Our skies are hazy with wildfire smoke, from New York to Detroit and far beyond. This is not abstract climate change. My 8-year old cannot go to the beach with his grandparents. My 11-year old went to the camp nurse with a sore throat. As I sit in my home in Baltimore, we are under firm public health directives to stay inside. In city after city, summer fun is moving indoors or getting canceled, replaced by growing unrest in our minds and hearts. This is how climate anxiety happens, and why climate grief is so real. So real, in fact, that these are now diagnosed conditions— affecting many of us, and especially our young people, who are now coming of age in a world on fire.
We are in the Nine Days now, walking toward Tisha B’Av, a holy fast day of commemoration, reminding us of all we’ve lost, of the great destruction, of mourning and grief, and in the end, of our Jewish imperative to choose life. This year the destruction and grief is neither history nor heritage. This year it is all around us. This year it is inside our very lungs.
In this painful moment, Jewish tradition calls upon us to do two things. First, that we dare not look away. We must face this fully — the loss, the fear, the smoke— because that is the only honest path to what we must do next. If we look away, we can justify inaction. So the next time you or anyone you know wants to dismiss climate action as too hard or too unrealistic, ask how hard or unrealistic it would be to spend an hour outside on a day like today.
Pearlstone Retreat Center
Adamah New York Offices
Isabella Freedman Retreat Center
Near Adamah Detroit Offices
No, do not look away. Face it. And then, choose love. Choose hope. Choose action. And choose to build community and belonging that even in times such as these, gives us the capacity for joy, for celebration, for rest and renewal.
A few days after Tisha B’Av comes Tu B’Av, the Jewish day of love. Grief and love, it turns out, are not opposites. They are neighbors.
When my kids ask me if things are okay, I cannot lie to them. I tell them that things are hard right now — and that we are the ones who get to choose how to respond. We do not practice denial, and we do not engage in blind hope. We choose hope not despite what we’ve been through, but because of it.
As we process this moment, and all the spiritual and emotional turmoil it brings, I invite you to check out Exploring Apocalypse, a project asking how we stay present inside these times of unraveling.
May we be both open-hearted and courageous in this moment. May we pass through this crisis safely. And may we build a new reality for ourselves and our children.
In community. In hope. And in love.
Shabbat Shalom,
Jakir Manela
