Environmentalism

Every day, in the news, there are stories of environmental interest, most of which warn of the dangers to our planet. Find a current and relevant story (either local or global) to share with your students. This could be a newspaper article or video news clip. Discuss the story with your students to make sure they understand the issue and to hear their perspective. Then, using the questions below, ask them to think about how Judaism might approach the issues that came up.

Using Google News to find current news stories may be helpful.

Some examples of newsclip videos:

• UN scientists say it’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming – BBC News
• Mitigation of Climate Change Report 2022: “Litany of broken climate promises” – UN Chief
• See what three degrees of global warming looks like | The Economist
• Causes and Effects of Climate Change | National Geographic

Read the biblical texts, and Rabbi Sacks’ accompanying comments, before using the Core Questions to discuss what you have read…

Humankind has Dominion over Nature as the Culmination of Creation

• See Bereishit Chapter 1

Few passages have had a deeper influence on human civilisation than the first chapter of Bereishit. Through its momentous vision of creation we see the universe as the work of God. Man is its final and supreme creation, the only being made in God’s image. Nature has been handed over to his dominion. He is commanded to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ and ‘rule’ over the animals.

Faith in the Future, p. 207

Humankind’s Responsibility to Creation

• Read Bereishit 2:4-17
• Read Bereishit Chapter 3

Bereishit I is, however, only one side of the complex biblical equation. It is balanced by a narrative, quite different in tone, in Bereishit 2, in which the first man is set in the garden of Eden ‘to work it and take care of it’. The two Hebrew verbs used here are significant. The first – le’ovdah – literally means ‘to serve it’. Man is thus both master and servant of nature. The second – leshomrah – means ‘to guard it’. This is the verb used in later biblical legislation to describe the responsibilities of a guardian of property that does not belong to him. He must exercise vigilance in his protection and is liable for loss through negligence. This is perhaps the best short definition of man’s responsibility for nature as the Bible conceives it.

The Dignity of Difference, p. 165

The mandate to exercise dominion is therefore not technical but moral and is limited by the requirement to protect and conserve. Indeed, the famous story of Bereishit 2-3 – the eating of the forbidden fruit and man’s subsequent exile from Eden – seems to make just this point. Not everything is permitted. There are limits to what we may do, and when they are transgressed, disaster follows: ‘Dust you are, and to dust you will return’ (Bereishit 3:19).

The Dignity of Difference, p. 166

Humankind is not the centre of the universe

• Iyov 39:5-7
• Tehillim 104:10-14

Bereishit sets forth a view of nature which is not man-centred but God-centred. To be sure, humanity with its unique capacity for moral choice is the focus of its concerns. But Maimonides warns us against an anthropocentric view of reality. ‘The universe does not exist for man’s sake, but each being exists for its own sake and not because of some other thing (Rambam, Guide of the Perplexed, 3:13). The climax of the book of Iyov, as God speaks to Iyov (Job) from the whirlwind, is a magnificent poem on this theme: the hubris of believing that man can subject the universe to his comprehension and control. Not only can he not tame Leviathan. Even the most harnessed of animals, the donkey, has an existence independent of man.

Faith in the Future, p. 208

That is implicit throughout the prophetic literature and in the great creation psalms… Creation has its own dignity as God’s masterpiece, and though we have the mandate to use it, we have none to destroy or despoil it.

The Dignity of Difference, pp. 166-167

Shabbat, Shemitta and Yovel as environmental education

• Read Bereishit 2:1-3
• Read Shemot 23:10-12
• Read Vayikra 25:1-24
• Read Vayikra 26:34

The three great commandments of periodic rest – Shabbat, the sabbatical year and the jubilee year – [are] powerful forms of environmental education. On Shabbat we are commanded to renounce our manipulation of the world. It is a day that sets a limit to our intervention in nature and the pursuit of economic growth. The earth is not ours but God’s. For six days it is handed over to our management. On the seventh day we symbolically abdicate that power. We may perform no ‘work’, which is to say, an act designed to alter the state of something for human purposes. Nor may we allow our animals to work. It is a day in which we respect the integrity of nature and set limits to human striving. No secular equivalent remotely rivals Shabbat as a day of ‘green’ conscious.

What Shabbat does for man and the animals, the sabbatical and jubilee years do for the land. We owe the earth its periodic rest. Indeed, the Torah stipulates that if the people of Israel do not respect this, they will suffer exile: ‘Then shall the land make up for its sabbatical years throughout the time that it is desolate and you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land rest and make up for its sabbath years’ (Vayikra 26:34). Behind this are two interwoven propositions. One is environmental. As Maimonides pointed out in his explanation of the sabbatical year, land which is overexploited eventually loses its fertility. Yishuv ha’aretz, the settlement of the land, means conserving its resources and not pursuing short-term gain at the cost of long-term desolation. The second is theological. There is no absolute ownership of the land. ‘The land’, says God, is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me’ (Vayikra 25:23). No statement more succinctly defines the conditional nature of human stewardship. Even the promised land is never an owned land. We are guests on earth.

Faith in the Future, pp. 209-210

Biblical environmental legislation

• Read Vayikra 19:19
• Read Devarim 22:6-7
• Read Devarim 20:19-20

There are other commandments, too, which restrain our interference with nature. The Torah groups together three prohibitions: against cross breeding livestock, planting a field with mixed seeds and wearing a garment of mixed wool and linen. It calls these rules chukim or ‘statutes’. Nahmanides, and later Samson Raphael Hirsch, gave this word a novel interpretation.

They understood chukim to mean laws which respected the integrity of nature. To mix different species, argued Nahmanides, was an affront to the Creator and an assault on the creation. Each species has its own internal laws of development and reproduction, and these must not be tampered with. ‘One who combines two different species thereby changes and defies the work of creation, as if he believes that the Holy One, blessed be He, has not completely perfected the world and he now wishes to improve it by adding new kinds of creatures.’ Ramban saw the law against sending the mother bird away when taking its fledglings (Devarim 22:6-7) as motivated by the same concern. Acts like these threatened the continuity of species. Though the Torah permits us to use some (but not all) animals for food, we must not cull them to extinction. Later authorities were particularly strong in their condemnation of hunting: killing animals not for the sake of food. This was wanton and destructive cruelty and had no place in Jewish life.

Faith in the Future, p. 210

Jewish law, however, required a more precise environmental ethic, one that applied to an urban as well as rural environment, and one that dealt with what we might today call a consumer society. The Talmud finds the basis for such legislation in the biblical laws of war (Devarim 20:19-20). In context, this is prohibition against a ‘scorched earth’ policy in war. However, the rabbis understood it not as a limited provision but as an example of a more general imperative. They extended it to peace as well as war, to indirect as well as direct destruction, and to other objects as well as trees. It became the basis of a universal rule against pointless destruction (bal taschit). In Jewish law one may not needlessly waste anything of potential human benefit.

Faith in the Future, p. 211

The Torah as a Key Source of Ecological Awareness

Few passages have had a deeper influence on Western civilisation than the first chapter of Bereishit with its momentous vision of the universe coming into being as the work of God. Humankind, the last and greatest of creations, is given dominion over nature: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.’ There is a sense of wonder here, and more explicitly in Psalm 8, at the smallness yet uniqueness of humankind, vulnerable but also unique in his ability to shape the environment:

When I consider Your heavens,

The work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars,

Which You have set in place.

What is man that You are mindful of him,

The son of man that You care for him?

Yet You have made him little lower than the angels

And crowned him with glory and honour. (Tehillim 8:3-5)

Bereishit 1 is, however, only one side of the complex biblical equation. It is balanced by a narrative, quite different in tone, in Bereishit 2, in which the first man is set in the garden of Eden ‘to work it and take care of it’. The two Hebrew verbs used here are significant. The first – le’ovdah – literally means ‘to serve it’. Man is thus both master and servant of nature. The second – leshomrah – means ‘to guard it’. This is the verb used in later biblical legislation to describe the responsibilities of a guardian of property that does not belong to him. He must exercise vigilance in his protection and is liable for loss through negligence. This is perhaps the best short definition of man’s responsibility for nature as the Bible conceives it.

We do not own nature – ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.’ We are its trustees on behalf of God who made it and owns it, and for the sake of future generations.

The Dignity of Difference, pp. 164-165

God sets limits to the enjoyment of nature. There is a tree from which man may not eat. Man ignores the restriction, eats from the fruit of the tree, and as a result suffers exile from Eden. Nature turns against him: ‘Cursed shall be the ground because of you; by toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall sprout for you.’ Today we are right to read this as an ecological parable. Once we lose the idea of limits and focus instead on short-term enjoyment, we set in motion long-term disharmonies which have devastating effects on the human situation. Man must not abuse nature for he is part of nature: ‘Dust you are and to dust you will return.

Bereishit sets forth a view of nature which is not man-centred but God-centred. To be sure, humanity with its unique capacity for moral choice is the focus of its concerns. But Maimonides warns us against an anthropocentric view of reality. ‘The universe does not exist for man’s sake, but each being exists for its own sake and not because of some other thing (Rambam’s Guide of the Perplexed, 3:13). The climax of the book of Job, as God speaks to Job from the whirlwind, is a magnificent poem on this theme: the hubris of believing that man can subject the universe to his comprehension and control. Not only can he not tame Leviathan. Even the most harnessed of animals, the donkey, has an existence independent of man.

Faith in the Future, p. 208

Ancient Biblical Environmental Legislation

Though we must exercise caution when reading twenty-first century concerns into ancient texts, there seems little doubt that much biblical legislation is concerned with what we would nowadays call ‘sustainability’. This is particularly true of the three great commands ordaining periodic rest: the Shabbat, the sabbatical year and the jubilee year. On the Shabbat all agricultural work is forbidden, ‘so that your ox and your donkey may rest’ (Shemot 23:12). It is a day that sets a limit to our intervention in nature and the pursuit of economic activity. We become conscious of being creations, not creators. The earth is not ours but God’s. For six days it is handed over to us, but on the seventh  day we symbolically abdicate that power. We may perform no ‘work’, which is to say, an act that alters the state of something for human purposes. Shabbat is a weekly reminder of the integrity of nature and the boundaries of human striving.

What the Shabbat does for human beings and animals, the sabbatical and jubilee years do for the land. The earth too is entitled to its periodic rest. The Bible warns that if the Israelites do not respect this, they will suffer exile: ‘Then shall the land make up for its sabbatical years throughout the time that it is desolate and you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land rest and make up for its sabbath years’ (Vayikra 26:34). Behind this are two concerns. One is environmental. As Maimonides points out, land which is over-exploited is eventually eroded and loses its fertility. The Israelites were therefore commanded to conserve the soil by giving it periodic fallow years and not pursue short-term gain at the cost of long-term desolation. The second, no less significant, is theological: ‘The land’, says God, ‘is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me’ (Vayikra 25:23). We are guests on earth.

Another group of commandments is directed against interference with nature. The Bible forbids crossbreeding livestock, planting a field with mixed seeds, and wearing a garment of mixed wool and linen. It calls these rules chukim or ‘statutes’. The thirteenth century scholar Nahmanides understood this term to mean laws which respect the integrity of nature. To mix different species, he argued, was to presume to be able to improve on the order of creation, and thus an affront to the Creator. Each species has its own internal laws of development and reproduction, and these must not be tampered with: ‘One who combines two different species thereby changes and defies the work of creation, as if he believes that the Holy One, blessed be He, has not completely perfected the world and he now wishes to improve it by adding new kinds of creatures.’ Devarim also contains a law which forbids taking a young bird together with its mother. Nahmanides sees this as having the same underlying concern, namely of protecting species. Though the Bible permits us to use some animals for food, we must not cull them to extinction.

The Dignity of Difference, pp. 167-168

The rich texture of biblical law is woven out of a fine balance between our mandate to use nature for human benefit and our duty to conserve it. Species should not be tampered with nor exploited to extinction. Neither the land nor animals should be worked to exhaustion. Above all, in its periodic sabbaticals of rest, biblical society enacted regular reminders of an ideal – once realised in Eden, to be recaptured at the messianic end of days – of man in harmony with nature ‘not hurting or destroying in all My holy mountain’. We are not there yet, but we must not lose sight of it. That is Judaism’s way of treating the inevitable conflict between the ideal and the real.

Faith in the Future, p. 211

Jewish law, however, required a more precise environmental ethic, one that applied to an urban as well as rural environment, and one that dealt with what we might today call a consumer society. The Talmud finds the basis for such legislation in the biblical laws of war:

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 axe 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 not yield food may be destroyed…. (Devarim 20:19-20).

In context, this is prohibition against a ‘scorched earth’ policy in war. However, the rabbis understood it not as a limited provision but as an example of a more general imperative. They extended it to peace as well as war, to indirect as well as direct destruction, and to other objects as well as trees. It became the basis of a universal rule against pointless destruction (bal taschit). In Jewish law one may not needlessly waste anything of potential human benefit.

Faith in the Future, p. 211

Beyond conservation, the Rabbis extended the Torah’s rule that waste should be disposed of far from human habitation. They banned garbage disposal that interfered with crops or amenities, pollution of the water supply and activities that would foul the air or create intolerable noise in residential areas. The biblical provision for open space around the Levitical cities is one of the earliest examples of town planning.

Faith in the Future, p. 212

The Jewish Ethic of Responsibility to Future Generations

We are charged with conserving and protecting the world’s resources so that future generations would benefit – a point brought out by a simple Talmudic story about one of the saints of early rabbinic times, Honi the Circle-Drawer:

One day Honi was journeying on the road and saw a man planting a carob tree. He asked him, ‘How long does it take for a carob tree to bear fruit?’ The man replied, ‘Seventy years.’ Honi asked, ‘Are you certain that you will live another seventy years?’ The man answered, ‘I found carob trees in the world. As my forefathers planted them for me, so I too plant these for my children.’ (Ta’anit 23a)

Constructing an environmental ethic in strictly secular terms has proved unexpectedly difficult. On what basis do we owe ‘duties to nature’, given that nature does not recognise duties to itself or to us, and thus lies outside the domains of contract and reciprocity? In what sense do we owe duties to generations as yet unborn, who are clearly not moral agents since they do not currently exist? On what rational basis are we to factor future loss of biodiversity as against present gain? What calculus would guide governments in poor countries who need the land made available by the clearing of forests to provide fields and food for hungry populations? Given the global impact of local policies, are wealthier nations obligated to compensate others for their environmental self-restraint? And what would persuade the citizens of those wealthy nations to give up resource-consuming habits of consumption? On what logical basis, Hans Jonas asked, do we even have a moral responsibility to ensure that there is a world for future generations to inhabit?

The power of the religious imagination is not that it has easy answers to difficult questions, but that it provides a framework of thought for such large and intractable issues. It is easier to understand the moral constraints on action when we believe that there is someone to whom we owe responsibility, that we are not owners of the planet, and that we are covenantally linked to those who will come after us. Like the planter of the carob tree, we act so that those who come after us will have a world to enjoy as we did…

As an ancient rabbinic comment put it: when God finished creating the universe He said to the first human being: ‘Behold My works, how beautiful, how splendid they are. All that I have created, I created for you. Take care, therefore, that you do not destroy My world, for if you do, there will be no one left to repair what you have destroyed.’ (Kohelet Rabbah 7:20)

The Dignity of Difference, pp. 169-173

We are guardians of the world for the sake of future generations. Trees are a symbol of the long-term nature of the human enterprise. In the book of Psalms, the wicked grow like grass, the righteous slowly like cedars. Our decisions – economic, political and military – must be taken on the basis of calculation of distant consequences (the Israelites, for example, are warned against too rapid a conquest ‘lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field multiply against thee’). The world we inherit is due to the efforts of those who came before us. The world we leave our children is dependent on what we do. Conservation is part of what Burke called the ‘partnership… between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.’

Faith in the Future, p. 212

A Call to Environmental Responsibility in Our Age

The mandate in Bereishit chapter 1 to exercise dominion is, therefore, not technical, but moral: humanity would control, within our means, the use of nature towards the service of God. Further, this mandate is limited by the requirement to serve and guard as seen in Bereishit chapter 2. The famous story of Bereishit chapters 2-3 – the eating of the forbidden fruit and Adam and Eve’s subsequent exile from Eden – supports this point.

Not everything is permitted. There are limits to how we interact with the earth. The Torah has commandments regarding how to sow crops, how to collect eggs, and how to preserve trees in a time of war, just to name a few. When we do not treat creation according to God’s will, disaster can follow.

We see this today as more and more cities sit under a cloud of smog and as mercury advisories are issued over large sectors of our fishing waters. Deforestation of the rainforests, largely a result of humanity’s growing demand for timber and beef, has brought on irrevocable destruction of plant and animal species.

We can no longer ignore the massive negative impact that our global industrial society is having on the ecosystems of the earth. Our unbounded use of fossil fuels to fuel our energy-intensive lifestyles is causing global climate change. An international consensus of scientists predicts more intense and destructive storms, floods, and droughts resulting from these human-induced changes in the atmosphere. If we do not take action now, we risk the very survival of civilisation as we know it…

The choice is ours. If we continue to live as though God had only commanded us to subdue the earth, we must be prepared for our children to inherit a seriously degraded planet, with the future of human civilisation at risk.

If we see our role as masters of the earth as a unique opportunity to truly serve and care for the planet, its creatures, and its resources, then we can reclaim our status as stewards of the world, and raise our new generations in an environment much closer to that of Eden.

The Stewardship Paradigm

• Rabbi Sacks on Eco-Judaism Roots (Video: 1.40 for JInsider)
• The Stewardship Paradigm: A Thought for Tu BiShvat (video 1.58)
• The Stewardship Paradigm (Article published 14 January 2014)
• Environmental Responsibility (Covenant & Conversation, Shoftim)
• Environmental Ethics: JNF Rabbinical Conference (1992) Lecture
• Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition: Tu BiShvat
• Made With Love (Covenant & Conversation Family Edition, Acharei Mot Kedoshim)
• The Ecological Imperative (Covenant & Conversation Family Edition, Shoftim)
• The Good Society: The St George’s Lecture, 5 June 2000 (transcript where the environmental aspects of Shabbat, Shemittah, and Yovel are mentioned)
• Animal Welfare (Covenant & Conversation, Ki Teitse)

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch

This prohibition of purposeless destruction of fruit trees around a besieged city is only to be taken as an example of general wastefulness. Under the concept of bal tashhit, the purposeless destruction of anything at all is taken to be forbidden, so that our text becomes the most comprehensive warning to human beings not to misuse the position, which God has given them as master of the world and its matter, by capricious, passionate, or merely thoughtless wasteful destruction of anything on earth. Only for wise use has God laid the world at our feet when God said to humanity, “subdue the world and have dominion over it.” (Bereishit 1:28)…Destruction does not only mean making something purposely unfit for its designated use; it also means trying to attain a certain aim by making use of more things and more valuable things when fewer and less valuable ones would suffice; or if this aim is not really worth the means expended for its attainment. [For example] kindling something that is still fit for other purposes for the sake of light;…wearing down something more than is necessary;…consuming more than is necessary;…. On the other hand, if destruction is necessary for a higher and more worthy aim, then it ceases to be destruction and itself becomes wise creating. [For example] cutting down a fruit tree which is doing harm to other more valuable plants, [and] burning a vessel when there is a scarcity of wood in order to protect one’s weakened self from catching a cold.

S. R. Hirsch, Horeb: A Philosophy of Jewish Laws and Observances

Rabbi Meir Tamari

Man’s economic needs have to be understood within the framework of his role as an administrator, responsible for the well-being of the world and its natural resources. So economic growth cannot be achieved through damage to another’s property or health or through harmful exploitation of natural resources, even when these are legally within one’s possession. The physical beauty of the world is a valuable enhancement to religious thought and contributes to man’s spiritual growth. The property rights of the individual are limited by the demands of religious observance, the welfare of other individuals, and the public welfare. Even one’s own body is not one’s exclusive property, and so one is required to take all necessary steps to preserve it from harm. Such responsibility extends to the bodily health of other members of the community.

There is a moral and ethical dimension involved not only in desisting from damaging property, but also in actively preventing such damage.

These limitations on the property rights of the individual mean that economic growth is not an end in itself but only one of man’s needs. A distinction would have to be made in a Jewish economy between the provision of necessities and the pursuit of luxuries, even though the dividing line is not always a clear one.

M. Tamari, With All Your Possessions, Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2014, p. 329

Rabbi Norman Lamm

There is no doubt that Judaism fully supports the endeavours to restore the balance of nature along with man’s respect for it. The Bible teaches us that man was given dominion over nature: after creating man and woman, “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth’” (Bereishit chapter 1:28). But to have dominion does not mean to destroy. We are to subdue nature, but we are also responsible for it.

The halachah has enshrined this principle in law. The Torah explicitly forbids the wasteful destruction of a fruit tree in a time of siege. The halachah extends this prohibition to cover all times, whether of war or of peace. But how about the wanton waste of other natural objects, not fruit trees? Most authorities (Tosafot and Sefer Yerei’im) hold that “fruit tree” is but a single instance of any kind of wasteful destruction, all of which is equally forbidden by biblical law and punishable by flogging. Maimonides (who earlier had held to the same opinion, but then changed his mind) decided that only destruction of the fruit tree is punishable according to biblical law. What of other objects? Some commentators believe that Maimonides includes them as rabbinical prohibitions. But one important commentator, the Minchat Chinuch, holds that Maimonides prescribes flogging for the fruit tree, but all other objects, while not punishable, are equally prohibited by biblical law.

What we derive from all this is that the Halachah clearly enjoins any brutal, wanton, senseless offense against nature – and even against human produce. It demands of us a sense of responsibility before all creativity, and a special sense of reverence before God’s work.

Rabbi Norman Lamm, Ecology and the Bible in Derashot LeDorot: A Commentary for the Ages: Exodus, Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2013, p. 198