For several reasons, it is gratifying that the editors of this
distinguished journal, when composing an edition on the topic of
environmental challenges facing Israelis and Palestinians, have
decided to include articles focusing on these issues from various
religious and cultural perspectives. First, political discourse too
often ignores, or tries to sidestep, differences in world views and
cultural values, in particular affairs of the spirit, in favor of
technical details of policy-making. This is especially true
regarding environmental issues. Yet it cannot be emphasized too
strongly that the environmental crisis will not be solved with a
technological quick-fix - that it is fundamentally a crisis of
values, of how we see the world and our place in it. And these are
precisely the questions that religion and culture have been asking
since the dawn of human history.
Not only have modernity, science and technology not obviated the
need for clarifying these fundamental issues, they have made it an
urgent necessity. Since religion and culture are the stuff of
difference between us, conventional wisdom would have us avoid, or
bracket, these explosive areas if we are to achieve peaceful
coexistence. However, exactly the opposite is true: real
coexistence can only come from confronting our differences openly,
honestly, and generously. Moreover, it is my belief that not only
do we have much to learn from one another, from our differences,
but also that we will discover that we have much of importance in
common, around which we can unite.
For instance, in the context of the age-old religious history of
the Middle East, Judaism, Christianity and Islam stand out against
the pagan cultural background as the monotheistic traditions that
have formed a foundational element in the development of the
Western world. As religious traditions, we share the belief in a
Supreme Creator, with us as creatures of God's Creation. Nature,
therefore, is neither eternal (uncreated) nor divine in
itself.
A Shared Spiritual Language
This point alone has made Western monotheism the focus of severe
criticism from environmental quarters. Space will not suffice for a
thorough response to this charge, or a comprehensive survey of all
the positive environmental insights of the biblical tradition, from
Pentateuchal limitations on human exploitation of land, and
animals, to Psalmic hymns, to the natural glories of Creation. In
the Genesis stories alone, so maligned for the notorious verse
(1:28)1 which allegedly mandates dominion over, and subjugation of
the natural world, we have one of the profoundest contributions of
religion to Western environmental thought: the idea of stewardship.
We are but caretakers - "serving" and "preserving" in the language
of Genesis ch. 2 - of a world that is emphatically not ours. Yes,
human beings are unique, but it is precisely this unique status of
the human - the nexus of the divine and the earthly - with our
attendant rights and responsibilities, that allows us to address
the environmental crisis at all, and reflect on our duties to the
rest of Creation: how we can best wield the immense power that our
unique creative faculties have endowed us with.
I would argue that Judaism, Christianity and Islam share this
spiritual language that articulates appreciation of God's earth and
the fullness thereof, awe and wonder at the daily miracles of the
Creation, and fosters a sense of human responsibility for its
continued well-being. Each tradition adds to that insight, or
refracts it through its own prism of religious expression and
cultural heritage. For instance, on the conceptual level, Jewish
sources include a striking comment on the creation story of Genesis
ch. 1, asking why humans, the crown of creation, were created last
of all the created beings. The answer given is so that if we become
too arrogant as a species, we will remember that the lowly gnat
preceded us in the order of Creation. Of God himself it is told, in
another midrash (rabbinical literary homily or comment on the
text): "When God created the first humans, God led them around the
Garden of Eden and said: 'Look at my works! See how beautiful they
are - how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it
that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there
will be no one else to repair it after you.'''
Judaism and the Environmental Agenda
In the final analysis, we can respond to the glorification of
nature¬ worshiping spiritual traditions in environmental
circles in the words of the great teacher, poet, and social
activist, the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: "In paganism the
deity was a part of nature, and worship was an element of man's
relation to nature. Man and his deities were both subjects of
nature. Monotheism, in teaching that God is the Creator, that
nature and man are fellow-creatures of God, redeemed man from
exclusive allegiance to nature ... The desanctification of nature
did not in any way bring about an alienation of nature. It brought
man together with all things in a fellowship of praise ... The
earth is our sister, not our mother."
But Judaism isn't just theology and midrashim. Jewish religious
culture has particular structures and institutions that comprise a
positive and unique contribution to an environmental agenda. These
are expressed in halacha, the Jewish code of right livelihood,
which gives shape and form to the central Jewish emphasis placed on
the importance of deeds. Judaism has been described as a religion
of pots and pans, and rightly so. Though derided in other
traditions as an excessive preoccupation with details of the Law,
the ability to translate abstract values into a rule of daily life
regulating everything from food and sex to language and business
has been one of Judaism's most enduring insights. I will bring only
a few representative examples, from both the ethical and the ritual
realms. Building upon the commandment in Deuteronomy 20:19-20 that
prohibits cutting down fruit trees even in the cause of winning a
just war, the rabbis developed a whole complex of guidelines known
as the laws of bal tashchit, "do not destroy, or waste," that
prohibit wholesale or wanton destruction of just about anything -
far expanding the biblical mandate. In addition, there is extensive
Talmudic legislation regarding what we would call today toxic waste
policy, air, water and noise pollution, and various issues relevant
to wise urban planning and design.
Ritual and Actuality
On the ritual plane, Shabbat, the sabbath day - according to some,
a paragon of rigid rabbinical legalism - is a wonderful example of
the translation of spiritual values into an actual day. Shabbat is,
of course, the day of rest. But the specific halachic prohibitions
on human activity point beyond simple relaxation and recreation.
Shabbat is as much a respite for the world as it is for the people
who observe it. How else can we understand a day of joy and rest
that prohibits labor-saving devices, and involves frequent
inconvenience - but by seeing that something other than human needs
are paramount? As Rabbi David Hartman of Jerusalem writes: "The
setting of the sun on Friday evening ushers in a unit of time where
the flowers of the field stand over and against man, equal members
of the universe. I am forbidden to pluck the flower or to do with
it as I please; at sunset the flower becomes a 'thou' to me with a
right to existence regardless of its possible value for me. I stand
silently before nature as before a fellow creature of God, and not
as a potential object of my control, and I must face the fact that
I am a man and not God. The Sabbath aims at healing the human
grandiosity of a technological society." And, one final example:
even in everyday life, a Jew who recites the obligatory hundred
daily blessings, over food, routine acts and sensual pleasures, has
the framework to become a more attuned and grateful citizen of the
world.
As important as these teachings are, it is, however, becoming more
and more clear that the current environmental crisis will not be
properly addressed by "citizens of the world." Meaningful and
effective environmental concerns and sensitivity do not spring from
a general feeling of identification with the entire planet. People
connect with places, with landscapes and surroundings which they
grow to love, and therefore care for. Real environmentalism begins
with the knowledge and caring that can only come from a natural
"sense of place": knowledge of, and familiarity with, the natural
world of one's home, one's bio-region, coupled with a spiritual
connection and cultural roots in that place.
People and Land
This perspective leads then to another element that is crucial to
explore in the context of discussing Jewish sources and values and
the natural world. In contrast with Christianity and Islam, Judaism
is a landed tradition: a civilization that grew to maturity in one
particular place, whose cultural roots and spiritual orientation
are deeply connected to that place. The Bible is a document of the
relationship of a people with a land, and a landscape.
That relationship was shattered with the Exile, which lead to what
I would claim is a certain historical alienation from the natural
world, a lack of a close, intimate ongoing relationship with a
particular place. For the past two millennia or so, we post-Exilic
Jews have insistently, almost pathologically, prevented ourselves
from developing a sense of place for any other spot on the globe -
though we have sojourned in most of them. Our calendar has always
been the calendar of the Land of Israel, our liturgy connects us
with the seasons of the Land of Israel, our holidays reflect the
natural cycles of the Land of Israel, and our language, Hebrew, is
suffused with the metaphors of the Land in which it developed. The
irony is that, though all this bespeaks a deep connection to
Creation, it was an abstract connection indeed to a far away piece
of Creation.
Zionism is the modem Jewish response to that historical alienation
from nature. It is a commonplace that for Jews, Zionism means the
return to the Land of Israel. Until now, we have generally thought
of that statement in sociopolitical terms - a polity with a Jewish
majority, and a renewed national sovereignty. But a reunion of a
people with a landscape is first and foremost an environmental
phenomenon: not only a much-acclaimed "return to history," but a
return to nature as well. The predominantly secular Zionist
revolution of Jewish life rejected the myth of the Wandering
Diaspora Jew, the "desiccated" bookish shtetl culture, and the
subsequent alienation from the body and the natural world. For the
first time in two thousand years, the Jewish people have assumed
responsibility for a piece of the Creation. The renewed Jewish
presence in Israel means re¬establishing our historic and
natural "sense of place." It means, ideally, coming home in an
environmental sense, reuniting Culture and Nature, and healing a
schizophrenic split as old as the Diaspora.
This is not a political polemic for any particular ideological
agenda of Zionism; certainly not to the exclusion of others who are
no less indigenous to this landscape. And it is certainly true that
Zionism's track record regarding environmental quality is not
spotless: alongside A.D. Gordon's vision of rural well-being based
on working the land, and achievements in forestation and wilderness
preservation, there is a strong modernizing tendency which in the
name of "development" pushes unchecked economic growth, widespread
industrialization and under-planned urbanization. We have not
always done right by the land of milk and honey. But there needs to
be a recognition that, ideally, Zionism is about the reconstruction
of Jewish indigeneity, a rootedness in this land and the
concomitant responsibility for it, that is the most relevant and
authentic expression of Judaism's concern for, and commitment to,
the environment and its care.
1. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and
multiply; replenish the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every
living thing that moves on the earth.
