JUNE 29 • 2023 | 7

these verses expansively, saying that when Rabbi 
Yochanan ben Zakkai began to teach mystical 
secrets, the trees started to sing. The Zohar, the 
mystical Torah commentary, imagines that when 
the Creator visits the Garden of Eden at mid-
night, the trees burst into song.
This description of plants is a reflection of the 
way many of us experience plants — as alive and 
in relationship to us. And it’s likely they reflect how 
our ancestors did too. Many indigenous spiritual 
practitioners consider plants to possess intelligence, 
so it’s certainly possible our ancestors saw plants 
this way as well. And it might be time for us to be 
mindful of this too, given that we are breathing in 
what plants breathe out and vice versa.
A team of researchers at Tel Aviv University 
has recently discovered that plants make sounds, 
albeit at a frequency we can’t hear, and that they 
make more sounds when distressed. This claim 
was made long ago in the Midrash, which teach-
es that when a tree is cut down, its cry goes from 
one end of the world to the other but no one 
hears. How differently might we act if we could 
hear the cries of trees and plants? And how 
much richer might we be if we could tune into 
their songs?
Indeed, this might not be as far-fetched as it 
sounds. In some kabbalistic understandings, we 
have plant consciousness inside us. According 
to the mystic Hayyim Vital, plants are a category 
of beings known as the tzomeach — the growing 
ones. They exist among four kinds of living crea-
tures: humans, animals, plants and stones (yes, 
even stones are considered beings). Vital says that 
the human soul reflects all these kinds of beings, 
and so perhaps we are kin to all of them. Even 
God has plant-like aspects: The kabbalists call 
the structure of the Divine personality the Tree 
of Life, and in the Zohar, the Divine Presence is 
called the gan, the garden, or the chekel detapuchin 
kadishin, the holy apple orchard.
My own small New York apartment has many 
fewer plants than my mother’s home, but I care 
for them lovingly. Once, while I was away, the 
cat sitter forgot to water the fuschia, and when 
I came home it was nearly dead and had only 
five living leaves left. I slowly nurtured it back 
to health, watering often but not too much, and 
now, a year later, it has bloomed many times. I 
may not be able to hear its voice, but I can see its 
beauty, and I can feel the power and persistence 
of its life-force. As summer begins, I invite all of 
us to celebrate, protect and listen to these green 
beings, these creatures who eat light and who 
create the very air we breathe. 

Rabbi Jill Hammer is an author, teacher, midrashist, mystic, 

poet, essayist and priestess. This article originally appeared 

on My Jewish Learning.

That, or Conservative will remain as 
a smaller movement, concentrated in 
large population centers.

ORTHODOX JUDAISM
Orthodoxy, meanwhile, claims 17% of 
Jews ages 18 to 29, compared with just 
3% of Jews 65 and older, according to 
Pew. If current trends continue, their 
proportion of the entire Jewish popula-
tion in America will grow from a small 
minority to a dominant majority by the 
end of the century.
Yet there is no one “Orthodoxy” 
in America. Orthodoxy is expressed 
in Modern and Centrist forms, the 
many flavors of Hasidism, the numer-
ous forms of non-Hasidic “haredi” 
Orthodoxy, Chabad-Lubavitch and the 
Orthodoxies that push the religious 
and ritual envelope in countless ways. 
It’s about choice.
But the price for Orthodoxy may 
be high, as the increased fractionaliza-
tion of the movement demonstrates. 
Haredi groups (what we call Sectarian 
Orthodox, and others call “ultra-Or-
thodox”) operate by preventing choice, 
especially in some of the more sectar-
ian Hasidic groups that create barriers 
to prevent adherents from leaving. 
More progressive Orthodox groups 
have adopted strategies that accommo-
date choice.
Orthodoxy will remain strong, but 
its future presents no consistent pat-
tern.

JEWISH RENEWAL
Understanding Jewish Renewal is 
central to understanding the present 
and future of American Judaism. The 
varied expressions of Jewish Renewal 
that took root in the 1960s and ’70s 
— the havurah movement, Jewish fem-
inism, practices that bear its spiritual 
approach — found newer expressions 
in communities such as Kehillat Hadar 
in New York; Yeshivat Maharat, which 
provides Orthodox ordination to 
women; The Kitchen in Los Angeles; 
“partnership” minyanim that maxi-
mize women’s participation within the 
parameters of traditional Halachah, or 
Jewish law, and New York’s unaffiliated 
B’nai Jeshurun congregation. Indeed, 
while the formal structures that gen-

erated Renewal recede in memory, 
Renewal has had a broad and deep 
impact on American Judaism and on 
American Jewish life.
The impulse of Renewal, whatever 
its varied expression, was and is to cre-
ate alternatives to the prevailing Jewish 
movements and forms. These alterna-
tives are “chosen” ways of participation, 
and Renewal is yet vibrant.

THE ‘NONES’
The wildcard in American Judaism is, 
of course, the “nones,
” those who iden-
tify as Jews of no religion. According 
to Pew, the percentage of U.S. Jews who 
do not claim any religion is 27% — 
higher among the young and going 
up. The future of Judaism in America 
will depend in part on the relative 
percentages of Jews with religion and 
Jews of no religion: Which will grow, 
and which will decline?
What has changed in American 
Jewish religious life? It is what Will 
Herberg, in his landmark book 
Catholic-Protestant-Jew, did not see 
in the 1950s: There is no longer any 
pressure to remain within any given 
religious community, nor in any 
movement or stream of Judaism, nor 
within Judaism itself (as the rise of 
the “nones” suggests). The American 
Jewish religious future — for all the 
movements, denominations and 
post-denominationalists — will be 
positioned in this dynamic.
When religious identity is 
increasingly seen as a matter of 
personal choice, groups that have 
depended upon ascribed identity 
to guarantee their numbers will be 
challenged to develop not only new 
means of keeping and attracting 
members but also new ways of con-
ceptualizing and communicating 
who and what they are. 

Jerome A. Chanes is co-editor with Mark Silk 

of “The Future of Judaism in America” and the 

author or editor of four previous books and 

more than 100 articles, reviews, book-chapters 

and encyclopedia entries on Jewish public 

affairs, history, and arts and letters. Mark Silk 

is director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center 

for the Study of Religion in Public Life and pro-

fessor of religion in public life at Trinity College, 

Hartford.

THE JEWISH FUTURE continued from page 4

