The AVATAR film & Tu B'Shvat: the ReBirthDay of trees & The Tree
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Dear fellow-seekers for peace and healing of the earth,
[Bottom line for this letter: I urge that multireligious groups together see the new film Avatar this month; learn with me by teleconference seminar on Thursday evening January 21 the connections between this film and the meaning of the festival of Tu B’Shvat that celebrates the ReBirthDay of the Tree of Life; and then gather January 29 to eat together the sacred meal of Tu B’Shvat. Why? See the unfolding below. — AW]
The film AVATAR is an obvious metaphor for the European-USA destruction of Native America and Africa; for the corporate destruction of the Amazon forest and its tribal human eco-partners; for the US destruction of much of Iraq and parts of Afghanistan.
For the indigenous peoples of the film’s quasi-planetary moon Pandora, the most sacred places are ancient living trees that embody the life force of the planet. So for me, the film spoke powerfully in the tongue of Tu B’Shvat, the festival of the Trees’ ReBirthDay.
AVATAR is extraordinary. — Not only for the superficial but powerful technology of the filming/ viewing, 3D and FX, but most of all for its spiritually rooted progressive politics.
See it!
See it in the spirit of its watchword: “I see you.” For Pandora’s people, these words express what in Hebrew is “yodea,” interactive “knowing” that is emotional, intellectual, physical/ sexual, and spiritual all at one – what “grok” is in the English borrowing from High Martian, channeled by Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land.
In the film, the indigenous people of Pandora – the Na’vi – [in Hebrew, this would mean “prophet”] stand in the way of an Earthian techno-conquistador corporation that is hungry to gobble up a rare mineral crucial to an Earth that the human race, or at least its corporations and governments, have desolated.
The Na’vi worship/ celebrate a biological unity of their planet and all its life-forms — Eywa — especially focused on great trees that are the most sacred centers of their lives. These great trees embody Eywa, the Great Mother – but S/He is more than even these trees, S/He is all life. Spirit incarnate. (Notice that “Eywa” can be heard as “Yahweh” (sometimes misdescribed as the Hebrew Name of God) turned inside-out.)
Just as AVATAR began appearing in theaters, we began approaching the ecological-mystical festival of Tu B’Shvat. It intertwines celebration of the midwinter rebirth of trees and the rebirth of the Great Tree of Life Itself, God, Whose roots are in heaven and whose fruit is our world. Tu B’Shvat comes on the 15th day (the full moon) of the midwinter Jewish lunar month of Sh’vat. This year, that falls from Friday evening January 29, till Saturday evening, January 30. Its observance was shaped by Jewish mystics –- Kabbalists -– 500 years ago, but the breadth and depth of its sense of God can embrace all religious and spiritual communities — not Jews alone.
Out of winter, out of seeming death, out of seeds that sank into the earth three months before, the juice of life begins to rise again. Begins invisibly, to sprout in spring.
This is a social and political reality, as well as a biological one. Beneath the official deadly failures of the Copenhagen conference that was supposed to reinvigorate the world’s effort to face the climate crisis, the seeds of rebirth were growing. They were growing in the grass-roots activists who will not let our earth die so easily at the hands of Oil and Coal and governmental arrogance as the Crusher tanks and rocket-planes and the robotic Marine generals and corporate exploiters of AVATAR would like to kill Pandora and its God/dess Eywa.
I urge that Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, those who celebrate Manitou/ GreatSpirit in the varied forms of Native practice, join for Tu B’Shvat to celebrate the Sacred Forests of our planet.
I urge that we reach across our boundaries and barricades to celebrate the trees that breathe us into life. The forests that absorb the carbon dioxide that humans are over-producing, the forests that breathe out life-giving oxygen for ourselves and all the other animals to breathe in.
For us, Eywa is YyyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh, “pronounceable” only by breathing, the Interbreathing of all life, Great Mother/Father/ Creator of our planet Whose breath, Whose very Name, what we call “climate” or “atmosphere,” is being choked and scorched by corporate rapacity and governmental arrogance.
I urge that we begin by going , anytime from now till January 29, in interfaith, multireligious groups to see AVATAR and then — discuss its meaning in our lives. It is the discussion afterward that will make “seeing” the film into the profound “seeing” God, life, and each other that the film itself calls for. And then I suggest we gather on the evening of January 29 to celebrate the sacred meal of Tu B’Shvat together.
What’s to discuss?
1) AVATAR teaches that the war against peoples and the war against the earth are the same war, being incited and fought by the same Crusher institutions. If we agree with this, how do we bring together the so-far separate struggles to end the two kinds of war? If we don’t agree, how do we see the relationship? Why does the Torah command that even in wartime, we must not destroy the enemy’s fruit trees? (The US Army did precisely this to the forests of Vietnam; the Israeli Army has done this to Palestinian olive trees; in AVATAR, the invading Earthians do precisely this to the sacred trees of the Na’vi. Why?)
2) AVATAR teaches that in the struggle to heal our world, birds and animals and trees and grasses can become our active allies if we “see” them as part of ourselves, part of our Beloved Community. Is there a way to make this true for us?
3) Some knee-jerk leftists have criticized the heroism of Jake Sully as merely another racist case of a “white male Marine” becoming savior of the exploited community. Indeed, some conservatives have stolen that rhetoric to discredit a widely celebrated film that clearly threatens to undermine the corporate-military-conservative alliance. But there are two mistakes in this rhetoric:
First, it is not Sully who leads the Na’vi; it is his Avatar who joins the resistance, a blueskin transformed from his life as a Marine, just as Moses the Egyptian prince remakes himself into a leader of the Israelite slave revolt .
More important, it is Eywa Herself, acting through the plants, birds, animals of Pandora, Who saves all life from depredation. The story echoes the biblical story of Exodus, in which Moses may be a spokesperson but it is the locusts, the rivers, the frogs, the hailstorms – what we call the Ten Plagues, the earth itself rising up as an expression of God’s Will to topple Pharaoh — that triumphs. It is YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh’s very breath, becoming the Holy Wind that splits the Red Sea, that drowns Pharaoh’s army.
What do we make of these stories? Can the Earth, God/dess Incarnate, defend Herself? What role do humans play?
3. AVATAR describes how some Earthians turn their backs on the military-corporate attempt to shatter the Na’vi and instead join the Na’vi resistance. They become – let’s not mince words – traitors. Or rather, they transform themselves into the Avatars that actually become Na’vi, loyal not to oppressive Crushers but to the web of life. What do we Americans, we Westerners — who have already done so much to crush the life from many parts of our planet and threaten to destroy the rest by choking its Breath, its Climate — what do we make of that? What do we owe the indigenes of Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Nigeria, Burma?
4. In the climax of the film , it is not only the invading Marines in their Crusher machines who use extreme violence. The Na’vi and Eywa’s life-forms use violence too, to defend themselves. There is barely a hint of any attempt to use nonviolent resistance in the mode of King or Gandhi to defend Pandora. Can we imagine an alternative? Why did the film not present one?
Talking together may help us “see” each other; eating together may help even more. On January 29, what’s to eat? A sacred meal, a Seder with four courses of nuts and fruit and four cups of wine. Foods that require the death of no living being, not even a carrot or a radish that dies when its roots are plucked from the earth. For the Trees of Life give forth their nuts and fruit in such profusion that to eat them kills no being. The sacred meal of the Tree Reborn is itself a meal of life.
And the four cups of wine are: all-white; white with a drop of red; red with a drop of white; and all-red: the union of white semen and red blood that the ancients thought were the start of procreation. And the progression from pale winter to the colorful fruitfulness of fall also betokens the growing-forth of life. The theme of Fours embodies the Four Worlds of Kabbalah: Action, Emotion, Intellect, Spirit.
There is much more to learn about this moment that so richly intertwines the mystical, the ecological, and the political. I helped bring together the Tu B’Shvat Anthology called Trees, Earth, & Torah (available in paperback from the Jewish Publication Society at 1.800.234.3151) that traces the festival through all its own flowering across 4,000 years of history.
On the evening of Thursday, January 21, I will lead a teleconference seminar on the meanings of Tu B’Shvat All are welcome. To take part, please click here.
I look forward to speaking with you, “seeing“ you.
In the Comments section below, please share your thoughts about AVATAR, sacred trees, Tu B’Shvat, violence/ nonviolence, and corporate/ military behavior!
With blessings of shalom, salaam, shantih – peace. — Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Comments
2 comments postedI am quite surprised that you missed the crucial points about the meaning of Avatar, but I suppose that comes with the glaring blindness inherent in your political perspective. The most obvious thing about Avatar is that Jake Sully plays a role exactly parallel to Osama Bin Laden: the rebel leader of the “natives” rising up to “shake off” the yoke of the evil oppressors. In other words, in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, this means simply taking the side of the Palestinians and blaming the Israelis for their “injustice”, “oppression”, etc etc… which you obviously do, judging from your (I’m sorry to say) pathetic performance in the “debate” with Omar Barghouti on Democracy Now (20100304).
You should have begun that “debate” by pointing out to Amy Goodman that it was improper to call it a debate, since you and Barghouti both agree that the solution is to destroy Israel, but that you just differ in how to accomplish this. For his part, Barghouti was quite obvious in the presentation of his standard propaganda line (although I was impressed by the way he managed to position himself against the background of an official “UC Berkeley” podium — surely a subtle but effective way to lend legitimacy to his campaign to destroy Israel).
When asked why he was calling for a boycott of Israel, Barghouti said it was because of Israel’s “three-tiered system of oppression against the Palestinian people, its occupation …. its 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and that includes East Jerusalem, as well as its system of racial discrimination against its non-Jewish citizens, the Palestinians as citizens of Israel, and first and foremost, its denial of the right of return for the Palestinians, the Palestinian refugees in accordance with United Nations resolution 194.”
Did you, Rabbi, offer any objection to these points? You offered none, but proceeded as if you hadn’t heard what he said, instead giving your own suggestions as to how to “bring down Israel”: get the Americans to do it.
In fact, you should have pointed out that not one of his 3-tiers of oppression has any validity, and if you don’t know that, and if you can’t point out why these 3 points are untrue (and presented only for propaganda value), then you have some research to do. But I would like to point out that not only did Barghouti list Israel’s refusal of the “right of return” as the 3rd tier of its oppression, but later in the discussion he specifically contradicted you when you suggested that the USA should impose a solution to the problem by creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza & East Jerusalem. Barghouti said in no uncertain terms that this would not be enough, because the “first and foremost” thing is the right of return, and the rights of the “Palestinians” who are already citizens of Israel. Since you did not respond to his comment at the time, I assume you just didn’t hear him, but this is what he said:
“This is not just about ending the occupation. There are three basic rights for the Palestinian people. The majority of the Palestinians happen to be not in the occupied territories. They happen to be refugees, ethnically cleansed during the creation of the state of Israel in and after 1948. These are completely ignored. Reducing Palestinian rights to simply ending the occupation will not do. This is simply unacceptable.”
Barghouti went on to talk about ending the “seige” in Gaza and blaming Israel for genocide, etc., and again you offered no debate, but passed over this propagandist line in silence, returning to your (misguided, in my opinion) “strategy” to get the Americans to fix everything.
Finally, there is one other crucial flaw in the movie Avatar that I believe you missed. Throughout the first half of the movie, the script did a great job of depicting “native” spirituality, and of capturing the sense of connection with “earth” and with natural forces which is so much a part of native beliefs. But when the hammer-headed rhinoceros came charging through the trees to avenge the death of the Tree, the movie moved from the sublime to the absurd. All of the beauty, subtlety, and grace with which the native “religion” had been depicted suddenly vanished as it was revealed that the Tree was now really pissed off and intent upon ruthless vengeance. Could you imagine a better depiction of a sanction for Jihad? No wonder the Palestinians have been painting themselves as blue Na’vi when protesting Israel’s security barrier.
I would suggest to you that the movie Avatar could have been a truly great vehicle for spreading understanding about the conflicts in our world which the movie “paralleled”. The key would be to explore the dynamic driving the Crusher institutions, especially the character presented as the corporate representative, who played such a small role in the movie, but actually held the real power in his hands. But instead of looking at the real issues involved, and considering real options, the movie opted for a Hollywood white-hat/black-hat solution, and really did us all a disservice. In the same way, I believe you are doing a disservice to Americans and israelis alike — and to the Palestinians— when you let blatant lies and substanceless propaganda pass without objection because you think you see some “strategy” for a solution that (apparently) doesn’t require us to recognize bullshit as bullshit. In other words, for all its 3-D technological brilliance, the message of Avatar was bullshit.
Post-finally, I regret having expressed myself so rudely here, because I know you are a thoughtful and well-intentioned person. Moreover, I have a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I’d like you to consider, but now that I might have insulted you, I guess that’s not likely to happen. Still, I feel that these are important issues, and need to be understood clearly, and that there can be no real progress if we replace brutal honesty in telling it like it is with a phony politeness.
P.S.
I’d like to end with a quote from Omar Barghouti in a debate (found on YouTube) which he had with a law professor at Georgetown University, when he was accused of simply desiring the destruction of Israel. He said: “If changing a state from one of oppression, racism and injustice to one of fairness and justice results in the destruction of that state, what does that say about the state?” I’ve been hard pressed to find a better example of pure propaganda: a statement that appears to be an intelligent comment, but when analyzed reveals nothing more than a propagandist assertion: Israel is an oppressive, racist and unjust state. And of course, the real response to a statement like this is to ask, “If your real concern with Israel is injustice and racism, then are you equally vocal in you objection to other states whose policies are unjust and racist? For example, Jews are prevented by law from living in Jordan, and when Jordan occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank, Jews were forbidden from even visiting. Have you been loudly protesting such racism? And how about the Islamic Republic of Islam: are you at the forefront of the battle to open that society to Jews and all peoples?” Of course Barghouti has never voiced opposition to any other Arab or Muslim state … he is simply practicing the art of propaganda.
What I wonder about the Na’vi:
Their green, organic technology includes many ways to bring death — from poisoned arrows to the ability to wield death wholesale through mind-links with the animals and trees — but the Na’vi are singularly devoid of something as important as a way to preserve life: namely, they do not appear to have any form of medicine. When one of the humans receives a deep wound, all the Na’vi can do is put her under a tree, sit around, and absorb themselves in some form of “yoga davening” till she dies.
And *these* people I should strive to admire and emulate?