The Passover story is one of intense grief and loss as well as redemption and freedom. And while the Jews fled Egypt 3,000 years ago, many aspects of the story seem particularly relevant in a world plagued by extreme climate events and COVID-19. So, how might the events of Passover inform the way we think about climate change? Can we customize our Passover observances in a way that considers our responsibility to solve the climate crisis?
Sarah Tuneberg is the CEO of Geospiza, a software company that helps cities and corporations take action around climate risk, and she spent 2020 leading the State of Colorado’s Coronavirus Innovation Response Team. On this episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast, Sarah returns to explain the Jewish tradition of the Passover Seder and explore how it might be customized around the theme of climate change.
Sarah walks us through the Seder meal, describing the inclusive nature of the service and the Jewish tradition of questioning that allows for reinterpretation of the Passover story. Listen in to understand how the idea of tikkun olam requires an active pursuit of social justice and learn how to incorporate climate elements in your Seder celebration this year.
Connect with Ross
Subscribe to the show on Substack @ rosskenyon.com/subscribe.
I also write Carbon Removal Memes and curate Climate Workers Anonymous.
Resources
Sarah Tuneberg on Reversing Climate Change EP094
New American Haggadah by Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer on Reversing Climate Change S2EP29
An Overview of the Story of Passover
What to Expect at a Passover Seder
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Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Hello, and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the creative editor at Nori’s Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today, I have with me an alumna, Sarah Thunberg, CEO and co-founder of GeoSpisa, and more recently, Colorado’s COVID czar. What a sentence. I’m so privileged to get to say such a thing. Welcome, Sarah.
Sarah Tuneberg: Thanks for having me.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, this show has been so long in the making. We tried to last year and we were gearing up for it. In fact, this outline that we’re working off of was built for a year ago, but the pandemic happened and it prevented us from doing this Passover episode. So we’re here now.
Sarah Tuneberg: We’re here now. And it’s very exciting because I think... A long, gestated podcast is a good thing. I’ve reflected deeply on it in moments across the last year, and I think we’re better for it now.
Ross Kenyon: You really had time to think about this over the last year?
Sarah Tuneberg: Occasionally, when you were like, hey, are we going to do it? And I was like, yes! And then I’d be like, oh, such good things to think about. And then it was all COVID all the time.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I can imagine that. If you go back and listen to Sarah’s original episode, we were talking about climate risk and how various organizations are working to visualize that, understand that risk and act on it in cases where they can. Is that an okay summary of your work?
Sarah Tuneberg: Very, very good. It’s the understanding that you need to take the changes to reduce the risk. And as we’ve seen over the last year, we live in a world of risk and a world we do very poorly at preparing for that risk.
Ross Kenyon: I feel like you’re getting at something specific. Is this potentially related to your pandemic work? Does this all flow together for you?
Sarah Tuneberg: It does, actually, because I think that one of the deep learnings of my career and my work is that All of the things we think of as surprises or natural disasters or anything like this, we know that they’re likely to come. We do the modeling about them. We even do exercises to practice for them. And yet when they happen, we’re like, oh my gosh, what are you talking about? We had no idea. How could we ever have known this was going to happen? We pretty much always know. And so it’s a human problem.
And I think we’ll talk in our episode about catastrophe in the form of the plagues. And so even back in biblical times, we had natural catastrophe and they are, turns out, not that different than what we’re dealing with now. So that we’re surprised is surprising to me.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Abortive joke in there. I was thinking a czar in biblical times would be a Caesar, right?
Sarah Tuneberg: I think so, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: That’s the joke I’m trying to make. I don’t know the exact way to package it. We’ll just leave it at that, I think.
Sarah Tuneberg: I like it. It’s lovely.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Okay. Before we get into the Passover story, how climate relates, what happened in this last year for you? What was it like working with Colorado state government and the pandemic response?
Sarah Tuneberg: I will say that I’m not sure yet. I feel like it has been a year of incredible intensity and loss and the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life and that the work was so intense and driven. That I feel like I lived in sort of state of adrenaline or fight or flight for nine months. And I’m not yet sure exactly. I’m not sure if I even like laid down the memories in my brain yet. It’s still just sort of stewing around up there. But what I will say is it was a year of people coming together and doing their absolute best and just...
Trying with everything. Lots of the work was very intellectual, very academic, very brainy. And yet you would see people’s bodies on video calls just tense up and move forward. And you could see that my colleagues and the people who were all across the world working to solve this had every cell in their body in it. And it was an incredible thing to witness. Yeah. So I’m not sure we should have another episode next year, maybe at this time, and we can reflect on all of this crazy. I’m not quite there yet.
Still just trying to take a breath.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. It sounds pretty raw still then. Well, I’m sure we’ll try to do another podcast in a year. And then three years later when we actually do it, then we can talk about it. Maybe that’s enough time to reflect.
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah. I think that sounds like plenty.
Ross Kenyon: I’m trying to remember how exactly this came up in the first time you were on the show. I think we were just talking about the plagues of Exodus. You had recommended this book that I have here, which is Jonathan Safran Foer’s, another podcast alum, his New American Haggadah. I worked through it. It was the first one I’ve ever read and experienced, except for I went to a friend’s Seder once. I guess that was the only other time I’ve referenced one of these, but... Yeah, I got a lot out of it.
And apparently these are quite customizable. A lot of people customize their Passover Seder and to feature different elements of the story and different themes. But I suppose before we get to the customizability, you could say, maybe we should just start with the bare bones. Like what is the story of Passover? What is a Seder? Let’s set a nice foundation for everyone.
Sarah Tuneberg: Sure, absolutely. So Passover is one of the oldest Jewish holidays and it... Celebrates the Jews’ exodus from slavery in Egypt. And it is a big momentous event in Jewish history in that the Jews were able to leave slavery and bondage in Egypt and go into the desert where they began to wander, which then led them to entry into Israel. And enshrined in sort of all of this legend and myth are lots of details, but it also is The giving of the Ten Commandments comes in this place. This is the early, early days, not Genesis, not the beginning, but the story of Exodus.
One of the things that’s very wonderful and beautiful about the Passover story is that it is a holiday that is oriented around lots of traditions in the home. And lots of storytelling. It’s not a single night. It is a many night event. And so there’s a first night Seder, a second night Seder, you can do it for up to eight nights, differing in traditions. And so it’s one, in Judaism, there is a lot of, as with any faith tradition, there’s a lot of food, there’s a lot of ritual, but Passover to me is the one where it just is like, Magnified.
And the Haggadah, the book you reference, is the story guide. It’s the text that guides us through the meal. We have a meal in Passover, is where the prayers happen. So you sit at the table with your family and friends, and you process through the story. And there’s wine and specific foods. And so it’s a real... Feast of the senses of intellectualism and questioning. It’s a pretty wonderful holiday.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s a great place to start. And if you’re listening and you’re not familiar, seders is, as I understand it, is just the name of the actual celebration or the event itself of Passover. Is that the correct way to understand it?
Sarah Tuneberg: So a seder is a meal. And it is a special meal in that there are prayers and storytelling and foods and wine. So it’s the event, you build them together to make Passover.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, understood. I was familiar more with the pretty basic story of Exodus and how Passover is celebrated. But my understanding is that you can customize this a great deal. And people will write Haggadahs that feature different themes they’ll highlight. And so we seized upon an idea of a climate Haggadah or like a climate Seder. Have you been to many Seders or how much customizability do you feature in your celebration of Passover? Give us something on that.
Sarah Tuneberg: Let me preface this by saying this is Judaism and Passover from my perspective. And with all things Judaism, as many people or Jews as there are, there are perspectives. And Judaism is a tradition of questioning and study. That is the best. That is the highest art. The holiest activity is to study all of the Torah and the books and the teachings. So this is my perspective. You might have a different one. But the Haggadah is a classic Jewish text in that it is not static. It’s malleable. It’s adjustable. My personal family Haggadah is like a mess.
It’s a manila folder that is a mess of stories. And every year we sort of discuss which ones we want to highlight. Are we going short? Are we going long? Are we doing lots of singing? Are we talking? What’s the point? And then we’ll sort of like adjust and then make copies and pass them out. Others, my grandparents used the modern Jewish Reform Judaism Haggadah. It was a book. We did the whole thing. There was no messing around. You just did the one. And then there’s other things like I’ve been to a feminist Seder where it was all about the women of the Torah.
And it was all about adjusting to the lens of feminism. And it was very cool. So it’s this idea that you can really Reflect on what you need to in the moment. And I think one of the other things that’s fascinating and unique is that you do it in a meal. So you’re also sharing food and you’re drinking wine, if that’s your jam. The Haggadah calls for wine in particular places. So you can get a little tipsy and then the discussion gets exciting. So it’s all just really, it’s lovely.
Ross Kenyon: Lovely. Yeah, it struck me in my limited experience as being, well, the story of Exodus is a story of slavery and then the Jews escaping and like as a nation leaving Egypt and going their own way. And they sort of get lost on the way, right? They’re out in the desert after it for a while. But so it’s sort of like somber, but it seems celebratory too at the same time. Is that tonally kind of correct?
Sarah Tuneberg: Yes, absolutely. And there is redemption. It’s a story of redemption and freedom. And that is something that is incredibly celebratory. And I think in retrospect, especially because I don’t know. I am blessed to have never been a slave, but I don’t imagine, I don’t know what that experience would have been like for them. And it’s also a story of incredible loss and trauma. The killing of the firstborn of each of the Egyptians, it’s horror, right? That’s trauma like we couldn’t even contemplate. And the plagues are terrible. As with life, I think there’s levity, there’s celebration, there’s grief and loss punctuated by redemption.
Ross Kenyon: Passover itself, the name is about the firstborn Egyptians being killed, right? Correct. And then the passing over is the Jews would put lamb’s blood over their doorway, something like that?
Sarah Tuneberg: So the message was for the Jewish houses to mark their... Doorsteps and their gates with lamb’s blood and the angel of death would know to pass over those homes and instead killed the firstborn in each of the others. And that tradition has been pulled forward and now the holiest prayers are tucked in a scroll and put in the mezuzah on the door. So it’s a linkage to that now Jews’ homes are always marked.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, I’ve only seen the, I guess I’ve seen mezuzahs on people’s doors before, but I learned about that from Curb Your Enthusiasm. I think much of my knowledge of Judaism is Larry David related.
Sarah Tuneberg: As it should be.
Ross Kenyon: As it should be, a fair amount. But, oh, so I didn’t know there’s a connection between the mezuzah though and Passover. That’s...
Sarah Tuneberg: They’re linked. In a prayer, it calls for it. But I think that this is, to me, always has been the interlinkages that, again, in Jewish tradition, we study and we reference and we note. So it’s very common in a book of Torah to have like one passage and then it’s like a whole three quarters of a page of like, Maimonides said this and Hillel said that and this person said the other thing. And so it’s just like, wait, what? Who? So yeah, so it gets, they get muddied. Some prayers say, you know, reflect back.
Ross Kenyon: I saw the scholar Jonathan Haidt say that argument and debate is a fundamentally Jewish cultural characteristic. It sounds like maybe you might agree with that scholarship debate, like working on your way through these texts and arguing about them. That seems, and also kind of Larry David too, right?
Sarah Tuneberg: Indeed. And I think it comes back to some degree to the story of Passover, which is in Passover are the first diaspora of many for the Jews. They had to leave everything. You couldn’t take anything with you. There’s the unleavened bread, the matzah, doesn’t have time to rise, so they just take what they can. But the most portable, highest value thing in Jewish tradition is education. Nobody can take it away from you. And in your diaspora, you get to keep everything that’s in your head. And so I think that’s, to me, has always been the root of the Jewish debate culture, the Jewish intellectualism, which is you can take all of our things.
You can put us in a ghetto, you can enslave us, but you can’t take what’s in our heads.
Ross Kenyon: What even is the correct way to understand that? Somber, sad, but I guess it’s been turned to a strong positive too at the same time.
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah, totally powerful.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s a power. It’s like a nice subversion of what one might expect from that. That’s great. I think this is a really good baseline to move from. How exactly does one celebrate a Seder when you host it? So in the Haggadah that I have, there’s a whole bunch of chants, things you say together, exercises, there’s sort of like thought experiments in there that you debate through and talk through. How do you do it? And how does it work?
Sarah Tuneberg: So it is of my tradition, we have a... Usually a big family Seder. And it’s family of choice and family of birth. Invite lots of people, extend out the table. And it begins with the washing of the hands in our tradition. And that is marking of specialness and ensuring that you’re sort of prepared is how I experience it. So you... Wash your hands. And I think some traditions and sometimes in our house, you wash another’s hands. So you pass a bowl, sort of a ritual washing, not a real one. There’s no soap.
And you sort of hold your hands over the bowl and the person pours it over and then you pass it along. Yeah. So it begins that way, which to me is an interesting reflection in this context of climate change, of a cleansing, of a beginning fresh. That’s how it begins at our house.
Ross Kenyon: A nice clean start. That’s you have to get your house in order, get yourself taken care of, and then you’re prepared to proceed or something like that maybe.
Sarah Tuneberg: Exactly.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. So then there’s this ritual hand washing. Where do you go from there?
Sarah Tuneberg: So one of the key traditions, and it’s not a tradition that’s called for and defined, is that you recline in Passover. That you have an extra pillow. You get your comfy chair. You get your stretchy pants. My family, because you eat a ton. But you recline. And we’ll come to the four questions. I think we’ll talk about that. But one of the questions is, why on this night do we recline? And there are lots of reasons why. But one of them... And the reason that I think about is about we can do this very hard work.
We can have this big reflection and event and also be comfortable in doing it. And perhaps in being comfortable, we have more capacity to be thinking and we have more capacity to be reflective. In the climate lens, I think a lot about the idea of comfort and being able to be okay. As a barrier to the changes we need to make in climate change. That there is this idea that you have to be a vegetarian and you have to walk everywhere and you can never take an airplane trip again. And it’s this very restrictive life if we’re going to have a carbon neutral life or a carbon negative life or if we’re going to really make an impact.
But I think the Jewish teaching of this reclining idea is that We can do very hard things and still have comfort. And maybe we can do harder things when we’re comfortable. That if we accommodate ourselves and our base needs, maybe that gives us greater capacity. And so maybe if we pulled that forward and it wasn’t this like all or nothing, you’ve got to do everything. No plastic ever, forever. We’d get more people on the side of like minor changes. I don’t know. To me, it also comes back to this idea like you can have anything, but you can’t have everything a little bit.
And so like maybe we need to let people have a little bit and they’ll do better work on the climate.
Ross Kenyon: That’s an interesting idea. Certainly, I’m trying to think of a good way to express it. But I imagine it’s easier to care about something that’s abstract that may affect your children or grandchildren to a far greater degree. This is something That is farther away. But if you’re not struggling to get your basic needs met, you’re able to zoom out a little bit. It’s a little bit easier to think about things that are farther away. Of course, climate change isn’t farther away for everyone, but at least for some people listening, it is sort of at this point still elective to think about, I think.
Sarah Tuneberg: Oh, I think that’s a really good framing. This idea too of basic needs being met. Allows you to have space to worry about the other things and that you can’t if you’re if you’re struggling to eat and all you can do is eat the meat or the whatever. Oh, yeah, I agree that resonates with me deeply.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, that’s good. If all you get is free manna from heaven and you really want quail, what a poor... By the way, I love that part of Exodus, which if you’re listening after Egypt, the Jews are in the desert and they get free bread that tastes like it’s been flavored with honey. And they’re like, we don’t really like it that much. We’d like... Can you get any quail up there, God, that you can send down? Does that crack you up? I don’t know. It seems funny to me. Is this intentionally funny?
Sarah Tuneberg: It does crack me up. And I think there’s so many things like that, which leads to really good questions of like, why? What on earth? And the multi-authorship of Hebrew texts? Like there isn’t a single author. There’s so many. So I’ve never actually read any of the reflection, but I would love to see like, why quail and not honey? Also, are there quail in the desert? Is it like a remnant? Is there a memory there? I have no idea, but I agree. It’s hilarious. And it also speaks to sort of, it’s never good enough.
Wandering the desert, you get free food and you’re like, but really, what I want is the quail. Come on, dude.
Ross Kenyon: I grew up in Arizona and there’s tonnes of quail there. Quail in the desert.
Sarah Tuneberg: There you go.
Ross Kenyon: Quail in the Desert, yeah. No, I love that too. I think I got this from Amy Jill Levine. Her work’s come up on other podcasts and she’s a Jewish scholar of the New Testament. So her perspectives are always really interesting to read about. But she had something I learned earlier. We’re just like trying to understand the humor and how much of the scripture is actually intended to be funny in her opinion. And so reading Exodus like that, I reread it for this podcast. And one thing that always gets me to you on the same front is Moses on Mount Sinai.
He’s up there for 40 days, you know, getting the tablets, getting the 10 commandments. And he comes back and the Jews are already building a golden calf. They’re already like building an idol. And he’s like, that’s like the one rule guys is like, you can’t, you know, you know, this doesn’t work, right? This is how God gets really mad at you over and over again. 40 days, not even that long.
Sarah Tuneberg: No, it’s nothing. 40 days. And this idea too of like, I’m a planner, right? I’m an emergency manager. I’m like, how much planning did they have to do to be at 40 days already have constructed it? They’ve been working on that for like since you went up there.
Ross Kenyon: What? You had to like gather all the jewelry from the people. You had to melt it down. You had to make the cast. There’s a whole series of operations.
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah, I had to agree that this was what they were going to spend their time on instead of like whatever else. Yeah, no.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know. It’s possible that this is not intended to be fun, but that’s the whole, the whole, as I understand Hebrew scripture, it’s this, there’s an agreement with God, the Jews break it in some way and they fall away and then some prophet will scold them and then they’ll sort of come back into God’s good graces and they break it. And it’s just sort of this like cycle of coming back to God and then losing the way and coming back. Is that kind of how you see it or am I imposing that?
Sarah Tuneberg: No, I think that’s true. I think that’s an accurate, it’s one of the many, but yes, of course. And isn’t that like human, isn’t that the way of humans? Oh, it’s all great. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, we’ve gone a little sideways. Please forgive me. Oh, I need a guru. You’re going to help me get back. Oh, I’m back. Okay. I think it’s like really common. I have, it’s like exercise and meditation, you know, it’s universal. It just can’t stay good forever.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think the overall shape of Hebrew scripture, if we accept that interpretation of it, is a sticky story because it rings true to us. Resolutions is a funny lens to see it in. You make these resolutions and then you don’t really keep them. Then you keep trying and trying, but you fail.
Sarah Tuneberg: I appreciate that there are even those prophets fail. That’s one of the things I love, that even the ones who do the best work aren’t perfect. So there is no perfection, just continuing self-improvement. You can always be better at Judaism.
Ross Kenyon: You can always be better at Judaism. It’s a great line. Okay, sorry. I let us down into tangents, hopefully related enough, but let’s get back into celebrating Seder. What comes next after the reclining?
Sarah Tuneberg: So I will admit it has been two years, though I’ve had many every year of my life. My Seder last year was a little sketchy. I had COVID and it was my birthday. My birthday falls in Passover, which as a small child was a huge bummer because I didn’t get a real cake. I got some sort of flourless nonsense. But in real life, it’s nice now. Good big party. And then there’s matzah braai, which we’re going to go a little tangent down food. Matzah braai is a sort of like French toast made with matzah.
And this is a subject of huge division. Some people love it and think it’s the greatest thing in the world. And I am pretty sure it’s like eating paper with maple syrup on it. I got no love for the matzo bra. Now people will be like, well, you can have matzo bra on your birthday. And I’ll be like, bleh. Anyway, so one of the things that is essential and quintessential of the Seder are the four questions. And the four questions are part of the Haggadah and they are asked by the youngest child.
And it is long held tradition to learn the four questions as a small child. And it’s a big thing when you can do it. If you can do it in Hebrew, even better. There’s a song. The questions are, why is this night different than all others? So why do we recline? Why do we eat bitter herb? Why do we eat only flat bread? And there’s another one maybe? Look at this. I’m not the youngest. So I never had to learn them. Anyway, the service is inclusive. It isn’t just the adults speaking.
It is about all people, including the youngest child who has a very important role. And I think about this in the context of climate is really important because talk in Passover about very difficult subjects, slavery, redemption, sadness. Sadness is an understatement. Unbelievable loss. And We give that storytelling responsibility to children as well as adults. And I think in doing that, we are ensuring that the story is transmittable between generations. That it isn’t too obtuse or intellectual, and that we get it to its simplest terms so that we cannot ever forget it.
And that even the youngest knows it. And I think about this, and this comes up for me with Greta Tuneberg a lot, that We had Al Gore and we had all sorts of other profits of climate change. And it wasn’t until Greta came along and was able to give us this incredibly simple message that a lot of people heard and that a lot of people were able to Internalize and also transmit the story of climate change. And so I really think deeply about this idea of ensuring our storytelling is appropriate for everybody and that everybody can then tell the story.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a really clever connection with Greta’s rhetorical approach and just maybe her personality generally speaking forcefully in very clear language. She also does have a bit of the sort of Hebrew scriptural prophetic thing going for her too as social critic, right? Those prophets are railing against civilization and society as they see it. What’s wrong with it? That seems very Greta-esque, no?
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah, I think the thing that I find especially Greta-esque and in the tie to the four questions is taking this incredibly complex, multifaceted story and being like, here’s the four key things. And I’m just going to talk about them incredibly simply, but not as a criticism, but like simply and elegantly. We don’t need we don’t need all the big words, all the big government talk like here’s what’s happening. Here’s what the consequences are. Here’s how we can stop it. And we need to do something about it now. And I just think it’s really beautiful, the idea of being able to have power with simple language, the most power, and also not negating the idea that even the smallest person, the youngest, can make magnificent change.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s a really beautiful sentiment. And it’s nice that it’s included in here too, ritualistically. It’s always the youngest child who says this?
Sarah Tuneberg: Always the youngest child. And so then when you go to adult seders, it’s very funny for it to be like, there was a lot of when I went to seders in college, it would be like, when’s your birthday? Because we were all really young, but there was always a youngest. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: That’s good to know. But yeah, it looks like these questions to, you know, why is tonight different? Why recline? Why the bitter herb? And why do we eat flatbread and matzah? What’s the bitter herb one stands out to me? Do you recall what that one might be about?
Sarah Tuneberg: So the bitter herb is to remind us of the time of slavery. And that we also dip our bitter herb in the United States, or in I think most tradition, the bitter herb we eat is parsley. And we dip it in salt water and eat it to remind us of the tears of the slaves and the bitterness of the work and being enslaved people.
Ross Kenyon: Hmm.
Sarah Tuneberg: Hmm.
Ross Kenyon: Hmm. So we’re still in like the somber part. Some of these thematically, it feels like you’re telling kids a sad story. You’re explaining why the bitter herb, why you’re eating flatbread. You’re eating matzo because there wasn’t time before fleeing Egypt. You had to make the bread. You didn’t have time to let it leaven. That’s my understanding. Is that right?
Sarah Tuneberg: Didn’t have time to go. So you baked it really fast so that you had something. And that something was a cracker.
Ross Kenyon: Right. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So then after this, this happens, the kids, they get their answers. They’re able to learn. They’re able to, and by the way, if you’re not able to explain your ideas in terms that, you know, at a low level of understanding that there’s always an open question of how well you understand those ideas. I think it’s an important exercise in general.
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah. In the startup world, there’s always this idea of pitching to a third grader, third grader. And they can understand and then retell you what your business is. I think that might say something about venture capitalists more than third graders, but.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. Throw in some Passover shade. I see. Very nice. Yeah. Okay. Um, where do you go from the four questions? What happens next?
Sarah Tuneberg: So again, this is, there’s sort of a meandering story and it’s, it’s differential and different in different families. Um, There’s wine, there’s all sorts of parts. But one of the things that I think, and this might be a little bit out of order, but thinking about Greta as a messenger leads me to the idea of Elijah. Elijah, the prophet, I believe he’s a prophet, the idea of ghost, if we don’t really have ghosts, but kind of like a ghost. So at Passover, We have a glass of wine for Elijah and we also, at a point in the service towards the end, open the door for Elijah.
And Elijah is the prophet, I believe, who will arrive prior to the Messiah. So there is an idea in Judaism that if a human form will come first to a particular A coastal village in Israel. And Elijah will appear first and sort of guide through. And we make room for Elijah, who’s considered a stranger because we don’t know Elijah and we don’t know when Elijah is going to come. So we make space for a stranger. And I think a lot about this in lots of different ways. But this is this sort of weaving of a thread Of connection and humans over time in the Passover message.
That one, we make space for people we don’t know. We traditionally in Passover, you are supposed to invite anybody who needs a home for Passover. Nobody should go without a meal. So we make space for the stranger. We also make space in our tradition. We think about Elijah as this ancestral ark. This connection where my grandparents, my great grandparents, the people all the way back to, you know, Europe. And before that, wherever they came from, making space for Elijah, this this force that was going to welcome the Messiah. And we still do it every year.
And also, I think it’s a really beautiful thing that you pour on a glass of wine and make it comfortable. Not only is it a seat, but there’s also wine for Elijah.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know how many times this happens in Hebrew scripture, but I feel it’s gotta be dozens of the admonition for you were once slaves in Egypt. And so it’s a exhortation that you need to extend a helping hand to be charitable, to be kind. Is this related at all or not really?
Sarah Tuneberg: I don’t actually know if it is, but there is a good Reflection there. I think that this idea of making space for the stranger, right? You were once slaves in Egypt, so you need to be more thoughtful and be more caring and have tzedakah or the giving of charity is really important. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: You were also telling me about an interesting idea about an idea of the Messiah within Jewish theology as maybe like the people overall or the time overall rather than a single person or something like that. Can you explain how that might work?
Sarah Tuneberg: Yes, absolutely. So the times... Of Judaism, the being a Jew in history has been one often of incredible trauma. You have being a slave in Egypt, you have subsequent wars, you have the Inquisition, and then obviously the Holocaust. And I learned it as post-Holocaust theology, which is rather than expecting there to be a single Human-formed Savior, a Messiah to come and save us all and usher us into the time of the Messianic period of peace, of all of that, that instead it’s incumbent on all of us to create the Messianic time, that we together can create the peace, can create the kindness.
It’s funny, all of the things that are coming up for me, I’m thinking of the opposite. So I’m thinking like, Ending poverty, ending inequity, ending violence, ending war. If we do that, that will make the time of the Messiah. Rather than us sort of waiting for it or waiting for somebody to save us, we need to do the hard work to make it be. And I think about that in the context of climate, like nobody’s going to save us from ourselves. We have to do the work. And perhaps the time of the Messiah, the first thing we need to do is to not have climate change and to stop it with the greenhouse gas emissions.
I don’t know. Just put it out there. That truly will be part of it.
Ross Kenyon: One term I’ve seen used frequently in these circles is tikkun olam. Is this all related in your mind?
Sarah Tuneberg: Yes, it is. The idea of doing good and not just doing good, but there’s an idea of righteous good in Judaism, that it’s not just doing good because you’re supposed to, but that actually doing the work of change, the work of charity, the work of help, the work of dismantling Broken systems that harm others. It’s a righteous, it’s righteous work. It’s the work that we all should be doing. I’m not getting the right word, but there’s an emphasis to it that’s really powerful.
Ross Kenyon: The shorthand, probably unfairly truncated version of it is Jewish social justice, maybe is a way to think of it.
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah. And so it’s not just about charity. I think there’s this idea of charity, which is you give, you donate money, you donate food, you whatever. That’s not enough in Judaism. You have to be socially just. You have to do more. Ah, you’re not allowed to stand by and let the bad thing happen. You actually have to be an active participant in dismantling or in I think about this a lot in the terms of in Holocaust times, which was there’s this idea of righteous Gentiles where those were the Gentiles who the non-Jews who hid people.
Who undermined the Nazis, who smuggled, who did other activities that were subversive, because it’s not good enough to just not have participated. You have to actively do the right thing.
Ross Kenyon: Do we even have a word in English that expresses that? I feel like you have to explain that idea.
Sarah Tuneberg: No, I don’t think we do, which is why we talk about tikkun olam, right? Like Jews don’t have shorthand. We’re like, we’re doing tikkun olam. And you’re like, what is tikkun olam? You’re like, it’s justice, but it’s righteous and it’s powerful and you don’t have a choice. You just have to do it. It’s not good. You know, like it’s a lot. There’s a lot. You on the podcast can’t see this, but like I have big hand movements about this.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, there’s a lot of that going on.
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah. So circling back to a couple of things we’ve already talked about, we also in Judaism make space for righteousness and comfort at Passover, right? We’re talking about an incredible loss and an incredible story of redemption, and we do it reclining. And we also, when we think about climate change, it’s not enough to just... B, you have to be actively engaged in the justice component. And for me, I think a lot about my role in the world and climate. And it looks like helping people who can’t, who don’t have the space or the capacity to be making those changes.
To what you said about if your basic needs can’t be met, how can we expect you to make space for this very hard work? So on the global scale, we talk a lot about developing nations and what work they need to do. And I think there’s this idea that, well, screw you, Western countries. You got to have all the benefits of a coal-inspired, coal-fueled development. Like, why can’t we have that? But this idea of we all have to do the hard work and maybe some of us have to work harder To compensate for the others who can’t.
I don’t know. That’s a little half-baked.
Ross Kenyon: That’s okay. I think there’s something there. I can see what you’re driving at. We should talk some about the plagues, right? I think this is what everyone thinks about when they say, oh, they’re doing a climate Passover episode. The plagues, rivers of blood, frogs, hail, climate change, natural disasters, and so on, right?
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah. Yes. And to the point that I said earlier, one of the things I find absolutely fascinating is that the plagues of slavery in Egypt and Exodus remain the plagues that devastate huge swaths of our human population in this very year.
Ross Kenyon: Like they’re not making new natural disasters for us. They’re kind of the same.
Sarah Tuneberg: No, they are the same. So I think of hail, especially hail, wildfire, that hail devastated crops in the time of slavery in Egypt for Jews in the same way it does right now. And that the catastrophic effects of climate change Are the same that were the catastrophic effects that God rained down on the Egyptians to free the Jewish slaves. It’s absolutely fascinating to me. And we have not innovated our way out of it. We’ve made it worse, in fact.
Ross Kenyon: We’ve made it worse, in fact, yeah. So you think we’re going to see... I mean, that’s sort of the most obvious link. I mean, there’s many ways to spin the story of Exodus to be about, you know, slavery into freedom that relate to the climate in a myriad of ways. But focusing on the plagues, that starts to me as like the most one-to-one kind of comparison. Is that in your head too?
Sarah Tuneberg: Absolutely. I think this is how we got here in the beginning, which was natural hazards. They’ve been the same since the time of the plagues. They’re still the same. And climate change is just maybe... To me, sometimes I think about is it are the plagues coming full circle and they’re so bad that we are in a time of global human catastrophe that we’ve magnified them with our greenhouse gas emissions? Or is it just a continuation? I think a lot about what is the lesson of the plagues in climate?
Ross Kenyon: I’m very interested in this too. And I don’t think I have a great interpretation of it because I find it a genuine puzzle. And I’m sure a lot of ink has been spilled on this. But so, okay, if you’re listening to this and you haven’t cracked open Exodus alongside us, Moses will go to Pharaoh, say, let my people go. And Pharaoh seems to be okay with it. But then there’ll be a sentence that says, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. It seems like Pharaoh would have let the Jews leave Egypt, but the hardening of the heart, why?
I don’t get it.
Sarah Tuneberg: I don’t know. And I think this is one of the heavily debated passages, and it would be interesting to hear in comments or wherever what people’s theories are. But is it one of the ideas is that the Jews didn’t deserve it enough yet? They hadn’t done it enough? Or was it an idea that... In order to not go after them and chase them down, which they do, the Egyptians do, leading to the parting of the Red Sea, that without the trauma of the plagues, would the Jews be able to make a break?
I also think that just the Old Testament Hebrew Bible God is a mean one. Right? There might be funniness, but it is a vengeful God. It is a God that is punishing and harsh. And I think the last thing I’ll say is that there’s an idea that religion and the Torah and the Bible and all of the pieces are written to explain very difficult things. Right? You don’t have an answer. There wasn’t an answer. So religion is a function of trying to answer all of these things. And in a time when it was probably very terrible, there was boils and pestilence and drought and darkness.
Like there couldn’t have been another explanation than God had to harden Pharaoh’s heart to do it again. I don’t know. What about you?
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know. It’s a hard one. I think it’s related to what’s typically called the Odyssey, just like the problem of evil. Sort of like, why does evil exist? Why does God harden hearts? To a modern reader, Abraham going up Mount Moriah with Isaac to sacrifice him, and then at the last second being saved. To a modern reader, that doesn’t seem like such a great test of faith. The things that are done to the various Jebusites and Canaanites and Midianites that really sort of seems like conquest and maybe genocide doesn’t strike the modern reader as being like, hmm, this is an unobjectionable good.
Well, one thing I liked about reading, especially this Haggadah, is the revisionist take on some of these stories about like God is hardening Pharaoh’s heart multiple times over. And the people who are suffering are regular Egyptians who are having their crops slaughtered. They’re living in a dictatorship, right? The Pharaoh is in charge. These people are not in a democracy. They have no control over their government probably. And yet they are the ones who are suffering. So the revisionist take here is how do you include mercy with Egyptians inside of the Passover story for Jews celebrating Passover?
Is that part of your tradition too? Or am I reading too much into it?
Sarah Tuneberg: No, it is not a part of my tradition, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good one to have, which is, I think, not just a dictatorship, but monarchy. Surely he was born.
Ross Kenyon: It’s possible he was just a monarch. That’s fine.
Sarah Tuneberg: Oh, no, not just. All of it. A monarchical dictator? Is that the word? Worse. You get to be born the dictator. It’s like North Korea. No, I think that it’s a really wonderful and sad idea that had to happen so that we could have a little empathy for the other people. Because I think there is an idea that, oh, there were slaves of Egypt, but Of Egyptians, but it’s not like those people, the everyday Egyptians, had the power to make a difference. Though, in a tikkun olam reflection, it would be incumbent upon those everyday Egyptians to be fighting the power and deceiving the Jews.
So, I don’t know.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, so what we just did, though, that’s a part of Passover, right? Yes! So you’re reinterpreting the story and asking these questions, right?
Sarah Tuneberg: Yes! That’s the way. This is the tradition. And I think the reason we eat and the reason we drink and we are in comfort is because we want to ask these questions. Because the text isn’t static, it’s about questioning and about making space. And so I’m going to lead us to another place, which is one of the Seminal parts, most important parts of the Seder is that you say, next year in Jerusalem, may we be together for Seder next year, but in Jerusalem. So this idea of the story of Exodus, they wandered and then they made it to Israel, though 40 years, interesting in that lifespan, The people who were enslaved never actually made it to Jerusalem.
The idea of the wandering was that you truncate the memory and you have a new generation who starts fresh. And that’s why it took so long because I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Sinai Peninsula. It’s actually very small and the idea of wandering there for 40 years. Bad directions, but it was like God wouldn’t let them and God didn’t let Moses enter because there is the need of fresh, of fresh starts. So to me though, in this time of coronavirus and global pandemic, the next year in Jerusalem, I think last year especially resonated with a lot of people.
And I think it will be the same this year because we’re nowhere near the end, unfortunately, which is what is next year? What do we want for next year? Oh, next year in Jerusalem can mean so many things. It’s being brought out of slavery. I imagine in the Holocaust, people thinking about next year, not in the camps, being free. I know that it is for hidden Jews in Spain. Post-Inquisition, the idea of next year in Jerusalem was about being not actually in Jerusalem, but being able to be public in their celebration of Passover.
And so I think that is one of the most, to me, it resonates the deepest of what is our vision for next year? Passover will happen every year. And what do we want and what do we mean by next year in Jerusalem?
Ross Kenyon: I like that. There’s something that’s really poetic about that sentence too, right? Is it just, you have like, it sounds like almost like a cheers though, right? Next year in Jerusalem, is that kind of how it takes place?
Sarah Tuneberg: Exactly.
Ross Kenyon: Given that Jews are, you know, throughout their history, so often a diasporic people that are not in their traditional homeland, there’s like a hint of like irony or melancholy I’m picking up on in there. Is that, is that in there or am I just think there is?
Sarah Tuneberg: Well, I think it is absolutely there that for a people who are historically pushed around geospatially and hidden and spread thin, the idea of having a place where we will all be next year. I think it also is so melancholy and also so much hope. One day we’ll get there next year in Jerusalem. We’re not there now. But we’ll get there eventually and maybe it’ll be next year.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a beautiful sentiment. If someone is listening and they celebrate Passover and they want to incorporate some climate elements into their Seder this year, and we’re going to release this the week of Passover, so they’ll have time to prep for it. Where might you steer them? What might you tell them besides just all the great ideas you’ve had so far?
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah, I think talking about what next year in Jerusalem in the climate context is, what does it mean? And also the pandemic context, what does it mean for next year? And in this idea of setting intentions and recognizing our humanness of falling down, What is your intention for where we’ll be next year? Is that family? Is that less plastic? Is it solar? I don’t know what it is, but what is your climate intention and sort of what is your next year in Jerusalem look like? I think also because it’s so wonderfully good in the story context and so illustrative, Talking about the climate plagues and coming up with them for your family and having the discussion even in the Seder, you could do planning, or you could just in the moment say like, what are the 10 plagues of climate?
What are they? I also think that to your point, Having more empathy is a key feature of the Passover story as well as what we need in climate change. And so maybe finding the empathetic component. What about you?
Ross Kenyon: I think those are all good points. I don’t know, given that my experience is so Limited, but I do like the malleability of the story. What does it look like perhaps for if we were to map this sort of freedom or slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Sinai and Canaan beyond? What does that look like in a climate context? Is it appropriate or does it make sense to say that it’s like we’re in a slavery or suboptimal position now with regard to how we treat each other and or the climate?
And what does it mean to move to a just kind of tikkun alam kind of world in the making that is waiting to be born? That’s kind of related to your next year in Jerusalem idea, I think.
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah, though, I do like this idea, too, of kindness with righteousness, of sort of what do we have to do to be sort of freed from the bondage of this? What is this that we’re in right now? And do we not like it enough that we’re going to go asking to be freed? And do we have to ask or do you just sort of make it be? I don’t know. Interesting. Who’s our pharaoh?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. I don’t know that I want to name a specific person. I don’t want to lay that on anyone necessarily.
Sarah Tuneberg: Recommendation for your climate-centric Seder folks out there. Have a discussion about who’s the pharaoh these days. Who, what? Probably not an individual. Maybe there will be some, but also what entities and what structures, what systems, and how do you... Be righteous in your seeking of undoing and dismantling.
Ross Kenyon: Well, maybe that’s a good place then to leave it. It certainly is time to do the work. If you listen to the show, you’re already one step on it.
Sarah Tuneberg: Yeah. I’m excited to hear about people’s climate seders. I don’t even get to talk about a seder plate. This is my ask of people.
Ross Kenyon: What is it?
Sarah Tuneberg: What is a seder plate? A seder plate is the ritual crockery or dish on which we place particular symbols that we reference through the meal. There is a lamb shank in the center representing the marking of the door. There is an egg that represents rebirth. There is the bitter herb, the salty water, the tears, maror, which is Paste that represents the mortar of the bricks that the Jews laid while they were in slavery. It’s made out of apples. And depending on where your family’s from, you can be like where my family’s from, where we make it with like a paste that’s apples and walnuts and cinnamon and it’s boring and dry.
Or Sephardic Jews who add a ton of dried fruit and lemon and wine. It’s the good of the Jewish. You have lots of different traditions to go from. Anyway, the Seder plate. Is the center visual of Passover and you place the foods around it and you sort of work your way through as part of the Haggadah or the service. And there are new Jewish traditions about adding items to the Passover plate, the Seder plate, to reflect particular elements. And so if you were to make an item on your Seder plate, Connected to climate change, what would it be?
Or if you were to make space for a new item on your Passover plate, on your Seder plate about climate, what would it be? Interesting.
Ross Kenyon: Do you have any ideas for what you might do?
Sarah Tuneberg: No, not yet. I imagine there’s like vegan Seder plates. There’s surely people who have done work around this.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m sure if you looked up Climate Seder, Climate Haggadah, surely some resources must exist at this point. We sort of independently came to this as like, oh, we should do this. But we’re probably not the only ones.
Sarah Tuneberg: I can’t imagine we’re the only ones. So I’m excited to hear about it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Well, feel free to write in. We’ll post this. This will come out the week before Passover begins or the week during which Passover begins. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll post this with the hashtag or something. Sarah, we’ll find some way to make this happen. Well, thanks for being here, Sarah.
Sarah Tuneberg: Thanks for having me and whatever it means to you next year in Jerusalem.
Ross Kenyon: Next year in Jerusalem, indeed. Well, thanks so much for listening. I hope you had a great time hanging out with Sarah and I talking about Passover and we’ll catch you next time. Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review. You can keep up with Nori at nori.
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