Oy, meh haya lanu

Today, Tisha B'Av, is the darkest day in the Jewish calendar. It doesn’t have to be the most depressing if we use it to change our ways.

Last night, at the Mission Minyan’s reading of Eicha (the book of Lamentations), I noticed something in the text that spoke anew to me, quite strongly and damningly this year. From Chapter 5, verse 4:

We pay money to drink our own water, obtain our wood at a price.

It is easy for anyone to read Eicha, look around and draw parallels to contemporary society, whether in the modern, literal Jerusalem, or in our various communities - Jewish or otherwise. It is sadly easy to put together a compelling talk about the themes of personal, civil, spiritual and ecological destruction and degradation that Jeremiah intones, which are so revelant today.

It is also easy to stop contributing to the destruction. Stop buying your own water, the water that YOU OWN as a citizen of the earth (and of course as a taxpaying citizen of a first world country with a municipal water supply.)

I live in one of the most environmentally aware places in the US, with a delicious, pure and safe water supply coming from the Hetch Hetchy valley and dam in Yosemite…yet many people I know actually STOCK bottled water in their homes. I complain about this constantly, directly to them, to anyone who will listen. The water in Hetch Hetchy - that comes through our taps in San Francisco - is so great that my former boss at Camp Tawonga used to joke about getting rich by bottling and selling it back to all these bozos.

That’s no joke as it turns out - it’s exactly what the big bottling companies are doing. Most of the bottled water for sale in our cities comes from “municipal sources.” AKA places not even as wonderful as Hetch Hetchy.

I am tired about hearing about “convenience”. Convenience is digging us a grave of plastic. This is an easy thing to fix. Get a water bottle. Use your tap. Enjoy a wonderful municipal asset.