Praying for the planet – the purpose of Sukkot

Every day in the week of Sukkot, we add a special prayer for the blessings of rain and nourishment, for the Earth and all her creatures. Each prayer is called a Hoshana (“Please save us!”), and it culminates in Hoshana Rabba, “the big Hoshana”. The next day, Shemini Atzeret, we begin to add requests for rain to the central prayer, called the amidah.

In synagogue, these prayers for water and rain are usually treated as playful, and of course they can be. For example, the shaliach tzibur leading prayers might don a raincoat and get spritzed with spray bottles. But what we are praying for is actually climate stability, for predictable and sustaining amounts of rain, something our world needs so much, and something the world will be in need of more and more as the next decades unfold.

So remember that we are praying for something very real, desperately real: for an end to drought and flood, for an end to the conditions that turn wildfires into “giga-fires”. For an end to the climate instability that foments wars, that drives refugees from their homes, and that brings on extinctions.

We offered seventy sacrifices over the days of Sukkot when the Temple was standing, because, according to Chazal (the rabbis), we are praying for all the “seventy nations”. That means we are praying for the whole world. Praying for the good and welfare of the whole world is what it means to be a “nation of priests”. And we have just spent the first ten days of the month (Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur) in purification, so that our prayers may be heard.

Our Hoshana liturgy for this time is full of pleas that make perfect sense in an age of climate upheaval. For example: “Hoshana adam uv’heimah / Please save human and animal”, and “Hoshana shetiyah l’romamah / Please save the one who drinks from the heavens”. There are also newer liturgies that speak to the changes happening to our planet, which you can find here: Hoshanot for the Planet.

Does liturgy matter? Does all the t’shuvah we did leading up to Sukkot even matter? When it comes to climate change, it only matters if we actually change how we live. That’s what it must mean if we are going to “choose Life”.

One of the poems in the newer liturgy includes this plea: “Save our prayers from being empty words!” May it be so, and may the best intentions of our prayers become true!

Chag Sameach!

P.S. Here is the text for the Hoshana mentioned above:

Hoshana! Please save aquifers from poison and drought!
Hoshana! Save bees from pesticides and fungus and collapse!
Hoshana! Save bedrock from fracking and earthquakes!
Hoshana! Save the breathing of this blue planet!
Hoshana! Save clouds from withholding their treasures / Hoshana ananim mil’ham’ni’a otzroteihem!

Hoshana! Save Earth and all that fills her / Hoshana Eretz u-m’lo’ah!
Hoshana! Save the forests from clearcutting, and from conflagration!
Hoshana! Save flesh and spirit and soul in every being / Hoshana basar v’ruach un’shamah b’khol b’ri’ah!
Hoshana! Save glistening rivers from becoming rivers of oil and blood!
Hoshana! Save habitat and home and species!

Hoshana! Please save! Keep drought from decimating!
Hoshana! Save lodgepole and ponderosa from pine beetle!
Hoshana! Save mollusk and plankton shells from being eaten away by the sea they drink and breathe!
Hoshana! Save northern plains from flowing oil!
Hoshana! Save our will and vision from despair!
Hoshana! Save pipelines already pumping from leaking!

Hoshana! Save our prayers from being empty words!
Hoshana! Save refugees from drowning and war and hate!
Hoshana! Please save! Renew the face of the Earth / Hoshana! Chidush p’nei ha’adamah!
Hoshana! Save sacred lands from being stripped and stolen and despoiled!
Hoshana! Save seas from inundating islands and cities!

Hoshana! Please save! Show us the rainbow rejoicing in its colors / Hoshana! Her’eh lanu et ha-keshet sas u-mit’pa’er b’govanin shelo!

Hoshana! Save the weave and web of Life!
Hoshana! Please save a world suspended in the nothingness of space / Hoshana olam t’luyah al b’li mah!