Speaking for the Climate With One Voice – A Conversation with Rabbi Daniel Swartz

Geoff Mitelman: I’m Rabbi Geoff Mitelman, I’m the founding director of Sinai and Synapses. Nice to see you all again, who are here. We had a little break for the High Holy Days, but coming out of the High Holy Days, I’m very excited to be sitting here talking with Rabbi Daniel Swartz, who is the Executive Director of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, which has engaged Jewish organizations and individuals in environmental advocacy and programs for 25 years as part of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. And he has just returned from the Vatican – I don’t know if you got a chance to be able to meet the Pope, but I know that you were at the Vatican talking about some of the work surrounding COP26 (and we will explain what that is), trying to advocate for environmental justice and for faith leaders to be involved, and the role that religious leaders can be making an impact on trying to be able to address climate change and a whole host of environmental issues. So, Daniel, nice to be sitting with you. Thank you for joining us.

Daniel Swartz: Good to be here, Geoff. So, for our listeners who aren’t in fully immersed in UN-speak, COP means “conference of parties.” And it’s actually used, unfortunately, for almost every meeting that the UN has on a regular basis. So, there are other COPs out there, just to make it more confusing. But COP26 is this year’s climate framework conference. The Paris agreement that you may have heard of, and even the Kyoto protocols before that, were earlier versions of the same COP. And this year’s version starts in November in Scotland, and is co-hosted by Great Britain and Italy.

And about 10 months ago, Great Britain and Italy, in conjunction with the Vatican, decided that to help push things forward at COP26 and to get things done (and there’s a little more hope, given America’s changed role in the world since the last COP), that we wanted to try to push world leaders as far as possible to really address climate change, both because of the possibilities and also because every new scientific evaluation that comes out just shows that we’re closer and closer to irreversible damage, and that there are more and more problems going on.

So, they decided to try to draw together a group of religious leaders and scientists from across the globe – 40 faith leaders, 10 scientists – to meet on a regular basis, with a goal that we would develop an appeal to world leaders that we just went to the Vatican to sign on October 4 and 5^th. And the Pope indeed took an active role in this. And I did get a chance to meet him on both days, which was an amazing experience.

But it was really an incredibly diverse group of folks involved – Sunni and Shi’a leaders, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, a couple of Ayatollahs. We had Jain, Zoroastrian, Sikh, Hindu leaders. We had the head of the World Evangelical Alliance, the head of the World Council of Churches, the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the World Friends, head of the World Lutheran Association – and then me.

So I did hear a little bit of that old Sesame Street “One of these things is not like the others…” in terms of institutional size. What I did bring into it – which I think was important – was a science background, and specifically an environmental background. And it was a great chance for all of those things to work together. And the whole discussion was really enriched by the active participation of science leaders, social scientists, hard scientists, including several who work for the Vatican and in the pontifical science institutes, and one British scientist who’s also a theologian. So it was really a full-on display of science and faith working together.

Geoff Mitelman: So, what I think is interesting – and I find this challenging – of looking at questions of climate change, is that I think for a lot of people, the science is not the barrier, right? The science is pretty clear. The question becomes politics and messaging and economics – that the science is pretty clear. And in the Jewish world – I don’t know if this is your experience, but I find that there [we are] almost not quite sure where to move in the Jewish community, because the Jewish community has recognized that climate change is a real issue – that’s not where the barrier is – but that it’s hard to be able to rally around and make a big statement moving forward. So I’m curious as to: How do you see the relationship with the scientists and these faith leaders, and how is the Jewish community the way other faith traditions are looking at these questions?

Daniel Swartz: Yeah. So I do think that there are still people out there – despite your good work – when we traveled around in Italy for about a week before the conference, my wife and I – she’s a Reconstructionist rabbi – and there were a number of folks there when we know there are these faith leaders, and they all shook their heads, and they all understood the role that Pope Francis has played in this. They all felt climate change was serious. They were in the midst of a drought in Tuscany, where it hadn’t rained in three months, and then it stormed and flooded. They lived this. We were staying on olive farms and went truffle-hunting. And these are all people who witnessed this in their daily lives. But when we said that the scientists and the faith leaders were working together, they were like, “Really? That happens? You can do that?” Which was interesting, because the Vatican, despite the stories of Galileo, has been really working with scientists for a very long time.

Geoff Mitelman: There’s a Vatican astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno – I can’t ever pronounce his last name, but yeah, there’s a Vatican astronomy organization.

Daniel Swartz: Yeah. I think, really, the scientists that were part of this dialogue feel like they have kind of hit their heads against the wall as much as they can – “How many times can you say the science is clear?” The science is clear. The science is even more clear. Now it’s clearer still. And the marginal growth in scientific certainty isn’t going to flip the political question.

And similarly, when people say, “Well, how are we going to solve it? We need to invent these technologies.” Yeah, I mean, there are more technologies that could be invented, but we have enough of the right technology, right now, to address the issue. The real question is political will and economic investment.

And so, our role as faith leaders – really, very clearly in this – is to excite people, to engage people, to help folks understand that if you are thinking about what it means to be a person of faith in the 21st century, and climate change isn’t on your radar screen, then you’re missing one of the key moral issues of the day.

And in some places – so there’s the people who kind of know this, but it’s not important enough. “Why do it now? Why make sacrifices now?” And there, we’re really calling on people’s higher selves. And there are also people who have sort of bought a fairly substantial propaganda machine that says, “This is not real, we don’t need to do anything about it, it’s government overreach,” and who don’t trust science. And for those people, it’s really faith leaders opening the door and trying to say, “Listen, you may have heard this thing in your faith about loving your neighbor – it’s been around for a while. In the world that we live in now, our neighbors are, really, anyone across the planet. They not even limited to the human species. And we’re being bad neighbors. Every time that we don’t address climate change, every time that we waste energy, every time we push off the policies that we need to do, we are really actively being a bad neighbor and causing life-threatening problems for people across the globe.”

Geoff Mitelman: I’m curious, because one thing that I’ve come to – I would say – believe or accept in a lot of ways (and I would love to know if this is accurate or inaccurate) that a lot of the responsibility has been shunted onto individuals, when in fact, climate change is a global issue. Almost by definition, it’s a global issue. And so, there’s a lot of push of, “Okay, make sure you recycle and make sure you turn your lights off and make sure – and if you don’t do this, you’re a bad person and you’re a guilty person.”

And look, I think there’s value in doing all those things, but what needs to happen is creating policies and regulation and a larger political machine to be able to really make this kind of impact. How are we going to put pressure on businesses? How are we going to put pressure on political institutions? And in some ways, it’s harder to be able to coalesce around these kinds of big, large-scale issues.

But how accurate is that? How much is it is, “Okay, let’s make sure you flip your light off,” versus, “No, make sure you vote for a candidate who is going to be writing policies that are going to be advocating to stem climate change”?

Daniel Swartz: Yeah. That was one of my big roles at this meeting, was to make that exact point many times. Because there is this tendency because of how people (I think even moreso people outside of the religious world than inside it), to think of religion as equaling individual piety, and thus individual actions. And you’re right – that’s less controversial, but it’s not going to solve the problem.

There are sort of three steps to answering that question. I think the first is to recognize the symbolic value of individual actions – both to get yourself out of the paralysis of, like, “I can’t do anything, this is too big.” And when you take that first step, even if it’s very symbolic – of getting a more energy-efficient refrigerator, of changing your light bulbs, of putting solar on your house. That empowers you. And it also sort of makes it easier for you to say, “I’m walking my talk, and how about you?” So, the actual individual action is important, then, for symbolic motivation, and for the authenticity of your voice.

The second thing is that when we’re talking about all these different faith groups, that they themselves are also large institutions with land and investments. And so, we really can use our own economic institutional power in terms of calling for investment and divestment in a way that can prod and push things. And often, if businesses are facing the choice of, “Am I going to deal with a bunch of smaller-scale economic things that I have to deal with one at a time?” or “If I can accept a national or international policy,” at some point it becomes more convenient to deal with something that’s standardized on a national level. So, the opposition goes down.

But really, we do have to go to that third place, which is, “Okay, yeah, let’s take the symbolic actions, let’s get motivated, let’s take the institutional actions.” Those can be on a greater scale, but this is not going to be solved unless we have the right policies. There are many choices that individuals can’t even make if the right policies aren’t there. In different states in our country, in some places, if you put solar up, you get this big tax break. In other places, if you put solar up, you actually get penalized economically in a variety of ways because of different policies – so, who’s going to do that?

And so, even the things that end up [needing] individual buy-in, you need the right policies in place to be able to do that. So, I think the Jewish community has this long experience that, yes, when we want to have interfaith dialogue, part of that is to open hearts and minds, and part of it is to make sure they don’t burn us and chase us out of the village – but that you want laws about discrimination because, to some extent, “Yes, I want you to have an open mind, I want you to treat me as a decent human being, but I need a floor that says that you can’t fire me because I’m Jewish, that says you can’t deny housing to me because I’m Jewish.” And those are policies. And even if you still hate Jews, if you’ve got those policies in place, you’re not actively behaving in a way that hurts me.

And I think that’s a useful analogy in this. Yeah, it’d be great if we want everybody in the world to do this on their own, but what we really need is to have policies in place that make sure that I’m not harming people across the world through my energy use or not-use, because there are the right policies in place.\

Geoff Mitelman: When you talk about the importance of symbolism, that’s a huge power that religious leaders and religious communities have, of being able to – because almost by definition, they have power beyond what their actions are. And I’m thinking of one of the books that I read when I was in rabbinical school – which is now a little bit dated, but The Rabbi As A Symbolic Exemplar. Which is scary, and there’s a lot of responsibility of that, and people can interpret symbols in a lot of different ways, but being able to say “We’re going to become LEED-certified, we’re going to be zero-waste…” We’re involved in a few different synagogues that now compost – and that’s a big statement, that when you go to Kiddush or if you’re at a church and you go to coffee hour, and you see that everything is compostable – not just recyclable, but compostable – that could trickle down to what day-to-day actions are.

Daniel Swartz: Yeah. So, we’re involved with a group that’s placed in Florida called Tikkun HaYam, “repair the sea.” And their whole mission is to get folks in the Jewish community to care more about the oceans, and to take steps to protect the oceans. And their central, signature program is symbolic, but it’s a symbolism that has these kind of waves of repercussions. It’s led by a Hillel rabbi who was taking some of his students out for Tashlich to the Gulf of Mexico. And one of the students said, “Why are we casting our sins into the ocean when we see our sins all along the beach?” pointing to the litter there. And so they started a program called Reverse Tashlich, where instead of casting our sins out, we gather together our sins on the ocean. And again, even something like littering – having the right policies in place is probably more important than me going out and picking up litter. But that does empower me, and it also helps me see – “Lord, there are so many single use plastics out here. Why are we creating this kind of waste in the first place?”

And so, that symbolic action – which, the last one we did was this Sunday, September 12^th – we had about 150 groups in 16 countries – all told, several thousand participants. So, this made an impact on those participants, but it made an impact on people reading about it in the newspaper. It made an impact on those people coming and telling their friends about it. And it changed how we think about what our role is – not just the picking up of trash, but, “Gee, why is there that much trash there in the first place?”

So, yes, the symbolism is very important, and definitely the symbolism of the Vatican being behind something is incredibly important. The Pope setting aside a day and a half in his schedule – that’s significant. And even on a very small scale – so, the second day focused on the role of education, both in terms of climate change, but more broadly in terms of empowerment, and focusing on those who have been excluded because of gender or poverty, et cetera. At the first day, there were 40 religious leaders speaking, and they gave us 800 characters. I mean, they monitor it incredibly closely. So, we had to get something approved; if it was over 800 characters, it got sent back to you. So that all ran on smooth Vatican time.

The second day, we were told to speak for three minutes or less, which was much more dangerous when you have 20 religious leaders – and not everyone was following that. And so, the Pope had a meeting that he had to get to, and they, in fact, said, “We’re sorry, the Pope’s not going to be able to hear the last three speakers because of a meeting he has to go to. So we’re going to read this document that we’ve all signed first” –the education document, in addition to the climate document. And then it came time for one of the cardinals to take the Pope to the next meeting, and he went like this. He was saying, “I was here for everybody but these three people. How can I be talking about respect and walk out on them? The other people can wait.” And it was a very beautiful moment for everyone there. I happened to be one of the three. So it was a very important moment, as far as my personal ego was concerned. But it was just a very touching moment to see the Pope concerned about having just talked about respect and the value of all people, and the value of different voices, to live it out – and it really brought that lesson home in a way that would not have been brought home without that symbolic action.

It also was a reminder, for me, of both the power of Zoom and its limitations. I had met all these people, or at least I’d met their heads, for 10 months, but I’d not had any unstructured conversation with them. And so, here’s a limited amount of how much I know them and feel that kind of human connection that can lead to greater motivation and action. And there, in person, just being able to have whole-body language, to see somebody really lean forward while you’re talking… symbolism spoke on that level, too, of the ability of actually meeting somebody and getting to know them, not just as a colleague of a different faith, but as a human being.

Geoff Mitelman: So what are you hoping will come out of this meeting in the Vatican, right? Like, what’s your dream scenario five years from now? How is the world different because of this meeting at the Vatican?

Daniel Swartz: Well, again, this is both a combination, I think, of my rabbinic training in Jewish culture, and also living in Scranton, that I was kind of like, “Okay, so what are we going to do? Okay, we’ve got these great theoretical statements. What’s happening next?”

We had an afternoon meeting which was supposed to focus on “What are we doing next?” And people were still being very theoretical, and it’s like, “Come on, let’s talk tachlis. Let’s put our cards on the table.” And people made some commitments. One commitment, and this sort of gets us looking forward, is – we have actually sort of written a grading rubric for COP 26. We want these kinds of things to happen. We want these kinds of values to be expressed in terms of how rich nations help poor nations, in terms of transition, in terms of recognizing indigenous voices, in terms of what is valued. So, once COP is done, we need to review it and say, “Okay, these things were pretty good, these things were a little short, and these things were missing altogether” – and then keep speaking up.

It’s still a little squishy for me, but there is some commitment on behalf of all those who gathered in this to keep this going. Clearly, there are institutional commitments on the part of the Vatican. And some of the other groups involved, including COEJL, were headed with some American interfaith colleagues. You know, one of the great things about this meeting was that there were four Americans out of the group – as opposed to so many of these kinds of things that have so many Americans, it was a very good dose of humility.

But a number of my colleagues of other faith groups in America are headed to the State Department on Monday the 18th to read this document there, and to highlight the need for those kinds of actions at the State Department. So, I’m hoping that we will, I know that COEJL will, and I’m hoping that my partners in these other groups in other countries will continue to approach both their own followers, but also to continue to do this as an interfaith dialogue.

And if that happens, there are a couple of things that might look different. One is that it really was easier for me to work with all these different faith groups on the environment than on most issues. It’s certainly easier than if we were talking theology – way easier than if we were talking the Middle East. There’s the not-small side benefit of being able to have positive working relationships with organizations that might otherwise really be actively inimical to each other. That really happened on this individual human level, but also because we can do something positive together. And that feels good. So, I’m hoping if this kind of thing continues, that one of the side benefits is going to be that some cooperation and some recognition of shared humanity – I really hope that we make it unavoidable for if you’re asking questions of public morality – which every faith should – that climate change is in that list right in the beginning, and really get to the place where not just for enthusiasts like myself, or people like you who are really tuned in, that climate change is one of the ways that they think about “What does it mean to be a religious individual in these times?”

And then there’s what happens in the society. If we can come together around this, if we can see it as beyond a partisan issue, if we can say, “Okay, listen, there may be partisan disagreements about how to solve the problem, but not whether to solve the problem and not whether it’s a priority,” I think you’ve got a very different sort of world. I think there can be very healthy debates about government incentives versus government regulation, but I don’t think we can say, “Well, it’ll take care of itself,” or, “Let’s wait until we have more information.”

We were talking about how somebody brought up a fairly morbid picture of a grave that said, “I was still doing my research on the vaccine” on the headstone. And that’s going to be our epitaph for society if we don’t start taking actions, we’re going to have a flooded city that’s floated in way saying, ‘I’m still checking out about this climate change thing.’” We really need to get past seeing this as something to debate and something that we can then talk about how we’re going to do it, but that we all agree that it has to be done.

Geoff Mitelman: So how are you trying to translate the work that you’re doing? Because you’re trying to hit leverage points – it’s not enough just for COEJL to have a wonderful statement and sign on. You’re trying to have stakeholders from all different areas of where the Jewish world is. How are you trying to engage different aspects and elements of the Jewish community to be invested in this issue?

Daniel Swartz: So, a few different ways, and I think that’s really key. The COEJL has a somewhat complicated institutional history in its beginning versus who sponsored it at different points of its history. But we are still – while we’ve always been part of the national religious partnership for the environment, we’re also an affiliated program of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. And the leadership of JCPA has made it very clear, in discussions that I’ve had with them over the summer, that they want JCPA to be an important forum for bringing this to the Jewish community. So, starting in the end of October, the national JCPA policy discussions are going to include climate change and what we can do. My guess: Part of that discussion is going to be where people are, and who’s interested in doing this, because it’s been a while since we’ve actually had this conversation on either a national, institutional level or in a local federation, JCRC level, of knowing which parts of the Jewish community are ready to make this a priority. It’s very easy to just kind of focus on the groups already making noise, from the Religious Action Center, to Arthur Waskow and the Shalom Center, to a relatively new group that focuses just on climate change, Dayenu. But the established Jewish community – we haven’t really even asked them for a number of years, “So, what are you going to do and what do you think about this?”

And so, I think having this as ongoing agenda item in JCPA will, at the very least, start asking that question. And then we’ll have some targets with that information. Both positive targets – “Okay, this federation in North Carolina or in California is really interested in engaging this. How do we give them the tools and how do we connect them with other people?” But also, “Okay, so these groups are not doing anything. What can we do to, who can we contact within that world to speak up?” And there’ll be places which will be more challenging than others, very clearly.

One of the hopeful things was there were two rabbis out of this group of 40. The other rabbi was Noam Maranz from the American Jewish Committee. And the American Jewish Committee has not been engaged on environmental issues. He was engaged, in part, through his continued work on interreligious dialogue at an international level that he’s been doing through AJC and elsewise. So, Noam and I are going to talk about – of all those groups that he works with, not on environmental issues – where do we think we can go, and what would make a difference to them in terms of… if they’re not engaged, if they don’t think this is an issue, what would change their mind? And try to think of that strategically, and we’ll see.\

Geoff Mitelman: While you were talking, I remember somebody that we had talked with the Center for Earth Ethics, which was founded by Karenna Gore and does a lot of work on theology and religious organizations, engaging in questions of climate change. We had somebody from the Center for Earth Ethics who had done a lot of work with indigenous people. And one of the things that he brought up was that a lot of the Abrahamic traditions – particularly Judaism, Christianity, Islam – have this framing of we need to take care of the earth. And in a lot of indigenous cultures, that’s a totally foreign concept – the earth takes care of us.

And I’m curious, when you were talking that there were Zoroastrians and Jains in North America, in the Jewish community, when we think “interfaith,” at least within the Jewish world, we’re thinking, “Okay, Jews and Christians – Jews and predominantly liberal Christians,” and that’s who is involved in interfaith. And maybe the Catholic community, maybe the Muslim community, if there’s a mosque nearby. But we don’t normally have Jewish-Zoroastrian conversations.

What are some of the things that the Jewish community should be aware of and thinking about, of how these other religious traditions look at questions of climate change and environmental justice?

Daniel Swartz: Well, even before that, there’s a prior question, which is that I think we tend to – and really, we should know better in the Jewish community – but we tend to think in terms of speaking up for those whose voices are not being heard, instead of saying, “How can we have them speak up and be heard?” And that’s a big difference. And I know that I fall into that sometimes. It’s like, “Well, how can I speak on behalf of the indigenous people who are not being heard?” No, that’s not the right paradigm. What I can do is help create some space at the table – but they should be at the table, not me interpreting.

So, with all of these questions, whether we’re talking about Native American traditions or other, quote, “indigenous” traditions (to some extent, all of us, somewhere at least, are indigenous), but these folks who have been excluded from the table – that the point is not to raise their concerns, but to get them at the table. And then, once we do that, there really is a lot to learn.

One of the things that has been very moving to my wife and I, as we’ve participated in some of the Parliaments of the World Religions, has been kind of the different stage sociologically that different groups are in, in terms of interfaith dialogue. And seeing over and over again different indigenous traditions just wanting to be recognized as a religion – not even to the stage of valuing, but just getting in the door. And it’s really sad that we haven’t, because when we do, there really is a lot that can be learned, especially on the issue, I think, of climate. There are also some really fascinating things in terms of gender issues and so on, where there are other perspectives out there that are very helpful to get. But it really takes down the arrogance.

And it also, I think, helps us understand how vulnerable parts of the world are. If what you’re talking about is not only your livelihood, but your sacred lands being under threat from climate change – that hits in a different sort of way. Your tribal community has been on this island for countless generations, and the island is going under the water! I think for Jews, who are used to sort of at least contemplating, however accurately or inaccurately it is in modern geopolitical terms, the existential threat to Israel, to say, “Well, okay, it’s one thing to have an existential threat that you can at least build up an army against. But what about somebody whose existential threat is really to the existence of the land itself?” I think we really learn a lot when we engage in those ways. Like you said, there are different ways – different traditions of relating to the earth, different levels of spirituality tied into earth, practices that are very helpful for us to hear.

Geoff Mitelman: One of our fellows, Arvin Gouw (who’s actually going to be presenting at a conference at, I believe, St. Andrews right around when COP26 is happening), he is from Indonesia, and he shared a very interesting perspective of how the sea is viewed. And Indonesia, where there are a large number of Christians and Muslims who are there, but the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are focused on the land of Canaan, and the land is good, and the sea is viewed as scary and dangerous and potentially even evil. And that’s something that, unless we’re connected with – what does it mean to be a people of the sea like people in Indonesia? It’s something that is that, “Oh, I wasn’t even aware that that is an issue,” And just being able to recognize the challenges that we may be blind to.

Daniel Swartz: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the hardest problem to solve are the ones that you don’t even notice. And there really are these different ways. One of the thought exercises that I ask people to go through is to close your eyes and picture the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “environment,” and then ask them to open their eyes and to raise their hand if there were any people in that picture. And universally (I’ve only done this, for the most part, in Western audiences, or in a couple of Parliaments of the World’s Religions – both of which were held in North America, these particular ones, and so heavily North American bias in terms of participation), “environment” is this thing that is out there that we’re not a part of. Even if you go back just to Jewish biblical traditions, that wasn’t the case. There’s not a word for “the environment.” The concept that there’s some place that is separate from us – it just wouldn’t make sense. But we have interpreted the world through this modern Western mindset that really separates human and nature.

And so, getting around that, and understanding that we’ve just missed out that the way that we’re thinking about this is not useful. and is blinding us to some things that we need to see – and I think it just in general is easier to see somebody else’s blind spots than your own. And so, one of the inherent values of dialogue with people who are more different from you is that it’s going to be more revealing of your blind spots.

Geoff Mitelman: Yeah. What sounds so powerful is that it’s not just the environmental issue – and we found this, too – but it’s almost using it as a means to be able to build those religious conversations across religious divides that you mentioned, too, of just being able to have, now, working relationships with Evangelicals, with Zoroastrians. We sort of joked – we presented both at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto, and we also presented at BioLogos, which is an Evangelical Christian organization advocating to help Christians to be able to accept evolution. But where you stand depends on where you sit, and being able to engage with people who are much farther right of where you are, and people who are much farther left of where you are – it’s helpful to be able to at least have working relationships, because that’s, almost by definition, what politics is: working with people that you may disagree with to be able to address issues.

Daniel Swartz: Yeah. On Thursday, there’s been – I had not heard this until they approached me; one of the side benefits of getting asked to the Vatican is, lots of people approach you that never would have otherwise approached you. But there’s ongoing multi-year scholarly discourse between Jewish community and Latter-Day Saints (informally called Mormons), and I had no idea. But this year, they’re focusing their dialogue on the environment and war and peace in the Jewish and Mormon Latter-Day Saint traditions. And again, there’s a way that having a topic to do this around makes even the direct relationship part easier to do.

I think that should make sense in our ordinary human experience: You get to know somebody by doing something with them, and then you can talk about your relationship. But to start to process a relationship when you haven’t even had it doesn’t work so well. So, if you want to get to know somebody as a friend, or going out on a date, you don’t sit there and just [be] sort of like, “Well, let’s talk about how we’re doing with each other.” There’s no “there” yet, so let’s do something together and then we can process it. And the environment is, I do think, a sort of user-friendly way to do that, both because there are so many issues of broad concern to humanity, but also – I think it’s very revealing in terms of how we think of others, and how we relate to the world, and what our role in the universe is, and all that. And we can address that in a way that is not just focused on our theological sensitive points.

Geoff Mitelman: So, one last sort of big question that I want to ask is that climate change often leads to a level of existential dread, and almost depression. And it feels like, “Oh, my God, I have no hope”. But that’s the Jewish joke of, “You always need hope.” There’s a great joke that ends with, “There’s no chance, maybe, but there’s always got to be a hope to be able to hold on to.” Where are there places where you’re seeing hope surrounding this issue?

Daniel Swartz: Yeah, it’s a little semantic, but I do think that it’s useful. Looking at something that Lord Jonathan Sacks said – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of England, that he said: “An optimist is somebody who expects things to get better.” And hope is different from optimism. It’s that you believe that if you engage, that things can possibly get better, but it’s not going to do it on its own, and it’s not necessarily something that the odds are in your favor. But you’re right – I think, without hope, we sort of curl into this fetal ball when we contemplate things like climate change. For me, it’s almost starting with the idea that I need to have hope in order to go looking for it. And then, once I’ve sort of made that commitment that I believe that things can change, that things can get better, that humans have agency, that we can fix problems that we create – then I can see, just first of all, the beauty of these people all getting together and having given up almost a month altogether of meeting time and travel time, and being together in person for this live meeting, that they’re willing to do that across these differences, is hopeful. I felt it was really important, and made some suggestions that were incorporated, that our statement talk about the role of religion in offering hope to the world, that we have some lived experience of being in dreadful, awful times and coming out not uninjured, not without loss, not without tragedy – but of there being another side.

And just being able to address loss – to not sort of say the two options are ignoring loss or being overwhelmed, but saying, “No, there are other options” – we have these traditions of knowing that everybody has loss, everybody mourns in one way or another, and to know that, that’s a very human, basic thing, and that if we address it correctly and compassionately, that loss is not all that we experience. I think the passion of young voices is exciting, but I was also equally thrilled by seeing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the Pope embrace each other after several centuries of millennia of issues between the Catholic Church and the various Orthodox churches. But, the thing that led to that embrace was them having a shared concern for the environment and its impact on the poor. So that all, to me, feels hopeful.

I would say that in our travels across Italy, before we got to Rome, that the average people that we spoke to know, first off know, when we said that we were meeting with Pope Francis, they were all like – there’s a smile on everybody’s face, and clearly some very warm feelings. And when we said they were talking about climate change, they, you know, they all shook their heads. They all – you know, we didn’t have to convince anybody. And I do think that when we get past the sort of screaming headlines that people are seeing in their daily lives more and more that this is going on – and if we can get past some of that need to define partisan enemies around climate change – that we have a chance among real people to come together around this. And so, for me, that’s a place of hope, too.

Geoff Mitelman: That’s a wonderful place to be able to end, and to be able to think about where we go from here. And if people want to get involved, what’s the best way to do so?

Daniel Swartz: Our website for COEJL is – every Jewish group needs an unpronounceable acronym, but it’s coejl.org, or email me directly at rabbidaniel at comcast dot net, and happy to try to get folks involved. Certainly, we are going to be trying to have a lot of activities between now and the end of COP26, which will run through most of November. But this is a multi-year battle, so there’s plenty to do and plenty of support needed to do that. And I encourage folks who are younger and thinking about “Can I do this in my life?” to reach out as well, and for us to talk about opportunities for internships or suggestions about things we might study or do.

Geoff Mitelman: That’s wonderful. And I encourage people to be able to go to COEJL’s website, or email Rabbi Daniel, and learn about different ways to engage on this really crucial issue. So, thank you not only for your time this afternoon, but for all the work that you’re doing to help combat climate change, to build bridges across different religious traditions. It’s such interesting, important work.

And actually, in a couple of weeks, we’re going to be talking with Joelle Novey, who is the director of the Northern Virginia Interfaith Power and Light – so, we’ll be talking more about how these issues play themselves out on a ground level in a couple of weeks. Next week, we’ll be talking with Dr. Yair Lior, of Scholarium, of “How do we translate some of the academic work that we do into engageable and usable questions in our world today?” So you can follow us. Each week we have conversations on Tuesdays at 2:00 p.m. Eastern at jewishlive.org/sacred science. You can also find me on Twitter. I’m at rabbi Middleman. And we hope that we will see you again next week. And Daniel, thank you for taking the time with us here this afternoon.

Daniel Swartz: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.