Sermon
Judaism & Ecology
by Neil Gilbert
October 7, 2006
In the beginning of the technological age, man recreated the heavens and the earth. To the earth he gave new form with dynamite and bulldozer, and the void of the heavens he filled with smog.
And God said, “let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear.” (Genesis 1:6)
Then man took oil from beneath the ground and spread it over the waters until it coated the beaches with slime. He washed the topsoil from the fertile prairies and sank it in the ocean depths. He took waste from his mines and filled in the valleys, while real estate developers leveled the hills. And man said, “well business is business.”
Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth. Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds. And it was so and God saw that it was good.
But man was not so sure. He found that mosquitoes annoyed him so he killed them with DDT. And the robins died too, and man said, “What a pity.” Man defoliated forests in the name of modern warfare. He filled the streams with industrial waste, and his children read about fish . . . in history books.
So God created humans in His own image. In the image of God He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over every living thing."
So man multiplied and multiplied . . . and spread his works across the land until the last green blade was black with asphalt, until the skies were ashen and the waters reeked, until neither bird sang nor child ran laughing through the cool grass. So man subdued the earth and made it over in his image, and in the name of progress he drained it of its life. Until the earth was without form and void, and darkness was once again upon the face of the deep, and man himself was but a painful memory in the mind of God.
This provocative set of contrasts comes from a book “Judaism and Global Survival” by Richard Schwartz. Of course it is dramatic and perhaps over dramatic. But as more and more research and observation come to us, it is possible that the tipping point of global survival is not that far fetched. We each need to ask ourselves what can I do to help create a change. What can we as a synagogue do. What can we, the Jewish people do. The earth will find a way to survive, perhaps without human or animal life. We are made in God’s image. God needs us to redeem the planet.
There is in Judaism much to guide us in caring for the world of nature and the environment. The Torah, psalms, Talmud, other post biblical writings can be a source of inspiration as well as specific guidance. Admittedly, Judaism does not have a strong history in leading the way toward protecting the environment, but what religion does have a strong track record in this regard. Part of the explanation is that we have been persecuted and isolated throughout history and to a degree have developed a bookish culture concerned with self preservation and living up to God commandments and the mitzvoth. We should note that of the ten commandments and the 613 mitzvoth, nearly the entire emphasis in on man’s relationship with our fellow humans and man’s relationship with God. Only one commandment has to do with anything else and that is Shabbat, and there are only and handful of the 613 mitzvoth that pertain to the environment or animals.
Before the twentieth century, no religious tradition has had to fully deal with the issues and concerns that the environmental movement has now raised. While resource management, loss of farm land, pollution control and even species extinction may have been addressed by some religious traditions in the past, these issues now exist on a completely different scale. Overpopulation, climate change, toxic waste, water shortages and biodiversity are issues that traditional religions could never have possibly imagined. Because of the growth of scientific knowledge, the natural world is now understood in a profoundly different way than the world in which most of the world’s religions developed.
Environmentalism is a modern critique of the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Environmentalism also challenges our economic system, because the way we are living, producing and consuming is not sustainable. The ozone is disappearing, the temperature of the planet is increasing, toxic chemicals pollute our land and our food and our fish and our air. Our global economic system is unjust in the distribution of resources. Developed countries consume the vast majority of resources, while creating the largest amount of waste, which is often exported to poorer countries in the form of toxic stuff. Environmentalism seeks to create sustainable economic development within a just global trade system.
Seen in this way, the environmental crisis is a crisis of values not technology. Environmental ethics tries to create a process of response to the crisis. Up until now traditional ethical systems, including most systems of religious ethics, have been inadequate to deal with the environmental crisis because they are primarily concerned with relationships between human beings and relationships between humans and God.
The three session class I’ve been asked to teach will look at some of these challenging issues and see if we can get some guidance from our Jewish tradition. The class is called “Discovering the Green in Judaism.” This will be held on three Wednesday evenings from 7:30 – 8:30 here at Sinai, starting October 18th and then the 25th and finally November 1st, 2006. I have zero background in environmentalism or ecology, but I am interested in learning more and what better way is there to learn than to teach. Each of the three sessions will focus on one the three themes mentioned in the essay on Ecology by David Gordis in our Chumash Etz Hayim, the three themes being responsibility, reverence, and restraint.
We as Jews, have a responsibility to protect the land. In the covenant between God and the Jewish people, there is a causal relationship that is spelled out in detail. This is spoken daily in our basic fundamental prayer the Shema. (Lev. 26:) Page 747-8-9 in Etz Hayim.
When Israel conducts itself according to divine command, the land is abundant and fertile, benefiting its human inhabitants with the basic necessities of life. But when Israel violates divine commandments, the blessedness of the land is temporarily removed and the land becomes desolate and inhospitable. When the alienation from God becomes so great and injustice fills up God's land, God brings about Israel's removal from the land by allowing Israel's enemies to overcome her. The well-being of the land and the quality of Israel's life are linked, and both are based on Israel's observance of God's will. The covenant between Israel and God led to specific laws intended to protect God's land and ensure its continued vitality.
One of the most important points here is that the land belongs to God and we as humans are tenants. The land is there for us to cultivate and reap its rewards. But the land is owned by God. Humans have a responsibility to be stewards of the land. We will explore this theme more fully in one of the Wednesday evening classes. A basic biblical law in this regard is the Sabbatical year when the land is to be left untended.
But we no longer follow these laws, which in biblical times pertained only to the land of Israel and does not formally govern where Jews have come to live in the Diaspora. But Judaism has changed fundamentally following the destruction of the Temple and the development of Rabbinic Judaism, has led to what could be called the portability of our religion. Through the wisdom of our wise old Rabbis we have developed ways to observe God’s commandments and live a Jewish life outside the land of Israel. Perhaps what we need today in light of the threat to our planet is some new guidance to deal with issues that could never have been imagined thousands of years ago.
A second theme mentioned the Etz
Hayim essay is that of restraint. There are a number of rules and mitzvoth that
teach us to restrain ourselves in how we approach nature. A good example of this
theme is in
Deuteronomy 22: 6–7, a Biblical text frequently cited in contemporary
discussions of Jewish views on ecology:
“if along the road you chance upon a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground,
with fledglings or eggs, and the mother sitting over the fledging or upon the
eggs, do not take away the mother along with the young. Let the mother go, and
take only the young, in order that you may fare well and
have a long life.”
We are taught to restrain ourselves. Perhaps for reasons of sustainability, to allow the mother to reproduce again. And yet there is this phrase “in order that you may fare well and have a long life.”. So the sense is not just a logical one for access to future fledglings of the mother bird, but also a sensitivity to life itself. God is cautioning us to act with restraint not only to protect a species but also to be reverent toward all life.
The third theme is that of reverence. We are to be holy because God is holy. We are taught to say blessings on all kinds of food, on our bodily functions, on seeing a rainbow, to revere God for creating this world with all of its amazing abundance.
We need to look toward our great 20th century teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel and his notion of wonder or radical amazement. Heschel's writings were designed to enable the reader to shed or question habitual ways of thinking, and gradually to begin to perceive the world as 'an allusion' to God, as an object of divine concern. Heschel has the affect of reawakening Jews toward the reverence of nature. In the Wednesday evening class we will look more deeply at Heschel’s teachings, in particular what he has to say about Shabbat as a potential guiding light to humanity as a whole to help preserve the planet through reverence.
The basic question I would like to explore this morning is what does Judaism have to say about the relationship between humans and nature. I do eat a lot of organic foods, we do recycle in my home, we keep the thermostat fairly low in winter and use little air conditioning in summer. My wife drives a hybrid vehicle. Working with Jane Rosen, the adult education committee hopes to get Sinai members to monitor your so called ecological footprint.
Such indicators as how many square feet is your home, how often do you eat meat and dairy products, what kind of mileage does your car get, do you use public transportation or walk, how much pre-packaged food do you consume, how many airplane flights do you take annually, what is your home’s electric bill, gas bill. We will be developing a scoring system for your family and for the synagogue building and for our congregation and the goal is to reduce our impact on the environment, in other words become more green.
There is much in our tradition to guide us, from biblical text to psalms to post biblical rabbinical writings. It would be however be inaccurate to say that Judaism is a green religion. There are many teachings and principles in our tradition that offer guidance and teach us to maintain reverence toward the world of nature, to be respectful, to act responsibly and to promote sustainability, to act with restraint. Yet at the same time we are shown that humans are given a pre-eminent place in the world. It is through humans that God’s will becomes realized. Nature is not to be worshiped or glorified. We worship God.
Let’s look at a few examples in the Chumash to analyze what is it that our tradition teaches us about how to approach nature and the environment.
In your Etz Chaim on page 1104 (Deuteronomy 20:19-20) reads as follows:
“When you besiege a town for many days, waging-war against it, to seize it: you are not to bring-ruin upon its trees, by swinging-away (with) an ax against them, for from them you eat, them you are not to cut-down – for are the trees of the field human beings, (able) to come against you in a siege? Only those trees of which you know that they are not trees for eating, them you may bring- to-ruin and cut-down, that you may build siege works against the town that is making war against you, until its downfall.”
This is perhaps the most frequently cited passage in contemporary writings on Jewish environmental ethics and is often evoked as a textual basis for Jewish environmental ethics. Rabbi mentioned this in his sermon on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. This is the rule of Do Not Destroy. Yet it contains an important ambiguity. Put simply: why should one not destroy the fruit trees?
So that is what I am asking you here. If we take a look at the text there are two things going on. First there is a distinction between not fruit trees, that trees that are not for eating – we are permitted to cut them down during a siege, but we are not permitted to cut down the fruit trees. Presumably, the reason for this is the principle of sustainability. Our lives are dependent on produce, and it is in human long term interest to preserve such trees.
But also in the text is this curious question … “are the trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?” to presumably take refuge. This line in the text sees the trees as innocent bystanders that have a life of their own independent of human needs. There is both a human centered value and a nature centered value here. Nature does not exist solely for the benefit of humans as it was created by God and belongs to God, yet it is also true that nature is to be used for our benefit when there is a need. We are permitted to chop down down the non fruit-bearing for the purposes of waging war. But these trees are no less a part of nature than fruit-bearing trees. Neither are able to run away. Why are we then permitted to destroy them? Are they not equally innocent? Why are they not also valued for their own sake?
David Vogel in a paper titled “How Green is Judaism”, comments:
“Clearly God does not want us to live in a world in which we are forbidden to chop down all trees, since such a prohibition would make the preservation and sustaining of human life impossible. At the same time, neither does God want us to assume that the entire natural world exists to satisfy our material needs, for as Psalm 24 reminds us: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” The Torah’s distinction between fruit-bearing and non-fruit-bearing trees seems to suggest both ideas: nature exists both for the benefit of humans and has a value which is independent of human needs.
There is not an easy lesson here. Destruction is permitted, but not wanton destruction. Who’s to say what is wanton.
Rather than continuing philosophical and ethical analysis, what we really need is a call to action. In the twentieth century the Jewish thinker who reconfigured the relationship between God and natural world most elaborately was Abraham Joshua Heschel. Rabbi Friedland speaks of Heschel often, and Al Neiman has taught a class here on Heschel and will do so again this spring. Heschel speaks of a caring God who "calls for human beings actively to redeem [the world]." Reinterpreting the Jewish tradition, Heschel instructed twentieth-century Jews to develop the notion of "kinship with the visible cosmos" and to grasp the reciprocal relationship between God and the world. The world is the object of God's concern or love. Heschel presented a vision of interrelatedness of humans, other beings, and God, and emphasized human responsibility to God, "who is both within and beyond nature and civilization."
Thank you.
