The Open Book
For Love and Coral / The Butterfly Effect
Here we are again amidst Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe: The 10 day period from Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) through Yom Kippur, during which we are invited to practice teshuva: Return. We contemplate where we have strayed from our best selves, and make an inner promise to return to that place. It’s a very meaningful spell of days for me, as I outlined in detail last year in my Substack post 14.
This year is no different. Last week I helped facilitate a small Rosh Hashanah dinner at my friend’s house in Marin, and on October 2nd will go to my favorite synagogue and listen to the beautiful chanting of the prayers of supplication, redemption and renewal. These are the days, culminating in Yom Kippur, when the Book of Life is opened, and our names are inscribed — or not. Do I believe that story? Of course not. But these days still give me pause — as they are meant to do.
Though I consider myself a cultural Jew (as opposed to an observant one) I grew up with these rites, and they fill me with a deep nostalgia and inner sadness. Partially it’s because of the continuing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and my complete disgust at the Netanyahu government. I no longer equate my Jewish identity, informed by the values of charity and humanitarianism, with the State of Israel. I still love the Jewish traditions, their symbolism and inclusivity, and what they represent on a universal level. The self-serving, sociopathic actions of the Netanyahu cabal feel like the negation of all I love about Judaism.
But on to our main story, which I hope will inspire you to join me in Sebastopol on Saturday, October 11th.
And while we’re on the subject of renewal…
Layla Love, a gifted multimedia artist and photojournalist with arresting blue eyes and an aura of heroic resilience, is becoming one of the world’s most imaginative champions of the Earth’s coral reefs.
Love is the Creative Director of Reef Revival, a traveling art exhibition that will begin a ten-city tour in 2026. Reef Revival itself is a project of Global CORALition, an organization that hopes to reverse reef degradation and renew at least a fraction of the 50% of the coral the world has lost since 1950.
Love’s passion for coral reef activism began in her twenties, when she went scuba diving on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. “The coral was completely bleached out,” she told WHITEHOT Magazine in 2024. “It was white and dead.” Having experienced thriving coral reefs in Fiji and New Zealand, the contrast was striking.
Five years later, in 2015 — by then a successful visual artist with a focus on human trafficking — Love went diving in Cancun, Mexico. There she experienced the astonishing work of Jason deCaires (click on his name to watch the mind-bending four-minute video), whose underwater sculpture garden of 500 figures moved Love to suggest a collaborative installation. After a long process of finding a figure with parted lips, Love engineered the statue so that it appeared to be breathing underwater – a nod to the fact that between 50 to 70 percent of the oxygen we breath comes from the oceans.
From that point on it was off to the races. Love joined up with the coalition of artist-activists who had created Global CORALition, whose mission also includes creating underwater sculpture gardens (like Jason deCaire’s work), providing a visually stunning substrate upon which new coral can grow. (The organization’s underwater sculpture designers include Love, Kyle Block and Angelina Chen.) As part of their advocacy, CORALition also hired 3,000 indigenous women in the Dominican Republic to plant mangrove trees, which filter seawater, serve as fish and bird habitats, and provide natural wave and storm breaks. It’s urgent work, especially with many mangrove swamps being destroyed to create commercial shrimp farms.
One outgrowth from this partnership has been Reef Revival, a traveling art exhibition funded in part by the Global Foundation for Peace and Sustainability, based in India. Reef Revival will premier in New York in 2026 and travel around the world, informing thousands of people of the beauty and fragility of coral reefs.
It is impossible to look at the underwater photographs of Jason deCaire’s sculptures being taken over by undersea plant life without seeing the process as a metaphor for how life of every kind is continuingly changing, combining, evolving and disintegrating. This is, as you might imagine, a pointed message for me. But it is also a powerful reminder for Layla herself. At the age of five, Love was diagnosed by the NIH with Dopa Responsive Dystonia, or childhood-onset Parkinson’s.
“I was only the 75th patient that they had seen with such early onset,” she told me.
Layla’s dystonia, or involuntary body movements, were so debilitating that they kept her in a wheelchair through most of her childhood. “I used to not be able to walk across the room, or even hold a cup or a pencil.” Only through extensive (and expensive) self-healing treatments has she been able to travel, dive and produce the body of work she’s created — not to mention her global activism.
“How do you, personally,” I asked Layla, “take in the way the sculptures are dissolving beneath the fans, sponges and corrals?”
“Life is a collaborative process,” she said. “I love making art that shows that transformation, of just becoming one with nature. I think having this health condition makes me feel that life is even more precious. Sometimes I feel so close to death and yes, it’s been so hard. And yes, it’s a way of making peace with the impermanence of things — while at the same time trying to honor the beauty of the process.”
So here’s where we return to what I referenced in the subhead. On Saturday October 11th, from 5:30 till 8:30 PM, Layla will be co-hosting an event called The Butterfly Effect: Art, Music and Impact” at the Gold Ridge Organic Farms in Sebastopol.
I’ll be there, and so will Layla. Please join us! It will be a great opportunity to meet like-minded activists, and rub shoulders with some of the most wonderful artists and in the environmental sphere. (An RSVP is requested.) And by the way: There will be chocolate.
In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful process of teshuvah, and a lifetime commitment to the core Jewish value of tikkun olam: “Repairing the world.”
Lord knows, it needs our care.
Wish I could join you there and meet the lovely and inspiring Layla! Xx
Incredible!