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JUDAISM AND THE EARTH
Is Judaism ecologically sound? VIVIENNE CATO suggests it is not as bad as it is sometimes portrayed
When God created the first human beings, He led them round the Garden of Eden and said, "Look at my works! See how beautiful they are, how perfect! 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 set it right after you" (Ecclesiastes Rabbah).
As a Jewish environmentalist, this story from the Midrash (rabbinical commentaries) has long been one of my favourites. I loved its poignancy and acute observation, set in a mythic moment of promise and choice. But recently that middle line has been leaping out at me as problematic. "For your sake I created them all". Is this, at its core, what Judaism really believes about our relationship with nature?
One does not have to search far for answers. The first explicit indication in the Bible of the human role vis-ŕ-vis nature comes early on with that embarrassing instruction to "fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth" (Genesis 1:28).
Fortunately, it is almost immediately modified by what we find in the "second" creation story of the next chapter. This time round, Adam (the primordial man, ie all of us) is to be Eden’s gardener, tilling and tending it (2:15). This is an improvement on mastery, but at the end of the day it is still stewardship, and the stewardship model is still one that places humans at the top of the heap. Blessed or cursed with capacities that enable us to have a meta-awareness of the whole, we have, biblically-speaking, been given the job of nature-manager.
Rabbinic tradition takes this concept further. The Talmud requires respect for animals in particular and nature in general, and insists that we safeguard their continued existence. Yet, as humans, we have the right to make use of them and to put our own needs first. The very staples of Jewish environmental ethics (prevention of cruelty to animals and the injunction to not destroy or waste) spring from human/nature relationships, not nature/nature ones. They deal with domesticated nature, not the wild world. Like the tree falling unobserved in the forest, the other-than-human world seems not to exist if the human has nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Deep Ecology has been growing up toward the light. Deep Ecology is built on the understanding that everything is connected with everything else. Hence, ironically, it is absolutely in our human self-interest to let every other, 'other-than-human' being, achieve its self-interest too. Arne Naess, the 'father' of the Deep Ecology movement, summed up this philosophy in the key phrase 'self-realisation', yet it is not a selfish self- realisation. For humans, it is a widening of identification beyond individual and even species boundaries to encompass, eventually, the whole of what some call Gaia. Deep Ecologists hold that all life has value in itself, regardless of its usefulness to humans. The very richness and diversity of life forms is of intrinsic value, and humans are only permitted to diminish this in satisfying vital needs.
This ecocentric perspective sits comfortably with indigenous tribal traditions, and fairly comfortably with the religions of the East. Social anthropo-logists and cultural ecologists looking for a golden past, and hopefully a golden future, in which humans lived and may yet live in harmony with nature, seize happily upon the Navajo and Inuit, the Aboriginal Australians, the tradition of shamanism. Even the more formalized religions of Buddhism and Hinduism find unqualified acceptance from Western ecologists, stressing as they do compassion and loving kindness towards not just humans but the 'more-than-human' emanations of life. Nature, in Eastern understandings, is a teacher, a spiritual force and a way of life. Material greed must be constrained by respect, and by the need for balance between humans, society and nature.
So, does the emphasis in Judaism (and Christianity) on stewardship justify the disregard and even contempt with which secular environmentalists hold the Judaeo-Christian tradition? Should Jews be embarrassed about how politically incorrect their religions are in the eyes of the Green movement? The answer is 'no'. After the Flood, God made a covenant not just with Noah but with "every living thing that is with you – birds, cattle, and every wild beast as well" (Genesis 9: 10). Nature’s beings must obviously be sentient and valued in their own right if they are partaking in contracts and covenants. The Torah sees even the land itself as alive. Jews twice a day in prayer remind themselves to honour the land and its rhythms so that it will continue to provide for them; and if this human-divine-natural contract is violated, "your land shall become a desolation and your cities a ruin" (Leviticus 26:33).
This is a people who were born, collectively, into a state of intimacy with nature. As farmers and shepherds they were dependent on the cycles of the seasons for their survival. The annual round of the Jewish festivals, most of which emerge from the paying of agricultural dues reflects these origins. Many of the Psalms speak of animals, birds, hills and even stars praising God, as do humans out of wonder at these very creations. Even today, the observant Jew blesses God on witnessing rainbows, thunder and lightening, comets, mountains and the ocean. This is not the utilitarianism of a steward. This is the response of someone stopping to pay attention, as the shepherd Moses did when he came across a bush burning in a subtly unnatural manner.
Rabbi Nahman, a founder of Chasidism, was known for praying outdoors. In the rural Ukraine of the late 18th Century this meant fields and deep forests and for the Rabbi it was through immersion in the non-human world that the presence of the divine could be felt. He wrote: "Master of the Universe, grant me the ability to be alone; may it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grass - among all growing things – and there may I be alone, and enter into prayer, to talk with the one to whom I belong. May I express there everything in my heart, and may all the foliage of the field – all grasses, trees and plants – awake at my coming, to send the powers of their life into the words of my prayer so that my prayer and speech are made whole through the life and spirit of all growing things, which are made as one by their transcendent Source."
This grass is not only sentient; it is in vital reciprocal relationship with the human, each dependent on the other for their fulfilment in the Divine. This perspective finds its most explicit expression in the Book of Job. Made to suffer in extremis as part of Satan's wager with God to test Job's loyalty, Job questions the meaning of existence. The answer is a powerful poetic oratorio on the magnificent impenetrability of nature. "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations? Speak if you have understanding. Do you know who fixed its dimensions or who measured it with a line? On to what were its bases sunk? Who set its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the divine beings shouted for joy?" (Job 38: 4-7)
This world with its sea, snow, winds, stars, rain, lions, goats, asses, oxen, ostriches, horses and hawks is one completely beyond human comprehension, let alone control. And in that impotence, and surrender, is relief. This is a world created by HaMakom (The Place), one of Judaism’s many synonyms for the Divine, and one that sits much more comfortably with a God who is immanent in this world and not just hovering transcendently above it. An earth God as much as a sky God. This is not a world created for us humans.
The Midrash says that it is God's world. And this is where Judaism parts company with Deep Ecology, whilst sharing some sympathies. The 'problem' is not so much with the idea of stewardship and the managerial ethos. Judaism has other ways of tempering that, in its nature-immersion tradition and in its custom of consciously taking one day each week to step back from yet more doing and making in our own image. The difficulty (not that Jews would see it as such) is that Judaism’s worldview is fundamentally theocentric. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24:1). Whether humans are at the centre or whether they share the stage reciprocally with the rest of the creation, the whole comes from a Divine source. This provides Judaism with a unifying vision of the universe that Deep Ecology does not have, for religious Jews it can offset accusations of pernicious anthropocentrism.
Vivienne Cato is a teacher, facilitator and writer. Co-founder of The Noah Project Jewish
Environmental group, she now runs Speak To The Earth, providing support, training and
educational experiences in Judaism and Ecology. It can be contacted on 020 8747 1410.
Reprinted with kind permission of Greenspirit: Journal of Creation Spirituality
Illustration: Nitza Felix Keren