Tikkun olam and litter picking

THE Ark Synagogue participated in the Great British Spring Clean with a litter picking event led by the community’s Rabbi Aaron Goldstein and member Judi Herman (pictured). Read Judi’s sermon, given about the project and its background, below:

IT’S November 2020 and I am done wringing my hands and raging at the appalling volume of litter ‘decorating’ our streets, grass verges and hedgerows.

My beloved husband Steve has bought us his ’n’ hers litter-pickers for our 45th wedding anniversary(!) and we take on the role of joint leaders of a new ‘litterati’.

Steve begins by finding some wonderfully official-looking ‘no litter’ notices online and fixing them to the fence at the entrance to an alleyway that is often ankle deep in rubbish. Meanwhile, I deftly clear the alley with my new weapon.

Our daily lockdown walks now have a new purpose. We still look at the stars, but we cast our eyes downwards to the gutters too, to clear them from bottles and cans, baby wipes, takeaway boxes… and face masks – then a new addition to the detritus that folk seem to have lost the will to bin or take home.

On our walks round our corner of suburbia we pick up everything we spot. As time passes, though there’s still plenty to fill a bag, the volume drops substantially, especially down our alley. We are often greeted by local residents who want to thank us.

Fast forward to 2023. I’m still litter picking daily, but now sadly without Steve who died in June 2022. But I am at least accompanied by my pretty little Bedlington Terrier sidekick Biba, whom I’ve now dubbed ‘The Litter Hound’.

Back in 2021 I made a podcast for Jewish Renaissance, the magazine and website where I’m Arts and Podcast Editor, tracking Steve and me – and our grandkids Alys and Dylan – as we did our bit with litter pickers and stout 30-litre rubbish bags.

The children became particularly intrigued when we explained how well litter picking chimes with the Jewish concept of tikkun olam (repairing the world), as we trash collectors do our bit to restore fields, verges and hedges to their pristine state, rather than leaving them strewn with all those unsightly and unhygienic cardboard cups, plastic lids and cans. I also wondered how come consumers of cans of energy drink then don’t have the ‘energy’ to carry them home for disposal afterwards.

When we explained how we’re also helping prevent wildlife being tangled up, often fatally, in carelessly abandoned items such as face masks, which have been found attached to birds as far afield as Antarctica, their righteous indignation and enthusiasm was off the scale.

Keep Britain Tidy, who were tagged in the podcast, picked up on it and were equally intrigued by the concept of tikkun olam. They invited Jewish Renaissance to become involved and we were announced as Keep Britain Tidy’s official ambassadors to the Jewish community. We were proud to take on that role once again with this year’s Great British Spring Clean - which ran from Friday 17 March until Sunday 2 April.

The challenge for each of us, all over the country, was to fill a chosen number of rubbish bags – be that one or 101.

The Ark Synagogue and our rabbis were right behind it too, in supremely practical ways.

This year, as well as the everincreasing impact on wildlife –particularly birds – from discarded plastic, another modern threat is vaping.

The Wildlife and Countryside Link reported that disposable vape use increased a whopping 44% last year compared to 2021. These break down into dangerously small parts that maintain the sweet vape scents – something that attracts wildlife, and dogs especially, and can be fatal if eaten.

So now I invite you to join me, to make this into a country-wide activity, a friendly and fulfilling way to get together for walks where, armed with litter-pickers and bags, we can share the fulfilment –and the fun - of giving our local areas a clean sweep to help fulfil the mitzvah of tikkun olam