Bryan Schwartzman:
Okay folks, a little post-production note before we get going. We recorded this interview with Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb in early May before the murder of George Floyd, before this incredible wellspring of protests and support for Black Lives Matter has sprung up in this country.

Bryan Schwartzman:
This interview is really focused on climate change, and the relationship between climate change and the pandemic. It probably would've come up as a question in the interview, but Rabbi Dobb does talk about the link between racial inequality and climate change, and I think his argument really would ... He would make the same argument even though we might've asked him a couple more questions about current events if we recorded this a couple weeks later.

Bryan Schwartzman:
We decided Rabbi Dobb really has an essential message that really feels relevant in light of everything that's happened. So, I say it in the intro, I'll say it again here that this is pretty stark, sobering conversation, but I think it really does give all of us some room for hope and optimism.

Bryan Schwartzman:
From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. (singing)

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Jobs versus the environment is a classic thing that really boils down to short term thinking versus long term thinking, and Judaism over and over reminds us, we have to focus on the long term. Ethics are empty, spirituality is empty if we are not thinking ahead.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I'm your host Bryan Schwartzman. Our guest today is Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, an environmental activist and congregational rabbi. We'll be discussing his Evolve essay, "The Jewish Basis for Environmentalism." This piece outlines the Jewish concepts that have long animated Dobb's approach to environmentalism.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Back in early March in eJewish philanthropy, he also published one of the first pieces to tackle the pandemic, from a Jewish lens, under the title, "COVID-19 in Torah: Advice from the Sabbatical Year". We'll be talking about some of the ideas raised in that article as well, and yes, we will get into the debate about linking the pandemic and climate change. He'll go into some of the reasons why he thinks lessons from one can be drawn and relate to the other.

Bryan Schwartzman:
We're also going to talk about the rabbi's journey as an environmental activist, and why as someone devoted to protecting the earth he chose to do so through the rabbinate, which is not necessarily an obvious choice. I'm going to say, this is a pretty heavy conversation.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I mean, climate change, COVID-19, but I promise, if you stick with it, he's going to offer us reasons for hope. As a reminder, Rabbi Dobb's Evolve essay is available to read for free at evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. The essay is certainly not required reading for the show, but we recommend checking it out.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Okay. Now, let's get to our guest rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb. He's the chair of COEJL, the Coalition On The Environment and Jewish Life, and has served as the rabbi at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda Maryland, since back in 1997. A graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He's the chairperson of the Maryland Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light, and past president of the Washington Board of Rabbis.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, welcome to the show. We're so happy to have you today.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Delighted to be on. Thank you.

Bryan Schwartzman:
First off, acknowledging we do have a little bit of a lag time with our production schedule. Right now, you and I are both still sheltering in place. I wanted to ask how you're doing.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
I appreciate that. As of mid-May, we are managing. So much of the answer to that question, which comes up dozens of times a day in the pulpit rabbinate in both directions, gets to privilege. We're comparing ourselves to others. And when I remember refugee camps, spread out across Asia, Africa and the Middle East; when I think about the folks without access to good healthcare, I think of folks living alone. To have a busy household family of four, with a lovely backyard, and a stable income and meaningful work to do in the community - I have to start there.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
That in no way minimizes the fact that even people with resources are having a heck of a time these days. There is tremendous vulnerability for all of us. There is loss all around. There is wistfulness for what was, and may yet be, and will be different.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
All of that is real, and it also has to be checked against the grand scheme that a disproportionate number of us in communities like Adat Shalom, and I assume many of the Evolve listeners - that we have to stop and count our blessings before we kvetch. Kvetching is allowed.

Bryan Schwartzman:
As long as kvetching is allowed I'm down to count my blessings. It seems like a good balance. I just wanted to ask, can you ask a little bit about the challenges of being a congregational rabbi in this time? I mean, it seems like you've had to make a more profound shift than simply meeting somebody at Starbucks to going on Zoom.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Indeed, the pivot has been so challenging in the last two months as of now, two and a half. Where a season ago we had a pretty good sense of where things stood. We had a sense of what was, and we were , not that long ago, rabbis of a certain generation, out a couple of decades, would talk about, how are we keeping it fresh?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Needless to say fate intervened, and that's no longer something we're talking about, because we have had to scramble to think about how both the programmatic piece, and that includes worship, but it also includes youth ed, adult education, all of the forms of engagement that we do, along with just keeping the institutions going.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
It also includes all of our tikkun olam efforts, which are prodigious and vitally important. All of that had to be transferred from in-person to virtual. At the same time, so did the pastoral, the interpersonal as the other big pull. And needless to say, the needs on the pastoral front have only gotten greater. Luckily, it doesn't take as much time to set up a Zoom, as it does for a congregant to get to the office, or me to get to them.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Nonetheless, for all of the savings, both the time and the energy that goes into it are unprecedented. This has been the busiest season of my rabbinic career, bar none. I never thought I would say that about any month except for September, but here we are.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I do want to get us into your essay, and the connection between Jewish values and environmentalism, and I have a feeling we'll somehow wade back into coronavirus, whether we intend to or not. I wanted to take us back a little bit. I'm told by our executive producer Rabbi Jacob Staub that when you arrived at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, you were bringing your own cup, plate, and utensils. You weren't using any plastic. You'd already walked from, I think you said from Los Angeles to New York to raise environmental awareness.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Can you tell us a little bit about your beginnings as an environmental activist, which sounds like it took shape when you were pretty young?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Thank you. Indeed, it did. A two minute version of the spiritual autobiography that we [crosstalk]-

Bryan Schwartzman:
Standing on one foot, right?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
As we go. I was shaped by a number of forces growing up in Toledo, Ohio in the Reform movement. One was growing up in poverty, just my mom and me, and not quite on the living wage. Economically challenged, but socially we had the advantages of the synagogue community, which through the camperships I went to R eform summer camp, one that actually Camp Havaya is in many ways very parallel to, and youth group.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Those helped shape me. So, progressive Judaism played a big role, as did my mom. A lot of hesed in that relationship. Somewhere along the way I got political in high school, and sort of channeled the combination of the love of Judaism the hesedik impulse of loving kindness and connection, and just the values of being nice and a good person, and interpersonal relations at the core, with a systems analysis.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
That led me very quickly to ecology as the defining issue. This was late 80s for me in high school, and into college. I was at Brandeis University, and very involved both in Hillel and in progressive organizing. And that's kind of the double piece that helped define who I was, and who I still am.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Ironically at a majority Jewish school, it was the Catholic chaplain, Father Morris, who was organizing peace walks. I did a two-week peace walk from New York to DC in 1988. That spawned what became in 1990 A Global Walk For a Livable World. I took a year off, figuring I will learn even more on the road than in year of classes, as great as those were, and part of a year long environmental education experiment on foot, which was a really remarkable opportunity.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
I was only 20, but they were joking I was the rabbi of this interfaith and no-faith walk. That was the first time I was in that position of communal leadership. So, whether it was leading worship, or being a pastoral presence, doing a lot of Jewish outreach. That really set the tone. I entered RRC at 23 with a fairly clearly defined sense that ecology at the center of a matrix of social and environmental justice concerns was at the core of my Jewish identity. But inextricably bound up with it.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
I can't talk about my Judaism, separate from tikkun olam or vice versa. Then enter Rabbi Jacob Staub, and so many of the other amazing teachers who then helped guide the rest of my journey, including my amazing classmates, and now colleagues.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Apologies, I wanted to back up for one second before I move on to something, something just popped up that I have never walked across the country. I wasn't even sure you could do that. I mean, I think we saw Tom Hanks do it in Forrest Gump with running.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Did you learn something profound about life by doing that, or is there one story that really sticks out? It just seems like something that deserves more than a passing mention.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Countless stories obviously. My very first speaking engagement has stuck with me. I was at U.C Santa Barbara before the walk even began, in the LA area, and had the opportunity to speak at the Hillel. I was 20, and another college student came up to me afterwards. I had this very halting presentation. I was totally new at this. It was really a Bartlett's quotes approach of I quickly crammed to be able to say something meaningful.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
I hadn't studied the text in the original. A young woman came up to me afterwards and said, "I haven't done anything Jewish since my bar mitzvah, and I'm now really active in campus environmental stuff. A friend said this was happening. I don't want to make a big deal, but it's kind of like you give me a reason to stay Jewish. Thank you."

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
And she walked away. This is three years before I started rabbinic school, but that was the moment when I began to realize the incredible power of this for every other value. That working on environment as a Jew, it has instrumental value. It's good for the Jewish continuity agenda. It's good for the Jewish community relations agenda. It's good to keep our youth engaged. It's good to link social with other. It's good to bring the text alive.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Jewish education, there are so many ways in which this is important, on top of the fact that I do believe it is mandated by our tradition that to the extent that we can talk about halakhah being operative in a liberal 21st century context. Protecting the earth, and thinking long term when we make decisions that have impact on others, and on the ecosystem are core mitzvot for our time.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
So that's just the first of many. I'll just fast forward around Columbus Ohio, the three quarters point. Late summer into fall we were joined by a holocaust survivor, a 72 year old at the time, who had survived the Krakow Ghetto. We walked and talked the last few hundred miles.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
For him, ecocide, and genocide were forever linked. It's just unforgettable, and a lifetime imprint when you're in the trenches of environmental activism with someone whose motivation comes from such a place of unspeakable challenge. It is not therefore an either-or that we focus on people, or we focus on ecosystems - ultimately it has to be both.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Short time out here. We hope you're finding this a powerful interview. Do you want to others to experience this kind of conversation? Please take a moment to give us a five star leaving, or leave a review. Positive ratings and reviews really help other people find out about the show.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Okay, now back to our conversation.

Bryan Schwartzman:
At what point in your evolution as a rabbi, as an environmentalist activist did you see or identify climate change as the number one problem? I mean, was that already back in 1988? I mean clearly ... I mean I really think of An Inconvenient Truth, which came out in 2006, as galvanizing the public conversation in a way it hadn't before.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Indeed, it was 1988. I mentioned this peace march that was in the classic antinuclear posture, which I did that summer. A bunch of us partway through, I think staying in a church in Delaware overnight, a bunch of sweaty, smelly, progressive peace activists were talking, and we realized that the antinuclear agenda was about preventing the fairly low odd scenario in any given year of massive unprecedented destruction.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
The things that we already knew, including the very earliest climate science [that] was just coming out in the 80s, including some of the signature challenges that helped spark a rebirth, just like 1970 was definitional with the first Earth Day. And what followed was the National Environmental Policy Act. The Endangered Species Act, Clean Water and Clean Air Acts.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Heading toward 1990 was very similar, and we were early on that particular wave. We said, let's focus on the thing that - we are already locking in unprecedented devastation every year, and it's getting worse with each subsequent year unless and until we do something about it. That was the moment that for a bunch of us it crystallized climate and the broader matrix of environmental challenge as the defining issue.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
That doesn't mean the human rights violations, LGBTQ empowerment, egalitarianism, race - underline that one, race and anti-racist work - all part and parcel of the environmental agenda. All necessary as part of, all vitally important on their own, and yet again every single one of those is only getting worse as the climate crisis worsens. No climate solution will ever be able to actually take effect without addressing some of those human questions as well.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
It's also worth noting that that same year, 1988, I didn't know her yet, but a young Jewish activist in Philadelphia, Ellen Bernstein, was thinking similarly, and it's time to organize in the Jewish community. The basement of the RRC was the home of the first ever staffed Jewish environmental NGO in history, Shomrei Adamah.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Shomrei Adamah, right?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Memorial Day Weekend of 89, they held their first membership conference, and I was the sole college student delegate there. I was the youngest person there at the founding of what you might call a mass Jewish environmental movement. So much is just the luck of being in the right place at the right time, and being able to contribute to groups like that, and the Coalition of the Environment and Jewish Life, and these others, all the way through the history of that movement.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I wanted to go to a quote in your Evolve essay, you wrote that "Every issue is important. We must never accept the frame imposed by some rightists and leftists alike, that various vectors of tikkun olam are in perpetual competition with one another for scarce attentions."

Bryan Schwartzman:
On the one level that seems totally intuitive, and then thinking about it, my inner voice is saying, don't individuals, and indeed governments, don't we need to make priorities? Don't we need to make choices? I guess what do we mean when we're saying every issue is important?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
The reason that I wrote that in the climate and in the environment essay, and not in any of the others is because this is the one that the others will be dwarfed by. Literally swamped by, inundated by, with rising seas, with rising vectors of public health crisis, with extreme drought fueling massive political instability, and growing numbers of climate refugees.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
I take refugees as a great example and for very obvious reasons in the last three or four years, just defending America as a land of immigrants has been front and center for much of the organized Jewish community. I've been part of that, I've only been arrested three times, in civil disobedience twice, on environment once, explicitly with Dreamers on the immigration issue. It is absolutely vital.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
We have 70,000,000 refugees in the world right now, an unprecedented number, and already many millions of those are attributable to climate crisis, which include the massive dislocation in Syria, and its neighbors, where drought helped to fuel the unrest that led to the disintegration, and the massive suffering that we're now seeing.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
That is going to only get bigger. I cannot be an immigration activist, I cannot speak on behalf of refugees without stopping to think about the climate crisis. I cannot address the question of adaptation, of how we respond to a world with growing numbers of refugees, without also thinking about mitigation, how do we reduce the future harms that were locking in with our current and rising carbon emissions, such that future generations will be saddled with an even greater refugee crisis than we have.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
So, for climate, it is connected to almost everything that we work on, and the people who say, "I'm so focused on this social justice issue, I don't have time to think about how my diet contributes to the carbon crisis. I don't have time to look for a more efficient vehicle, and emit less, as part of my daily commute in the pre-imposed COVID era, et cetera," are missing the boat in some very dangerous and myopic ways.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Two, are the dwindling number of effete white affluent environmentalists, for whom the goal is a pristine Arctic with polar bears, and who don't stop to think about the disproportionate harms on people of color, who don't recognize that climate is hitting the global south much worse than it's hitting the global north.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Those kinds of questions also, it's a critique of environmentalism, which 30 years ago was woefully stuck in that narrow place of thinking, and has come a very long way, [but] still has farther to go.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Thank you.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I'm curious, there is just so much within the scope of Jewish tradition and text, and we've all seen it mined for different ends. I'm wondering if you ever encountered in your time anything in the text that really challenged your linking environmentalism and Judaism, and how you dealt with it, or how you understood it? Because I'm sure there could be as much ... You could find a quote that would talk about economic development or the importance of earning a living or something like that.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Beautiful question. So, yes, absolutely. Going back to the Mishnah, there is the famous passage that one who interrupts their studies, in order to acknowledge how beautiful is that tree, or that plowed field, scripture considers as if they had forfeited their soul. There is a lot of apologetic readings to do for that, but there's always been the country dweller, and the city dweller tension, the rancher, and the farmer, going all the way back to Cain and Abel.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
That also touches on modern environmental thinking with Daniel Quinn Ishmael, the leavers and the takers. There are some beautiful ways that these teachings just keep getting recycled if you will, from generation to generation. The fact is, these are what our tradition calls makhlokot le-shem shamayim, disagreements for the sake of heaven, sofah lehitkayem, in the end they endure. That's also Mishnah.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
We have to separate, what are the fundamental questions? Including those where there is truth on both sides. And human needs, environmental needs - it's a false dichotomy, because ultimately if we don't take care of the environment human needs collapse as well. In a given moment, my next unit of, I have an hour to volunteer, I have $36 of tzadakah to give, where do I put it? It can feel like it's a zero-sum game, and there is no right answer. They're both important. That is a makhloket le-shem shamayim.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
There are others that are not. Jobs versus the environment is a classic thing that really boils down to short term thinking, versus long term thinking. Judaism, along with every other great spiritual tradition, over and over reminds us, we have to focus on the long term. Ethics are empty, spirituality is empty if we are not thinking ahead.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
If we only prioritize the needs of the moment, we are going to do horrible things when it comes to the environment. We're also going to do horrible harm in the interpersonal and social arenas. Whether that's a question of this moment of corona, and how fast we reopen, and how much we prioritize economy over human lives? That is also one of those false dichotomies. That is not a makhloket le-shem shamayim.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Ultimately neither is can we afford to protect the environment? Can we afford to retool our economy and rethink our ways of life in order for it to be sustainable for our grandchildren? The real question is, can we afford not to? And of course the answer is no, we cannot afford not to.

Bryan Schwartzman:
In your Evolve assay, and your more recent eJewish Philanthropy essay that touched on coronavirus, you heavily influence, or you heavily discuss the idea of Shmita, which I believe translates to sabbatical - you could correct me - and really going to great depth at it.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I guess I was wondering if you could give us the sense of why understanding this idea is so important to understanding what Judaism has to say about the environment, and climate change today.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Thank you. Had you not asked I would have put it in anyway. As every Adat Shalom-er knows, I told Rabbi Deborah Waxman on her Hashivenu Resilience Podcast, that it's actually become a punchline of a joke.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Rabbi Fred starts to speak, and waits, and everyone says, "Shmita." Because that's what I talk about. Shmita actually translates as release, radical release, which is critical, because it's release from the ways that we have done things that are non-sustainable. It's also release from the expectation that the way things have been are the way things will be.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
It is also sabbatical, it's interchangeable with Shevi'it, the seventh year, or Shabbaton, sabbatical. Those three terms mean the same thing when we're talking about the Jewish legal institution, going back to Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, where it's mentioned in four, or five different parshiyot, which by the way is more than keeping kosher is.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
This is really a fundamental gift from our earliest ancestors, and it's not only an environmental issue. It's economic, it's social, it's political. It's how we organize as communities for resilience all the time. It's baking in the notion that six years can be normalish, but 14% of the time predictably we're going to need to downsize. We're going to need to know, and be cooperative with, our neighbors. We're going to have corona every seventh year.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
We are going to have to think about where our food supply chains are coming, every seventh year. We are going to need to stay connected enough, small enough, ethical enough, cross-trained enough, resilient enough, to be ready for massive economic, and social and environment bumps along the way. And tradition said, be ready.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Later tradition said, "That's really hard to do." And created legal fictions around it so that the radical notion of the release of Shmita was lost. I think of it in mathematical terms as an asymptote. It's the axis that a curve rises to reach ever gradually closer, but never quite getting there.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
We will never, and should never practice exactly what is outlined in Leviticus chapter 25, or Deuteronomy 15, but we absolutely have to grapple with the ethics, and the values behind that institution, which talk about linking economic, social, political, environmental, and spiritual concerns, always rolled into one. A member of the synagogue after reading the piece that I wrote in EJP about Shmita as a bed of Jewish values for the COVID era. And it was quite early, it was early March-

Bryan Schwartzman:
March 6th. It was an eternity ago. Right.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Right.

Bryan Schwartzman:
When we were still going in to work.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
I was honored to get one of the first published pieces about Jewish values in the COVID era out there, and more honored that Shmita was the focus, because as a member of Adat Shalom told me afterwards, "You gave all those sermons on Shmita and I sort of got it." Then I saw the vulnerability of the COVID era, and I read that piece, and then I really got it, the need for cross-training, the need for knowing your neighbors, and plugging in. The need to roll up your sleeves, and know how to do things differently.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Whether it's a cessation of formal agriculture every seventh year, and the need to be able to live off the land, and off the storehouses. That means just in time production chains are not the answer. That means that indefinite population growth is not sustainable. That means that we need to every once in a while celebrate living small, even as we also celebrate the advantages of the scale of a modern community that can support the kind of creativity that we see in our great cities.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
That too is holy, but so is everyone knowing, whether it's on your windowsill or your backyard, how to raise vegetables that we ourselves can consume, without needing them to be raised thousands of miles away with heavy pesticides, and trucked with great environmental expense to get to a store that we're now nervous about shopping in, because of contagion.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
The corona era is actually proving the need for Shmita as that bedrock set of values, that asymptote that we hold up and say, "Does this economic idea, does this social idea, does this way of organizing our lives actually still look sustainable through the lens of Shmita, and that particular kind of resilience?

Bryan Schwartzman:
I mean, it's not at all surprising that the response to coronavirus in some levels has been political and polarized. I just finished the Ron Chernow Biography of Alexander Hamilton, and the 1793 yellow fever pandemic was polarized. It's been very much so, and to the extent that climate change has been discussed, it's also been through a very partisan lens, where we almost hear people putting things in the mouths of their opponents.

Bryan Schwartzman:
"Oh, see, those environmentalists, they're happy that everything stopped", which I don't think has actually been said by prominent environmentalists. Can you help us unpack what if anything the connection might be between this globalized threat, and virus, and how we think about climate change?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Yeah.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Or is there no connection?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Quite the opposite. In fact, a piece that I'm now working on, it's all about flattening the curve. There is the COVID curve, and there is the Keeling Curve. Named for Charles Keeling, the scientist who in the late 50s founded the observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii that's taken accurate snapshots of global CO2 concentrations for two or three generations now. That's the curve made famous by Al Gore, et cetera, but it's a piece of science.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
That is a curve that we are nowhere near flattening, and that is a curve that stands to kill untold millions in the years, and generations ahead. With a fatality rate higher than that of COVID-19. We've also learned from this, that it is possible to trust science, and to take massive steps that have an adverse immediate economic impact in order to protect life. That core value of pikuakh nefesh, potentially saving a life, that in Judaism has the ultimate ... Sorry to use the name, it's the ultimate trump card, right?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
The possibility of saving lives overwhelms almost every other value that you can put on the table. The challenge, and the need, and the opportunity in the COVID era, and the climate era is to redefine pikuakh nefesh as a long term set of concerns, as well as an immediate set.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
The halakha says, the Jewish law, that you can violate Shabbat if there is a reasonable possibility that this is a life and death situation. If it's not, then you have to wait. That's already very progressive within a traditional Jewish framework for how we act. That the value of life has to push other things aside. What we now know is burning coal for our electricity, instead of solar or wind, and driving a vehicle that's worst in class, as opposed to best in class, or driving when you could, in the old days, take public transit, or walk, or a bike.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Every one of those things is locking in suffering and death in incremental but very real and measurable ways. Through peer reviewed science, guaranteed that every unsustainable act we take has an adverse impact on the poor and the marginal today, or tomorrow, on endangered species next year, and on our own progeny the next generation, and three and four generations, because that's how long carbon stays in the atmosphere.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
We need to take the core of Jewish teachings, with new power from the COVID response, when people do listen to science, and are willing to take a short term economic hit in the name of saving life, and just apply that from flattening the COVID curve, to flattening the Keeling Curve.

Bryan Schwartzman:
While we have just a couple of seconds of your time, if you'd like to support these groundbreaking conversations of Evolve, and the podcast, and the website, and our web conversations, or even the curriculum we're producing, you can. You can make a contribution to reconstructingjudaism.org/evolve-donate. There's also a link in our show notes. Thanks for listening, and thank you for your support.

Bryan Schwartzman:
All right, now back to this conversation. You write a lot about entitlement, and what we're not entitled to. My sense if I read your writing correctly, you would like individuals to consume less, governments to pursue policies that consume less, and help individuals consume less. I mean, my sense of the environmental movement is so far telling upper middle class people in western societies to live less well hasn't worked. Is that accurate, and do you see this as a potential game changer? Because like you said, we have taken extraordinary steps that has really wrecked our economy in the short term?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Precisely.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
First, we need to redefine sacrifice. This is another gift of our tradition. The Latin and the Hebrew are the same. Sacrifice is from sacred. And korban the biblical name for the sacrifices offered on the altar in Jerusalem is from karov, to draw close, or get near, proximate.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
In every case, and all the way into the modern experience in baseball, a sacrifice is a good thing. It's an investment. It's a short term hit for the sake of a long term gain. When we focus not on what we give up, to live a sustainable life, but we focus on what we get, it then becomes just the logical thing to do. In fact, if we found the way to price into the market, the actual social cost of carbon on a multi-generational basis, then even the free market itself could be part of the solution.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
We now need regulation and political conversation around it, because we're so not there. A few people are getting rich off of the climate crisis, and the rest of us are suffering, and so will our great-grandchildren. The part one of the answer to this very important question is, that we need to reframe, and giving up is actually getting. That's not doublespeak, that's not Orwell, it's quite the opposite.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
The real Orwellian 1984 reality is that from 1984 all the way to 2020, we think we can emit. We think we can enjoy cheap gas, and cheap beef, and cheap everything where the actual long term cost is staggering. We don't stop on a daily basis to think of that as hypocrisy or as an ethical failing on our part. That can change. It's not about giving up a hamburger. It's about gaining a life that our great-grandchildren can endure.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Speaking of hamburgers, is it true ... Is beef really worse than cars in terms of what's a big problem for emissions?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Glad you asked. The United Nations, the food program related to the UNEP Environmental Program, originally said, 18% of all anthropogenic, meaning human caused climate effects were related directly to livestock, compared to 14% for the entire transportation sector.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
They then revised it downward to 14.5% while never acknowledging the multiple peer reviewed studies that said that theirs was a radical under-count, because it didn't include respiration and other factors that some estimates placed it as high as 50 or 51%.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
It is at least as big as transportation sector, and possibly even bigger than the energy sector. Diet, and car, and source of house electricity are by far the top three things that we can do. Some of it is very unsexy, retrofitting a boiler, or an HVAC system is sometimes the best thing that an office, or a synagogue or a home can do, and ultimately it saves money, short term it costs. But ultimately it saves lives. That's again, the clarity of that conversation.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
I said that redefining sacrifice is part one. There is more, and some of it is how good it feels to actually do the right thing. To live in line with our values, and to just have that mental picture of the great-grandchildren not yet born in mind when I think about what I'm doing. That gets to the important and growing field of climate communications, which is where psychology, and marketing, and economics all come into the picture.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
You're absolutely right. That the historic voice of, "Nay, nay, nay, you can't do that" has obviously not worked to bring about the widespread change that is needed. We need to replace the don't do the negative, with the do the positive. Build the world that we want our children and their children to enjoy.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
When we frame it that way, build a Judaism that is going to speak to rising generations in an era of climate change, and all of its upheavals as a source of inspiration, as something that is meaningful, and a place of happiness, a place of depth and meaning - then we have to rethink how do we approach Jewish life and Jewish education? How can we possibly continue to have disposables at synagogue for the oneg? How can we possibly continue to assume that chicken and beef are the way to celebrate Shabbat.?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
How can we possibly even continue in a post COVID era to say, "I can't wait to get back to where we all drive to that overcrowded parking lot. So that we can celebrate the anniversary of creation, every Shabbat." That is one of the hidden gems of this Zoom era, as we realize we can see each other in worship when it's on Zoom. And we can do it in our PJs.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
That also means we can do it with almost zero carbon, depending on where the electricity to run your laptop comes from. If you've got your solar panels on your roof, or you pay for offsets for wind, then truly, zero carbon Shabbat observance, and we're still in community. Does that mean that we should never go back to in-person in a post-COVID era? Of course not. Community is a value on its own.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
But should we assume that we should all keep driving every Shabbat to shul? Is that really what a post-COVID back to normal is going to look like, or can back to normal be toward something sustainable, and ultimately better, and holier, and more beautiful than what we had mistakenly called normal as recently as February of 2020?

Bryan Schwartzman:
I think this is a place for what could be the last question, depending on if there is follow-up. It's one I've really been wanting to ask, and it's about hope. On so many levels I am fearful of the world my children are inhabiting. I'm sure since the dawn of time, or cognition, parents have wondered, "What kind of world did I bring my child into?"

Bryan Schwartzman:
I'm having those thoughts now, and you're a parent as well. In your Evolve piece you write about hope being the hardest, but most important value pertaining to environmentalism. What would you say to someone, either a hypothetical listener, or me, who is having a really hard time being hopeful right now?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
You're not crazy [laughter] for challenge, and that question.

Bryan Schwartzman:
It makes me feel a little better.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
It is the baked-in irony that the people who know the most about the science, and the trend lines around the greatest long term threat to humanity as a way of life as we've known it also have to peddle hope. We have to peddle the painful truth. We're Jeremiah, we're the no fun people at a party on Saturday night, of, yeah, I'm having fun, but have you thought about rising emissions?

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
We also have to be agents of hope. The hope is abstract at times, but real. Just as every mile we drive, even in a Prius, much less in a Hummer, and everything we eat, even tofu, much less burgers, comes at a measurable environmental impact. Also, every positive act that we engage in, every reduction in emissions that we participate in, every phone call we make on behalf of a candidate who may yet get elected and help move the needle, every little action that we take demonstrably in the grand picture, just like one vote may not matter in a given election, but ultimately votes matter more than anything, so do every one of those impacts.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
We know that ultimately the scales that we're on are analog, not digital. Digital, it's either zero or one. It's sustainable, it's sustainable, it's sustainable, then we fall off a cliff. It doesn't work that way. It does work that way for an individual who either will or won't survive the next flood driven by a more active hurricane on rising seas, than it is for an individual endangered species, whether it will wink out of existence or manage to eke out a return.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
There is lots of those that are in fact digital. We have already locked in massive suffering, massive death, massive environmental consequence. It's going to get worse before it gets better, because carbon endures for a century in the atmosphere. Even if we cut our emissions now we would still have effects for a century.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
There are people in the future who could live, and not die, because in the fall of 2020, or the spring of 2022, whenever the post-COVID dawns for us fully, because people chose a more sustainable path. Because people understood that sacrifice was actually about gaining something beautiful, like life for our great-grandchildren. There will be entire societies, there will be entire species, entire eco-regions among those that do survive, the devastation that we've already locked in, who will live because we made those choices.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
That's a complex and challenging hope to hold onto, but it is real, and scientific, and peer reviewed, and it is deeply, deeply Jewish. Because we are the inheritors of a tradition that says God is thinking - and we are of course supposed to emulate God, imitatio dei - God is thinking according to Exodus 34, the 13 attributes, to the third and fourth generation, when it comes to inequity. That's the carbon cycle.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
God is thinking to the thousandth generation for hesed for loving kindness. That is beginning to get to geological time scales, theological time scales. Are we being good ancestors? If we can answer that in the affirmative, we can find meaning for now, and hope for later.

Bryan Schwartzman:
A lot to think about, process, and do, and act on. Rabbi Fred with the fate of the world, we could keep talking for a while. This was great. Thanks for a really thoughtful, and informative conversation. It was really good to have you on the show.

Rabbi Fred Dobb:
Thank you. I'm honored to be a part of this. I'm honored to be part of a movement that asks these questions, and creates a forum like Evolve. And every single one of the articles there is vital, and every single one of them also has a climate connection. We need to keep that in mind as we prioritize how we emerge from this crazy collective moment that we're in, and we will emerge.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Thanks so much for sticking to the end of our interview with Rabbi Fred Dobb. I told you he'd give us some hope at the end. If you liked it, please be sure to read the essay The Jewish Basis for Environmentalism. What did you think of today's episode? Be honest. We want to hear from you. Evolve is all about meaningful conversations, dialogue, back and forth, you name it.

Bryan Schwartzman:
That includes you. You're part of this. You're part of the listener community. Send us your questions, comments, feedback, whatever you've got. You can reach me, I'm putting my personal email out there in the inter-web, bschwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org. I'd love to hear from you.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Evolve Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song, Ilu Finu, was composed Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism, I'm your host Bryan Schwartzman, and we'll see you next time. (singing).