Rabbis and Jewish activists were in the forefront of a number of ecumenical activities organized to lend moral support to the Earth Summit that opened last week in Rio de Janeiro.
On Tuesday, Rabbi Henry Sobel, a leading Conservative rabbi in Brazil, took part in an interfaith prayer service held at the Se Cathedral in Sao Paulo, along with the Dalai Lama from Tibet, Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns of Sao Paulo and Rev. Jaime Wright of the Independent Presbyterian Church.
Exactly one week earlier, more than 300 Jews took part in a “Nightwatch” attended by 5,000 people at Aterro do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro’s seaside.
It was part of the Global Forum, a broad panel of alternative activities developed by hundreds of non-government organizations as a sideshow to the official Earth Summit forum.
Jewish groups at the Nightwatch were led by Rabbi Nilton Bonder of the Jewish Congregation of Brazil, a Conservative congregation in Rio. He was joined by Rabbi Zalman Schachter of Philadelphia, Israeli ecological leader Peggy Brell and Susannah Heschel, an American Jewish feminist writer and professor.
The Jews mixed freely with colorfully dressed representatives of afro-Brazilian religions, Latin American Indians and Sunni Moslems.
“It is hardly usual to see all these different people together. That’s really impressive,” said Edda Bergmann, director for interreligious dialogue at B’nai Brith Brazil.
AN ‘ECOLOGICAL KADDISH’
Every religion had its own tent where religious rituals were performed throughout the night.
Inside the Jewish tent, Rabbi Bonder, known for his “alternative” approach to Judaism, recited an “ecological Kaddish” for animal species menaced by extinction.
Just a step away were Santo Daime activists. Santo Daime is an Indian-Christian religion, based in the use of a hallucinogenic tea that causes “visions.”
Following the Nightwatch, religious leaders organized a panel discussion in which each presented a facet of their own faith, using languages of another.
The Buddhist Dalai Lama sang “Hava Nagila” and joined Rabbis Sobel and Schachter in prayer for “a new world of peace.”
Schachter, wearing a green suit and turban, held a small papaya fruit and palm leaf as an ecological substitute for the etrog and lulav.
Sobel, a Portuguese-born, American-educated rabbi, greeted the Dalai Lama on his first visit to Brazil. “Our world needs humble and tolerant people like him,” Sobel said.
Religious leaders were invited to participate in a World Interparliamentary Summit special panel in Rio that drafted a “Declaration of the Earth,” in defense of the environment.
The summit established the “Green Cross,” an “SOS-Earth” panel of ecological NGOs that invited former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to be its president.
Professor Heschel warned that “indifference toward the planet and our population is the worst attitude we can take.” She also urged “more respect toward women. As the Earth is a female, she could not develop properly unless the world respects women.”
In an interview, Heschel explained why she came to Brazil.
“My participation in the summit was prompted by a neglect of Jewish values,” she said. “Which of our religious teachings allows us to exploit the environment? The Torah commands us to protect the Earth, yet it is not stressed by our rabbis and our spiritual leaders.
“We are not only here because we are concerned about the environment,” she said. “Unfortunately, we are here because the Earth is revolting against us.”
“We have this idea that God is presented as all-powerful, and that the world is in his hands, and that he will take care of it.”
That is “an easy way to relinquish our own responsibility,” she said. But the fact that “the Earth is holy does not mean that it’s invulnerable to our neglect.”
(JTA student intern Alexandra J. Wall in New York contributed to this report.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
