Notes from a Jewish Thoreau

Shabbat (the Sabbath) as Child's Play

2012-01-31T12:59:00.006-06:00

(Graphic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Recently I read an article suggesting that families should turn off their TVs for one day per week in order to reconnect with each other. I found that amusing, given that Orthodox Jews (and many others) already do this on the Sabbath -- and not just with TV. All of our electronic devices -- from computers to phones to iPods -- are given a day of rest.

As I have written on this blog before, we do daycare for the 2 grandchildren of my oldest stepson. He is not Jewish and neither are the kids. (He was born before my wife converted to Judaism and married me. Her kids from another marriage never followed suit). So the grandkids are not growing up with the same house rules as my wife and I when it comes to Shabbat (the Sabbath).

Usually we are not doing daycare on Shabbat anyway, but it sometimes happens, and the first time this occurred, the oldest boy was horrified. (The youngest, being a baby at the time, had no opinion yet.) He just could not imagine what to do with himself without some sort of screen to stare at all day. "What if I turn off the volume on my Gameboy?" He asked. No deal. "How about if I go into the other room? Or outside?" Nope. I explained that the Sabbath is not about how loud something is, it's about retreating from the weekday world, and that while he is in our house, he follows our rules. He was sure he would die of boredom, and at first it seemed so -- but not forever. Now he actually enjoys a Shabbat visit.

So what on earth do we do without all those gadgets? Aside from prayers, meals, and other ritual activities, we play board games, card games, do jigsaw puzzles, take nature walks, play with non-electronic toys -- and read. It is this latter activity that has really caught on with the kids. It began with me reading stories out loud, and talking about how when you watch a movie, you watch somebody else's ideas about the characters, but when you read, you go on a journey in your own mind. He didn't get it at first, but now, a few years later, he is such an avid reader that sometimes when he is here on a weekday he actually turns off the TV to read a book! The last time I took him to Cub Scouts (about a half hour drive) he spent the whole time reading a new book he had just checked out of the library.

I've also noticed that when he and his younger brother (now 3) play with Legos and other non-electronic toys, their play is much more creative. All of those chattering toys that talk, buzz, beep, roar, or otherwise make electronic sounds are also no-nos on the Sabbath -- and quite frankly, the kids tire of them rather soon anyway, because they are so repetitious. (And ubiquitous -- nowadays it's really hard to find toys that do not do this.) Even on weekdays, the first thing the 3-year-old does is dump out the box of non-electronic cars, dinosaurs, blocks and Legos.

He also loves paging through books and even though he can't yet read words, he spends hours looking at the pictures. He looks for -- and recognizes -- any new books added to the children's shelf since last visit. (Most of these we get at the thrift store, so that if he tears pages or spills on any of them, it's not big deal. You do not want to be saying "no" or scolding a toddler about damaging his books, or you will kill his interest. You should, however, teach him how to respect and care for books.)

All of this suggests that turning off your TV and other gadgets on a regular basis is a very good idea. I would even go so far as to say that the Sabbath may well contribute to the high literacy rate among Jews. At the very least, it helps us connect better when the family around the Sabbath table -- not a TV screen -- is the focus of our attention. Try it sometime.

"Who Stole My Religion?" -- rescuing Judaism from Right-wing politics

2011-12-08T11:39:00.009-06:00

I haven't been blogging much the last few weeks, because my energy has been going into the final stages of publishing a book with Richard H. Schwartz, author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, as well as other works. Schwartz's new book is called "Who Stole My Religion? Revitalizing Judaism and applying Jewish values to help heal our imperiled planet. I'm in the process of doing the formatting and layout for self-publishing on Lulu.com. His regular publisher (Lantern Books) did not think they could get it out in time for the 2012 election, so we went the self-publishing route. The back cover reads:

Richard Schwartz, author of
"Who Stole My Religion?"

"In the five decades since Richard Schwartz first became a religious Jew, he has watched the mainstream Jewish community shift more and more to the Right, often abandoning the very values that originally attracted him to Orthodox Judaism. In this soul-searching book, Schwartz examines the ways in which he believes his religion has been “stolen” by partisan politics, and offers practical suggestions for how to get Judaism back on track as a faith based on peace and compassion. Tackling such diverse issues as U.S. politics, Israeli peace issues, the misuse of the Holocaust, antisemitism, U.S. foreign policy, Islamophobia, socialism, vegetarianism, and the environmentalism, Schwartz goes where many Jews fear to go — and challenges us to re-think current issues in the light of positive Jewish values."

And yes, if you looked closely at the cover (which I designed, by the way) you will see my name there under his -- in much smaller print, because although I did help with a lot of research, editing and in some sections ghostwriting for this book, Richard Schwartz is indeed the primary author. We started out doing it co-authored in dialogue form (sort of the Jewish version of the "City Mouse and the Country Mouse" -- he has spent all his life in the New York City area) but that didn't work out. So I decided to pull back and let it be his book, for the good of the project. Still, he generously wanted to give me credit on the cover. A couple of our original dialogues did make it into the Appendix area, along with a section on kapporot that we had previously co-authored. And we did include both of our bios.

As for the cover, here's my explanation of the design:

The background photo (#ISS028-E-020072 from the NASA files) was taken aboard the International Space Station on July 31, 2011, when the sun was just below the horizon. When observed from space, the palette of gaseous layers of our atmosphere reminds us of the fragility and tenuousness of the thin cocoon that shelters life on Earth from the cold harsh vacuum of outer space. Without this precious envelope of air, life on Earth could not exist.

A thin crescent of the new moon appears to hang above the Earth, although in reality it is more than 238,855 miles away. On the Jewish calendar, the important holiday of Rosh Hashanah, which begins the High Holy Days season of repentance, always begins on a New Moon. Perhaps the message of this photo is to encourage us to think about how we are treating our planet’s fragile atmosphere, and to change our polluting ways before it is too late.

So -- where can you get the book? It's not out yet, but be sure to join the Facebook fan page at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Who-Stole-My-Religion-by-Richard-H-Schwartz/255675117826340

to be notified as soon as it hits the market. There will be both a print and an ebook version.

You can't fast forward a sunset ~ and other TIME-ly thoughts

2011-11-13T11:43:00.005-06:00

A while back I was teaching a circle dance to some children and told them to go clockwise. They looked at me blankly and had no idea what I was talking about. Their generation is used to digital clocks -- which do not go in circles at all -- and that got me to thinking about how we experience time. "Clockwise" comes from the way that the shadow moves on a sundial. Later, this was carried over onto the faces of mechanical clocks. In both cases, time is seen as a continuous, cyclical flow.

An hourglass, on the other hand, is not cyclical. It has a beginning and an end. But it still shows a flow of time, as the grains of sand slowly run down. A digital clock, however, shows time as broken up into a bunch of individual numbered moments that are often disconnected from each other. All of this may seem like a bunch of nitpicking, but I wonder how it affects the way we see the natural world. Nature goes in cycles. Days, months, years-- all are based on the somewhat circular patterns of rotations and orbits. Even the elliptical orbits of comets go in cycles. And they all move at their own pace. But are we losing that sense of the "flow" of time?

So last week I was watching a program on PBS about how families are spending less and less time outdoors, and how this, combined with the high speed of modern technology, is indeed distorting our inner sense of time. "You can't fast forward a sunset," one of the panelists said, and that statement has stuck with me. In a world where you can speed up, slow down, or freeze-frame a movie, or watch it over and over anytime you want to, the slow steady pace of nature often seems boring. So kids prefer to stay indoors and play speedy video games instead.

Yet it is precisely that slowness that allows us to relax and tune in to God's creation. Being with nature is a form of meditation. Our bodies evolved in nature, the Garden of Eden was in nature -- however you define it, we need the natural pace of with nature. But nowadays, even meditation is speeded up -- or at least people try to shortcut it. They go to a weekend seminar to get "enlightened" and are disappointed it it doesn't "work" right away.& But true enlightenment is a lifelong process that takes hours and hours of quiet contemplation. You can't get there by plunking down your money for a workshop and no, there isn't an app for it, either.

The only way you can freeze-frame a sunset - or any event in nature - is to take a picture of it. Even then, you only have a small part of the real experience. In photographing sunrises (which I seem to do more than sunsets lately), I have found that there is always a perfect moment where everything in the picture is just right. The minutes before and after that are beautiful, too, but that peak moment is the best picture in the series. However, in order to capture that moment, I have to patiently sit there for about 45 minutes or more, because the sunrise is going to unfold at its own pace, and there's not a darned thing I can do about it. It's happening on God's time, not mine.

Watching a sunrise is a "letting go" experience that requires us to fit into nature's pace, not the other way around. Only when you are willing to just sit there quietly and absorb the experience are you able to notice the subtle changes from second to second and minute to minute. There's that magical moment about an hour before dawn, when the first bird begins to sing, when the rooster begins to crow and the wild geese begin to honk. In Jewish law, the earliest time you can say the Shema prayer is when you can distinguish a blue thread from a white one. Try it at dawn sometime.

Sunrise on the Gershom farm
Pine County, Minnesota, Sept. 21, 2006

On children, dying pets, and the Circle of Life

2011-10-23T15:13:00.001-05:00

On Friday morning, it was very clear that one of our cats, Tigger, was dying. It was expected. He was old and his health had not been good lately, but it was still sad. As it turned out, we were babysitting two grandchildren, Chris (age 8) and Nick (almost 3), that same day. So my wife and I debated: Should we show them the dying cat or not? Would it be a trauma, or a lesson in compassion? We decided it would be best to tell them and let them say goodbye to their friend.

Tigger in 2007

He was barely alive when the kids arrived, but still aware enough to respond to petting. I explained that he would probably slip into a coma soon and die in his sleep before the day was over. And that's what happened.   Cats often go off and hide when they die, and I did not want that happening where I could not find him. So we put him in the cat carrier when I was not holding him. He willingly went in there, instinctively wanting some privacy.   By mid-afternoon, he was gone.

We couldn't bury him right away because the Sabbath was coming, but it was cold enough outside that we could store his body in the shed until Sunday morning. I wrapped him in a small blanket with his head sticking out, and 3-year-old Nick said, "Bye, meow," which is his word for cat. 8-year-old Chris understood death better, and could see that the spirit was gone from Tigger's eyes. It was a very sad time, but also an opportunity to talk about death. Chris asked if he could help me bury Tigger on Sunday, and I said he could.

So this morning we did just that. It had been raining but God gave us a window of opportunity when the rain stopped and we could go into the back field where we have our pet cemetery.   Chris and I went together, leaving my wife with the toddler, since she has trouble walking on rough terrain and we weren't sure when the rain would start again.

Chris and I dug the hole together, then lined the bottom with dried goldenrod flowers. We laid Tigger in the grave, wrapped in one of his favorite cat blankets. Chris is part Cree Indian on his mother's side, and he wanted to follow the Native custom of putting tobacco in the grave, so he did.  This is not my custom, and frankly it's a bit pagan from the Jewish point of view, but when it comes to funerals, I think it's important for the mourners to be able to express grief in ways meaningful to them.  Tigger was as much his cat as mine, maybe more so, since it was his mother who had found him abandoned as a kitten in a gas station parking lot. They couldn't keep him at the time, so the cat came to live with us, but Chris always looked for him when he came to visit.

As we filled in the grave, we talked about the Circle of Life, and how everyone eventually dies, to make room for new animals and people. I told him the story of the Rainbow Bridge, which, although it is a piece of modern poetry and not Scripture per se, is as good a metaphor as any for animals going to heaven.   Personally, I do believe the souls of our animals will join us in the Next World. After all, the Jewish metaphor for heaven is the Garden of Eden, and it had animals in it, right? Perhaps that is where the lion really can lie down with the lamb.

We marked the grave with rocks and I told Chris how, when Jews visit a grave, we leave a small stone in remembrance -- a custom dating all the way back to biblical times.   So the funeral had both Native and Jewish elements, expressing each of our beliefs. Then the rain started again. We headed back to feed the chickens, then returned to the house. We didn't talk much on the way back, but there was a sense of closure and we felt Tigger's soul was at peace.

Some people may wonder why I didn't have the cat euthanized when it was obvious that he was going downhill. The answer is the same that I would give for a dying human: I believe it is better for the soul to transition naturally into the Next World whenever possible. And yes, I do believe animals have souls, as I have written before on this blog. Although Tigger had health problems, he was not in serious pain as far as I could tell. Up until the last day, he responded to being held, purred in happiness when petted, and slept next to me on the couch. So I felt it better to accept that he was dying, and give him the hospice care he needed for comfort. It was a good decision -- for all of us.

Tigger (right) and Bugsy, a feline friend
who crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 2009.

Building my own Sukkah from stuff in the woods

2011-10-16T16:59:00.163-05:00

Last week I spent three days building my sukkah, the little booth that Jews erect for the Festival Sukkot. The sukkah has many meanings. First of all, it reminds us of the days of wandering in the wilderness with Moses. It also teaches us that this life is a journey through a world that is not permanent. And it is a celebration of the harvest, the time when we have gathered in our crops and can enjoy the fruits of our labors.

White pine for shchach --
courtesy of road maintenance!

The basic requirements for building a sukkah are simple: It must have 3 walls, and the shchach (roof covering) must be made of natural materials cut from the earth. The sides can be made from anything handy, including the wall of an existing building if you build it against the house or other structure. However, the location must be open to the sky, not under a tree or other obstruction.

Nowadays you can buy prefab sukkah kits made out of plywood or various other materials in a variety of designs. However, these are rather pricy and way beyond our tight budget. Besides, my wife and I are getting a bit old to be hauling heavy plywood panels in and out of the shed each year. So, I call upon my old Boy Scout skills to lash together a framework of saplings that I cut from the woods on my own land.

I use nylon twine instead of the old sisal kind, because, although it is harder to tie permanent knots with, it does not rot or stretch. (Through trial and error, I found that tying it off with a square knot, followed by three overhand knots up tight against the first knot, pretty much keeps the ends from untying.)

This creates a rather permanent frame that I leave up after the holiday. However, last winter the snow was so unusually heavy, it collapsed the whole thing (read that story), so I had to start over from scratch. But I can't really complain, because the old sukkah frame had lasted over 10 years. Still, it is a lot of work to drag all those new poles in from the woods. Not to mention finding appropriate trees in the first place.

Andy Cat, one of my "helpful"
construction workers who loves string!

Luckily, I had a bit of help from a road maintenance crew. About two weeks before I began my sukkah-building project, they came through and cut down a bunch of trees and brush along our road for fire control. This gave me a set of nice straight maple poles -- all the verticals in the new sukkah frame are made from this free material. I also got a good supply of white pine branches from trees they trimmed that were overhanging the road. That, plus prunings from my own white pine that had bent down too low to mow under, gave me enough shchach to cover the sukkah. Not only was this economical, it was also ecological, because I used materials that would otherwise have gone to waste. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Here is what the sukkah looked like after I got the basic framework up. Four cinder blocks help to anchor it in place. It still needs some more diagonal braces, which I installed after this picture was taken. (I used a flash at early dawn, to show up the frame better against the trees in the background.)

Covering the sukkah was a challenge this year, because most of the old sheets and bedspreads I used before were either torn or moldy. My wife is very allergic to mold, so I had to throw most of it out and start over. Because Rosh HaShanah had come back-to-back with the Sabbath, and Yom Kippur was on the Sabbath itself this year, I could not take advantage of all those Friday garage sales to find more used cloth. Not to worry -- I did have a lot of feed sacks and some clear plastic on hand, so I used those instead. To keep the wind from tearing these rather fragile materials off the frame, I put a strip of corrugated cardboard over the plastic where I was stapling to the wood. That reinforced it very well. The cardboard, of course, came from old boxes I got at the grocery.

Here is how the sukkah turned out. The outside table has a bucket of water for the ritual handwashing, and there is room for more chairs around the card table if needed. The side table is very handy for setting dishes aside. Both of the low gray tables, by the way, are ones we already had for flea market sales, A fourth wall could be added in front, perhaps by hanging a blanket, but that would have prevented me photographing the inside for this blog post. Besides, we enjoy looking out at the scenery.

Definitely primitive, but functional. And much closer to what Moses actually used. He certainly didn't have any plywood on hand. Then again, he didn't have any plastic, either. (He probably used animal skins.) But still, this sukkah did well to evoke the story of wandering in the wilderness. Spiritually, what I got form this whole project is that we are to bloom where we are planted, and that God will provide for us, be we must also be creative in using what is available. "Who is rich? He who is satisfied with his portion!" (Talmud, Pirkei Avot.) And by the way: The whole thing only cost me about $15 out of pocket, for the nylon twine and some staples. Thoreau would have been so proud!

The Kapparot ritual -- how tradition has become a travesty

2011-10-04T12:10:00.085-05:00

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is coming this Friday-Saturday, and with it comes the annual culture war over a ceremony called kapparot, in which a chicken is slaughtered just before the holy day.    The PETA and animal rights people will be shouting "Meat is murder" while the Hasidic Jews who practice this ceremony will shout about antisemitism and accuse the activists of trying to shut down the whole kosher meat industry. And nobody will really be listening to each other. As a Hasidic Jew who is also a vegetarian, I understand both sides of the issue, and would like to share some suggestions for better communication. (For basic background information on the history and meaning of the ceremony itself, see The Custom of Kapparot in the Jewish Tradition , by Dr. Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., and me.)

Respect, not insults, please

First of all, PETA people, for outsiders to call any traditional culture "barbaric" or "medieval" or "primitive" or whatever never really works. It only causes the traditionalists to circle the wagons.   And it goes without saying that sending nasty, obscene, anti-Jewish and/or personally insulting messages to various rabbis is not going to win any converts to your cause. Would you stand outside a Native American (Indian) ceremony and shout about "primitive barbarism"? Of course not, that would be "politically incorrect" now, wouldn't it?   So what makes you think it is any better to do it to the Jews?

If you yourself are Jewish but not Hasidic, please try to keep negative stereotypes out of the dialogue.  Even I, who am both a vegetarian and an opponent of using live chickens for kapparot, will get turned off if you start shouting anti-Orthodox epithets at me.  Stick to the specific issue at hand and don't go dragging in feminism, gay marriage, dress codes, Israeli politics, "who is a Jew" or references to the movie Yentl. In other words, don't use the opportunity to dump on me everything you always wanted to yell at an Orthodox Jew.   I care about the welfare of chickens the same as you do -- even if I do dress funny in your eyes. (In fact, all the pix in this article are of my own birds on my vegetarian, no-kill farm.)

Both sides would do well to visit the site of the Alliance to End Chickens As Kapporos, an org that is sensitive to both the suffering of chickens and also has a reasonable amount of sensitivity to Jewish culture.

Ridicule does not work

In a recent dialogue with an animal rights activist, he told me the best way to handle this would be to use rubber chickens to make fun of the ceremony ala Mark Twain, so that it would be rendered ridiculous through satire. But that is exactly the WRONG way to go about it. Most Hasidic Jews have probably never read Mark Twain (if they even know who he is) and won't see this as satire, they will see it as "a bunch of ignorant goyim ridiculing the Jews again." If you really want to change minds and hearts, then you need to educate yourself first. Learn how to respectfully dialogue from within the context of the culture and maybe, just maybe, they might listen to you. Keep in mind that for the people practicing kapparot, it is a serious religious ceremony, even if you do not understand it.

Neither does playing the "antisemitism card"

On the other hand, my Hasidic brethren, it is unfair to judge the whole animal rights movement by a few nuts who send nasty messages to your email box. PETA is not trying to shut down the entire kosher meat industry. In fact, PETA has affirmed that kosher slaughtering, when done properly, is humane. Animal scientist Temple Grandin, who has worked with PETA as a consultant on slaughterhouse issues, also affirms this. The key words are "done properly." Animal rights activists (including me) see this as referring not only to the moment of slaughter, but also to how the animals are treated before slaughter. And we should also point out that it is not only secular activists who have concerns about modern kapparot ceremonies. Numerous Orthodox rabbis have also condemned it for various reasons of Jewish law.

From rural villages to urban communities

In order to have respectful dialogue, both sides need a bit of history first. In the days when Jews lived in small towns (stetls), the kapparot chicken was a locally-raised bird slaughtered and eaten for the pre-Yom Kippur meal, same as any other chicken dinner. (Chicken, at that time, was a luxury saved for special occasions like the Sabbath and festivals.) A person would simply choose a bird from their own flock, or buy it from a neighbor, then walk across the village square, have it slaughtered, and take it home to be cleaned, plucked, and prepared for dinner. In fact, the Shulchan Arukh (16th-century Code of Jewish law) says not to specifically seek out a white chicken (in reference to Isaiah 1:18, where "though your sins be scarlet, they shall be white as snow") or pay more for it than usual, because this resembles the superstitions of the pagans (darchei ha-Emori). Instead, people should use whatever chickens they already have on hand, the same as for any other meal. This clearly indicates that raising and slaughtering chickens was an ordinary part of everyday life.

A mixed flock of chickens

The problem today is that most Hasidim are living in urban areas where live chickens are a rare sight, period. The majority of urban Jews (even non-Hasidim) probably never see a live chicken except for this ceremony once a year. These birds come, not from local free-run flocks as in the old days, but from commercial factory farms located many miles away. Nowadays the poor chickens are crammed into tiny cages so tightly they can hardly move, then piled onto open trucks, and driven to town, sometimes for days without any food or water. In some cases, shopkeepers selling these chickens have left them out in the sun and rain for many days, again without food or water.

Cruelty to animals is forbidden by Judaism

In Shivchei Ha-Ari, there is a story about Isaac Luria, the 16th-century Jewish mystic, telling a student that he had lost his place in the World to Come for failing to feed and water his chickens properly. The cries of those suffering chickens were canceling out all the prayers and Torah learning of that student. This is based on the general principle that one cannot commit a sin -- in this case, cruelty to animals -- in order to do a mitzvah. While Luria did approve of kapparot in his day, I find myself wondering if he would still give his approval under modern conditions. I suspect not. Trucking in factory farm chickens and mistreating them along the way nullifies any spiritual value in kapparot, and turns tradition into a travesty.

Humanely holding a chicken

The birds may also suffer while they are being handled for sale or during the ceremony, because many urban Jews are unfamiliar with the proper, humane way to hold a chicken while waiting in line. Which should be by holding the bird upright, holding the feet to prevent kicking, and supporting the weight of the body -- as I am demonstrating in the photo here. A chicken should not be held with the wings painfully pinned back, as is done at Rabbi Shea Hecht’s New York Chabad kapparot centers.

I suspect that Hecht's method has more to do with not getting one's clothes dirty than with the comfort of the chicken. Imagine somebody holding your arms behind your back and then suspending you by the elbows to get an idea what Hecht's method would feel like. The feet of a chicken are made to support its weight; the wings are not. The proper way to hold a chicken is to have the bird upright, holding the feet and tucking the body under the arm to control the wings if flapping is a problem.

It's waving, not "swinging" a chicken

On the other hand, I must point out to the animal rights people that the chicken is not "swung"or "slugged" over the head (as is often mistranslated on the Internet lately), giving the wrong impression that it is whirled around like a pitcher winding up for a fastball. Not so. The chicken is gently waved in a small circle over the head, in imitation of a "wave offering" as was done over the altar in biblical times. Older pictures and paintings of this ceremony, show the bird being held properly and waved in this way. Continuing to call it "chicken swinging" for sensationalist purposes only makes you look ignorant and foolish to the people who actually practice this ceremony. Plus, it might even mislead some Jews to think they are supposed to swing the chicken, which would be doing it wrong. Again, if you want to change something, get your facts straight first! (This article continues below the picture.)

This old engraving from the Middle Ages
clearly shows the chickens being held upright by the feet,
not dangled by their wings as some people do today.

Using money instead of chickens

Using money for the ceremony instead of a live chicken has long been an acceptable substitute, and this is what I do. So do many other Orthodox Jews. An amount of money equal to (or better than) the value of the chicken is waved over the head and then donated to charity.

However, Rabbi Shea Hecht, who is a major promoter of kapparot in the New York City area, doesn't feel he gets enough emotional kick out of using money. "The main part of the service," he says, "is handing the chicken to the slaughterer and watching the chicken being slaughtered. Because that is where you have an emotional moment, where you say, 'Oops, you know what? That could have been me.' "

Frankly, this statement disturbs me deeply, for the following reason: What kind of message are we sending to our children about Judaism? And yes, there are children present at kapparot ceremonies. Are we telling them, "If you don't behave, you could end up dead like that chicken"? Are we telling them that Judaism is a religion of fear, that they should live in terror of God slaughtering them like a helpless bird if they step out of line? Do we want them to harden their hearts against the suffering of animals? I seem to recall a child abuse case several years ago where a daycare facility made kids watch a rabbit be killed. How is this any different?

It is well known than abuse of animals leads to abuse of people. This was probably not the case with kapparot when raising animals for food was a part of village life, and seeing a chicken slaughtered was nothing out of the ordinary. But nowadays, it is being done completely out of context, as a strange, scary, bloody ceremony meant to frighten us into obedience. The majority of modern Hasidim not only do not raise chickens, they rarely keep pets or have any personal contact with animals at all. Witnessing the slaughter of a kapparot chicken may well be the only contact with animals that these children have all year. And they are not healthy, happy, beautiful birds like the ones in the pix on this blog. Very often, they are sickly, scraggly birds with ragged broken feathers, half-starved from being kept in "battery hen" cages.

What kind of message does that send to our children? Certainly it does not teach them that chickens are sentient, feeling beings with a social structure in their flocks, over 40 different calls, and the ability to pass learned behavior down to the next generation of chicks. Nor does it teach them about the love a mother hen has for her chicks -- an image we sometimes use of God, who shelters us like a mother bird.

The true means of repentance

The heart of kapparot for me is not slaughtering a bird for the shock value, but in repenting of my sins. The Yom Kippur liturgy says that "repentance, prayer and charity averts the evil decree," So giving charity can nullify any bad karma coming to me from my wrong deeds. Not only does killing a chicken not atone for my sins, it would seem that the cruelty involved in this ceremony nowadays compounds the sins I might already have, heaven forbid.

Some Jewish leaders have also felt that people would misunderstand the significance of the ritual. The belief that the ceremony of kapparot can transfer a person's sins to a bird, and that his or her sins would then be completely eradicated, is contrary to Jewish teachings. For, if the ritual could remove a person's sins, what would be the need for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement? What would be the need for soul-searching and repentance? Repentance does not come from abusing and killing a bird, but from a true change of heart.

This is why, if you still use chickens for this ceremony, I ask you to have a change of heart this year, too. Use money instead, and don't lose your place in the World to Come because of cruelty to animals. Show mercy to God's creatures, as God shows mercy to you. Treat the chickens kindly, and let them live.

Autumn Leaves and Rosh Hashanah Thoughts

2011-09-27T11:55:00.006-05:00

Tomorrow night begins Rosh Hashanah 5772, the Jewish New Year. As I wrote in a previous post, it comes in the fall in the Northern Hemisphere. This year it is rather late, due to the cycles of the Hebrew Lunar Calendar. Because there are no major Christian holidays at this time, many people have never heard of the Jewish High Holy Day cycle of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, followed by Sukkot, the Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles, as the KJV mistranslated.) However, these holidays are much, much more important on our calendar that Hanukkah, which everyone has heard of because it comes near Christmas.

Fall blackberry leaves
By Yonassan Gershom
Pine County, MN

In the natural world, the leaves are already turning fall colors here in Minnesota. It might seem odd to begin a new year in the fall, when everything is going dormant. Why not start in the spring, when new things are being born? However, there is a spiritual reason for this.

The Jewish New Year, unlike the secular New Year, is not a time of parties and revelry. It's a time of repentance and serious introspection, the Day of Judgement when God opens the Book of Life and looks at the karma of the world. So it is appropriate that this holy day should come when the natural growth cycle is ending and old leaves are falling off, when we are looking over our past deeds, rather than focusing on the future. This is a time to shed old behaviors, to bare our souls before God the way the trees are baring their branches. A time to repent of our old mistakes and promise not to do them again.

Autumn Oak Leaves
By Yonassan Gershom
Pine County, MN

Another symbolism connected with Rosh Hashanah is wearing white clothing, because of the verse, "Though your sins be scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." (Isaiah 1:18) So once again, the brilliant red leaves falling off the trees are a reminder of the negative behaviors we seek to drop at this time of year. They are beautiful for the moment, as temptations often seem to be, but they do not last very long. At the same time, those falling leaves can, if composted properly, become fertilizer under the winter snow, for a better crop next year. In the same way, understanding our past deeds becomes food for thought -- mental fertilizer if you will -- for improving our lives in the future.

Rosh Hashanah always comes at the dark of the moon, then the season moves toward greater light. Much of Jewish symbolism focuses on moving from darkness into light. Our days begin at sundown, based on the story of Creation in Genesis ("It was evening and it was morning...") where the very creation of the universe went from darkness to light. So, as we move from Rosh Hashanah, the Judgement Day, toward Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the moon is getting brighter and brighter, until on Sukkot, the Harvest Festival, it is full. In the same way, we go from the somewhat depressing prospect of examining our past sins, toward making amends during the Ten Days of Repentance, until we receive forgiveness on Yom Kippur. After that, we move forward together, to celebrate in the sukkah during Sukkot, the Feast of Booths - which I shall tell you more aobut in a future post.

Meanwhile, wishing everyone Shanah Tovah -- may you have a blessed, prosperous, and peace-filled New Year!

Flaming Fall Oak
by Yonassan Gershom
Pine County, MN

Viewing my autism as a gift, not a curse

2011-09-18T19:32:00.012-05:00

When I was a child back in the 1950s, neither ADHD nor Asperger's (both of which I have) were even on the radar. Because I had good verbal and reading skills, nobody ever saw me as 'disabled' or 'special' -- just a problem child who "does not work or play well with others." (How many times was THAT on my report card?)  I was, they often said, "too smart for my own good" -- probably because I was talking by nine months, reading by the time I went to kindergarten, and into college material by 5th grade. My family nicknames were "Chatterbox" and "Professor." A neighbor once told my mother not to let me come over there anymore, because I "made her feel stupid."

On the other hand, I was (and still am) socially inept, because I don't read body language or facial expressions very well, and I often fail to pick up nonverbal cues.   Throughout grade school I was the butt of ridicule and bullying by my peers ("Why do you always look at the ceiling?" they jeered), so that by the time I reached high school, I had pretty much withdrawn from all activities and almost flunked out. The only reason I got into college at all was because I had really high SAT scores.   Eventually I got tracked into being a rabbi because I am a good scholar but, alas, most American Jews don't really want scholars, they want "schmoozy" social directors. And that is something I am unable to do very well. So, I ended up as a freelance writer.

Given all of this, how could I possibly believe, as the title of this post suggests, that my autism is a gift?   As a child, I did not believe that. Well into adulthood, I thought I was cursed.   I spent years of loneliness trying to figure out why I could not fit in anywhere. But recently I have come to realize how being an Aspie gives me a unique and different perspective on the world, and that it has helped my writing immensely.   My ability to remember precise details, make fine distinctions among various categories of things, and see complex interconnections all give my writing a clear, fine precision.

"Big Oak 3"
by Yonassan Gershom
(An old growth oak on my land)

As many of my readers know, I literally "wrote the book" on the subject of Holocaust reincarnation cases (Beyond the Ashes, 1992), and I believe my autism made this possible. I was able to be emotionally detached enough to sift through the material without being overwhelmed by the horror and sadness of the stories. I also believe my odd personality prevented this from becoming a cult, heaven forbid. Since I have zero charisma as a New Age guru, it was not likely that any groupies would blindly idolize me. In fact, readers are often very disappointed to discover that the author of the book they love is a chattering Aspie nerd who does not fit their stereotype of "spiritual." And that is for the best.

Autism also influences my photography. You have probably noticed that there are no people in my photos. Frankly, I find pictures of people to be terminally boring. The last publication I would ever buy is People magazine, and I have never once watched a reality show like Survivor or the Bachelor. All babies look pretty much the same to me, and I mix up adult faces as well. For example, I know, that William Shatner is Captain Kirk on classical Star Trek, but if I see Shatner in another role, I might not immediately recognize him. I might not recognize you right away, either, if I see you out of your usual context (such as in the grocery instead of at work.) Which does not make for very good personal relationships.

"Calico Kitten"
by Yonassan Gershom

On the other hand, nature fascinates me, and my ability to hyperfocus on small details helps me see the world through a creative lens. I have hundreds of photos of the sky and clouds, as well as landscapes, trees, flowers. I also have a great rapport with animals, too, especially cats. I guess you could say I'm a Cat Whisperer. Even cats that people claim are impossible to hold or pet will come up to me, rubbing and purring. I would not ever want to give that up in order to be "cured" and become a Normie.

As Temple Grandin once said (and I am paraphrasing here), if the socialites had been running the world for the past few millennia, we would all be still just sitting around in caves, chatting and gossiping. When you look at great inventors and writers, they were often oddballs who did not fit in, but they saw the world through different enough eyes to come up with original ideas. I'm convinced that Thomas Edison was an Aspie -- how else could he hyperfocus on a single idea so intensely that he tried a thousand ways to make a light bulb? And Bill Gates, who was the butt of jokes for many years because of his personality, turned out to be an Aspie also. Perhaps he was not the most sociable person on the planet, but he did invent the idea of a loadable operating system, thereby making modern computing possible. Were it not for Aspies like Edison and Gates, you would not now be reading this blog. Remember that next time you want to "cure" people like me.

Wild Turkeys -- hard freeze tonight -- picking green tomatoes

2011-09-14T16:18:00.002-05:00

This has to be the most cruelty-free wild turkey feather ever -- it was dropped on our dirt road by a passing flock of turkeys about a week ago.   I frequently see turkeys around here, sometimes as many as 20 or more.   I wish I knew where they are roosting -- then I could find lots of feathers!

This morning our dogs were raising a ruckus from inside the house, and when I looked outside, there was a crow walking down the road. I thought it was odd to see a crow taking a stroll there, but thought maybe he was looking for gravel or grains. Then I saw the turkeys following behind. At least, that's how it looked. I grabbed my camera but of course, as soon as I went outside, the crow let out a warning call and the turkeys all ran into the bush.   I did get a good enough look to see that there were 5 adults and 2 older juveniles.

Was the crow actually serving as a lookout for the turkeys? It sure looked like it. And he did fly off in the same direction that they went.

On another topic, we are due for a hard frost tonight -- going down to 26F, which is probably going to break some records around here. This is really early for a killing frost. Way too cold for tomatoes to survive, even if they are covered. So I'm taking a break right now from picking and storing them all in the shed.   Some will ripen, and for the rest, I've got lots of recipes using green tomatoes -- fried, pickled, in sauces and relishes.   (BTW, naturally-ripening tomatoes do so from the inside out. Any tomato showing some whitish or reddish on the skin is already ripening inside and will eventually turn red.)

I've already pickled all my cukes, picked all my beans, onions, leeks and hot peppers, made sauerkraut and kimchi from the cabbages, jelly from the grapes.   All in all, it was a pretty good year for the garden. Tonight we are making apple butter and applesauce, using fruit from our trees. All of this certainly helps with the winter food budget.

Scarlet Sumac leaves against the sky
Pine County, Minnesota

Birds flocking, crickets chirping -- Rosh Hashanah is coming soon!

2011-09-04T13:35:00.004-05:00

I woke up very early this morning and went outside for a dawn walk, to be met with the squawking of a huge flock of birds waking up in a distant tree. (Probably starlings, they were too far away to positively ID.) I don't have a telephoto lens, just a digital point-and-shoot, but was able to snap this pic just as the flock took off with the sunrise. Even though it's not the best photo I ever took, I'm pretty proud of it -- migrating birds have gathered in that same tree for years, and this is the first time I was able to capture them taking flight.

Flocks of chattering birds mean autumn is coming. So does another sound: the chirping of crickets. I have always heard this as a sweet-sad sound: sweet, because I love the song of crickets, and sad, because it marks the beginning of the end of summer. Crickets are around earlier, of course, but they do not get their song until they shed their skins for the final time and the males get wings with the "instrument" to make the sound. It is the wings -- not the legs as is commonly thought -- that crickets rub together for this sound.

A third sound that I associate with fall is not made by nature, although it does require a natural object to produce it. This is the sound of the shofar or ram's horn, that Jews blow on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as well as during the Hebrew month of Elul that preceeds the holy day. The Jewish calendar is lunar, so the exact date of Rosh Hashanah varies form year to year, but it is usually in September. (This year it is quite late, beginning after sundown on the 28th.)

Typical ram's horn Shofar

Some Christian Bibles mistakenly translate shofar as "trumpet" and refer to Rosh Hashanah as "the Feast of Trumpets." The first time somebody asked me about the Feast of Trumpets, I had no idea what they were talking about, because no Jew would ever mistake a shofar for a trumpet. Trumpets were also blown in the ancient Jerusalem Temple, but a shofar is definitely not a trumpet! The shofar is an ancient, primitive horn that is literally made from an animal's horn, usually from a male sheep but it can also be from a goat or gazelle. (Never a cow, though, because of the sin of the Golden Calf.) The shofar produces an archetypal, visceral sound that shakes the very soul and is meant to wake us up spiritually. "Wake up, wake up!" the shofar says, "Return to the path of God, your Creator!"

I suppose that in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is now the beginning of spring, not fall, there are other nature sounds that Jews associate with Rosh Hashanah. But for me, it is the sound of the crickets and the calls of migrating birds that remind me the High Holy Days are coming.

Night of the Polyphemus Moths

2011-08-28T10:53:00.005-05:00

When I was growing up in the 1950s, we used to find lots of the Giant Silk Moths (Saturniidae), such as Cecropia, Luna, Polyphemus, Ailanthus, etc. -- even in the city, where their caterpillars fed on leaves of street trees, and the moths came fluttering to the windows. But in recent years their populations have declined, due to loss of habitat, insecticides and, some scientist believe, night flight confusion caused by light pollution. When we moved to the country in 1988, I was looking forward to maybe seeing them again, but even here, sightings are few and far between.

So you can imagine my delight when, in the spring of 2005, I found a Polyphemus cocoon under a birch tree in our yard. I put the cocoon in a bed of dead leaves (simulating its natural environment) in an empty fish tank with a screen top, and awaited the emergence of the moth.

Female Polyphemus Moth
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

On June 30, 2005 she emerged -- but the weather was so cold and windy (with 50 mph winds) that I could not release her. The storm continued thru Saturday night, so I attempted to release her on Sunday at dusk, which was around 10:00 pm here in the midsummer northland. I took the top off the cage, put it in the upstairs window with the screen open, and expected her to sail off into the woods the way butterflies do when I release them in the daytime. Only the moth would not fly away.

What I did not know is that a female Polyphemus does not fly untril after she mates. So she just sat there in the open cage, giving off her pheromone mating call -- and wow, did it work! Around midnight I went upstairs to see if she was gone, and the room was full of polyphemus moths! The female had flown, all right, leaving behind six suitors who were still sitting in her cage and on the walls, getting high, I suppose, on the lingering smell of female moth.

That was more of these big moths than I had seen in many years. I was surprised but also pleased, because it indicated the local population was bigger than I had thought. I later read that a male can detect a female from a mile away -- or even more. Whether or not there were other females in the same radius sending out their mating scent to other males, I do not know. But six males on my land in one night was certainly beautiful! I carefully picked up each moth and put them out the window, watching them fly off into the night. Two years later, in May 2005, I found an empty Polyphemus cocoon under the same tree. I like to think it was descended from the Night of the Polyphemus Moths.

In more recent years, I have found empty cocoons of Cecropias and an occasional Polyphemus or Luna, but have not seen many of the adult moths. Still, it's nice to know they are still out there.

To collect or not to collect -- is that really the question?

2011-08-24T13:08:00.006-05:00

A while back, I had a conversation with a vegan who thought it was wrong for children to catch fireflies in jars. Her reasoning was, that the flashes were mating signals and we would be interrupting their love lives. "How would you like to just fall in love and then somebody grabs you and puts you in a cage?" Interesting anthropomorphism, and a perfect example of how our society confuses sex with love. But I highly doubt that fireflies actually fall in love. A Black Widow spider certainly doesn't -- she EATS her mate. So does a praying mantis sometimes. Nature in the raw is often far from romantic.

Still, the question remains: Is it ethical to allow children to collect living things from nature? My vegan friends say no, we don't need zoos or bugs in jars, the kids can learn from watching nature videos. But TV just isn't "real" in the same way as seeing the actual live animal. Things happen fast on nature shows because they edit out the long hours of waiting for the "action." But actually stalking a frog takes focus and patience!

Thinking back to my own childhood, we regularly caught fireflies, watched them flash in the jar in our rooms after lights out, then released them in the morning. I can't say what effect this had on the fireflies, but I do know that my sister and I learned a lot from watching the various bugs, toads, snakes, and other things we caught and kept in captivity for a while.   From our "catch and release" activities, we discovered a lot about nature firsthand.

We learned that you can't just throw any old leaves in with the caterpillars, you need the right species of plant and a way to keep the leaves fresh (which we accomplished by covering the mouth of a small jar of water with foil, then poking holes for the plant stems. The food stayed fresh without caterpillars falling into the water and drowning.)   We learned what toads, snakes and turtles eat, and how they eat it, where to find it. And we also learned how to look up and identify the things we found. By 5th grade, I was reading college-level biology books.   And I must admit that I also collected insects in the usual way, mounting them on pins in boxes and attracting the attention of the high school biology teacher, who invited me to go on a museum entomology field trip.   Although I no longer collect, I still love entomology.

So I find myself wondering if kids today, who are often forbidden by well-meaning parents to do this kind of hands-on learning, are really discovering very much about the outdoors. Have we gotten so politically correct about nature that we are defeating the purpose by creating a barrier between children and nature? Lately there has been a public service ad running about "discover the forest," where two kids wander into the woods, turn over a log and look at some bugs, and then Shrek come along and eats one (a bug, that is, not a child!) A cute fantasy, but in real life, how many parents would let their kids turn over a log in the first place? (If you do, please teach them to put it back as it was when they are done, so you don't destroy the homes of things that live there.)

When I was a kid, there would have been no need for such an advertisement.   You could hardly keep me out of the small suburban woodlot we called our "forest." Contrast that with my 8-year-old grandson, who has been spending daycare time with us in the country this summer, and who, although he has 15 acres here to play and explore in, rarely goes outside on his own.   Too boring. When he first came, he could not tell a daisy from a sunflower, but has gradually learned some basics about the outdoors.   Today, we both looked up an unfamiliar purple flower and learned it was a species of vervain. When we are outside, we watch things happening in nature, such as bees pollenating squash flowers or wasps hunting caterpillars among the broccoli -- things he would never stop and watch on his own.   One day, I took him into the back woods and then told him to lead me home. He did -- by following the sound of our roosters crowing and our geese honking. "See?" I said, "You won't get lost if you pay attention to what is around you."

So is it ethical to catch and collect things? I think it depends on how you do it. Certainly it is wrong to pull wings off flies or leave animals starving or dying of boredom in cages.  But I see nothing wrong with letting kids keep a toad for a few days, then release it back into it own environment. When I find a snake or turtle, I bring it in the house for the kids to see.  Who knows? Maybe the snake benefits spirtually from having helped a child learn more about the world.   In the long run, maybe a little reptilian inconvenience now might well save that snake's home in the future.

Thoughts on death while burying a pet chicken

2011-08-09T13:54:00.005-05:00

One of my old hens died last night. She apparently went peacefully in her sleep, because I found her under the roost where she usually sat. As I was burying her out in the woods, I found myself thinking back to when I was a child, and how my mother told me it was useless to have pets, because, she said, "They only die anyway." I don't know where she got this attitude. Did she have a beloved cat or dog that died in her own childhood?  Or was she simply repeating something that she herself had heard as a child? She never told me. All I know is that although she eventually relented and let us have a dog, she never really bonded with him.

The Talmud tells us that Adam and Eve felt much same way after Cain killed Abel. Adam was so heartbroken over this, that he didn't have intercourse with Eve for 130 years. (see Talmud, Eruvin 18).   Why bring more children into the world if they are just going to die anyway? But God wanted Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply," so eventually they slept together again.   And so it continues to this day.

Unlike my mother, I have had many, many companion animals over the years.   And I have outlived all but the ones that are still with me. The fact of the matter is, the human lifespan is much longer than that of most animals.  Which means that the individual animals who were alive when I was born 63 years ago are already dead, with perhaps the exception of a few long-lived species like parrots and Galapogos tortoises. Why should this be? Perhaps it is God's way of helping us deal with the impermanence of life on earth. I have grieved at the death of each of my animals, but I have also learned, over the years, that death is not something to be feared. It's a natural part of the cycle of life.

Animals seem to know when death is coming. I once had a dog named Shunka (which is Lakota for "dog") who would walk with me in the woods.   As he got older he went deaf and was somewhat confused, perhaps from a minor stroke, but he knew the trail well. Every morning we would walk the same route, past the chicken coop, into the woods to the big oak tree, then back around to the house. One morning, we got as far as the coop when Shunka lay down and looked at me with his big brown eyes, as if to say, "I can't do this anymore." He then walked back to the house, and by morning he was dead.   He had lived a good long life -- 18 years -- and was ready to go. I cried when I found his body, but I also knew that he was old and tired, and that nothing lives forever. We had those years of happiness together, and I still cherish those memories. Sometimes, when I walk in those same woods, I feel as if Shunka's spirit is walking with me.  Maybe he is.

So my mother was wrong. While it is true that pets eventually die, it is not useless to have them. While they are with us, they give us much love and joy. And when they go, they help us accept the day when we, too, will cross that rainbow bridge and join the circle of life.

Dawn in Pine County, MN

Thousands of USA heat records broken -- new widget tracks them all

2011-08-07T10:40:00.012-05:00

The weather has finally cooled down here in Minnesota -- at least for now. Over 4000 heat records have been broken so far this summer in the USA, and the PBS Newshour site has developed this widget to track them all. Use the scroll arrows to see records set by day, month, and year. (You can get the widget code for your own site at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/08/is-this-record-breaking-record-breaking-heat.html, where you will also find an informative article. And yes, the widget will run year round, since records get broken in winter, too.)

As you can see, some of these records stood for more that 50 years. Clearly this is a disturbing pattern -- and one that does not bode well for the future. Global warming is here, whether the deniers like it or not. Perhaps that's the REAL meaning of the endtime prophecy that says people will be "eating and drinking as in the days of Noah." Maybe not gluttony as has been thought, but apathy in the face of warnings. No doubt they laughed Noah, too: "A flood? In the desert? You've got to be kidding!" And we all know what happened to that generation.

And it's not just a matter of things warming up.   Climate change means weather patterns are changing, too. Places that used to get rain are turning into deserts -- witness the drought and famine in Africa.   I remember hearing years ago that the monsoons in India were no longer coming reliably, but nobody heeded the warning.    Those same monsoons are what used to water the fields of Somalia. And the southwestern USA (where a lot of these records are being broken even as I write) is experiencing the worst drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

On the other hand, Minnesota has been drowning in much more rain than usual.   Rivers reached record highs, there have been numerous flash floods and many more severe storms than usual. Every time the Jet Stream takes an abnormal plunge south, it sucks up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and pulls it north.   Here in Pine County, MN, it rained just about every other day (sometimes several days in a row) in July. I ended up growing a lot of my garden veggies in containers, because it was just plain too wet to till the ground.

Down the road from me is a cornfield that never got planted. Lots of other fields lie fallow, too.   All of which is resulting in higher prices in the supermarket.   Parts of my lawn got so out of control I just let them go to seed and will mow it down for chicken bedding when -- if ever -- it dries up a bit. Meanwhile, I struggle to keep up the mowing around the house and trails to the outbuildings. Wild plants in general are huge -- I've got ragweed with inch-thick stems, eight-foot-high Jerusalem Artichokes (sunchokes), and enormous blackberry canes trying to take over my garden.

On the other hand, pollination has been iffy. There were very few wild berries in spite of all the rapid growth. And not one wild plum on my trees. Pollinating insects don't fly in the rain. Some don't even fly on cloudy days. And I have not seen one single honeybee -- not one! Whatever is causing the demise of the honeybees has apparently reached here. This spring, when I stood under my apple trees, I did not hear the happy buzz of honeybees, although some pollination did happen from other insects, because apples are forming. The honeybee niche seems to have been taken over by a species of small bumblebee, which I have seen on my cucumbers and squashes in large numbers. Something is pollinating my tomatoes also, although there are fewer fruits than in other years.   And as I wrote in a previous blog post, the Monarch butterfly population crashed here this year -- I have not found one single caterpillar.

All of this is very disturbing, to say the least. Nature will eventually adjust to climate change -- but will we?

Where are the Monarch butterflies this year?

2011-07-04T09:04:00.006-05:00

Over the years, I have purposely allowed Common Milkweed to naturalize on my land, because it is the food plant of the Monarch butterfly larva. The area where I live is on the migration route and a breeding grounds for the larvae. (In fact, the Monarch is the state butterfly of Minnesota. I consider my place to be a butterfly sanctuary.) The caterpillars will only eat plants in the Milkweed family -- which include not only the Common Milkweed, but also Butterfly Flower ( formerly known as Butterfly Weed, but renamed "flower" by retail greenhouses) and Aesclapia varieties. So it's a good idea to have some of these plants in your butterfly garden if you want to attract Monarchs.

In past years, I could go out into the field this time of year and, within minutes, find either larvae or eggs from Monarchs, as well as see the females fluttering from plant to plant laying more eggs. This year, zilch, zero, nada. I wanted to find some eggs and/or caterpillars to raise so my little grandson could watch them grow and pupate. A few years ago his older brother, at around age three, was amazed to see an adult Monarch emerge from the pupa. "Butterfly in there!" he exclaimed in delighted surprise. He also delighted in releasing the butterflies. Now his brother is about the same age and spending daycare time with us, so I wanted to do this project again. I went in search of larvae or eggs, but found not a single one. I must have looked under the leaves of a hundred plants or more, with no luck. So what happened?

It's hard to say. Did all those fires in the Southwest kill the Monarchs as they migrated from Mexico or the Gulf states? Was the long cold spell here in Minnesota this spring too much for those who did arrive? Are they being killed off by genetically-modified corn pollen from plants with BT (Bacillus thuringensis) built in to kill corn earworms -- and any other caterpillars it comes in contact with? Is climate change upsetting the migration cycle? Is it a combination of all these things? We do know that their wintering habitat in Mexico is shrinking, due to illegal logging of the areas where they normally go. In addition, there are fewer and fewer places for Monarchs to stop along the way.

Female Monarch
(Photo by Kenneth Dwain Harrelson
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Monarch butterflies travel north at about 50-100 miles per day. The butterflies don't make a single trip from Mexico to Minnesota. Instead, they breed along the way, then their offspring continue the journey. It take 3 or four generations for them to reach Minnesota from Mexico. In other words, they travel in stages, as spring moves northward and flowers become available for nectaring and Milkweed plants for breeding. You can read more about the migration and see a map at this site: http://www.fs.fed.us/monarchbutterfly/migration/index.shtml.

Only once in my life have I seen a migrating flock passing through Minnesota. It was many years ago, when I was still in college. A fellow student and I were driving along a back country road when the call of nature came, so we pulled over and I went into the woods to pee. Suddenly I was surrounded by fluttering Monarchs. There must have been three or four hundred of them. It was a magical moment I will never forget. I called to my buddy to come see, and he was amazed, too. Of course, I didn't have a camera with me (I never seem to at these moments) so the only record of this event is in my memory - and I don't even remember exactly where it was. But I'll never forget the wonder of it!

Even if I could remember the place, I'm not sure that patch of woods still exists. The land is becoming more and more developed along the migration route, with fewer "way stations" for the butterflies to breed and feed. So one way you can help the Monarchs is to plant milkweed for them. Each fall, I harvest the milkweed seeds on my land and sell them in my eBay store, The Happy Rooster, for butterfly gardeners. I have both the Common Milkweed and what I call Swamp Milkweed, the Aesclapia species with the narrower leaves that likes ditches and other damp areas. I do a pretty good business with this, since commercial seed companies don't offer such "weeds" in their catalogs. In this way, I am doing my little bit to help Monarchs survive. You can do the same: Be a good Monarch steward and plant some milkweed in your butterfly garden this fall -- help save our state butterfly.

I love animals, but I'm not a vegan - and here's why

2011-06-29T17:15:00.004-05:00

Recently I received a review copy of Vegan Cooking For Dummies, a new book in that series.   As I have discussed in previous blog posts, I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian, which means that I eat vegetables, eggs and dairy, but not meat, poultry, or fish.   Over the years, various people have tried to convince me to go all the way and become a vegan -- which means not eating or using any animal products, period.    But the more I read about veganism, the more I have become convinced that it is an upper middle class urban phenomenon that just won't work for low income people like me who live in places like northern Minnesota.

This book is a case in point. Written by a gourmet vegan chef, it assumes you can find all those exotic ingredients and afford to use them. But that just isn't so if you are on a tight budget. For example, a lot of these recipes call for pure maple syrup instead of sugar. But the only reason we have pure maple syrup in my house is because I make it myself from our own trees every spring (See my previous blog post on that at http://rooster613.blogspot.com/2011/03/warmd-days-cold-nights-maple-syrup-time.html.)   At $10 or more per pint in the store, we could never afford to cook with it as often as this cookbook calls for. As it is, most of the time we still use sugar.

As for a lot of the other ingredients in this book, you are simply not going to find them in rural America. It's hard enough being an ovo-lacto vegetarian out here, let alone vegan. I am lucky enough to live near a small health food store (The Organic Carrot in Sandstone, MN), but even then, I have to special order certain vegetarian "meat" products because, the shopkeeper says, they do not sell well enough for her to carry them on the shelf. Special orders must go by the case and that can really kill a limited budget. Not to mention the cost of the necessary freezer space.

But beyond the question of ingredients, there is a much bigger question: Do I really believe in vegan philosophy? Do I believe that it is wrong under all circumstances to never, ever use animals or their products for any reason?   The answer is no. Although I do not wear leather or fur, I have no problems with feathers that are naturally-shed, nor do I have a problem with riding horses or training service dogs.  (My old sheep dog, Grett, enjoyed patrolling the yard and guarding the geese and chickens. He got depressed when he didn't have some kind of work to do. The same is true of a lot of other working dog breeds, as well as many horses who enjoy being with their riders.)

Over the years, I've had many debates about this with hardcore vegans who believe that ahimsa (the Jain philosophy of total harmlessness) is the only way to go, or else you are a total hypocrite with no compassion for anything. Maybe for people in a tropical climate like India, where Jainism originated, this philosophy would work, although even there the Jains are a small minority. But not everyone lives in a warm climate where veggies and fruits are available year-round. I believe this is why God permitted Jews to eat meat. God knew that we would end up in harsh climates where a totally plant-based diet would have been impossible. Meat was not the ideal (the Garden of Eden was vegetarian) but neither was it forbidden, as long as one stayed withing the limits of permitted species. For this reason, I consider my own vegetarianism to be a personal chumra (extra strictness) that I voluntarily take upon myself, but not a comandment per se.

My land in winter -- no veggies growing here!

I have often looked out the window at my Minnesota landscape in mid-winter and asked myself: What would I be eating if there was no modern food storage or transportation? To answer that question, all I have to do is look at the traditional diet of the Native tribes who lived around here before my ancestors arrived. Yes, they grew corn and squash, harvested berries and wild rice. But meat and fish were also a big part of their diet, especially in late winter. As much as the animal rights people idealize the spiritual relationship between Indians and animals, I have never yet met a vegetarian Indian, let alone a vegan. The only vegetarianism reference I've seen is a T-shirt that reads,"Vegetarian: Old Indian word for Lousy Hunter."

The American Indian philosophy about animals is not that different from the Jewish/biblical one, namely,  that the Creator permits us to use animals, but we must not abuse them in the process. We must remember that animals are living beings, and be respectful of their feelings and well-being. If we find it necessary to kill them, it must be done humanly and with respect. (The word "sacrifice" comes from the same root as "sacred.")   If we do not treat them with respect, the Indians say, the souls of the animals will not reincarnate, and the people will starve. This is not unlike Deuteronomy 11:13-17:

If, then, you truly heed My (God's) commandments which I enjoin on you today, loving and serving the Lord your God, with all your heart and all your soul, I will give the seasonal rain to your land, the early rain and the late rain, that you may have your grain, wine and oil to gather in; and I will bring forth grass in your fields for your animals. Thus you may eat your fill. But be careful lest your heart be so lured away that you serve other gods and worship them.  For then the wrath of the Lord will flare up against you and he will close up the heavens, so that no rain will fall, and the soil will not yield its crops, and you will soon perish from the good land he is giving you.

Part of those commandments includes the proper treatment of animals, and the prohibition against cruelty to animals (tsaar baalei chaim.)  This respect issue was the main reason that I gave up eating meat, because, in the modern meat industry, there is no longer any respect for the animals. Kosher meat comes from the same cruel factory farms as non-kosher meat, the only difference is in the processing. So I choose not to eat it. I believe that, in this modern age, vegetarianism is the best diet for Jews (and others should they so choose.)

But as for "using" animals, I do not believe it is "animal slavery" to ride a horse, shear a sheep (who, in hot weather, really appreciates it!), or collect honey from bees.   I sometimes wonder if the purist vegans ever really have personal relationships with animals. If you do not keep dogs, cats, horses, birds or chickens in your home or your immediate environment, can you really connect with them? Or do they just become subjects of politcal theory?

Rucus in the woods -- and a chicken thief

2011-06-27T09:52:00.005-05:00

Last week something got Star, one of my roosters -- the trail of feathers led off into the woods for about 200 yards, indicating that the bird fought hard. In the process, he saved his flock, because all the other chickens got back inside the coop safely. I suspected the predator might have been a neighbor's dog - -but I was wrong.

Red Fox
(Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

The next day, there was a flock of crows making a HUGE ruckus back there in the woods, accompanied by a chorus of blue jays. I went to investigate, and got a glimpse of a red fox running up the hill. No doubt in my mind, he (or she) is the chicken thief. And maybe a goose thief, too -- a female goose named Sarah has been missing for 2 weeks, although I did not find any of her feathers scattered like I did those of the rooster. Usually when there is a predator attack, it's really obvious, with tracks and feathers all over the place.  I found none of this when she disappeared, so it is possible she is off somewhere sitting on a nest -- it has happened before. With all the tall grass around here, finding the nest would be next to impossible -- I'll just have to wait and see if she returns with goslings.

Anyway, my chickens and geese now have to stay inside the coop or be penned up until this fox moves on or somebody shoots it. I myself do not hunt or trap, I prefer to live in harmony with nature, but it's times like these that remind me why I'm not a vegan. In fact, I have come to believe that veganism is an upper-middle-class urban phenomenon that does not work out when you actually try to live off the land.

Don't get me wrong: I love animals, and as I have written before on this blog, I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian. But when things like this fox raid happen, I have to make decisions that are not always 100% pure ideologically. Do I let the chickens run free and take their chances? That seems irresponsible, now that I know the fox is hunting here. Do I keep the birds shut up safe inside the coop or in cages? That's not politically correct according to the animal rights people.  Do I shoot or trap the fox? Wait until somebody else does it? That's not vegan, either.   The fact is, there is no solution that does not, in some way, "oppress" either the chickens or the fox. So I have opted for confining the chickens. I figure they would rather be alive in the chicken pen than dead in a fox den.

Of course, most vegans would say I should not even have chickens in the first place. But as a vegetarian who eats eggs, I feel it is my responsibility to get them from birds who are well-treated. Certainly my chickens are happier than those on factory farms. And even if I did give up raising chickens, what about all the slugs, cabbage worms, beetle grubs, and other pests that eat my garden?   Do vegans realize that the fruits and vegetables they buy in the store -- even the organic ones -- are produced by killing the insects that feed on them? Believe me, I've seen cabbages that weren't sprayed with BT (an organic caterpillar killer) and they would never be deemed acceptable in the urban market. So, I must admit, I have no qualms about throwing the pests over the fence into the chicken yard. They are, after all, the natural food of chickens -- who, because of the fox, cannot forage the bugs for themselves right now.   That's not vegan for the bugs, but it's good protein for the chickens.

I try to live in harmony with animals as much as possible, but there are times when, as I said, I must make these decisions. I do not fault my urban friends who choose to be vegan. For them, it works. But when you actually live with raw nature on a daily basis, you soon realize that the forest is not as idyllic as we would like it to be. On the one hand, it was thrilling to be able to add "red fox" to my list of animals seen on my land. But on the other hand, the critter is a darned nuisance who took one of my favorite birds.  The bottom line is, this world is not the Garden of Eden.

Unplugging for God and nature

2011-06-10T10:00:00.011-05:00

The past two days were the Jewish festival of Shavuot, which is both the Feast of First Fruits and the commemoration of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. (For our first fruits, we ate our first leaf lettuce of the year from our garden. In addition to liturgy, we like to tie our holidays in with what is happening in nature.) On the major holy days, as on the Sabbath, religious Jews do not use the phone, computer, TV, CD player, radio, or other electronic communications devices. No texting, blogging, surfing, chatting, gaming, etc.  No, we don't turn off the electricity -- the lights and fans were still on -- but we do unplug from the endless chatter of the outside world.

My non-Jewish friends cannot conceive of doing this. "What if there is an emergency? How will people contact you?" Well, if it is really an emergency, then I will hear the sirens, see the tornado, or the police will come to my door. Anything less than that can wait.   And you know what? We survive being unplugged just fine. In fact, we more than survive -- we actually enjoy it. Turning off all the human chatter gives us the quiet space to enjoy the natural sounds in the woods around us.   Birds, frogs, toads, insects, the rustle of the wind in the leaves -- how can you hear these things if you are always plugged into your ipod?
In 1987, as part of a series of lessons on kabbalah (49 Gates of Light), I wrote the following about Moses and the Burning Bush:

What is genius? Perhaps it is the ability to see familiar things in a new and different way. For example, how long did it take Moses to realize that the burning bush was not being consumed? After all, this was something he had never encountered before. Most of us would probably have glanced at it and said, “Oh look, there's a bush on fire.” Then, shrugging our shoulders, we would have continued on our way. But Moses took a little more time. Turning aside to investigate, he became personally involved. Only then, the Midrash tells us, did God call out, “Moses, Moses.”

The question is, how many other potential prophets have missed their opportunity to receive, simply because they were distracted and did not recognize the vision? In this fast-paced world of ours, it’s so easy to say, “I don't have the time.” Yet in order to receive inspiration, we must be willing to make time for the Creator to speak to us.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov was fond of saying that a person who does not have an hour of solitude with God each day was not truly human. By this he meant that we were created to be channels of God's blessing. If we do not make time in our lives for this, we are not fulfilling our purpose. To be truly human is to bridge heaven and earth, to join together the spiritual and material worlds. To do this, we must listen to the "still, small voice" speaking to us from the Silence. (From 49 Gates of Light: A course in Kabbalah, 2010 revised edition. Also available as a download on Lulu.com on my Lulu Storefront page.)  )

This is even more true today. I recently read about a survey where college students were asked about their use of electronic devices, and a large percentage said they cannot go for more than ten minutes without checking their email or Twitter or whatever. And here I am, turning off the whole Internet for 26 hours every Sabbath, and two days for the Festival of Shavuot.   Not only that, but I do not carry a phone everywhere I go, because I don't want to talk to you or anyone else when I am out communing with God and nature.

In his now-classic book, The Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described it as "a palace in time." He was the first Jewish theologian to spell out for the Western world how traditional Jews live more in time than space.   While gentiles tend to travel to sacred places to feel holy, Jews have sacred times that we carry with us. The Sabbath is a portable sanctuary, a retreat that you can have anywhere.   This is not to disparage the importance of sacred space, but if you clutter that space up with emails and text messages, then where is the holiness? When we prepare for the Sabbath, we speak of creating the "Sabbath space." By this we mean more than just setting the table. We are creating an atmosphere where we can interact with God, nature, and each other in a personal, "be here now" kind of way.

The Sabbath is based on the Seventh Day of Creation, when God rested. It is not that God got tired. Rather, God ceased creating, thereby making it possible for us to do the same. On the Sabbath, we are not doing our busy-ness. We are free to just be.   Try it sometime: Turn off your phone, don't log on, don't play video games or watch TV, etc. for a whole day. Instead, watch and listen to the real world around you. Who knows? You might even discover your own equivalent of a burning bush.

Do animals have souls (part II)

2011-05-20T14:18:00.004-05:00

In a previous post  (go to part 1) I discussed the question of whether or not animals have souls according to Jewish theology, and then defined five different Hebrew words that are commonly translated "soul." In this essay, I will explore the question of why Western society became so callous towards animals, and attempt to show that this is not due to Judaism! There is a disturbing tendency in the animal rights and ecology movements to blame everything negative on "monotheism" or "The Patriarchy" or "the Jews" without really understanding what Judaism actually teaches. Very often, the popular conception of what is "Jewish" is about as accurate as the Hollywood Wild West portrayal of what is "Indian." So we need to take a second look at some basic Jewish teachings before we can understand how modern society got off track.

Consider the story of the Garden of Eden, a teaching story that is originally Jewish and comes from the Torah (which is the same text as the first five books of the Bible.) The story of Noah and the Ark also comes from the Torah. So right away, we can see that Judaism gave us two of the most basic images about caring for the environment -- images that are frequently cited by modern environmental movements, both religious and secular. These stories are also basic as to how Jews are supposed to relate to animals.

Adam and Eve lived in harmony with animals in the Garden, and were told to care for the Garden. So their role was to be stewardship, not conquest.   Adam also names the animals. Now, usually this is interpreted as naming the species, but there is another, deeper way to look at this. When you name an animal, you take responsibility for it, and you also develop a connection to it. There is an old adage among farmers to "never name something you are going to eat" -- and there are many stories of farm children who did name a cow or goat and were then unable to eat it. Naming an animal personalizes it and makes it into an individual. So clearly, Adam and Eve did not see animals as mere "things."

Noah was instructed to build the Ark to save all the animal species from an impending catastrophe. Whether you take the story literally or symbolically, the message is clear: God values every living species on earth, and expects us to take care of them. The Midrash (an ancient set of Jewish commentaries) tells us that Noah and his family provided each species with the specific food it needed, caring for the diurnal species during the day and the nocturnal species during the night. [The predators, it is said in the traditional Jewish commentaries, reverted to drinking milk on the Ark -- perhaps not very scientific, but a good way of explaining why they didn't eat the other animals. Even in modern times, there are cases where artificial nutrient mixes (such as KMR kitten formula) are used to feed and/or rehabilitate animals in the absence of their natural food.]

The Ark was, in a sense, a return to the harmony of Eden for the duration of the Flood.   After the Flood, humans were permitted to eat meat, but only after humanely slaughtering them. Judaism later went further, permitting only domesticated species as food. Eating exotic species was forbidden, as was hunting for sport. (In later years, the rabbis would also forbid their followers from attending the "games" at the Roman arena. To this day, Jews do not, as a rule, attend or participate in blood sports.)   There were no factory farms in those days. Herds and flocks grazed freely in the open, as it was meant to be.   Nor was meat eaten every day. It was something served on special occasions, such as the Sabbath, or when Abraham told Sarah to prepare food for the three visitors when he was camped under the trees at Mamre.

Both of these stories, Eden and the Ark, treat animals as living, feeling beings. So do many lines in the Psalms and other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, as I discussed in Part I of this series. That being the case, why has Western society -- which claims to be based on the Bible -- become so callous about the treatment of animals on factory farms in recent times?

The answer, I believe, lies in the rise of secularism, and most particularly with a 17th-century French philosopher named Rene Descartes (pronounced day-CART.) Known as "the father of modern philosophy," Descartes is best known for his famous saying: "I think, therefore I am." But what is not as well-known is this: He believed that only humans have the ability to think and feel. To Descartes, animals not only did not have souls, they were incapable of feeling emotions or pain. Animals were mere things, unthinking automatons with no consciousness whatsoever. The cries of an animal in pain, to Descartes, were nothing more that the squeaking of a poorly-maintained machine. To prove his point, he once nailed his own dog to the door and ignored its cries of anguish.

Descartea was not Jewish, and his ideas about animals are not in line with Jewish teachings. Nor are they in line with Christianity: the Roman Catholic Church condemned his books and forbade reading them. Nor did they have much influence of Jews -- at first. When Descartes was teaching, Jews in Europe were ghettoized and not accepted at the universities where he lectured. But ideas will spread across all barriers, so that, by the time you get to the late 1700s, Cartesianism was starting to filter into the Jewish community along with the secular "Enlightenment" movement.

This explains why Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (d. 1810), the Breslover Hasidic Rebbe, told his followers not to study philosophy. I had always been puzzled over this, this, because Maimonides was a philosopher, Nachmanides was a philosopher, so were Ibn Ezra and Luzatto and a lot of other classical commentators -- and we study them, right? But after reading about Descartes, I realized that what Rebbe Nachman was talking about was secular philosophy. He must have realized that this type of thinking would lead us away from respecting God and the creation. As indeed it has.

Cartesianism opened the way to factory farms and other abuses of animals we see today. Jews, in turn, are now mostly urban people, who are cut off from the land, farming, and the process by which their food is now produced.   Most are unaware that the only difference between kosher meat and non-kosher meat is the method of slaughter. The animals themselves come from the same industrialized factory farm and feedlot system as non-kosher meat. The days of our ancestors raising their own chickens and taking them to the shochet (kosher slaughterer) are long gone.

It is for this reason that I believe that vegetarianism is the highest form of kosher diet today. I do not fault my ancestors for eating meat. There were times in Jewish history, when we lived in harsh desert or northern climates, where vegetarianism would have been next to impossible.  God knew this would happen, and so did not outrightly forbid eating meat. But nowadays it is easier to be a vegetarian, and with modern nutritional science, it is possible to do it with a balanced diet and and remain healthy. Many would now argue that vegetarianism is more healthy, given all the diseases we now know are associated with meat consumption. But the bottom line, for me, is this: Animals do have feelings, and should not be raised as if they were nothing but food-producing machines.   That is not the Jewish way.

(My next essay in this series will explore the kabbalistic concept of "raising holy sparks," how this relates to animals and meat-eating, and how it relates to the souls of animals.)

Ground Zero "Survivor Tree" is a Tree of Life

2011-05-06T08:54:00.007-05:00

This week was the first time I had heard of the Ground Zero "Survivor Tree," when President Obama laid a wreath there. A quick Google search revealed several past articles about this tree, which I apparently missed before. But now that the tree, (which is a callary pear originally planted at the World Trade Center in the 1970s) has received national publicity, everyone is aware of it.

And I think it is a wonderful symbol. Unlike the "cross" that was really just an iron support beam that landed upright after the explosions (and which got so much publicity as a "miracle" right after 9/11), the pear tree is a truly universal symbol that can be embraced by people of every faith or lack thereof. Like a phoenix from the ashes (if I may mix my species metaphors here) this tree symbolizes life and hope. For me, as a Jew, there is a double meaning, because the Torah is also called a "Tree of Life" -- and it is the Torah which gave our country its basic moral compass through the Ten Commandments, which include "Thou shalt not murder." For other faiths and philosophies, too, the symbolism of a Tree of Life affirms positive values.

Survivor Tree in 2002
(courtesy of NY Parks Dept)

Here's what the Survivor Tree looked like just a few months after 9/11 -- nothing much was left but the trunk and some stubs. "It looked like a wounded soldier," said horticulturalist Richie Cabo of the New York Parks Department. It was only 8 feet tall and barely alive when it was moved to their Arthur Ross Nursery in Van Cortlandt Park for rehabilitation.

Pear trees have amazing regenerative abilities, and it was not long before the tree began to sprout new growth. Cabo, who was just starting his career at the Parks Department at the time, spent nine years lovingly nursing the tree back to health. The tree is now 35 feet tall and has been transplanted to the Ground Zero memorial site, where Obama laid the wreath on May 5, 2011, almost a decade after the tree was damaged.

Some people have criticized "the press" for dubbing this a "survivor tree," claiming that the word "survivor" indicates defeat. I strongly disagree. First of all, it is not the first tree to be called a "survivor tree"; there is also one at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing. And secondly, a survivor is someone who overcomes tragedy against all odds -- and that is exactly what this tree did. When you look at that charred stump as it was right after the attack, it seems impossible that it could ever regenerate into a healthy tree. But it did. In the same way, we were deeply wounded at 9/11 but we were never defeated.

"The survivor tree is a testament [to] our ability to endure, the symbol of our unshakable belief in a brighter future," said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who kicked off the 9/11 Memorial planting ceremony in December 2010.

Six other 9/11 survivor trees – three callary pears and three leaf lindens – are permanently planted near City Hall and at the Manhattan entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Survivor Tree recovered, September 2010
(Photo courtesy of forestsociety.org)

Pileated Woodpecker action on dead trees -- wow!

2011-04-22T10:08:00.001-05:00

Pileated Woodpecker
(Photo by Noel Lee, courtesy
of Wikimedia Commons)

Now that the snow has melted, I can finally get back into our woods to see what is going on there (I keep telling myself to get snowshoes so I could hike there in deep winter. Oh well, maybe next year...) The Pileated Woodpeckers sure have been busy chopping away at dead trees! I haven't found a nest yet, my guess is they are either looking for insects, or trying out different trees to see if they are suitable for a nest.

This illustrates the importance of leaving large dead trees for these big woodpeckers to use. The back five acres of our land are pretty much left as-is, except that I collect firewood there for campfires and maple syrup, and I maintain a trail (which will need some serious work this year. Lots of dead trees and branches came down in the heavy winds we had a while back. And the heavy snow totally flattened the wild raspberries across the trail in places -- that should make picking the fruit interesting this year! On the other hand, it will be easier for the grouse to eat the berries so close to the ground.)

Anyway, back to woodpecker holes. (To see enlarged versions of any of these pix, just click on the picture. I use thumbnails on my blog so it will load faster.)

TREE #1

This tree (on the right) was the first I spotted, and absolutely amazing! Just look at the huge holes the birds have chopped out. There was also one at the top that was a literal trench about 5 feet long! Unfortunately, it did not photograph well, because the sun was behind that side of the tree at the time. But you can guess from these pix that it was HUGE! The top of the tree had also broken and fallen off where the bird had chopped so far through, the tree broke.

This next picture is a closeup of two of the lower holes. Notice that the entire trunk was covered with a small species of shelf fungus. I imagine that had helped to soften up the wood. This is my favorite in this series of photos. There is just so much interesting texture and contrast between the delicate fungi and those big holes!

TREE #2

These next two shots are of another tree I found in the same general area, clearly in the territory of the same birds. There were more dead trees with evidence of woodpecker action, but these were the most dramatic. A big pile of wood chips like this was at the bottom of the other tree, too.

This is a closeup of the base of the same tree. I almost expected an elf to be sitting in there, the hole was so storybook perfect. More likely the base is now so weakened that this tree will soon fall, where it will become shelter for the insects, salamanders, and other creatures that like to live under fallen logs.

Spring is here, cleaning for Passover, birds are back!

2011-04-15T12:44:00.008-05:00

I haven't had much time to write on my blog lately -- between making maple syrup, cleaning out the chicken coop, and cleaning the house for Passover, I haven't been online much in the past couple weeks. So this is just a quick note to let all my readers know I'm fine, and very much enjoying the return of the birds. The bird migration north is in full swing. The phoebes that nest on my land (one in the open garage and the other under the eaves of the chicken coop) are back. Of course, I have no way to know if they are the exact same birds that nested here last year, but we have had phoebe nests in the same areas for about 5 years now, so it is either them or their descendants.

This is a photo I took of the young birds in a phoebe nest in 2009 -- they fledged the next day. I liked it so much, I made it up as a souvenir postcard (you can still buy a copy in my ebay store, The Happy Rooster):

The Canada geese are back in droves, and I've seen Sandhill Cranes flying over several times now. Monday on the way to Hinckley, my wife and I saw two pair of Snow Geese standing in two different flooded fields -- an unusual sight, we usually see them flying over on their way to Canada but rarely on the ground. But Sunday night it was very windy so I supsect we had a bird drop (which is different from a bird dropping) because overnight there were suddenly lots of migrating birds in the trees and bushes. On the same day, the pond across the street was full of ducks, and I also heard them back in our seasonal woodland wetlands area, where it floods every spring. All waiting out the high winds, I guess.

Plus there are robins, flocks of Juncos, and song sparrows, pheasants calling, grouse drumming. I also saw a red-tailed hawk and a pair of Bald Eagles. And the pair of starlings that nests in a hole in the eaves every year is back. I keep meaning to get up there and plug it up, but I'm a bit old for climbing second-story ladders now. Starlings are not really a big problem here, this is the only pair we ever see and I enjoy enjoy seeing them sitting on the power lines and flying back and forth to feed their young. When I do get the eaves fixed, I plan to put a birdhouse for them up there. Otherwise, they might go compete with the Bluebirds or Tree Swallows.

Starlings, you have probably heard, were purposely released in the USA by a guy who wanted to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays. There's a chapter about this in a new book, "How Shakespeare Changed Everything," due out on May 10. (I got an advance review copy. Since I'm not a Shakespeare expert, I found it very informative -- basically a good book with odd facts to get teenagers or newbies interested in the classics.) The starling release has over-succeeded. In many place they are serious pests. But up here in the North Woods, they are just another species returning for spring.

Crocuses are blooming, the daffodils are coming up, and the frogs are out, too -- across the road is a marsh where the Spring Peepers are almost deafening, along with a species I call "clacking frogs" because that's the sound they make, likeone of those kids' clacker toys. I've never actually seen them do it, so I'm not sure what the species is. No singing toads yet, but I expect to hear them soon. Last year a big toad took up residence in the flower garden outside the front window and we heard him all summer.

Yesterday I dug up my horseradish for the "bitter herbs" at our Seder (on Monday and Tuesday nights) and today I get to vacuum the rugs. Sunday we kosher the kitchen to get rid of all leavening, bring down the Passover dishes from the attic, etc. (We order matzoh online -- it has already arrived.) Monday we go buy fresh veggies and begin cooking for the first Seder Monday night. So I might not get around to blogging again for a while -- until then, wishing you all a Happy Spring (or fall if you are reading this Down Under.)

On bird migration, modern science, and Jewish theology

2011-03-30T11:02:00.005-05:00

The Canada geese are coming back now -- I've seen several flocks heading north. With all the flooding going on here in Minnesota, there's plenty of open water for them to swim in. (Luckily we are not in a flood zone, but my domestic geese are having a good time wading in puddles and honking at their migrating brothers.)

Speaking of migration, did you know that until the late 1700s, it was commonly thought that birds hibernated in the mud in rivers and lakes during the winter? The British doctor Edward Jenner, who is best known for discovering the smallpox vaccine, was also interested in hibernation, and conducted extensive studies on hedgehogs and other hibernating mammals. He was among the first to remark that birds were not dirty or muddy when they reappeared in the spring. Nor were they thin and hungry like other hibernating animals when they emerge in spring. So where did the birds go?

Jenner dissected spring-returning birds and examined the contents of their stomachs, to see what, if anything they had been eating. He found seeds of plants not native to Britain. He also noted that these species of birds had been seen flying far out across the oceans. So he hypothesized that the birds were leaving Britain to go someplace else in winter. Unfortunately, Jenner died before he was able to write up his studies on bird migration, but his family published them after his death. Modern research has confirmed his theory: birds do not hibernate in mud, they migrate.

That such a basic scientific fact was not discovered until the late 18th century raises the question of various "scientific" statements made by the early Jewish sages. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, it was taken for granted among Jews that when it came to science and medicine, the modern discoveries take precedence over any folklore that might be in the Talmud or other earlier writings.   We went by the opinion of Maimonides, one of the greatest Jewish philosophers and a medical doctor, wrote in the 12th century: "Do not ask of me to reconcile everything that they (the Sages of old) stated from science with the actual reality, for the science of those days was deficient, and they did not speak out of traditions from the prophets regarding these matters... " (Guide for the Perplexed, 3:14) In other words, when it comes to science, the Sages were not divinely-inspired prophets nor were they infallible.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a major 19th-century German Jewish theologian, later wrote: "...We find that the Sages themselves considered the wisdom of the gentile scholars equal to their own in the natural sciences. To determine who was right in areas where the gentile sages disagreed with their own knowledge, they did not rely on their tradition but on reason. Moreover they even respected the opinion of the gentile scholars, admitting when the opinion of the latter seemed more correct than their own." (From a letter written in 1876 to Rabbi Pinchas M.E. Wechsler.)

That was the attitude I grew up with: science was science, no matter who discovered it. But more recently, with the rise of the Haredi (post-WWII fundamentalist Orthodox Jewish) movement, there are those among my Jewish brethren who expect us to take absolutely everything the Talmudic rabbis said as literal scientific fact, trumping anything the secular scientists might since have discovered. I find this impossible to do without having to turn my brain off -- an option I doubt God would want. After all, God gave us brains to learn with.  The rabbis of the Talmudic era were very wise, but when it came to science, they were limited to what was commonly known around them.

Thus, you find things like the curious statement that "lice come from sweat" and it is therefore permissible to kill them on the Sabbath (Shabbat 107b) when we normally do not kill living things. At the time of this ruling, "spontaneous generation" of insects and other creatures was taken for granted by the whole known world, not just the rabbis. Aristotle wrote that certain lower animals “are not produced from animals at all, but arise spontaneously: some are produced out of the dew which falls on foliage... others are produced in putrefying mud and dung, others in wood, green or dry, others in residues, whether voided residues or residues still within the living animal.”   Eels and fishes were commonly believed to come from the foam of the sea and flies from rotten meat.

But today we know that lice come from the eggs of other lice, and are indeed living things. The same goes for the Talmudic mice that are "half dirt and half flesh" (Chullin 9:10, Sanhedrin 91a), another biological impossibility.   For that matter, DNA wasn't even discovered until 1962 -- when I was still in high school.   Yet look how much -- in my own lifetime! -- that discovery has fundamentally changed our entire perspective on the natural world! All the "ancient wisdom" about passing down characteristics through "blood" is now rendered obsolete.

These may seem like trivial issues to some people, but for many Orthodox Jews, they are serious challenges to our faith. If the Sages were wrong about lice and mice, are they also wrong about other things, too?   Can we trust anything the Talmud says in the face of these absurdities?

If you see Judaism (or any other religion) as a house of cards that will tumble with even the slightest question or error, then science can seem very threatening. But if you can make a distinction between science studying the "how" of the natural world and theology dealing with the "why" of human existence, there is no conflict between science and religion.   Science tells us how things work, but it is neutral on questions about God, the soul, and religious laws. Scientifically, there is no reason I should not eat pork or mix meat with milk, because these laws are not about science per se.   I don 't keep kosher because is is more healthy or more natural,  but because it is the will of God for me as a Jew.   And if I had lice (which I thankfully do not!) it would still be permissible to kill them on the Sabbath, even though we now know they do not spontaneously generate from sweat. This is also why, when I see birds migrating, it is no challenge to my faith.

(For an in-depth discussion of spontaneous generation and Jewish law, see The Sweat-Louse, the Dirt-Mouse and the Dong Chong.)

Geese migrating over my land in Minnesota, 2011

March storm is roaring like a lion!

2011-03-23T13:08:00.003-05:00

A few days ago, it was in the mid-50s with my chickens out foraging in patches of bare ground. There were even bits of green grass poking up, I heard robins calling and saw my first pair of Canada geese returning for the season. Today, I slogged through knee-deep snow drifts in howling 50 mph winds to get to the coop. As the saying goes, "If you don't like the weather in Minnesota, just wait 10 minutes." All the poultry are shut inside -- literally "cooped up" -- happily dry and safe. I even got 8 eggs. My two ganders were fighting -- not too seriously, but another sign that spring is coming.

Here's a picture of Buffy, one of our barn cats, coming out from under the evergreen in our front yard (He's a stray who wandered in, and except for really, really cold weather, he prefers to be outside. He comes to the porch to eat and sleeps in the old garage.)

One good thing about the storm is that it will prolong the maple syrup season, since there won't be any fire danger for a while (I was getting a bit worried at how fast it was melting off last week, revealing all that long dead grass on the hillside.) I'm not up to going out to do any photography in this wind -- but here is one of my favorite photos from a previous storm in 2007. I call it, appropriately, "Dawn after the Storm":

And here is essentially the same view in early spring that same year -- a sight I'm definitely looking forward to SOON! As for why we are getting so much snow lately, see my previous blog post, "If the earth is warming up, why are we getting so much snow?"

Warm days, cold nights -- maple syrup time!

2011-03-16T12:55:00.014-05:00

It has been two years since I've been able to make maple syrup -- 2009 we were in a drought and I did not want to stress my trees. Spring 2010 there was no snow left  (believe it or not) and a burning ban was in effect.   But this year should be perfect! We had a wet summer in 2010, plenty of snow cover, and now the sap is running!

This is always one of the most pleasant times for me to be outside. The weather is mild, and the birds are starting to claim their territories. On Monday, when I was putting the spiles (taps) in my trees, I heard chickadees and blue jays calling, woodpeckers drumming, and a flock of crows having an argument out in the woods.    No grouse drumming or turkeys gobbling yet, but it won't be long.

Commercial syrup producers would probably die laughing at my primitive backyard setup.   But it gives us enough syrup for our own use, and saves a lot of money.  When I checked in the grocery store recently, pure maple syrup was $7.99 for an 8-ounce bottle -- and that was for a local product. (The Audubon Center of the North Woods, only a couple miles from my home, makes it every year as a fundraiser.) I imagine if commercial shipping were also involved, the price would be even higher. We usually get a gallon or more of syrup a year, which I can in pint Mason jars. Add that up, and it's a pretty valuable crop!

These are some pictures I took in 2008, which show the process. For "buckets" I use gallon milk jugs, which are free. For spiles I have the old-fashioned metal kind I got years ago.   I cut the top off the jug to make it more like a bucket, then add a wire loop for a handle. This works well, and at the end of the season I just remove the wire, wash the jug and recycle it. The spiles I save for next year.

By the way, you don 't have to use sugar maple trees. ALL maples have sugary sap, and many make great syrup. Mine are boxelders (also known as "split-leaf maple"), which many people consider "trash trees" but I see as a valuable resource. The syrup I get from these trees is excellent.   Plus, the leaves are the food plant for Cecropia moth caterpillars.

My boiling apparatus is simplicity itself: two rows of cinder blocks with some old refrigerator grates on top. Then I build a trench-style fire between the blocks. For pans, I use disposable aluminum baking pans. (The best kind have wire handles, although the ones in the pix don't -- I can't always find them here.) I suppose this isn't as ecological as using  heavier kitchen pans and washing them, but if you have ever tried to clean a pan that was used over an open fire, you will know why I prefer this for cleanup. (Yes, I know about soaping the bottoms of campfire pans, but again, it's a horrible mess to bring into the house. And don't worry about that dead grass you see near the fire -- it's actually wet straw I stomped into the mud to avoid slipping on the layer of melting mud that forms over the still-frozen soil. Believe me, it was way too soggy to be a fire hazard.)

As you can see, syrup in the early boiling stages doesn't look very golden. There is a sort of whitish stuff that precipitates out -- this has to be filtered out later or the syrup will be bitter. I use a piece of ordinary felt inside a kitchen strainer. Timing is very important: If you strain too soon, the white stuff slips though, but if you wait too long, the syrup is too thick to go through the felt. Some people use a hygrometer and measure the specific gravity, or a candy thermometer to measure the temperature. I just go "seat of the pants," having learned from years of doing this. If it's still too thin after straining, I just boil some more.

It takes a lot of sap to make syrup -- about 30 gallons for one gallon of product, so you have to keep adding sap all day. During this time, I do a lot of yard cleanup. The firewood comes from stuff I saved up last year, plus any dead wood that the wind might have brought down, etc. You need a continuous hot fire for this, so smaller stuff such as lower dead branches work great. In this next pic, you can see that the pan on the left (pan A) has a higher sugar content than the one on the right (pan B). That's because as the sap boils down, I ladle it from B to A, then fill pan B with more sap. I also pre-heat the cold sap in big tomato juice cans before adding it to pan A. This keeps thing boiling constantly.

To keep the syrup from boiling over as the sugar content rises, you need to add some sort of oil to break the tension on the surface. Native peoples used various animal fats, and the pioneers used to hang a strip of bacon over the pan and let is slowly drip in. Nowadays a lot of people use butter or margarine (which is why Mrs. Butterworth's syrup advertised itself as being made with real butter - an innovation in its day.) This is why, if you keep kosher, maple syrup is off-limits unless it has kosher certification. I use 100% vegetable oil so I can gift the syrup to both my kosher and vegan friends. So, if you buy syrup and are concerned about animal products in your food, then it is a good idea to ask what kind of oil or grease they are using. Especially at flea markets and roadside stands!

This pan is just about ready to take inside for finishing. At this point, I ladle it through a tea strainer to get as much ash out as possible (with a wood fire, that's inevitable) into a stainless steel deep kitchen pot (one with a heavy copper bottom, less likely to scorch). I then douse the fire and carry the syrup into the kitchen, where I finish boiling and straining it. I let it sit overnight so any leftover impurities settle to the bottom.

In the morning it's easy to pour off the clear syrup, leaving any sludge behind. (I add the sludge to the chicken mash -- they like a sweet treat, too!) I then sterilize my canning jars and can it the same as for jelly. Done right, it keeps for years -- but once you open a jar, refrigerate it or it will get moldy.

So there you have it -- the first crop of the year on my land. But enough blather -- time to go out and collect that sap!

Do animals have souls? (Part I)

2011-03-07T08:29:00.176-06:00

Do Jews believe that animals have souls? I get this question a lot lately. People want a quick yes-or-no answer, but the problem is, the Hebrew language has five different words that get translated as "soul" (nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah) and they mean different things in Jewish mysticism (kabbalah). So before I can answer the question, I need to define the five levels of the soul. Sorting this out is not always easy, because different commentators have interpreted these terms in different ways throughout the centuries, and they don't always agree. Here are the basic definitions as I understand them:

1. Nefesh (NEH-fesh) the physical life force of the body. All animals certainly have this, or they would not be alive. For that matter, so do plants have nefesh.   This is also the word used by King David in Psalm 25:20: "O guard my soul and rescue me." Some modern versions of the Bible translate this as "guard my life." In Jewish thought, to "guard your soul" means to take care of your health and safety. We are also commanded to take care of our animals in the same way, giving them proper food, water and shelter: "A good man takes care of his animals, but wicked men are cruel to theirs." (Proverbs 12:10)   So before we go any further, let's be very clear that whether or not animals have souls in the theological sense is irrelevant in terms of our responsibility to care for them. One cannot argue that animals are "things" and then go abuse them, heaven forbid. (In fact, even "things" have a netzotz -- a divine spark of holiness - within them, but that's a whole other blog.)

2. Ruach (ROO-akh) literally means "wind" or "spirit" and is the emotional level of the soul.   In Hebrew/Yiddish idiom, to do something "with ruach" means to do it with feeling -- such as singing a song or playing an instrument with "soul." Biologically, I would associate ruach with the limbic system, the "mammalian" part of the brain that controls emotions. Maimonides, an important 12th-century Jewish philosopher, clearly states in his Guide for the Perplexed that when it comes to the love between a mother animal and a mother human, there is no difference, because love comes from the emotional level. This is the reason the Torah forbids slaughtering a baby animal on the same day as its mother (Leviticus 22:28) because the mother might see this and feel emotional pain. By extension, Jewish law forbids slaughtering any animal in front of another. (Shulchan Arukh Yoreh Deah 34:14)

Maimonides also argues that the commandment to send away a mother bird before you take eggs or young from a nest (Deuteronomy 22:6-7) is meant to teach us compassion for the feelings of the mother bird. I have chickens and believe me, they do indeed get upset if they see you taking their eggs. So clearly, from a Jewish perspective, birds and mammals have ruach. Whether or not insects, fish, reptiles, etc. have this level is up for debate. Certainly they experience fear; otherwise, they would not run or swim away. But does a snake feel love?

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liady (the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, 18th century) wrote in the Tanya that humans actually have two souls: an "animal" soul that they are naturally born with (which seems to correspond to the nefesh-ruach levels described above) and a "divine soul" which is "a part of God above" and must be developed and consciously focused on spiritual things. These two souls have been compared to a rider and a horse; when they work together, all is well, but if the horse throws the rider, the lower body desires take over and a person acts only on animal instincts.   From Rabbi Schneur Zalman's perspective, only humans have the higher soul level, which brings us to:

3. Neshamah (neh-SHAH-mah) is the word most commonly used in colloquial speech for "soul" in the usual sense, that is, an immortal soul that survives death.   But it is also the word used in Psalm 150 for "let everything that has a soul praise God." Some translations render this as "everything that has breath," because neshamah is etymologically related to the word neshimah, meaning "breath." Now, if everything that has breath is to praise God, wouldn't that suggest that animals, too, have a neshamah? In Psalm 148, everything in the universe is praising God, even inanimate objects such as the sun, moon and stars. So "praising God" can't really be used as a criteria for whether or not something has an immortal soul. However, we should note that there are many anecdotal stories of people encountering "ghosts" or spirits of animals. So it does appear quite possible that something in an animal survives death.

In kabbalah, neshamah is associated with the higher levels of the mind and, interestingly, some Jewish philosophers felt that we are not automatically born with a neshamah, that we must develop it. This is supported by modern brain research. The more we use our brains, the more synapses we develop among the neurons, and the more intelligent we can become.   Conversely, a brain that is not stimulated will lose synapses and, in some cases, fail to learn even basic language and reasoning skills. "Use it or lose it" apparently applies in both biology and theology.

Jewish philosophy has long regarded knowledge as the only thing we take with us to the Next World, which may be why developing the intellectual neshamah is associated with immortality. But does this mean we are developing a "soul," or simply improving the physical brain? Hard to say. The fact is, we can't really prove there is an immortal human soul, anymore than we can prove -- or disprove -- the existence of an immortal soul in animals. What we can say is that humans do possess a level of intelligence that is greater than even the higher primates, and that we humans can develop a conscious sense of right and wrong that animals lack. (A lion may kill prey, but he does not murder.)   Most Jewish thinkers also maintain that humans are the only beings with free will, who can consciously choose to know their Creator.

Neshamah is generally connected not only with intellectual pursuits, but also with moral responsibility. In Yiddish, to have a "Jewish soul" (yiddische neshamah) means to have a sense of proper humanity and compassion.   In other words, to be a mensch -- an upright person of true integrity and honor -- the highest compliment one can give in the Yiddish language.

4. Chayah (KHAI-yah) literally means "living." It is first used in the Torah in Genesis 2:7 , where God breathed the breath of life into Adam and then Adam "became a living soul (nefesh chayah)." Note that this term combines nefesh, the life force of the body, with chayah, "living." But isn't a body with nefesh already living?   In the biological sense, yes. So chayah must add another dimension to human existence.

In kabbalah, chayah refers to a higher spiritual level, something like a collective consciousness, where all members of humanity are connected together. The word adam literally means "human being" -- homo sapiens -- in Hebrew, and only later in the story does it become the name of a specific man.   Adam Kadmon -- the Primal Adam -- is often pictured as a hermaphrodite cosmic being who contains all the souls of all the humans who ever were or will be born. He/she is the chayah level of the human species.

Do other species also have a chayah level? Plato thought that they do. The Torah would seem to say no. Everything else in the Eden story is created by God simply speaking it into existence: "Let there be light -- and there was light." Only in the case of humans does God "breath the breath of life" into them directly. Again I stress: This does not mean that other creatures don't have life. And we have already demonstrated that many creatures have feelings. But Judaism does take nefesh chayah to mean that there is something different about humans as compared to the rest of creation.    Genesis is the only place in the Torah where this term is used, and only in connection with humans.   Rabbi Natan Slifkin, known as the "zoo rabbi" and author of Man and Beast, clearly states that humans are the only beings that have a "divine soul" in this sense.   But on the other hand, he also devotes many pages to our responsibility toward animals as stewards of the earth. So do numerous other Jewish commentators.

4. Yechidah (yeh-KHEE-dah) means "unity" and comes from the same Hebrew root as echad, "one" as in "God is One." Yechidah does not appear in the Bible as such, but is a kabbalistic term developed in later Jewish mysticism. Yechidah is the level of the soul where we can "touch God."

Judaism does not teach that we can become God or merge entirely with God as some mystical systems do (although some Hasidic thinkers came pretty close to that.)   We Jews are not pantheists.   But there is a level where we can experience oneness with God's Creation and, through this experience, get a "taste" of the oneness of God. Humans all over the world have reported this type of experience.

Do animals also experience oneness with God? It is impossible to say, because they cannot tell us. Some Jewish thinkers (as well as others) maintain that animals -- and, in fact, all created beings except humans -- automatically do the will of God because they were created that way, with no free will to do otherwise.   In that sense, they may be more in tune with God than we are. At the same time, they do not seem to have the same level of creativity that comes with our free will.

In conclusion: There is no clear yes-or-no answer to this question. Whether or not you believe animals have souls depends on how you define "soul," and Judaism does not speak with one voice on the subject.  One thing Judaism does clearly say, however, is that animals are living beings with feelings, that they were created by God, and that we are commanded to care for them properly.   (That's three things, actually, but you know what I mean.)

This being the case, why is it that Western civilization -- much of which is based on the Bible -- has become so callous toward animals and the environment? The fault lies not with Judaism, but with a non-Jewish philosopher named Rene Descartes -- "the father of modern philosophy" -- who lived in the 1600s and believed that animals are nothing but automatons, unfeeling machines that cannot feel pain. This is not in accord with Jewish thought but, unfortunately, a lot of Jews, as well as many Christians and others, have adopted Cartesian attitudes over the centuries -- a topic we explore in Part 2 of this series.

On God, ecological stewardship, and imitating an ostrich

2011-02-27T20:42:00.005-06:00

News item: Minnesota State Representative Mike Beard (R-Shakopee) says he wants more coal-burning power plants in Minnesota because God will fix global warming, so we don't need to worry about it. (read more on him). He believes God will prevent the planet from running out of fossil fuels while also eliminating the harms associated with climate change, and that it is "arrogant" of us to think we can do anything to harm God's Creation or destroy the Earth unless God wills it.

This guy happens to be a Christian, but I have run into similar attitudes among religious Jews recently, most notably an email that claimed Israel was never under water during the Great Flood (based on an ancient story about Noah's dove getting the olive branch from there) so Israelis needn't worry if the ocean rises from polar ice melting. The Holy Land, this email claimed, will always stay high and dry. So not to worry about climate change.

These are not, of course, the opinions of all religious people. Not everyone is sticking their head in the sand (which ostriches really don't do, they are actually lowering their heads to guard their eggs -- but the metaphor has entered the English language, so you all know what I mean.) A lot of denominations have come out with more responsible directives concerning our stewardship of the Earth. (See for example Interfaith Power and Light, an org working to educate congregations about environmental issues.)

As for the possibility of Humans harming the Earth, there is an ancient rabbinical teaching (at least 2000 years old) which disagrees with Representative Beard. Jewish tradition says:

"When God created the first human beings, God led them around the Garden of Eden and said: “Look at my works! See how beautiful they are—how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.” (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 7:13)

So, on the one hand, Judaism teaches that God created the Earth and everything in it for us. But on the other hand, we are charged with taking care of it and not destroying it. The fact that God tells us not to destroy it means that we do have that ability. It comes along with our free will. God has set the stage, but the choice is ours whether to act responsibly or not. And to face the consequences of our actions.

The Jewish interpretation of having "dominion" over the world is one of stewardship, not exploitation. And our tradition goes even further. Another midrash says:

"Last and first You created me" (Psalms 139:5) ... If man is worthy, he is told: You are first among the works of creation. If he is not worthy, he is told: The flea preceded you, the earthworm preceded you." (Midrash Rabbah, Vayikra 14:1)

From this we learn that our "dominion" is not absolute. It is dependent on our behavior. We were created last, and that can either mean we are the "crown of creation," or it can mean that we came after the worms and fleas. ( I remember being told back in the 1960s that if we ever had a nuclear war, the cockroaches would be the most likely to survive the radiation.) Genesis 2:15 says:

The Lord (YHVH) God put the human being (literal meaning of "Adam") in the Garden of Eden, to work it and guard it."

Yes, we are allowed to use the resources of the Earth ("to work it") but we must also guard and care for it. Even in the innocence of Eden, we are charged to protect the environment. But I suppose that even in the time of Noah there were people like Beard who said, "What? A flood in the desert? Impossible!" And we all know what happened to that generation...

If the Earth is warming up, why are we getting so much snow?

2011-02-22T18:59:00.011-06:00

Climate change deniers have been having a field day with all the snow this winter. If global warming is real, they say, then why are we getting buried in so much snow? Sunday, February 20, 2011 was the largest snowfall in a single 24-hour period ever recorded in Minneapolis, and in Minnesota overall, this has been the second snowiest February on record -- and the month isn't over yet.   So, the skeptics say, how can it be getting warmer if we are buried in blizzards? And even if it is getting warmer, how can a few degrees make any difference?

Apparently it is making a big difference. Normally, we get cold weather in January and February here, but not much snow until March-April. But this winter, it has been as if the calendar moved up a month or two, and we are getting April's weather in February. And this, the scientists say, is indeed due to global warming.

To understand how global warming can produce more snow, we need to understand a basic fact of physics: warmer air holds more moisture! More moisture can mean more precipitation, either as snow or as rain. If you look at the Jet Stream on recent weather maps, you will see that it has repeatedly dipped way down south toward the Gulf of Mexico -- where the air is very warm and moist -- then it swings back up north, dragging all that extra moisture with it. The warm damp air hits the cold arctic air and whammo! Lots of snowfall on the good ol' USA.

But hasn't the Jet Stream always done this? To some extent, yes. But I'm over 60 years old and I can't ever remember it going down way into Texas like it has done recently.   In the past, the Jet Stream remained pretty much up in Canada, with an occasional dip into Minnesota. It formed a relatively stable circle of air flowing around the arctic that fenced in the really cold air up there. Now, however, the Jet Stream has become unstable and is moving up and down the northern hemisphere rather erratically, causing extreme temperature swings (here in Minnesota, we have had a range of 35 below zero (F) to 60 above in a period of a mere two weeks) and a lot more precipitation.

Why is it doing this? According to a recent study released in January 2011, the melting of ice in the arctic is allowing the Earth to absorb more heat from the sun instead of reflecting it back into space like it used to.(Second basic physics fact: dark ocean water absorbs more sunlight that light snow and ice.)   And it is doing this at a much higher rate than previously thought. Now, 32-degree sea water might not seem very warm to you and I, but it is a heck of a lot warmer than the below-zero snow and ice that used to be there. And once it absorbs that sunlight, it holds the heat, melting still more ice. This warming of the arctic is destabilizing the Jet Stream, which, as I explained above, results in more snow further south.

So, although it may seem paradoxical for warmer air to produce bigger snowstorms, the phenomenon is scientifically sound. You can't just look at a few local storms, you have to take into account the whole pattern of changes globally.   And while a few degrees might not seem like much, we are not really talking about the difference between a 70 degree day and a 74-degree day. We are talking about the overall warming of the entire planet. It doesn't take much to alter the ocean and wind currents. Scientists say an overall change of 6 degrees can be disastrous. Already there has been a rapid increase in volcanic activity, earthquakes, severe hurricanes and other storms -- including snow! -- yet so many of us are still in denial about this!

How much do we humans contribute to climate change? Quite a lot, according to most climate scientists. Yes, the earth goes through natural cycles, but since the Industrial Revolution the greenhouse effect has accelerated at an unprecedented rate. The science is pretty firm now, with the vast majority of climate scientists agreeing there is a rapidly-accelerating problem. Yet I am often appalled at how many of people not only don't believe the science, they think it is merely a matter of politics, a sort of left-wing hoax perpetrated by the Democrats. (If Ronald Reagan had produced An Inconvenient Truth instead of Al Gore, would the right-wingers take global warming more seriously today? I wonder.)

James Hoggan, in his book Climate Cover-Up, presents a well-researched argument that from the 1980s onward, there has been an organized campaign on the part of Big Oil and Big Coal to convince us that global warming is a hoax. (Remember that notorious ad trying to convince us that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was good?) I'm not normally into conspiracy theories, but this one is pretty convincing. Unfortunately, a lot of people have bought that argument, which delayed us doing anything about changing our lifestyles or lowering our carbon footprints. But I think it is becoming pretty evident that global warming is real -- even if is does produce more snow sometimes. Next time you are shoveling the stuff, blame it on that melting arctic ice.

Even crap has beauty sometimes

2011-02-20T09:20:00.009-06:00

The most mundane things can turn out to make an interesting picture. We have had some serious winds this winter, and the other day I noticed that a big branch on one of our old apple trees had cracked and fallen. When I went to investigate, I discovered that rabbits had stripped the bark from all the twigs that were low enough on the ground for them to reach.

I snapped these two pictures to show my wife Caryl, who has serious arthritis and walks with a cane, so she doesn't get out much in winter when the snow is deep and the ice is slick. I often bring her nature pix so she can see what is happening out there in our woods. I wasn't particularly expecting anything artistic when I took these shot of bunny poop, I just wanted to record the spoor -- but the light was just right to create a rather interesting -- if campy! -- effect.

You can see how the rabbits stripped the bark off -- not only on this fallen tree, but in a lot of other places, too. I've also noticed quite a lot of bunny poop in the compost pile, where I dump the cleanings from the chicken coop. The bunnies are apparently picking through the old hay and straw. It's been a hard winter for them and other animals, with the snow so deep that food is hard to find. Rats and mice also visit the compost pile -- you can see the little trails of footprints where they come out of their tunnels under the snow. And sometimes you see also the prints of feather tips, where an owl swooped down to grab its dinner. I often hear an owl hooting around here, although I've never actually see it.

In nature, you find these signs of animal activity more often than the animals themselves. Oh sure, those TV nature shows have lots of fast action, but in the real world, you wait a long time to see a few moments of thrill. (And those cameramen sit for a lot of uncomfortable hours to get that footage, too.) On a day-to-day basis, you learn to look for little clues that tell you animals are around. And these clues are often quite ephemeral. The sun soon wipes out tracks in the snow, or they get covered up with new snow. Another storm is coming in today, and these bunny signs will soon be buried. So you have to pay constant attention if you want to know what the wildlife is doing out there.

And I think this how it is with "finding God," too. Hollywood has taught us to expect dramatic special effects, but the Red Sea doesn't split every day, and you rarely see such a big miracle in real life. However, if you pay close attention, there are always little signs around that God is there. Sometimes, you can even find God in the crap of life -- maybe even more so than when things are going well. But you have to learn how to look with kavannah -- focused attention.

If a tree falls, you can definitely hear it!

2011-02-16T09:34:00.002-06:00

Yesterday, as I was sitting at my computer, I heard a loud falling, sliding, crunching sound and assumed it was ice sliding off the roof (which has already happened before -- the other day a huge thick sheet of it came crashing down off the chicken coop as I was doing chores down there -- startling me and upsetting the chickens, who cackled for five minutes afterward. Luckily this happened outside their pen and nobody got crushed.)

When I went outside to look for the source of the latest crash, there was no sign of a snow pile on the ground, just the usual drips. Puzzled, I looked the other way -- and saw that the noise was made by the top of this tree snapping off in the wind and crashing to the ground. This tree has been dying for a quite while and, since it's not close enough to the house to be a hazard, I had left it for the woodpeckers and nuthatches. And they are still enjoying it -- I saw a Downy hopping up and down the fallen top this morning. The debris scattered on the ground will eventually get picked up and probably used for firewood when I make maple surup -- which will be soon if these warm days keep up.

I imagine this will also open up an area where the sun can shine in better. Last time a tree fell in this windbreak, a patch of orange daylilies burst into bloom. They had apparently been there since the previous owners of this land (I certainly didn't plant them) but had never bloomed until the tree fell. Under this new topless tree, there is an old clump of peonies, probably planted back when these pines were little evergreens. The peonies have bloomed for me, but it will be interesting to see if they do better now that the top of the tree is gone and better light gets in.

As you can see, I've been allowing other younger trees to grow in beyond the older ones, to maintain the windbreak, which is on the west side of the house. It makes a big difference, both in winter when the winds blow and summer when the sun beats down, to have trees there. In addition to stuff that has grown up on its own, I've moved quite a few young trees and bushes into the new row. My grandson's Arbor Day tree got planted there, too.

The rural roots of Hasidism -- and my love of nature

2011-02-14T18:10:00.011-06:00

A while back I heard a Chabad rabbi remark at how annoyed he was that people were portraying the Baal Shem Tov ("Master of the Good Name," founder of Hasidic Judaism) as "that guy living out in the woods." Somehow, the rabbi felt this was an insult to the Baal Shem Tov's memory, making him into some sort of backwoods simpleton instead of a great Torah scholar. I beg to differ. I think the fact that that he spend a period of time wandering and meditating in the Carpathian Mountains contributed to the deep spirituality that he later taught his disciples. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that rural life was an essential part of the origins of early Hasidism.

Like many American Jews, I grew up hearing about how Jews in medieval Europe were locked into urban ghettos where the sun never shined and nature was totally absent -- so much so, that lovers met in the cemetery because it was the only green place in the ghetto. That was true in some locations, but not in Eastern Europe where Hasidism began in the mid-18th century. True, there were restrictions on Jews in The Tzar's domain (the expression "Beyond the Pale" comes from this period, referring to the Pale of Jewish settlement in Russia where Jews were required to live) and they were limited in what occupations they could pursue, etc., but for the most part, Jewish life was happening in small towns (stetls), not big urban centers.  Jews might not have owned land (in many places they were forbidden to), but they certainly saw trees, mountains and rivers on a daily basis. Nature was up close and everywhere.

This point was driven home to me when, in 1997, I traveled to Uman, Ukraine, to the grave of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov. I was struck by how, even today, this is a very rural area. Many people were still drawing water from wells with buckets, plowing with horses, and tethering goats in their front yard.  Goods were bought and sold in open air markets. Everywhere there were sights and sounds that made the details of Hasidic stories come alive.  I walked along the Bug River, mentioned frequently in Hasidic lore, climbed the rocks along its banks, visited the Sophia Park and saw what was probably the bridge that inspired that most famous saying of Rebbe Nachman: "All the world is just a narrow bridge, but the main thing is not to fear." (Read the full story of my Uman pilgrimage)

On that pilgrimage, I became very much aware how connected to nature those early Hasidim must have been -- and how much their urban descendants of today have lost. As I have written here before, the Hasidic world -- and much of the Hasidic community in general -- is suffering from a serious case of Nature Deficit Disorder. Back when I lived in the city, people thought me very odd for wanting to spend time alone in the park, or take the shortcut through the golf course to get away from the sounds of traffic on the Sabbath. Everyone rushed from one place to another in such a hurry, there was no time to smell the flowers -- if indeed anyone even noticed the flowers were there.   I don't ever remember anyone pointing out a bird or butterfly, and when I did so, there was little or no interest in it.

To the urban Hasidim, the outdoors was merely an inconvenient gap between one building and another. There was a disturbing expectation that, as I became more "acclimated" to Hasidic life, I would eventually give up the goyim naches (gentile pleasures) of nature study and settle into the urban Jewish world. Nobody seemed to understand that it was the Baal Shem Tov's connection to nature -- so very obvious to me! -- that had drawn me to Hasidism in the first place. More and more, I felt an extreme disconnect between the beautiful teachings I was reading and the modern reality I was seeing. In 1988, my wife and I left the city, never to return -- but we have remained observant Jews.

So here I am, many years later, a Hasid living without a local community in the Great North Woods of Minnesota. Critics accuse me of assimilating into rural American culture -- how little they know! It is they who have really assimilated -- into an urban life that would have been as alien to the Baal Shem Tov as if he had landed on Mars.   Every morning I wake up to the sound of a live rooster crowing -- and I make the special blessing that one says upon hearing a rooster at dawn. When was the last time my urban friends did that? On clear Saturday nights we end the Sabbath by literally going out and looking for three stars. I will make shehechiyanu, the blessing that thanks God for reaching another season, when the first Canadian geese come honking back in the spring. There are so many other things in our daily life that resonate with early Hasidism, that I feel closer to the Hasidic masters here than I ever did in the city.   Which is one reason I started this blog -- not to kvetch (complain) but to share some of the wonderful nature experiences that have deepened my love and understanding of Torah.

Winter nature photos -- a creative challenge

2011-02-06T12:46:00.002-06:00

"Snowy Tree at Dawn"

As I was looking through my winter photos, it struck me how my "eye" for nature is different in winter than summer. During the warm months, I tend to focus on things close up: Flowers, insects, birds, etc. During the winter, when everything is covered with snow, my attention goes more toward sunrises and landscapes. After all, how much plain white snow can you watch without getting terminally bored?

Nevertheless, I do sometimes spot interesting natural objects and other "found art" that get "captured" and preserved by my camera. Occasionally the snow makes a rather ordinary thing look much more interesting than usual. Here are a few of my favorites:

These frozen crabapples were on a volunteer tree growing behind my chicken coop. (Either it grew from the compost, or a seed was dropped there by a bird.) The tree was already there when we moved here in 1997, and every year it produces a crop of 1-inch fruits that hang on the tree all winter. When spring comes, lots of birds enjoy the mushy thawed-out apples, including robins and cedar waxwings.

Very few birds hang around here all winter, but the woodpeckers do, and it's obvious that they have been busy on this old rotting stump, as well as other snags in our little woodlot. Somebody once referred to dead trees as "fast food restaurants" for birds. A lot of insects winter over on or inside dead trees, and winter birds rely on them for high-energy food. So, unless the dead trees are a hazard, I leave them for the birds. There's a dead pine that I can see from my window that almost always has a Downy Woodpecker or a Nuthatch creeping up and down the peeling bark.

My last winter pic for this post is this bunch of snow-covered dead grass. Not a particularly rare sight --we have fields of it here! -- but it is an example of how the snow can make ordinary objects more interesting and artistic. I like the way the blades of grass form a sort of abstract pattern, providing a contrast that you would never see without the snow:

A Winter Field in Contrast"

Living within the seasons

2011-01-30T14:44:00.003-06:00

One of the things I quickly learned after moving to the country was how to plan ahead for Jewish holidays, because way out here, there just aren't any kosher specialty stores. That's why I'm already thinking about Passover in January.

For example, you need nuts to make charoset, the apples-and-nuts mixture served at the Passover Seder. And the nuts must either be certified free of any leavening products (that is, kosher for Passover), or still in their shells. Finding Passover certified nuts in small-town America is next to impossible, and nuts in the shell can only be found in December or early January (except for peanuts, but they're legumes, not real nuts.) So I learned very quickly to plan ahead and stock up on almonds and walnuts and such in December so I'll have them at Passover time in April. (I also save black walnuts from my own tree in the fall, and wild hazelnuts when I can find them.)

The same is true for many other things people take for granted in the city. One of the reasons my wife and I are vegetarians (although by no means the only reason!) is because of the hassle and extra expense of trying to get kosher meat outside of the Metro area. I suppose I could have learned to slaughter my own chickens (one of the best-kept secrets of the kosher meat industry is that any Jew who knows how can slaughter for own his household, provided he doesn't sell the meat as kosher to others) but I'm just not cut out for that. My backyard chickens are friends, not food. And to be honest, we eat much better as vegetarians than we would be for the same amount of money as carnivores.

There have also been years when I couldn't find fresh parsley for the Seder, either, because the local grocery didn't have it and there certainly wasn't any growing out there under the snow. In fact, this is why the traditional dipping vegetable at a Russian Jewish Seder isn’t parsley, because nobody in Russia had fresh greens when the ground was still frozen solid at Passover time. So they used a piece of boiled potato, which falls into the same pri ha-adamah ("fruit of the earth") blessing category as parsley. Even today, if you go to a traditional Lubavitch Seder, they still use the potato, because that's what their Rebbes used in Russia. A piece of carrot would do, too.

I also grow my own horseradish for the maror (bitter herbs), because once again, fresh horseradish just isn't available here in April, and the kind in the jar isn't so easy to find, either. The first year we were here, I had to special order horseradish roots and take 5 pounds -- but at least I had enough left over to start the patch that I've harvested from ever since. (Of course, I need to remember to shovel away the snow a couple weeks before Passover time, so the sun can reach the soil and thaw it enough to dig the stuff out.)

Yes, I could order these things from the Internet (and I do that with some things, such as vegetarian soup mixes), but that's not the point. Simplifying my lifestyle and getting in touch with nature is. Up until recently, nobody had the same fruits and vegetables all year round. Eggs weren't so easily available, either. When I made the decision not to eat factory farm eggs and only use those from my own chickens or free-run hens from places I trusted, our winter diet changed radically. Right now, in the dead of winter, I'm getting maybe 6 eggs a week from my little flock, if that. So I'm not having eggs for breakfast today. They will get saved for baking bread and other things for the Sabbath. My winter breakfasts consist more of hot cereals.

Urban Jews will read this and probably wonder why I put myself through all this trouble. But I think I have a better understanding of Hasidic stories when I live closer to the way that early Hasidim lived. Foods were seasonal back then, and this was reflected in the way our feasts were celebrated. Lots of spiritual reasons are given for serving eggs at Passover time (or Easter for my Christian neighbors), but the most down-to-earth one is, that, in the natural order of things, the hens start laying again in spring. I think it's important not to lose sight of that.

Perek Shirah, The Song of Creation

2011-01-24T03:35:00.006-06:00

"This is my Father's world,

and to my listening ears,
all nature sings and round me rings

the music of the spheres."

This old Protestant hymn, which I learned in Scout camp many years ago, expresses the same consciousness as an ancient Jewish text called Perek Shirah, "The Song of Creation" a mystical hymn that even today is found in many traditional Jewish prayer books. It portrays all living creatures singing their individual songs in praise of the Creator. The universe is filled with hymns as cows, camels, horses, mules, roosters, chickens, doves, eagles, cats, mice, locusts, spiders, flies, sea creatures, fish, frogs, and many more offer Biblical verses as songs of praise to God.

A number of years ago, I had an amazing experience; I actually heard a small part of the mystical Song of Creation. It was on a warm summer day, and I was walking through a field of blooming alfalfa. The air around me was filled with hundreds of little orange and yellow butterflies, the ones known as "alfalfas" or "sulfurs," flitting from flower to flower. Suddenly I experienced an expansion of consciousness in which those butterflies were actually singing! Of course, it wasn’t a song in the way we usually think of a song, there weren’t any words per se. It was more like a joyous energy that I experienced as an inner sound, in which those butterflies were expressing a level of absolute joy. I had, for a moment, touched a higher level of awareness about how nishmat kol chai, "the soul of every living thing," is praising God.

Perek Shirah doesn’t mention butterflies specifically (they are apparently lumped in with insects in general), but they are part of Creation’s song, too. And if I were to assign a biblical verse to the song of those butterflies, it would be ivdu et HaShem b’simchah, "serve the Creator with joy." (Psalm 100:2) Most butterflies only live for a week or so in the adult stage, but judging from what I heard that day, they make the most of every joyous moment while they are here.

And this is why Rebbe Nachman of Breslov told his followers to spend an hour a day praying alone in woods and fields. He even said that the grasses and trees would join in the prayers. I take that quite literally. Every living thing has a consciousness, even the rocks and clouds are sustained by the "holy sparks" (netzotzot) and emanations of God's energy. Sometimes, if we are very quiet and patient, we can tune in to their mystical songs.

Garden spider in my yard 2007

A tale of fowl language

2011-01-20T10:19:00.005-06:00

If you have followed me around the Web on various sites, you probably noticed that I use the ID "rooster613" in a lot of places, including this blog and my eBay store, The Happy Rooster, which is located at rooster613.com. This ID has a history dating back over 20 years -- so here goes:

When my wife Caryl (pronounced "Carol") and I moved to Sandstone, MN in 1988, we got a pet rooster. At the time, it was legal to have backyard chickens in town, but one of my neighbors didn’t like me very much, and kept calling the city administrator to complain about the rooster crowing.

As any rural resident knows, if you sneeze on one side of town, somebody will say "Gesundheit" on the other end. The fact we were Jewish --the only Jews in town and, in many cases, the only Jews many people here had ever met -- made us doubly interesting subjects of local gossip. It seemed like everything we did was picked apart in detail, often very inaccurately, but that's a whole other blog... Anyway, I got known around town as that guy with the darned rooster. My wife and I, in turn, argued that we were within our rights. Which we were.

Meanwhile, Internet access came to town. I began setting up my personal website. When the ISP rep asked what ID I wanted, I said "rooster" out of pure cussedness. (So beware of angry roosters - -they use fowl language!) Thus was my nickname born. Even after we moved to our little hobby farm outside of town, (where chickens are no problem), I kept the Rooster ID because, by now, the website was linked all over the Internet. It also related nicely to the Hasidic parable by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, about the mad prince who thought he was a rooster. (Read my re-telling of the story.) Or, some say, he was a turkey -- but I first heard it as a rooster... Besides, I'm not about to call myself a TURKEY!

The original reference in Yiddish was to the "Indian Cock,"which some scholars claim is the turkey (because people apparently mistook it for a peacock) and others say it is the Red Jungle Fowl of India, which is believed to be the original ancestor of all breeds of chickens. (Wouldn't this make a really great Purim debate -- was it a turkey or was it a rooster???? We Jews can agree on the big things, such as One God, Ten Commandments... it's those annoying little details that really get us going. )

Then again folk tales do have a habit of mutating. Did you know that the "goose that laid the golden egg" was originally a chicken, too? So nu, what is this? A revisionist plot to deny chickens their rightful place in history? There's fowl play afoot, that's for sure... Not to egg you on about this, but if you really want to pursue this profound dilemma, then check out the history of the turkey and the origins of the domestic fowl (chicken).

Anyway, the exact species of barnyard bird doesn't really affect the story, which I frequently tell, and which is my personal model for teaching Yiddishkeit (Judaism). Plus, my wife and I like chickens, which we keep as pets on our farm. (Wec are vegetarians. We do not slaughter our birds, although we do eat the eggs.)

Not long after I got online, Amazon.com came out with their Associates program and I decided to join. To my dismay, the “Rooster” ID was already taken on their system. So, I added “613" to my Amazon ID. Why did I choose that number? Because I’m an Orthodox Jew, and “613" has a special significance to religious Jews. It refers to the 613 mitzvot (pronounced “mitts-vote,” meaning “commandments”) in the Torah. (NOTE: They are communal rules -- no one person can do all 613 mitzvot, because some are for men, some for women, some for farmers, teachers, merchants, priests, soldiers, etc. Altogether, the Jewish community as a whole has the 613 commandments. Many are common-sense social rules we all follow anyway. Others are connected with specific rituals and ceremonies.)

Nowadays, "613" has become a shorthand way that many Jews use on the Net to let each other know that they are Orthodox or Hasidic, similar to the way that Christians use WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) to identify themselves to each other. There’s even a site called 613.org with an extensive audio-video library of talks by various rabbis. Now granted, the number 613 doesn’t have a meaning to everybody, but at least it has a back story that people might remember once they hear it. My guess is that you will remember it now and that’s a whole lot better than using my age or my Zip Code.

When I later came to eBay, "rooster" was already taken there, too. So I carried over my "rooster613" theme. By now, I also owned the domain name rooster613.com which used to point to my personal website and now goes to my eBay store, The Happy Rooster. (My website is located at RabbiGershom.com.)

However, we should note that not every "rooster613" ID online is really me. There is some woman using it on a dating site who definitely is NOT me! I emailed her once about changing it, but got no answer. It's not exactly identity theft, since she clearly is somebody else and not claiming to be me, so this was probably just a random coincidence. But it's a good idea to actually read the material in question and be sure you are actually talking to Rabbi Yonassan Gershom. Conversely, if you don't want to get a lot of rabbincal questions and/or hate mail about Israeli politics (and I'm a PACIFIST yet! Some people just target any Jew they find with their rants...) then it is a good idea not to call yourself "rooster613."

Really, really cold tonight!

2011-01-18T19:38:00.003-06:00

This shot was taken at dawn a while back, looking through the trees across the road from our house. I think it captures the way I feel right now --cold! But at least it's not snowing tonight -- it snowed every day last week. Not huge amounts each day, but it all adds up. Tonight it's going down to -8 (F) and -20 on Thursday -- BRRRR!!!! (UPDATE: It actually hit 35 below zero that night.)

When it gets this cold, the snow sort of crunches under your feet, and sometimes you hear a loud crack in the woods as a tree branch "explodes" from freezing. I also have to go to the chicken coop at sundown each evening and dump all the waterers or they freeze solid by morning. Chickens don't eat and drink at night anyway, but for the geese, who do, I fill their bucket with hot water at sundown, and that usually stays liquid until morning, at least, the geese manage to keep a small hole open to drink from. By morning there is a layer of ice lining the bucket. (I use a rubber horse-watering bucket so I can knock the ice out with a stick without breaking it. A plastic bucket would shatter in the cold.) In the morning I give everybody warm water and it stays liquid pretty much all day inside the coop, which has a passive solar design. Luckily the coldest days are also the sunniest, so it does warm up in there. We are even getting a few eggs.

I noticed today that the rabbits completely stripped the bark from my new Honeycrisp apple tree I planted last year. Yes, I had put some chicken wire around it to protect it, but the snow got so deep, the bunnies could reach over it -- and they did. Completely girdled it. I'm going to see if I can take cuttings from the top and root them, or maybe graft them onto another apple tree in spring. Next time I suppose I should wrap the trunk with tree wrap or something. Gardening here is a constant challenge here.

The stark silent beauty of winter

2011-01-16T09:12:00.005-06:00

Last night (Saturday) I had to go out and shovel the huge pile of snow that the plow left at the end of the driveway. Normally I would not be doing snow removal in the freezing cold of night, but my stepson needed a ride to work, so I had to pick him up and get him there by 7am this morning. The snow came on the Sabbath (Friday sundown to after dark on Saturday) when I do not work, so I had no choice but to bundle up and go shovel last night. And this brought me into a very beautiful nature experience. The sky was clear, the moon and stars were out, the snow sparkled like diamonds, and the only sounds were an occasional car way off in the distance. Well worth braving the cold. I only wish the sky had been that clear when we had the totla lunar eclipse back in December.

Now, I must admit that I'm not much of a winter person, but the snow does provide some wonderful opportunities for photography. The pic below that I took in 2007 is called "Minnesota Snowscape." (You are looking down the hill from the trail to my chicken coop.)

And this next pic is a view along the trail through our woods that I call "Dawn Wonderland." This was taken a few years ago after a spring snowstorm, and is one of my alltime favorites. You only get this "fairyland" effect when the snow is wet enough to stick to the trees -- and it only lasts until the sun gets high enough to hit the branches. So I have to get up and out there at pre-dawn when there is some light but the sun itself is not up yet. When I do manage that, I take all the pix I can before the show is over. I rather like the blue color, too. Once the sun is out, the snow becomes a glary white and loses this magical quality.

The snow collapsed my old sukkah frame

2011-01-11T10:58:00.000-06:00

The snow is coming down again -- the brunt of the storm is way south of us, but so far another inch or so has piled onto what we already have. The frame of my sukkah (booth for the Festival of Sukkot) finally collapsed under the weight of the snow. Oh well, it's supposed to be a temporary shelter anyway, so I'll just have to build a new one next year. (Story continues below photo).

For those of my readers who are not familiar with the Festival of Sukkot, you might know it as the "Feast of Tabernacles" in the Bible, although the English word "tabernacle" calls to mind a fancy church building, whereas, a sukkah is a primitive booth that we Jews erect in the fall for a harvest festival. In fact, there are two completely different Hebrew words often translated "tabernacle": mishkan, which refers to the portable sanctuary that the Jews had while traveling with Moses in the wilderness, and sukkah, the harvest booth we are tallking about here. As you can see, a sukkah is a far cry from the Mormon Tabernacle!

My urban Jewish brethren usually make their sukkahs out of plywood or other commercially-made materials. Many buy rather expensive prefab versions, then store them away in the garage after the holiday. I could never afford to do that. When I lived in the city, I used to make mine out of whatever materials I could scrounge, because it doesn't really matter what the sides are made of. One of my more memorable sukkahs was made of old refrigerator packing crates that I found behind the appliance store. Reduce, reuse, recycle! Nowadays, living here in the country, I prefer to use my campcraft skills and lash the framework together from saplings that I cut myself in the woods, then cover the sides with old sheets or blankets. I think this is much closer to what our ancestors probably used. And it's also a whole lot more economical.

Lashing the framework makes it a somewhat permanent structure that I don't take down after the holiday. I used to remove the cloth sides and the pine branches on top, but then I noticed that my cats were sheltering in it while they waited to come in the house on windy winter days, the squirrels sometimes climbed on it, and birds were often hopping around on the top. I enjoyed watching this animal activity, so for the past few years I have left it up all winter, then removed the coverings in spring and made any necessary repairs to the framework.

There will probably be Haredi Jews who read this blog and be horrified that I let animals come in the sukkah, because it is supposed to be holy -- but really, it is only a "sukkah" during the festival itself. And what makes it a sukkah is the natural plant materials (called schkach) on top, which I replace fresh every year right before the festival. I see no problem with it being a multi-purpose structure other times of the year. In summer, I have sometimes hung flower planters from it. (No bird feeders, though, since we have roaming barn cats. Most of what my cats catch are rodents from around the chicken coop, which is very helpful, but there is no point in setting up bird bait for them.)

The Torah tells us that Jacob "journeyed to Sukkot and built himself a house, and for his livestock he made shelters; he therefore named the place Sukkot (Booths)." (Genesis 33:17). This is the first mention in the Bible of anybody making shelters for their animals (aside from Noah's Ark, of course!) -- and those shelters were probably something like my primitive sukkah. Which is why he named the place Sukkot. So I feel that by letting the animals use it after I'm done with it, I am much closer to how our ancestors lived.

At any rate, come spring, I will have to completely re-do my sukkah frame, after using the old wood to boil down my annual batch of maple syrup. I need to remove some green ash saplings that are taking over the meadow area where the milkweed grows for the monarch butterflies, so this will be a good time to do it. I look forward to that, because it will mean some very pleasant days outdoors, cutting the poles and listening to the various sounds of the forest. There will be grouse drumming, pheasants and other birds calling, geese flying overhead, and woodpeckers chipping holes in the dead trees that I purposely leave up for them. But right now, we have the silence of winter -- and that's beautiful, too.

Nature Deficit Disorder and Jews

2011-01-09T09:01:00.001-06:00

I just finished reading a book called Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. “Nature deficit disorder” is not a medical diagnosis; it’s a term he made up to describe what he sees as a very serious deficit in childhood experience nowadays. The book examines some serious psychological research and concludes that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults.

Louv makes the point that, as parents have become more and more worried about child abductions, accidents on playgrounds, lawsuits, etc., the lives of children have become overly controlled and, more and more, their playtime is all happening indoors. With many housing developments and condos having covenants forbidding tree houses, playhouses, even gardens in some areas, kids who do have a backyard have only dull, boring places to play. Everything is being so tightly organized by adults, there is little or no free time for children to develop their creativity. Add to this the fact that kids are spending hours and hours in front of TVs and computers, developing obesity problems and having heart attacks in high school (unheard of when I was growing up), and there is a serious problem affecting modern society.

And we Jews are not immune. In fact, I think we have a worse case than the general population. I am often appalled at the lack of basic knowledge about nature in the Jewish community. In Chaim Potok's children's book, The Tree of Here, he describes a robin living in a hole on the tree -- but robins do not live in holes! Even Artscroll's beautiful coffeetable version of Perek Shirah: The Song of the Universe misidentifed a photo of a Grackle as a Starling, and one of the rooster pix is really a hen.  Nor are these the only nature-oriented bloopers I've found in recent Jewish books. Although the Psalms and siddur (Jewish prayerbook) contain many verses about God's beautiful creation and how everything in nature is praising God, these have become mere words to be recited at breakneck speed with little thought as to their meaning in the real world.

So, although many of our patriarchs and matriarchs were shepherds and farmers who spent a lot of time outdoors, and we have their beautiful references to nature in our classical texts, these teachings don’t stand out to most Jews nowadays. Why? Because there is no real contact with the outdoors to ground the texts in everyday life.

For example, there is so much pollution in the atmosphere in urban areas that even if someone were to try to gauge the time for saying the evening Shema by seeking three stars, they would err -- if they could see any stars at all. So they rely on their wristwatches and astronomical calculations, which are not bad things in themselves, but if you have never looked up at a starry sky or listened to a chorus of birds singing at dawn, how can you make any real connection with the texts that describe such things? How can you picture God as a mother eagle sheltering Her nest if you’ve never seen a bird nesting, and know eggs only as something in Styrofoam boxes that you buy at the supermarket?

In many of our yeshivas, even the teachers often lack these firsthand experiences with nature. So they focus on stuff that is familiar to them, namely, the rules of kashrut and using animals as food.  This, in turn, causes Jewish kids to see nature as something totally utilitarian. My good friend Richard Schwartz (author of Judaism and Vegetarianism) tells how, when he was at an outdoor Sukkot gathering, the kids saw some ducks and said "Let's schecht (slaughter) them."   This is a far cry from when I was a kid and we used to go feed the ducks in the park.   When was the last time you and your kids did that?

I was very lucky, in that I grew up in an area where I could go play in the woods --and my parents let me do it. This was not wasted time -- it was learning in a very different way.  It enriched my understanding of Torah in ways that my nature-deprived urban brethren often cannot grasp.   And it ultimately led to me becoming a Breslov Hasid, because of Rebbe Nachman's teaching about hisboddisus -- the practice of spending an hour alone with God each day. He recommended doing it in a forest or field because, he said, the plants and animals would join in our prayers. And he meant that literally.

Breslovers still try to do that today, although in a city it is hard to find the solitude. But at least they have the teachings about spending time in nature, which many other groups do not. In fact, mainstream Jews have sometimes considered the Breslovers crazy to go wandering in the woods. Rabbi Odesser, (may he rest in peace), a Breslov teacher who died in 1994, once told how, when he started following that path in his youth, the local rabbi warned his parents that roaming in the woods could cause their son to literally lose his mind. Now, I don’t think being with nature makes you go insane. Quite the opposite is true: It restores your sanity and opens you up to connect with God in a very real and personal way.

Our latest kitty rescue

2011-01-03T12:38:00.001-06:00

Meet Angel Cat!

Our latest feline arrival is this pretty female Siamese/tabby who showed up after a heavy rainstorm this past summer (2010). She was way up in high a tree and crying pitifully. The white cat looked like a little spirit up in that dark spruce tree, so I immediately named her Angel. When I called to her she came right down into my arms, which told me she wasn't feral. But she was very thin and starving for both food and love. Nobody ever claimed her, so she lives here now, too. As soon as she was well enough, we got her spayed, thanks to the all the generous people who helped us out. She got so attached to me (sleeps on my bed now) that I did not want to traumatize her again by re-homing. She really is a very sweet kitty, I can't imagine why somebody would dump her.

P:eople have asked me why we have so many cats. No, I'm not hoarding them!!! Frankly, I'd rather have fewer cats -- right now, the kitty count is at 13, which is a LOT of cats. The thing is, they keep showing up here on our farm, and I don't have the heart to send them to a shelter where they would probably be killed if not adopted. There have been a lot of foreclosures around here and I think many of these cats were left behind when thier owners moved. People think (falsely) that cats are more attached to places than people -- not true, so never abandon your kitty!

Anyway, they do help keep the rodent population down around the poultry house and garden, which is better than settin g out traps and poisons. So for now, I'm managing a cat colony, some indoors and some outdoors. And yes, I do get them all spay/neutered, so we have the cat population under control. Lots of generous people have helped us do this through my eBay store, The Happy Rooster - look under "Help animals" to find sales dedicated to feeding and caring for these beautiful cats.

Sunshine the rooster -- a rescue tale with a happy ending

2009-09-21T09:36:00.000-05:00

Meet Sunshine --

a cross-breed rooster (probably Leghorn x Buff Orpington) that we rescued in 2005. If he looks a little ragged and henpecked -- well, you should have seen him the day we got him. He was a whole lot worse back then. This bird has been through a lot in his life. Here is his story:

In the fall of 2005...

My neighbor Bob from down the road stopped by and asked if I wanted a chicken. Seems this rooster had turned up at his brother's place and was being chased by the dogs and pecked by other chickens, until he finally squeezed himself behind some hay bales in the barn and hid. His brother didn't need a rooster, but neither did he want to eat him or see him be killed. Could I please take him?   How could I say "No" to a story like that?

He gets his name

Bob had the chicken in a sack in the back of his pick-up truck and said the bird was pretty wild, so I didn't get a look at him until I put him into an empty cage. Man, was that rooster in sorry shape. Most of his feathers were missing or broken, his comb, face, and back were all bloodied up, and he was absolutely terrified (can you blame him?) From what was left of his feathers he appeared to be white with golden shoulders. I immediately thought of the John Denver song, "Sunshine on My Shoulders " (which, by the way, was written here in Minnesota) so I named him "Sunshine."

A bird with a serious social problem...

Sunshine spent that winter living in a cage by himself, both to heal and because he was so terrified of the other chickens. I speculate that he was somebody's "Easter chick" who imprinted on humans, then grew too big and noisy to keep, so they dumped him "out in the country" to fend for himself. Which he did not do very well. Had we not captured him, he would never have survived a Minnesota winter.

Sunshine was definitely a young bird from that year's hatch -- you could tell by the short spurs on his legs, which had not even grown in at the time I got him. As he got to know me, he became tamer, and I was able to take him out of the cage for some attention and exercise.

In the spring of 2006 a predator killed the old rooster in my flock, so I thought maybe Sunshine could live with those hens. Total disaster! They chased and harrassed him until he hid in the corner or in one of the nest boxes. They saw him as an intruder to be driven away. So it was back to the cage again. I hated that, because he was a big bird who needed to get out and stretch. In order to give him some freedom, I let him run loose inside the goose pen when the geese were outside free-ranging.

The happy ending....

By the end of that summer, those roosterless hens were moulting and growing new feathers for winter. Sunshine had gotten to know them through the chicken wire door, and was no longer afraid of them. Plus, fall is the season when breeding is over and birds, both wild and domestic, are beginning to flock.   Could the hens accept Sunshine now?

I gave it a try and.... YES !!!!! This time, there were no fights. Having been deprived of sex all summer, those hens were more than ready to accept a new rooster. Sunshine began to flap his wings and strut like a rooster should. And that's when I found out that Sunshine was what I call a "dancer" -- a rooster who struts and shows off and courts the hens gently, rather than chase and rape them like some roosters do. He still looked pretty straggly in places, but he eventually lost his old battered feathers in the fall moult and, as the new ones came in, was even more beautiful.

Then he became a father!

In the spring of 2009, he sired 3 chicks, two hens and a rooster, shown half-grown in this picture, with the barred bantam hen named Spunky who hatched them. The white one in the upper right turned out to be a male that my grandson named Star. (The others are both hens, named Snowball and Maggie.) Star is almost full-grown now and so far, he gets along fine with his father and the rest of the flock.

Then he crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 2009

Sunshine died peacefully in his sleep during the winter of 2009, "Crossed the Rainbow Bridge," as some people say. Star, his son, became leader of the flock, and his 2 sisters inherited thier mother's colored-egg-laying ability -- Snowball lays olive-green eggs and Maggie lays light blue ones.

(This story was originally posted on my eBay blog in September 2006. It was moved here and updated when eBay decided to close down their own blog platform.)

"A Sacred Duty," the film -- behind the scenes at my place in the country

2009-09-14T23:28:00.001-05:00

On June 6, 2006, film director Lionel Friedberg came to our farm to interview me and film our geese and chickens for a documentary called "A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World," sponsored by the Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA). Friedberg has produced films for the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, PBS, etc. so this was a real honor.

The film covers Jewish teachings on ecology, non-violence, vegetarianism, etc. Footage was shot in the USA and Israel (and maybe elsewhere?) and includes a number of prominent rabbis, scholars, animal welfare activists, vegetarians, etc. I got involved both because I'm on the advisory committee of JVNA and because I'm a Hasidic Jew living in the country who actually has animals. (Nowadays, most Hasidim are urban people, but this was not always the case. Hasidim in pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe lived mostly in small rural villages.)

I also got involved in this film because I believe it is very important for people to know that there are Orthodox Jews who care about peace, the environment, civil rights, etc. Right now, the only images of us that many people see are from the war between Israel and Palestine -- but I won't go into my rant about that!

We were originally going to film outdoors in the morning, then do the interview with me in the afternoon, but nature decided otherwise. There was a huge, powerful thunderstorm that morning, so we had to reverse our schedule. Luckily we did the filming before the record heatwave and drought hit Minnesota that year, when everything was still lush and green. The storm washed everything clean and just perfect when it cleared.

One of my hens, whom I called Mama Hen (because she was the best mother and just loved to raise chicks) had a 3-week-old brood of four. They were just the right age to be little movie stars -- old enough to be outside without risk of getting chilled (yes, it actually was chilly back then!) but still young and cute enough to be just adorable. We did a sequence where I carried the chicken family out into the yard in a cage that, I explained, was the size of a battery hen cage, where chickens on factory farms spend their entire lives. Then I opened the cage and let them all go free to scratch, peck follow their mother around. (Unfortunately, this part did not make the final cut, but Friedman has the footage, so maybe it will get used someday.) However, Mama Hen and her chicks did make it into the movie, along with some of my geese running freely (in contrast to some horrible factory-farm footage.)

The interview part was done indoors and covered my philosophy on how Jewish mysticism fits with vegetarianism, some Hasidic teachings about animals, etc. Of course, I'm not the only one in the film, but a section of my interview was used to introduce it -- for which I am both humbled and honored. The film has been released on DVD and you can view it for free on YouTube at the http://www.asacredduty.com/ homepage, where you will also find a printed overview and a list of all the rabbis and educators who appear in it. (And yes, my Israeli readers, there is a llink to a version with Hebrew subtitles.) In addition, if you are interested in Jewish vegetarianism, I recommend visiting the JVNA website at JewishVeg.com.

UPDATE: Mama Hen has passed on and crossed the Rainbow Bridge. She was 11 years old, a full lifespan for a chicken, and had a good life. In a way, appearing in this film became sort of a memoral to her.

My Cat Sapphire was in Cat Fancy Magazine!

2009-09-14T22:42:00.000-05:00

Those of you who were following my old eBay blog will remember I mentioned this article when the interview was done in July 2006. When the December 2006 issue was published, there we were, Sappire and I, in a 4-page article entitled "Clergy Cats." The article was about -- you guessed it! -- some clergy who have cats. The clergy included are:

Cardinal Roger Mahoney (Los Angeles) and his two silver tabbies, Raphael and Gabriel

Father Chuck Giradeau, Associate rector at All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta, with his orange tabbycat, Ivan

Father Allan Warren, Church of the Advent in Boston, with his four cats, Jake, Jeoffrey, Skipergee and Owl

And yours truly -- Rabbi Gershom, freelance writer, on a farm in MN with my cat, Sapphire

Each of us was profiled with some anecdotes about our cats. There were also short facts about cats. I learned that Pope Benedict loves cats, as did Confucius and Mohammed. The pictures here are the ones that they used of me and Sapphire (now that the issue is published, the rights revert back to me and my stepson, who took the pic of me, so we can post them). One blooper, though - -they identified Sapphire as a female, but he's a neutered male. He got his name, Sapphire, because of his beautiful blue eyes. My old sheepdog, Grett (may he rest in peace) led me to Sapphire on a cold winter day. He was lost, hungry, thirsty and scared. Whoever dumped him here missed out on a wonderful, affectionate, loving cat.

Mine was the only cat shown twice -- once with me and once alone. (He's sitting on the branches I put on the chicken pen during the heatwave that summer. He's not after the chickens, just getting some early morning sun.) The pic on the left was also used in a composite graphic. I suppose that might have been because I was the only one to send in two photos? Or maybe it was because he's such a beautiful cat!

How did Sapphire and I rate this honor? The author, Sandy Robins, who is also a freelance writer, is Jewish, and wanted to find a rabbi with a cat to round out the article. So she searched the Web and contacted me after reading a story about Sapphire on my main website, RabbiGershom.com.

Bonnie and Clyde: Two chickens on the run!

2009-09-14T09:40:00.000-05:00

In late summer of 1997, my wife and I were driving to Duluth (75 miles away) on Interstate 35 and went to use the facilities at a wooded rest stop located near a little pond. We noticed a pair of brown and grey half-grown chickens running around and asked the caretaker about them. He told us they had showed up a couple weeks ago -- probably dumped there -- and he had been trying unsuccessfully to catch them in a live trap. He wasn't even sure they were really chickens -- he thought they might be pheasants -- but I assured them that yes, they were indeed chickens, only not the usual white-feathered commercial variety.

I asked if we could have the chickens and he said yes, if we can catch them, we can have them -- good riddance! Well, the best way to catch a chicken on the run is not with a trap. Rather, you figure out where they are roosting and come back at night. So I asked where they hung out at dusk, and he told me they went into some short evergreens. I looked under the trees and sure enough, there were chicken droppings on the ground. It was about 5:00 PM and we would not be back from Duluth until after dark, so I said I would bring a box and capture them then. This particular caretaker had just come on duty and said he would still be there when we got back.

Around midnight we returned, borrowed a flashlight, and headed for those trees. The two chickens were roosting on a branch about 6 feet off the ground. I simply picked them up and put them in the box, no problem. The caretaker was amazed at how easy it was. (But then, we are experienced Chicken Busters!) We took them home, put them into an empty breeding cage in the coop, and went to bed.

Next day, when I examined the chickens more closely, I could see we had a young rooster and a hen. We dubbed them Bonnie and Clyde because they were captured "on the run." They turned out to be some kind of gamecock variety. Clyde had a lovely silver-grey breast with golden hackle feathers, a reddish rump and shoulders, and a flowing silver-grey tail. Bonnie was brown and did indeed resemble a pheasant -- without the long pointed tail.

Clyde eventually sired a number of chicks with Bonnie and some of our other hens, and was an excellent watch-bird around the yard. He was friendly with people, but don't let a predator come around! He actually attacked my old sheepdog, Grett, who everafter stayed away from the chicken yard. (Grett didn't chase chickens, but Clyde was making sure!)

Bonnie lived to be 8 years old and died in the spring of 2005. Clyde lived to be 9 and died in the late winter of 2006. Both are buried in our pet cemetery now, but left many descendants behind, including. Rocky Rooster, the cocky bird on the covers of my Happy Rooster eBay selling series, who was a cross between Clyde and a Barred Rock hen. (He, too, has now crossed the Rainbow Bridge.) And so, their memory lives on!