What can the space shuttle, which burns more than two million pounds of fuel with each launch, teach us about energy conservation?
The way the National Aeronautics and Space Administration manages shuttle missions teaches us an important lesson about our values that should lead us to change our gas guzzling ways.
This summer the space shuttle Discovery completed a successful mission, the first shuttle launch since the crash of Columbia in 2003.
While in orbit, photographs revealed minor damage to the shuttle’s heat shielding. Two protective bits of material known as gap fillers protruded several centimeters out from between the shuttle’s insulating tiles.
While most likely this would not cause a problem, some engineers were concerned that the protrusion could alter the shuttle’s aerodynamics sufficiently to cause dangerous overheating.
Reporters asked Deputy Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale about this. He said that due to “the large uncertainty about aerodynamics at the altitudes and speeds of a shuttle re-entry,” there was no way to be sure the shuttle would return safely. Therefore, NASA officials instructed a space-walking astronaut to remove the fillers.
As Hale concluded, “The remedy is easy and we ought to go exercise that remedy. If we cannot prove that it’s safe, then we don’t want to go there.”
Can’t have it all
There is another important spaceship whose future is clouded by scientific uncertainty. This time the stakes are much higher. Everything we know of is at risk. I refer, of course, to Spaceship Earth.
Why are we more lax when it comes to taking care of the earth than of the space shuttle? Where is our caution and prudence with regard to the dangers in the use of fossil fuels?
Certainly conservation of energy is a complex issue involving competing values. Scientific issues must be balanced with other considerations.
However, if we apply to the earth the standard of care NASA used for the space shuttle (and which we also apply to most other things that we value), we clearly see the overriding importance of conservation.
Economics is “the dismal science.” This is because the fundamental truth underlying all economic debate is that no one can have it all.
A finite amount of goods and services is available, producing a zero-sum game. What one individual obtains is necessarily denied to another.
There is no greater example of this than energy resources. All agree that only a finite quantity of fossil fuels exists within the earth. What one individual, group or nation takes must be denied to another.
Furthermore, any attempt to increase production of fossil fuels to make them easily available to all is also an attempt to claim these resources for our generation and thereby deny them to people in the future.
The political issues raised by fossil fuel consumption arise from one central point: Some nations have large quantities of these resources, and some don’t. Friction between Haves and Have-nots inevitably leads to strife.
In the United States, even though we possess sizable fossil fuel deposits, our enormous consumption rate has made us into Have-nots, dependent on various foreign countries to maintain our way of life. This allows other nations to attempt to force us to do their bidding.
Finally, burning fossil fuels causes environmental harm. Global warming and ground level ozone are only a few of the negative effects directly related to the use of gasoline for transportation.
Our national discussion seems to have focused primarily on how to make sure rising petroleum costs do not harm our economy. Maintaining a healthy economy is of course an important concern but where is discussion of our responsibility and of the morality of using gasoline in this way?
Sometimes people try to brush these concerns aside. Problems, after all, can be solved.
Perhaps scientists will invent new sources of power, thereby making energy plentiful for future generations. Political difficulties can be worked out via diplomacy.
Perhaps science will invent a means to offset global warming. Maybe this warming will benefit some parts of the world even as it harms others, and we will simply adjust.
All this is certainly possible. But where is our sense of caution? How can we take chances with our nation’s independence and the earth’s natural resources?
The above reflections might seem to be of universal concern. But as religious Jews we are uniquely obligated to speak out.
Someone without religious faith might respond to these issues by saying, “Why not? Why shouldn’t I be selfish? Why should I care about other people or about the future?
“Let people in poorer countries fend for themselves. Lots of the big problems, like global warming, will take years to develop. There are enough fuel resources to last through my lifetime. Maybe I won’t even have kids. Why should I care about the future?”
Our Torah teaches that this perspective is abhorrent. We have a mitzvah “To love our fellow as we love ourselves” (Leviticus 19:18).
So how can we take more of a resource for ourselves than we allow for others? How can we use resources to elevate our quality of life if doing so causes disease or injury to others?
Our Torah begins with God’s creation of the world. Our belief that the world is God’s creation entrusted to us is the basis for our commitment to preserving it.
Fortunately the vast majority of non-religious people join us in advocating that we live responsibly based on common decency and morality. But for us as committed Jews, these are our guiding principles. We should be leaders in influencing our society to make responsible choices.
Sadly, the Orthodox community has not taken a lead in speaking about environmental responsibility. That needs to change.
Rabbi Shlomo Levin is spiritual leader of Lake Park Synagogue.
Israel has learned something from Rabin’s murder
By Calev Ben-David
Shortly after moving to Israel 20 years ago, I was invited to a dinner at which then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres was speaking. Assuming security would be heavy, I asked how I would be able to enter the hall.
I was surprised to hear that all I needed to do was give the name of the organization that had invited me. I walked in almost unimpeded to within a few feet of Peres, without any security check whatever.
A couple of years later, I was walking down Jerusalem’s Rehov Emek Refaim, when a short, older, mustachioed gentleman strode by me. Only when I noticed a security guard trailing him did I realize I had just brushed by Peres’s successor, Yitzhak Shamir, as he was taking his constitutional.
When I mentioned this to veteran Israelis, they assured me that the situation had been even more open in the old days of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. So, this seemed to me an emblematic characteristic of my newly adopted nation.
Those were among the first thoughts that came to me that terrible Nov. 4, 10 years ago, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered. As was later proved, incompetence bore as much fault as complacency in the security lapses that led to it.
But surely his own unwillingness to wear a bullet-proof vest testifies that even a hardened military and political veteran like Rabin wasn’t yet ready to give up the notion of Israel being one big extended family, an intimate society that may have disagreements, but shares consensually recognized boundaries regarding internal conflicts.
The night Rabin died, so did a certain vision of this country that had probably long ceased to match reality.
End of illusion
We know now that his assassination was not by itself a watershed mark in the internal political/religious conflict over Israel’s future borders. That dispute continues a decade later, along the same lines.
Nor did Rabin’s death have the kind of immediate cultural effect some pundits wishfully predicted.
These observations are not made out of cynicism, or to downplay Rabin’s death. It was a milestone event, although not in the way that his killer or the supporters of his policies would have hoped for.
When such acts occur in democracies they may not directly influence the outcome, or even the terms of the political debate at hand; but they shake the foundations, the core beliefs, of those societies.
On an individual level, the psychic scars can range from rage, despair, cynicism, sorrow, guilt, denial, indifference, all depending on the personal context in which one views Rabin’s assassination.
For myself, with the assassination falling half-way in my two decades as an Israeli citizen, I can regard it as a turning-point.
It marked the end of some of the idealistic but illusory assumptions that motivated me to move here, and the beginning of a more mature understanding and acceptance of the complexities, contradictions and conflicts that are perhaps inevitable in the development of such a nation — or more to the point, perhaps any nation.
What of the collective consciousness of the Israeli people? Can we say, a decade later, that Rabin’s assassination left any kind of consensual lasting mark on this society, other than clear recognition of the need for increased security around the prime minister?
You wouldn’t think so if you’ve been reading the newspapers, or watching the news shows, the last few weeks. The local news media like no cliché better than asserting that Israel “has learned nothing” from the assassination.
So, it’s not surprising that many believed the evacuation from Gaza would lead to widespread violence, if not civil war. Especially since some of the extremist incitement and anti-Sharon rhetoric recalled the days preceding the assassination, as did two acts of anti-Arab terrorism prior to disengagement.
But Israeli society, especially the segment of it most fervently against the disengagement, did not go to the brink, or anywhere near it. In fact, the most surprising fact about the Gaza pull-out was how it passed with relative restraint on both sides.
How much of this was due to the traumatic impact of the Rabin assassination, the “lesson learned” about the dangers of conducting a debate over a nation’s future when the debate itself threatens the future of that nation? Much more than was given credit for, I tend to think.
The territorial disagreement is no less intense. But the conduct and resolution of the debate over Gaza showed that Israel has matured over the past decade as a democracy committed to the rule of law.
I don’t pass prime ministers in the street any more, and my one close encounter with Ariel Sharon in recent years involved a security check lasting half-an-hour. Extremists exist in every society, and the Zionist dream of Jewish normalcy now includes political assassination at the highest level.
But something was gained on that night we lost Rabin. Now we must all hope, and pray, we eventually don’t lose that, too.
Calev Ben-David is a former managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, now director of The Israel Project’s Jerusalem Media Resource Center.
Iftar in a sukkah was a moment that must live on
By Rabbi Asher Lopatin
A Resource of Edah
The High Holidays are behind us, together with their emotional and spiritual peaks. How they will shape our year remains to be seen.
Here in Chicago, amidst the excitement over the World Champion White Sox, we enjoyed one such peak, an incredible evening that simply cannot be sent to the dustbin of history. It was a Muslim-Jewish, Judaic-Islamic coming-together that must live on beyond Sukkot.
The program was a joint Iftar (Ramadan break fast) and Sukkot celebration in our synagogue.
On a rainy Sukkot Sunday, more than 70 people gathered in our sanctuary for speeches about Ramadan and Sukkot by Muslim and Jewish leaders. Then, while we made the afternoon Jewish prayer in the sanctuary, more than 20 Muslim men and women prayed their Salat in the Jewish Community Center’s gym across from the synagogue.
Dozens of Muslims watched the service in our synagogue, and dozens of Jews watched the Salat accompanied by traditional hand washing and mats. For the first time, these people were seeing up close how their fellow worshippers prayed.
Afterwards, we went downstairs in the social hall for the simple Iftar meal of water and dates for the 30 or so Muslims who were fasting. Finally, we all retired to a strictly kosher-hallal dinner where Muslims and Jews of every age group and nationality could not stop mixing and talking and sharing their religious lives.
There was so much goodwill at this event, so much warmth and civility, that it felt like the words of Zechariah 14, from the first day of Sukkot, had come true: “Once a year the Gentiles will come to celebrate Sukkot.” In fact, the Muslims at the event insisted on seeing our sukkah, even though doing that meant walking in the rain.
A ‘distant chapter’
Muslims were invited as individuals through the contacts with the Jewish Council for Urban Affairs, which co-sponsored the event with our shul. But many of these individual Muslims are leading figures in the Chicago Muslim community who were not afraid to be seen and photographed with rabbis in the sanctuary.
In fact, one leading Muslim organization, CAIR-Chicago, put the whole event, including pictures of the sanctuary and sukkah, on its website.
This is not an organization known for loving Israel, and though one cynical observer felt that CAIR was exploiting this event to gain legitimacy, I prefer to take its goodwill at face value.
Jews conveyed the magic of Sukkot and Muslims communicated the excitement of Iftar. Combined with a shared enthusiasm for food, this exchange broke through all other barriers, at least for one evening.
“It was my first time inside a synagogue observing Jews pray,” said Dina Rehab, CAIR-Chicago’s Outreach Coordinator. “The rabbi was very friendly and astute to the fact that there were guests observing. He made sure to explain things. I very much appreciated the opportunity.” This comment sounds honest and sincere, not contrived for the media.
Sukkot is over and with it a month of holy days and festivities. We have all returned to our regular jobs, our normal year-round synagogue programs, and our busy lives in the secular world.
Unfortunately, we look at the news from the Middle East and there is still no magical peace in Israel, no apocalypse of Gog and Magog as we read about in Ezekiel. Religion doesn’t seem to be the great peacemaker as it was in our synagogue only a few weeks ago. Possibilities and dreams from Sukkot seem far away, a distant chapter.
Yet, the Sukkot-Iftar celebration was real. We will not forget conversing with each other that night, sharing experiences of our holidays, and being in each other’s presence as we engaged in intimate prayer before God.
I ask us all not to leave Sukkot behind, but to carry it into the months ahead. Let us recapture these innocent interactions between Muslim and Jews, who perhaps began the conversation with the protection of Sukkot, Ramadan and Iftar, but might be able to continue that conversation beyond.
Last month we read the following from Isaiah 56 as part of the liturgy: “My house will be called a house of worship for all nations.” The prophets were more astute politically than we give them credit for.
Maybe a shul is a good place to start to welcome the nations, and maybe it is not too much to ask Muslims and Jews to “observe” each other’s holidays every year by viewing and appreciating them.
Our job this winter will be to turn the dreams and fantasies of Rosh HaShanah and Sukkot into reality, rather than to abandon them.
Having seen our Muslim friends in Chicago hear my prayers, pray in my institutions, and share my food and hospitality, I am confident they can come true.
Rabbi Asher Lopatin is spiritual leader of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation, a leading modern Orthodox synagogue in Chicago, and a former Rhodes Scholar in Arabic Thought at Oxford University. This column was provided by Edah, the advocacy group for Modern Orthodoxy.
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