In 1995, Jewish environmental
activists began to appeal to the Jewish tradition
in defense of the Headwaters Forest in Humboldt
County, California, which had been acquired by
Maxxam Corporation in the mid-1980s in a hostile
takeover of the once-independent Pacific Lumber
Company. After the takeover, the rate of logging
in the old-growth forest doubled. Seeking to
appeal to the religious faith of Maxxam’s
CEO and major stock-holder, Charles Hurwitz,
the activists
wrote him a letter just before the Jewish Day
of Atonement, Yom Kippur, invoking Jewish
values and urging him to change his logging policies.
A year
later, in 1996, three local rabbis joined the
effort by issuing an open letter to Hurwitz in
the local
Jewish weekly newspaper of his home city of Houston,
Texas. Again, this letter appealed to Jewish
tradition in calling Hurwitz to make a teshuvah
shelaymah (“genuine change of direction”)
and encouraging him to perform a great mitzvah by
protecting the Headwaters Forest. The letter,
along with other
public statements and actions in defense of the
redwoods, including peaceful civil disobedience
on Maxxam’s land, earned the rabbis the
name, “Redwood
Rabbis.” In 1997, they led a contingent
of 250 people, including 100 Jewish worshippers,
to
celebrate Tu B’Shevat, the New
Year of the Trees, by planting redwood seedlings
along a stream
bank in an ancient redwood grove on property
owned by Maxxam. Rabbi Lester Scharnberg spoke
out on
behalf of the redwoods at the Maxxam stockholders
meeting in 1998, challenging the Board to consider
the moral and religious implications of its logging
policies. A letter signed by thirty-eight rabbis
was also delivered to Hurwitz at the meeting,
along
with
pro-environment proxies from concerned shareholders.
Pressure from within the Jewish community in
Houston and elsewhere was mounting: in 1998,
the national
Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life
(COEJL) called for environmental protection in
the Headwaters
and other ancient redwood forests. The following
year, Maxxam’s Pacific Lumber conceded
to sell enough forest acreage to create a 7,470-acre
redwoods reserve and agreed to adopt restrictions
on logging and forest management requirements
for
other parts of its property. More recently, the
Redwood Rabbis have targeted California Governor
Gray Davis to advocate for the protection of
ancient redwood forests across the state through
letter-writing
campaigns and other grassroots initiatives.
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