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January 4, 2010
The "AVATAR" film & the Trees' ReBirthDay: Celebrating Forest and the Lungs of Earth
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow
I urge that in many communities across our continent, multireligious groups together see the new film AVATAR this month; learn with me by teleconference seminar on January 14 the connections between this film and the meaning of the festival of Tu B'Shvat that celebrates the ReBirthDay of the Tree of Life
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The "AVATAR" film & the Trees' ReBirthDay:
Celebrating Forest and the Lungs of Earth --
Interfaith gatherings for Tu B'Shvat, Jan. 29-30
Several milestones in my life came this past week as I continue
climbing into and beyond my post-car-crash ordeal of the last four
months. One came Sunday afternoon, when Phyllis and I saw our first
movie-movie (in a movie house, not DVD) since August. We drove there in
a used Prius we have just bought to replace the car that was totaled in
August.
The film was AVATAR. It is an obvious metaphor for the European-USA
destruction of Native America and Africa; for the corporate destruction
of the Amazon forest and its tribal human eco-partners; for the US
destruction of much of Iraq and parts of Afghanistan.
For the indigenous peoples of the film's planet Pandora, the most
sacred places are ancient living trees that embody the life force of
the planet. So for me, the film spoke powerfully in the tongue of Tu
B'Shvat, the festival of the Trees' ReBirthDay.
AVATAR is extraordinary. -- Not only the technology of the filming/
viewing, 3D and FX, but most of all for its spiritually rooted
progressive politics.
See it!
See it in the spirit of its watchword: "I see you." Expressing what in Hebrew is "yodea,"
interactive knowing that is emotional, intellectual, physical/ sexual,
and spiritual all at one - what "grok" is in the English borrowing from
High Martian, channeled by Robert Heinlein.
In the film, the indigenous people - the Na'vi - [in
Hebrew, this would mean "prophet"] of Pandora stand in the way of an
Earthian techno-conquistador corporation that is hungry to gobble up a
rare mineral.
The Na'vi worship/ celebrate a biological unity of the planet and all its life-forms -- Eywa -- especially focused on great trees that are the most sacred centers of their lives. These great trees embody Eywa, the Great Mother - but S/He is more than even these trees, S/He is all life. Spirit incarnate.
We are just now approaching the ecological-mystical festival of Tu
B'Shvat. It intertwines celebration of the midwinter rebirth of trees
and the rebirth of the Great Tree of Life Itself, God, Whose roots are
in heaven and whose fruit is our world.
Tu B'Shvat comes on the 15th day (the full moon) of the midwinter
Jewish lunar month of Sh'vat. This year, that falls from Friday evening
January 29, till Saturday evening, January 30.
Flickr Photo by by Rob__
Beneath the official deadly failures of the Copenhagen conference that was supposed to reinvigorate the world's effort to face the climate crisis, the seeds of rebirth were growing. They were growing in the grass-roots activists who will not let our earth die so easily at the hands of Oil and Coal and governmental arrogance as the Crusher tanks and rocket-planes and the robotic Marine generals and corporate exploiters of AVATAR would like to kill Pandora and its God/dess Eywa.
I urge that Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, those who celebrate Manitou/ GreatSpirit in the varied forms of Native practice, join for Tu B'Shvat to celebrate the Sacred Forests of our planet.
I urge that we reach across our boundaries and barricades to celebrate the trees that breathe us into life. The forests that absorb the carbon dioxide that humans are over-producing, the forests that breathe out life-giving oxygen for ourselves and all the other animals to breathe in.
For us, Eywa is YyyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh, "pronounceable" only by breathing, the Interbreathing of all life, Great Mother/Father/ Creator of our planet Whose breath, Whose very Name, through the climate crisis and its global scorching is being choked by corporate rapacity and governmental arrogance.
I urge that we begin by going , anytime from now till January 29, in interfaith, multireligious groups to see AVATAR and then discuss its meaning in our lives. And then I suggest we gather on the evening of January 29 to celebrate the sacred meal of Tu B'Shvat together
What's to discuss? AVATAR teaches that the war against peoples and the war against the earth are the same war, being incited and fought by the same Crusher institutions. If we agree with this, how do we bring together the so-far separate struggles to end the two kinds of war? If we don't agree, how do we see the relationship?
AVATAR teaches that in the struggle to heal our world, birds and animals and trees and grasses can become our active allies if we "see" them as part of ourselves, part of our Beloved Community. Is there a way to make this true for us?
AVATAR describes how some Earthians turn their backs on the military-corporate attempt to shatter the Na'vi and instead join the Na'vi resistance. What do we Americans, we Westerners, make of that?
On January 29, what's to eat? A sacred meal, a Seder with four courses of nuts and fruit and four cups of wine. Foods that require the death of no living being, not even a carrot or a radish that dies when its roots are plucked from the earth. For the Trees of Life give forth their nuts and fruit in such profusion that to eat them kills no being. The sacred meal of the Tree Reborn is itself a meal of life.
And the four cups of wine are: all-white; white with a drop of red; red with a drop of white; and all-red: the union of white semen and red blood that the ancients thought were the start of procreation. And the progression from pale winter to the colorful fruitfulness of fall also betokens the growing-forth of life. The theme of Fours embodies the Four Worlds of Kabbalah: Action, Emotion, Intellect, Spirit.
There is much more to learn about this moment that so richly intertwines the mystical, the ecological, and the political. I helped bring together the Tu B'Shvat Anthology called Trees, Earth, & Torah (available in paperback from the Jewish Publication Society at 1.800.234.3151) that traces the festival through all its own flowering across 4,000 years of history.
On the evening of Thursday, January 14, I will lead a teleconference seminar on the meanings of the Festival. All are welcome. To see what to do in order to take part, please click here.
I look forward to speaking with you, "seeing" you.
You can also click here for this same essay on our Home Page and comment there. Share your thoughts about AVATAR, sacred trees, Tu B'Shvat, and corporate behavior!
Authors Website: http://www.shalomctr.org/
Authors Bio:
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph. D., founded (in 1983) and directs The Shalom Center , a prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, and American life that brings Jewish and other spiritual thought and practice to bear on seeking peace, pursuing justice, healing the earth, and celebrating community. He edits and writes for its weekly on-line Shalom Report.
In 1996, Waskow was named by the United Nations a â??Wisdom Keeperâ? among forty religious and intellectual leaders who met in connection with the Habitat II conference in Istanbul. In 2001, he was presented with the Abraham Joshua Heschel Award by the Jewish Peace Fellowship. In 2005, he was named by the Forward, the leading Jewish weekly in America, one of the "Forward Fifty" as a leader of the Jewish community. In 2007, he was named by Newsweek one of the fifty moist influential American rabbis, and was presented with awards and honors by groups as diverse as the Neighborhood Interfaith Movement of Philadelphia and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.