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