Download 14. The Jewish Approach to the Environment

14. The Jewish Approach to the Environment
Clive A. Lawton
As soon as one realises that a central feature of Jewish belief is commitment to the
Land of Israel - not just as a museum or a pilgrim/tourist spot, but as a living ecological entity - then it becomes obvious that Jews have much to say on the subject of the
environment. The Torah legislates a number of rules about the Land and its produce.
Firstly, it establishes the principle that the Land is God’s and only held in trust. At the
fiftieth year - Jubilee - all land reverted to its original family allocation so there was
little virtue in property speculation!
Every seventh year it was forbidden to sell the produce of the land or to cultivate it for
that purpose. People could take and eat what they wanted but essentially the Land also
deserves a Shabbat. This seventh year - the Shmitta - is still observed by some Jews.
Religious agriculturalists will grow their seventh year produce in trays suspended
above the ground so that the land can lie fallow, and many orthodox Jews around the
world might actually avoid Israeli produce in their supermarkets once every seventh
year for fear that it might be Shmitta produce!
In addition, there were rules about how much natural produce one could use oneself
and how much one had to give - to priest, to God. However much we could grow, it
was not all ours. Each harvest was a gift, a bounty not a right, and each deserved
gratitude. Such gratitude was not to be expressed in vague symbolic terms but in concrete proportional amounts.
The three harvest festivals, (for barley Pesah, wheat and first fruits, Shavuot, and
fruits, Sukkot), faded in agricultural significance over Israel’s long exile from the
Land, but with the flowers of Shavuot and the fruit hanging in the Sukka, their harvest
nature was never entirely masked by their higher-profile historical associations. Now,
with agricultural activity again a thriving reality for the Jews, the balance is starting to
reassert itself.
Another agricultural festival, not referred to in the Torah, comes about through Torah
legislation. There are laws about fruit trees. One is not supposed to touch the fruit of a
new tree; one can use the fruit for private consumption in the third year and only in
the fourth year can one sell the produce. These rules necessitate a sort of ‘tax-year’
ruling by which one can decide the age of a fruit tree, and this in turn led to the establishment of Tu B’Shevat, the New Year for Trees. On this day, Jews attempt to plant
trees wherever they may be, to donate money for the planting of trees in Israel and to
eat the fruit of trees (customarily 15 different fruits because the festival falls on the
15th of Shevat).
However, the pre-occupation with trees does not end there. The Torah in Deuteronomy explicitly forbids the destruction of trees when besieging a city. US policy in
Vietnam and possibly Macduff’s advance on Dunsinane were both probably in contravention of Jewish law. (A number of modern Jews have seized upon this verse as
support for an anti-nuclear stance. They argue that the law implies that in warfare the
ecology should not be severely disrupted (one can presumably cut down bushes and
dig trenches) and since nuclear warfare not only kills people but destroys the natural
environment in a drastic way, this becomes an illegitimate means of waging war).
Furthermore, ever since the nineteenth-century push for more Jews to cultivate the
Land of Israel, the planting of trees in someone’s name has become a standard way of
honouring someone — the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles in Yad Vashem, the Lord
Louis Mountbatten forest, the Queen’s Jubilee forest, and so on - or celebrating an
occasion; for example, my mother-in-law planted 50 trees in our names when Sara
and I were wed.
Living with the natural environment
Of course, concern for the environment in a sense only grows as we become more divorced from it. If one lives within the rhythms of nature and accepts the wilfulness of
the Earth, then that humility prevents the arrogance of trying to smother rather than
harness natural realities. However urbanised Jews have become, a number of Jewish
traditions have prevented this tragic divorce from the natural environment.
Firstly, the Jewish day has always been defined by God’s time and not by Man’s (I
think I do mean to be particularly male there). Sunset starts the day, and in different
climes and at different times the days are and feel different. The months run in line
with the waxing and waning of the moon and, by the way, spring and autumn coincide
much more accurately with Pesah and Sukkot, even in Britain, than ever they do with
March and October. Indeed, Pesah has to be postponed if necessary so that it will coincide with spring and the start of the barley harvest in Israel. The custom at Sukkot
time of sitting in the Sukka ‘under the stars’ (the law requires that the roof should not
be so thick that the Stars are not visible) is once again a powerful reminder of the real
climate in the midst of our central heating and air conditioning.
The observance of Shabbat is also a weekly statement of recognition that humanity
should not always be doing in the world (though for six days a week it should). It is
right and good sometimes to just be. What a universal observance of such a tradition
would do for the environment boggles the imagination. At the very least, since orthodox Jews do not carry things outside their private property on Shabbat, the litter in the
world would be reduced by one seventh at a stroke! At the time of the threat of petrol
rationing in the 70s and the possibility that each person would be banned from driving
one day a week, orthodox Jews viewed this with equanimity. Imagine one day a week
in which no trucks, no trains, no cars, no planes moved anywhere (except for lifesaving emergencies). What a blessing!
There is, however, a lesser known mitzva (rule) in the Torah which I believe has major environmental and ecological significance. It is the law of `shatnez’. As you
probably know, Jews are very committed to the principle of distinctiveness. God created diversity and we should celebrate it, not subvert it. Kashrut is all about separation
of things and in so many facets of Judaism there are things to be brought together and
things to be kept apart. Nowhere is this more explicit than in the law of ‘shatnez’.
Put simply, this rule forbids the linking together of two natural, different things. For
example, one should not weave together wool and linen in the same garment, or hybridize two totally different types of fruit, or yoke together an ox and an ass. The recent production of a ‘geep’ - or was it a ‘shoat’? - is a complete anathema to Torah.
There are ‘shatnez’ testing laboratories where some Jews will send clothes they’ve
bought to confirm that they are kosher. There are other Jews who have their doubts
about some of the new fruits one can buy in the supermarket. (This only applies to
radical hybridizing, not the mixing of two kinds of apples or two kinds of citrus to
produce a third).
This mitzva has always been seen by Jews as one of those in the Torah that has no apparent reason (rather like the dietary laws) but exists merely (?) as an exercise in discipline or an expression of God’s will. As we grow to understand the nature of ecology and its subtle balances, a reason starts to emerge that speaks to the twentiethcentury Jew.
As we turn our attention from flora to fauna, we note a range of rules about how animals should be treated. An animal should not be muzzled when working in the Field,
for example. One of the seminal verses is that in the Torah which has God saying ‘I
shall give grass in your fields to your cattle, and you shall eat and be satisfied’. The
order of priorities and the juxtaposing of these two statements led to the strong insistence that animals should be cared for before (and so that) we could care for ourselves.
Furthermore, one of the seven rules of the sons of Noah (the basic rules of human morality required in the Jewish view of Jew and Gentile) is the prohibition against eating
meat torn from a live animal. This would seem to preclude hunting with dogs for
food, and the general picture given of Jacob and Esau seems to suggest that Esau the
hunter is not a particularly recommended role model.
Responsibility and Constraint
However, it would be wrong to suggest that Judaism is in some way sentimental about
nature and the environment. The task given to Adam was to ‘fill the world and control
it’, but, Judaism would argue, only by having a proper respect for it. While there is a
tradition that Adam and his descendants were vegetarian, from Noah onwards, the eating of meat was permitted but only under stringent controls of how one slaughters the
animals to cause them the least pain. (Sentimental observers have been so distressed
by the amount of visible blood in Shechita, the Jewish method of slaughter, that they
have called for a tidier, neater system. The fact that the animal suffers no more than in
other current systems, and the more important fact that shechita is more successful
first time, leads Jews to believe that shechita is not only an acceptable, but even a desirable system. What seems even more important to me is that in shechita the slaughterer is repeatedly aware that he is taking a life and he does so deliberately. In other
more distant automated systems, it is now possible to ‘process’ animals).
Judaism has no doubt that human life and need takes precedence over all else. The
developing of technology and the sciences of fuel development, agricultural intensification, and so on, are not just permitted but are imperatives in the Jewish view of humanity’s responsibility to use the world to its own best needs. This is no more startlingly expressed than in the eleventh-century Biblical commentary by Rashi, one of
the great rabbinic luminaries, when he discusses the Flood. Why, he asks, did all the
animals have to perish (except for those in the Ark) when the Flood was sent because
of the wickedness of humans? The answer he gives is breathtaking — without people
there was no use or need for animals. This is certainly a humano-centric view of the
world!
This view, however, stands a million miles from that which has created the current
crisis in the world’s environment. Judaism argues that the power we have was given
us in trust: with it goes responsibility and constraints. The first responsibility is to take
the long view and consider unborn generations. Hence the old man in the Talmud
planting a tree, the fruit of which he will never see, because, as he says, someone
planted a tree for him.
The second responsibility is to recognise that public property is more our concern and
our inheritance than our private property. Again in the Talmud: A man was seen in the
road clearing stones by throwing them onto his own garden. People thought he was
crazy. But, in later years, when his fortunes had changed and he was reduced to penury, his bare feet were grateful for the stoneless road.
The most important constraint is only to take what we need and not more. A rigorous
analysis of needs, as opposed to wants, could change the environmental picture at a
stroke. Jewish food restrictions require that one only kills animals for food, and one
only eats animals one can breed for food. There would be no endangered or extinct
species. The periodic halt in consumption and buck-chasing brought about by Shabbat, and the amnesty given to the land by shmitta could help to make us all a little
saner.
Sometimes – only sometimes – I think it’s a shame Judaism doesn’t try to convert
people to its views.
Still, there’s nothing to stop me recommending them to you!
Clive Lawton is Head of King David’s High School in Liverpool and a member of Shap.