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Judaism Ideas embedded in the rich theological and legal literature of Judaism have informed and influenced modern Jewish environmental ideas of sustainability: the belief that humans are temporary inhabitants of what God has created, and the inherent values of humility, moderation, and responsibility. Many old and new traditions—Tu b’Shvat, the Sabbath, and Sabbatical Year—celebrate care and concern for the environment. J udaism has, throughout its history, developed a theocentric theology while focusing much of its ethical and legal literature on the good governance of human society, which was seen at the same time as the fulfillment of God’s will. In the earliest stages of Jewish history, found in the Hebrew Bible, the relationship between the people, the land, and God was conceptualized as a covenant. This was a conditional contract in which the people had obligations to be loyal to God alone and to follow God’s commandments in return for peace and fertility on the land. Failure to follow the contract meant exile from the land. Thus the land-based covenant contained several important laws that emphasized proper stewardship of the land and gratitude to God for the bounty that the land produced under His blessings. In later Jewish history, when many Jews lived outside of the land of Israel, these concepts were incorporated into practices and rituals meant to remind Jews of their ancestral connection to the land, but they could also be applied in some part to the lands they now lived in. It was this rich theological and legal literature that has informed and influenced modern Jewish environmental ideas of sustainability. While the language of sustainability was not used directly in Jewish environmental writing until the early 1990s, several concepts emerged in the first responses and have continued to be the major values with which Jewish environmentalists have found connections with the classic elements of sustainability: God’s ownership of Creation, human stewardship of Creation, intergenerational responsibility, modesty in consumption, the common good, and gratitude. These theological ethical concepts became part of the organizing discourse of the Jewish environmental movement as it began to mobilize. Early Environmental Writings and Organizations Jewish environmental writing began in the early 1970s as responses to three events: the famous article in the journal Science by Lynn White Jr., the creation of Earth Day, and the advent of major environmental legislation. These all occurred in North America, as Israeli environmentalism began in the 1950s, not as a religious movement, but as part of a secular response to development (Tal 2002). This article will therefore focus on the Jewish religious concepts of sustainability that were primarily developed in North America. The first major Jewish environmental organization was Shomrei Adamah (Hebrew for “Guardians of the Earth,” a reference to Genesis 2:15 in the New Jewish Publication Society’s Hebrew Bible), which was founded in 1988. Shomrei Adamah published a number of books and educational materials devoted to increasing environmental awareness among Jews. One of its most successful activities was the popularization of the Tu B’Shvat seder. Tu B’Shvat is the New Year for the trees, a minor event in the Jewish calendar originally used to designate the date when a tree’s fruit became subject to tithing. In the sixteenth century, Jewish mystics created a seder or ritual meal to mark this event, which was reinterpreted with their elaborate cosmological system. In the twentieth century, 254 J.indd 254 10/22/2009 10:52:37 AM JUDAISM • 255 Tu B’Shvat was reintroduced as a kind of Jewish Arbor Day by Zionist settlers in the land of Israel. The seder was then rewritten to promote this event for Jews in the Diaspora. It was Ellen Bernstein, the founder of Shomrei Adamah, who reintroduced the mystical version of the seder within an environmental context. This ritual has spread to many Jewish communities, and Tu B’Shvat has become the de facto Jewish Earth Day. While the term sustainability was not originally used in the seder, the themes and practices of sustainability are now central to the seder’s rituals and liturgy. In 1992, as part of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) was founded in the United States. COEJL became a nationwide organization with many local affiliates usually connected to the organized Jewish community structures. In its founding statement, COEJL (2007) called for “mobilizing our community towards energy efficiency, the reduction and recycling of wastes, and other practices which promote environmental sustainability.” COEJL’s mission statement also connected sustainability with environmental justice and the “Jewish values of environmental stewardship.” The major Jewish religious denominations and rabbinical organizations in the United States have all passed numerous environmental resolutions since the early 1990s in which the language of sustainability is utilized. It is always assumed in these statements that sustainability is in consort with Jewish theology and ethics. Ethical Obligations It can be said that sustainability has two ethical obligations in time and space—one horizontal and one vertical. The horizontal obligation is to all humans and to all life living in the present: we must live equitably within the boundaries of what the Earth can sustain. The vertical obligation is to extend that process into the future, in other words, a commitment to generations of humans and nonhumans still unborn. These ethical obligations can be found in the following Jewish theological assumptions upon which a Jewish concept of sustainability is based. First of all, Judaism holds that the Earth and all it contains is a creation of God. This world was not brought into being by human endeavor, nor does it exist only for human beings. For whatever reason, God created Earth and the life upon it; it all belongs to God, and human beings are temporary dwellers or tenants upon the earth (compare I Chronicles 29:11–15). This temporary tenant status also implies that humanity must leave the Earth in the same state as they entered it. These ideas are best seen in the laws of the Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee. In Leviticus 25 (compare also Exodus J.indd 255 23:10), the Israelites were commanded to let the land lie fallow every seventh year. During that year—the Sabbatical Year—whatever grew on the land without human cultivation was allowed to be eaten but with the stipulation that the poor should have access to this produce as well. In a law called the Jubilee, Leviticus 25 also mandated that every fifty years, all land sold during that time was to be returned to its original owners. At the end of the stipulations of these laws it says: “But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but resident aliens with Me” (Leviticus 25:23 HB). In Deuteronomy 15:1–15, further stipulations are added to the Sabbatical Year: All debts must be cancelled and all indentured servants released. The rationale given in this source is that since the Israelites were redeemed by God from slavery in Egypt, they should imitate God and not enslave their fellow Israelites through debt. In the Torah there is also the idea of cross-generational responsibility in which the sins of one generation can end up hurting future generations (compare Exodus 20:5). Creation is also deemed by God to be “good,” which suggests a positive view of the material world. If all things created are good, then God has equal concern and delight in both human life and nonhuman life. This dual concern is found in texts such as Psalms 104 and 148. Human life, nonhuman life, and even the landscape itself form a single community in Creation. The speeches of God to Job out of the whirlwind (Job 38–41) suggest the more radical idea that humans are not the primary objects of God’s concern. Secondly, Creation has an order, (in Hebrew: seder b’reshit.) This order is, according to classical texts such as Psalm 148, hierarchically structured with its focus toward God. But it is also horizontally structured to remind us of the interdependence of all life. Embedded in both ethical and ritual laws in the Torah is the warning against the disruption of this order (compare Genesis 4, Leviticus 18:27–30). Thirdly, human beings have a special place and role in the order of Creation. Of all Creation, only human beings have the power to disrupt Creation. This power, which gives them a kind of control over Creation, comes from special characteristics that no other creature possesses (compare Psalm 8). This idea is expressed in the concept that humans were created in the image of God (in Hebrew: tzelem Elohim). In its original sense, tzelem Elohim means that humans were put on the Earth to act as God’s agents and to actualize God’s presence in Creation. But the concept also has ethical implications, which means that human beings have certain intrinsic dignities such as infinite value, equality and uniqueness, and that human beings possess God-like capacities such as power, consciousness, relationship, will, freedom, and life. Human beings are supposed 10/22/2009 10:52:38 AM 256 • BERKSHIRE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SUSTAINABILITY: THE SPIRIT OF SUSTAINABILITY 2 to exercise their power, consciousness, and free will to be wise stewards of Creation. They should be maintaining the order of Creation even while they are allowed to use it for their own benefit within certain limits established by God (Genesis 2:14). This ethical imperative of responsibility applies to human society as well to the natural world. These theological concepts give rise to two ethical values in Judaism: humility and moderation. Humility calls upon human beings to recognize their place in the order of Creation. “Why were human beings created last in the order of Creation? . . . So they should not grow proud, for one can say to them, ‘the gnat came before you in the Creation!’” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38a). While human beings do have the power to manipulate Creation, that power must be exercised carefully since humanity is dependant upon and interconnected to the rest of Creation. The second century Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai said: “Three things are equal in importance: earth, humans and rain.” The early fourth century Rabbi Levi ben Hiyyata said: “And these three each consist of three letters [in Hebrew] to teach that without Earth, there is no rain and without rain earth cannot endure; while without either, humans cannot exist” (Midrash Genesis Rabbah 13:3). Humility calls humanity to understand that all actions have longterm consequences upon the Earth, that it is necessary to “tread lightly upon the Earth,” and not to act out of the arrogance of power. Moderation is a self-imposed limitation to unnecessary consumption. Moderation is a positive value that can enhance the appreciation of life. “Who is rich? One who is happy with his portion” (Mishnah Avot 4:1). One of the great Jewish texts on moderation is the Eight Chapters of Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), an introduction to his commentary to Mishnah Avot. Chapter Four describes the path of moderation between two extremes as the definition of virtue. And while Maimonides was especially concerned with showing how extreme asceticism is not a virtue in itself but only as a means to an end, his basic principle of understanding how destructive extreme behavior can be to the human psyche is quite relevant today in discussions about sustainability and countering the modern culture of consumerism. The Jewish tradition has never exalted poverty and has always seen material welfare as a blessing and a reward from God, but it also saw the unlimited acquisition of wealth as a danger to true spiritual and ethical values. For example, the medieval French rabbinical authority Rashi (1040–1105), in his commentary to Numbers 32:16, speaks disapprovingly of how the tribes of Gad and Reuben had more concern for their cattle and wealth than for their children. During the Middle Ages, many Jewish communities had sumptuary laws that included limitations upon extravagance in dress and as well as limitations on the amount of spending at life-cycle celebrations. One is also J.indd 256 not supposed to be excessive in eating and drinking or in the kind of clothes that one wears (Maimonides Mishneh Torah, Laws of Discernment, chapter 5). It is thus easy to understand how modern Jewish environmentalism embraced the concept of sustainability within traditional theology. But Judaism has always sought to concretize its theology and ethical values within a discrete system of legal actions (in Hebrew: halakhah). One particular law has been part of Jewish environmentalism since its start: the mitzvah (meaning “commandment”) of Bal Tashchit (“Do not destroy”). This law, one of the 613 commandments that Rabbinic Judaism has traditionally found in the Torah, is based on Deuteronomy 20:19–20: When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? Only trees that you know do no yield food may be destroyed; you may cut them down for constructing siege works against the city that is waging war on you, until it has been reduced. This law was expanded in later Jewish legal sources to include the prohibition of the wanton destruction of household goods, clothes, buildings, springs, food, or the wasteful consumption of anything (see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings, and Wars 6:8, 10; Hirsch 2002, 279–280). In modern Jewish environmentalism, Bal Tashchit is considered the primary call to sustainable living. Thus Jews are obligated to consider carefully their real needs whenever purchasing anything. There is an obligation when having a celebration to consider whether it is necessary to elaborate meals and wasteful decorations. There is also an obligation to consider energy use and the sources from which it comes. In classic rabbinic sources there is also a strong commitment to the common good. For example: Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai taught: It can be compared to people who were in a boat and one of them took a drill and began to drill under his seat. His fellow passengers said to him: “Why are you doing this?!” He said to them: “What do you care? Am I not drilling under me?!” They replied: “Because you are sinking the boat with us in it!” (Midrash Leviticus Rabbah 4:6) There is also the Talmudic legal principle of geirey diley (Aramaic for “his arrows”). In this principle, it is forbidden for a person to stand in his own property and to shoot arrows randomly while claiming that there was no intent to cause damage (Talmud Bava Batra 22b). Thus people are forbidden to establish polluting workshops in a 10/22/2009 10:52:38 AM JUDAISM • 257 courtyard where other people are living. This principle can also be applied to sustainability in that we cannot claim that our unsustainable consumption is morally neutral. We know that it is causing harm to other human beings in the resources extracted to create the things we consume and in the waste it produces when we throw it away. “His arrows” creates a principle of responsibility even when there is no intention of harm and even at great distances from the original act of consumption. Lastly, Jewish environmentalism has tried to create better awareness of sustainability in Jewish liturgy and ritual practice. For example, Jewish liturgy has a large number of blessings for many different occasions: eating, celebrating, and experiencing the wonder of Creation, to name a few. Blessings and other prayers also help to create an understanding of God’s ownership of Creation. When a blessing is said, a moment of holiness is created, a sacred pause. Prayer also creates an awareness of the sacred by taking people out of themselves and their artificial environments to truly encounter natural phenomenon. Prayer creates a loss of control, allowing people to “see the world in the mirror of the holy,” according to the twentiethcentury theologian and philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel (Tirosh-Samuelson 2002, 409). It is then possible to see the world as an object of divine concern, placing people beyond self and more deeply within Creation. Prayer also engenders a sense of gratitude for what we have and allows people to better value the things of this world. Another important ritual aspect of Judaism that has been utilized by modern Jewish environmentalism is the Sabbath. By its restrictions of everyday work and activity and by its positive elements of prayer, rest, and celebration, the Sabbath can engender a sense of love and humility before Creation and help to foster a way to live a sustainable life. For one day out of seven, people must limit their use of resources. Traditionally people walk to attend synagogue and drive only when walking is not possible. One does not J.indd 257 cook or shop; the day is used for relaxation and spiritual contemplation. As Rabbi Ismar Schorsch (b. 1935) once wrote, “To rest is to acknowledge our limitations. Willful inactivity is a statement of subservience to a power greater than our own” (COEJL 1994, 20). Thus Judaism holds many traditional theological concepts, values, and actions that the modern Jewish environmental movement has connected with the value of sustainability. More and more Jewish communities and congregations are integrating these ideas into every day life and into the ritual rhythm cycle of the Jewish year and the imperatives of Jewish ethics. Lawrence TROSTER GreenFaith FURTHER READING Bernstein, Ellen. (Ed.). (1998). Ecology & the Jewish spirit: Where nature and the sacred meet. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing. Bernstein, Ellen. (2005). Shomrei Adamah. Retrieved June 30, 2009, from http://ellenbernstein.org/about_ellen.htm#shomrei_ adamah Benstein, Jeremy. (2006). The way into Judaism and the environment. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing. Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL). (1994). To till and to tend: A guide to Jewish environmental study and action. New York: Author. Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL). (2007). Retrieved June 30, 2009, from http://www.coejl.org/~coejlor/about/ history.php Hirsch, Samson Raphael. (2002). Horeb: A philosophy of Jewish laws and observances (Isidore Grunfeld, Trans.) (7th ed.). London: Soncino Press. Tal, Alon. (2002). Pollution in a promised land: An environmental history of Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava. (Ed.). (2002). Judaism and ecology: Created world and revealed word. Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University Press. Yaffe, Martin D. (Ed.). (2001). Judaism and environmental ethics: A reader. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 10/22/2009 10:52:38 AM