Please Go To The Alaskan Youth Climate Change Lawsuit At The Supreme Court Wednesday - I Have A Conflicting Obligation

I saw this message today:

As wildfires rage across Alaska and salmon die in the state’s warmed rivers after a summer that reached the hottest temperatures on record, these young Alaskans are standing up for their rights and for a future free from climate chaos.
WHO: The 16 young Alaskans who are suing the state of Alaska for violating their constitutional rights by knowingly contributing to climate change.
WHAT: The youth plaintiffs have a hearing before the Alaska Supreme Court after appealing a lower court’s ruling against them and they need YOU in the courtroom to show the public that their community stands behind them in their fight for climate justice.
WHY: The lower court mistakenly ruled that the youth had not identified a state policy that contributes to climate change, even though the youth clearly identified the statute declaring the State’s Energy Policy to promote fossil fuels and explained how the State’s implementation of that policy causes climate change and violates the constitutional rights of young Alaskans.
WHEN: Wednesday, October 9 at 1:30 p.m. Arrive early to secure your seat in the courtroom. There will be a press conference following the hearing at about 2:30 p.m. near the courthouse (location TBD) where you will have a chance to hear from some of the youth plaintiffs and their attorneys.
WHERE: 303 K Street, Anchorage 99501

I should be there!

But Wednesday is also Yom Kippur.  Although I have lots of issues with the persona of the Old Testament God, the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is an important, traditional period set aside to think about one's deeds of the last year.  Whom have I wronged?  Who has wronged me?  How can I make things right?  Can I forgive those who did me harm?  And just as important, it is time to think about how I can be a better person in the next year.

And there is something much greater than thinking about attending Yom Kippur  as one individual act.  Going to high holiday services, even though I miss most of the other services during the year, is a way to honor my ancestors who struggled hard, and even died, because of their membership in this family of people that goes back to Moses and Abraham.  I can't just walk away from that. So I cringe at the demanding, paternalistic diety in the prayer book, and the fatalistic sealing of people's fate:

Oh Rosh Hashanah it is written,
on Yom Kippur it is sealed:
How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be;
who shall live and who shall die;
who shall see ripe age and who shall not;
who shall perish by fire and who by water;
who by sword and who by beast;
who by hunger and who by thirst;
who by earthquake and who by plague;
who by strangling and who by stoning;
who shall be secure and who shall be driven;
who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled;
who shall be poor and who shall be rich;
who shall be humbled and who exalted.*

OK, you've got ten days to change what is written, before it is sealed, in this narrative.  You do have some say in this.  And while some of these seem like ancient fates, most are still fairly common even in the US.  And around the world there are people still being stoned to death, but how are these sorts of fates due to an individual's unholy behavior? Are the people dying by fire more sinful than those who have less painful deaths or even those who live for another year?  Are the rich really better people than those who are poor?  There are so many examples of this not being true.  (Of course I'm accepting our society's belief that rich people are somehow better than poor people.)

But other parts of the prayer book are more subtle and relevant to today's world.  So I concentrate on those parts.  Such as:

We sin against You when we sin against ourselves.
For our failures of truth, O Lord, we ask forgiveness.

For passing judgment without knowledge of the facts,
and for distorting facts to fit our theories.
For using the sins of others to excuse our own,
and for denying responsibility for our own misfortunes.
For condemning in our children the faults we tolerate in ourselves,
and for condemning in our parents the faults we tolerate in ourselves.

For keeping the poor in the chains of poverty,
and turning a deaf ear to the cry of the oppressed.
For using violence to maintain our power,
and for using violence to bring about change.
For waging aggressive war,
and for the sin of appeasing aggressors.
For obeying criminal orders,
and for the sin of silence and indifference.
For poisoning the air, and polluting land and sea,
and for all the evil means we employ to accomplish good ends.

These are behaviors that people do every day and these lines force them to face the consequences of their seemingly minor and benign behavior.    And I'm comfortable with "O Lord" being a metaphor for humanity or nature, or some other collective being other than a tyrannical deity demanding obedience of the imperfect creatures he's created.  (So very much like many parents.)

*After writing all this, I found a discussion above of the list of ways people might die, by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg who shares some of my reactions, but offers this more as a collective rather than individual fate.

". . .how can we accept that tefillah (prayer) and teshuvah (repentance) and tzedekah (acts of righteousness, usually translated as “charity”) are going to save us from earthquakes, car accidents, persecution? We know that lots of very good people suffer every day, and that many people who do horrible things prosper. One could write off the prayer as reflective of an era in which people found solace in trying to control their fate, but I think that’s unfair and dismissive of the liturgy. . .

What if it weren’t about my individual repentance as it affects my individual fate? What if our repentance as a society (which demands that each individual do his or her part) is the thing that affects our collective fate? What if the reason a person gets cancer is not because he or she personally has done something wrong, but because we as a nation and a globe have poisoned our air, our water, and our food with toxic chemicals and negligence? Are the tsunami of two years ago and the hurricanes of last year a sign that entire sections of the world were filled with sinners, or a tragic by-product of global warming? Are the women killed by stoning–yes, today–in honor killings around the world guilty of insufficient prayer, or should we assign responsibility to everyone who perpetuates a culture in which this is considered acceptable? Are the war refugees (like those fleeing the genocide in Darfur or the Lost Boys of Sudan) who sometimes fall to wild beasts personally responsible for their situation, their fate? Of course not. "

I can live better with this interpretation, but why not change the language of the prayerbook to reflect this?

So, in my life, I've accepted that attending High Holiday services is something I should do.  My mother took me with her, even though she didn't go to weekly services.  And there were times when going was difficult - as a student in Germany when the Jewish community was not yet visible again, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in a remote Thai province.  But I usually attend.  I work past the language that's troubling, and focus on the language that connects me, individually, with righteousness and humanity.

And so, I hope that many of my friends who believe in the importance of fighting Climate Change in as many ways as possible, are at the Supreme Court Wednesday afternoon to support the 16 who are suing the State of Alaska.