invite you to read the entire article, HERE, and to think about your own relationship with water, how you use or misuse it, and as you’re thinking about it, consider the way in which we (and you) are merely hacking at the branches, or really getting to the root of the problem.
Shabbat Shalom,
Hazzan Harold
