As we come closer to the High Holy Days, the question of repentance and change draws nearer. Lucy Benjamin’s PhD thesis dissertation is on Hannah Arendt and climate change. Reflecting on the High Holy Days and teshuvah she writes: "As I consider the question of repentance I am struck by the stubborn irreversibility of certain deeds; how to repent for those actions that will remain in the world beyond our own appearance, how certain actions or inactions will percolate throughout the lives of others and become untraceable to a single ‘doer’ and in so doing resist the call to repent.…

Reading this next passage might suggest that the rabbis were not especially interested in nature and what we now call the environment (as if we, too, were somehow not part of it.) Interpretations, however, insist that whatever we do should be with our full attention (kavanah.) Rabbi Yaakov says: One who while walking on the road reviewing a Torah lesson and interrupts his review to exclaim: “How beautiful is this tree!” “How beautiful is this plowed field!” – Scripture considers it as if he bears guilt for his soul. Pirke Avot 3:9 Being ‘in nature’ is often a way for…