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Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, ed.
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
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The Jewish voice has joined the environmental movement
relatively recently. Jews are not among the leaders of
the environmental movement, and environmental activists
who are Jews by birth have not developed their stance
on the basis of Judaism.1
With the marked exception of the Bible, the literary sources
of Judaism have remained practically unknown to environmental
thinkers, and Jewish values have only marginally inspired
environmental thinking or policies. Moreover, since the
famous essay of Lynn White, Jr.,2
many environmentalists have charged that the Bible, the
foundation document of Judaism, is the very cause for
the contemporary ecological crisis. The biblical command
to the first humans “to fill the earth and subdue
it” (Gen. 1:28) is repeatedly cited as the
proof that the Bible, and the Judeo-Christian tradition
based on it, is the direct cause of the current environmental
crisis.
Jews, too, have not regarded the well-being of the physical
environment a Jewish issue.3
In the post-Holocaust years, the physical and spiritual
survival of the Jewish people, rather than the survival
of the earth and natural habitats, has dominated Jewish
concerns. While environmentalism was gaining momentum
in the industrialized West, Jews were preoccupied with
other issues, such as the prolonged Israeli-Arab conflict,
relations between the State of Israel and the Diaspora,
Jewish-Christian dialogue, and pluralism within Judaism.
The desired relationship between the earth and the human
species has not been at the forefront of the Jewish agenda.
The lack of interest in the natural world among Jews
has deep historical and religious causes that go beyond
the contemporary Jewish anguish about survival. For
most of their history, Jews have been an urban people.
In the Greco-Roman world, although Jews dwelled in urban
centers, agriculture remained the primary mode of Jewish
livelihood in Palestine and Babylonia. After the rise
of Islam, heavy taxation on Jews made agriculture unprofitable
and accelerated the process of urbanization, leading
Jews to concentrate in commerce, trade, finance, and
crafts. In medieval Christian Europe the Jewish estrangement
from the land was even more pronounced because feudal
relations excluded Jews. Although in some parts of Western
Europe landed property was granted to Jews as late as
the thirteenth century, Jews were increasingly forced
to engage in moneylending, an economic activity that
was odious to Christians. Frequent expulsions and voluntary
migrations further estranged Jews from land cultivation,
turning the ancient agrarian past into a distant memory.
No longer in practice, the prescribed land-based rituals
of Judaism fueled the hope for the ideal Messianic Age
in the remote future, when the exiled people will return
to the Land of Israel. For two millennia of exilic life,
Jews continued to dream about their return to the Holy
Land, but they waited for divine intervention to bring
it about. Until then, Jewish life was to be shaped by
the norms of rabbinic Judaism whose comprehensiveness
enabled Jews to remain loyal to their religious tradition,
despite the loss of political sovereignty and in the
face of hostility and discrimination.
Nature, nonetheless, was not absent from traditional
Jewish life. Through prescribed blessings and prayers
the traditional Jew acknowledged natural phenomena and
expressed thanks for God’s benevolent creation.
Yet the natural world was not understood to be independent
of God’s creative power. To venerate the natural
world for its own sake or to identify God with nature
is precisely the pagan outlook that Judaism rejects
as idolatrous.4
The world created by God is good, but it is not perfect;
it requires human action to perfect it in accord with
God’s will. While nature is not in itself holy,
it can be sanctified through performance of prescribed
commands from God, the source of holiness.5
In Judaism, the system of revealed commandments stands
in contrast to nature, prescribing what should be done
to that which already exists. Steven S. Schwarzschild
captured this ethical stance when he coined the phrase
“the unnatural Jew.”6
The prescriptive stance toward nature was compatible
with attempts to fathom how the natural world works.
During the Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers sought to
understand the laws by which God governs the world and
availed themselves of contemporary science based on
the study of natural phenomena and their causes. Medieval
philosophers regarded the study of God’s created
world a theoretical activity whose reward was the immortality
of the rational soul, or the intellect. It was a religious
activity that enabled the philosopher-scientist to come
closer to God. Moreover, the study of nature was never
divorced from the study of the revealed Torah. Even
though from the twelfth century onward medieval Jewish
philosophers did not use biblical verses as premises
of their philosophical reasoning, they all presupposed
that in principle there could be no genuine contradiction
between the truths of the revealed text and scientific
knowledge about the world; both were believed to manifest
the Wisdom of God. In premodern Judaism, then, all reflections
about the created world, the doctrine of creation, and
the doctrine of revelation functioned as the matrix
within which Jews speculated about the natural world.
The religious outlook of premodern Judaism reached
a crisis in the late eighteenth century. The rise of
the centralized, modern nation-state, and, thereafter,
the spread of democratic principles, made it impossible
for Jews to continue to live in autonomous communities
and be governed by their own laws and by special laws
imposed by the state. If Jews were to remain in their
country of residence, they had to be granted citizenship
and civil rights. Many Jews wished to end age-old social
and religious segregation and integrate into Western
society and culture. For many, especially those who
were open to the ideals of the Enlightenment, the sacred
myth of Judaism and its traditional lifestyle became
untenable. For the first time in their history, Jews
evaluated their own tradition by criteria derived from
the surrounding society, which they now regarded to
be superior to their own. The Emancipation of the Jews
during the nineteenth century was accompanied by a rapid
process of modernization of Jewish religious practices,
beliefs, and social customs. It was helped by more positive
attitudes toward finance and commerce in modern mercantile
and later capitalist economies. Yet precisely because
Jews in Western and Central Europe so successfully and
rapidly integrated into modern society, anti-Semitism
emerged as a backlash, culminating in the elimination
of one-third of world Jewry in the Holocaust. The multiple
causes of the Holocaust cannot be discussed here, but
it is appropriate to ponder the causal connection between
the collective destruction of the Jews and the current
environmental crisis.7
Zionism was the most radical Jewish response to modern
anti-Semitism. A secular, nationalist movement, Zionism
called on Jews to leave their country of residence and
settle in the Land of Israel where they would rebuild
the Jewish homeland and enjoy political sovereignty.
For many Zionist ideologues, especially those associated
with Labor or Socialist Zionism, the return to the Land
of Israel was not merely a political act; it was also
a deliberate attempt to create a new kind of a Jew,
a person who will be rooted in the soil rather than
in the study of sacred texts and the performance of
religious rituals.8 The
return of the Jews to nature was supposed to liberate
the Jews from the negative character traits they had
acquired during their long exilic life and to lead to
personal redemption not in the afterlife but in this
world, and not through observance of divine commands
but through manual labor.9
The “religion of labor” through land cultivation
was the most profound transformation of traditional
Jewish values.10 Along
with the return to nature, the Zionists created a new,
Hebrew culture that highlighted the agricultural basis
of many Jewish festivals and designed new rituals that
celebrated the abundance of the land without referring
to God or to the sacred sources of Judaism.11
Despite the Zionist return to land cultivation and
the emotional link to the Land of Israel, the physical
environment did not fare well in the State of Israel.
Since its establishment, the nascent state has been
struggling to survive in a hostile environment, and
nature preservation has not been at the top of the national
agenda. In fact, the rapid population growth of the
Jewish state after 1950, industrialization, and the
perpetual state of war with its Arab neighbors dictated
overuse of preciously scarce natural resources, especially
water.12
Furthermore, the influx of Jews from the Arab world,
which had not been exposed to Western modernization,
reintroduced traditional Jewish life and values to the
young state, including a certain indifference to the
physical environment. The social agenda of these immigrants,
as well as of the refugees from Europe after the Holocaust,
has had little to do with protection of the land and
its limited natural resources.
Environmentalism does exist in Israel,13
but its forms indicate the complex relationship between
Judaism and ecology. On the one hand, intimate familiarity
with the landscape, its flora and fauna, and concern
for the preservation of the physical environment are
popular among secular Israelis. Yet these activities
are not legitimated by appeal to the religious sources
of Judaism. Even when the Bible is employed to identify
plants and animals in the Land of Israel, the Bible
is not treated as a revealed text,14
but as a historical document about the remote, national
past. For secular Israelis, attention to environmental
issues has more to do with a Western orientation and
links to environmental movements in Europe and North
America than with the religious sources of Judaism.
On the other hand, Jews who are anchored in the Jewish
tradition tend to link their love of the Land of Israel
to a certain religious nationalist vision. Even though
the religious, nationalist parties now promote outdoor
activities for their constituents, these activities
were not grounded in the values and sensibilities of
the environmental movement. Nonetheless, in recent years
attempts have been made to include ecological awareness
in the religious-nationalist school system.
The creative weaving of Judaism and ecology took place
in North America and began in the early 1970s as an
apologetic response to the charges that the Judeo-Christian
tradition was the cause of the environmental crisis.
Defensive responses came first from Orthodox thinkers
who showed that the accusations were based either on
misunderstanding of the sources or on a lack of familiarity
with the richness of the Jewish tradition.15
Since then, Jews from all branches of modern Judaism—Reform,
Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Humanistic Judaism—have
contributed to Jewish ecology thinking, giving rise
to a distinctive, albeit still small, body of literature.16
If reflections about nature from the sources of Judaism
began with religiously committed Jews, environmental
activism, by contrast, was initiated by Jews who were
already involved in the environmental movement and who
found their way back to their Jewish roots as part of
the Jewish Renewal movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.
At the forefront of the Jewish environmental movement
was the organization Shomrei Adamah (Keepers of the
Earth), whose goal was to raise Jewish awareness about
ecological problems, such as pollution of natural resources,
deforestation, erosion of top soil, the disappearance
of species, climatic changes, and other ecological disasters
brought about by the Industrial Revolution and by human
greed and unbridled consumerism.17
Jewish environmentalists have shown how ancient Jewish
sacred texts and practices expressed concern for the
protection of the earth and its inhabitants and urged
Jews to reconnect with the rhythms of nature that are
the foundation of many Jewish festivals.18
In 1993 the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish
Life (COEJL) was founded as an umbrella organization
of diverse groups in North America to coordinate Jewish
educational efforts and influence environmental policies.
The final essay in this volume, by Mark X. Jacobs, the
current executive director of the organization, documents
the political and educational activities of Jewish environmentalists
and reflects on the challenges that face them
Existing Jewish ecological literature has shown that
the sacred sources of Judaism are compatible with the
sensibilities of the environmental movement, especially
the value of stewardship, and that the values of Judaism
could be used to formulate viable environmental policies.
Contrary to the accusations of secular environmentalists,
the Bible itself serves as the point of departure of
Jewish environmentalism. Three main areas are commonly
cited as evidence of the ecological usefulness of the
Bible and rabbinic literature: protection of vegetation,
especially fruit-bearing trees; awareness of the distress
of animals; and predicating social justice on the well-being
of the earth itself.19
All three areas are framed in the context of covenantal
theology, the bond between Israel and God.20
The causal relationship between human conduct and the
thriving of the natural environment is spelled out in
the relationship between the People of Israel and the
Land of Israel: when Israel conducts itself according
to divine command, the land is abundant and fertile,
benefiting its human inhabitants with the basic necessities
of life. But when Israel transgresses divine commandments,
the blessedness of the land is temporarily removed and
the land becomes desolate and inhospitable (Lev. 26:32).
When the alienation from God becomes so egregious and
injustice fills up God’s land, God brings about
Israel’s removal from the land by allowing Israel’s
enemies to overcome her. The well-being of the land
and the quality of Israel’s life are causally linked,
and both are predicated on Israel’s observance
of God’s will. In short, the covenant between Israel
and God implied specific laws intended to protect God’s
land and ensure its continued vitality.
Jewish ecological discourse has shown that Judaism
harbors deep concern for the well-being of the natural
world.21
To date, however, the movement has not articulated a
Jewish theology of nature, nor has it submitted the
sources of Judaism to a systematic, philosophical examination.
This volume is a first attempt toward that goal. The
volume comprises essays presented in February 1998 at
a conference at the Center for the Study of World Religions,
Harvard Divinity School, as part of the larger study
of religion and ecology, spearheaded by Mary Evelyn
Tucker and John A. Grim of Bucknell University. Organized
by Rabbi Steven Shaw and Moshe Sokol, the conference
brought Jewish academics, environmental activists, and
educators to reflect about Judaism’s attitude toward
the natural world. Unlike other gatherings of academics
in Jewish studies, this conference intended to bridge
the gap between objective scholarship and subjective
commitment, between theoretical reflections and recommendations
for action. The volume reflects this vision.
The volume commences with two attempts to construct
a Jewish theology of nature in order to address the
current ecological crisis. Arthur Green and Michael
Fishbane both take their inspiration from kabbalah.
Green believes that in kabbalah we can find the correct
view of the relationship between God and the universe
and that such a view offers useful insights for our
environmental predicament inasmuch as it is compatible
with the evolutionary model of the life sciences and
with the orientation of contemporary physics and cosmology.
Green boldly asserts that in order to address the concerns
of the “environmental age,” it is necessary
to formulate “a Judaism unafraid to proclaim the
holiness of the natural world, one that sees creation,
including both world and human self, as a reflection
of divinity and a source of religious inspiration.”
Adopting the ontological schema of kabbalah, Green maintains
that all existents are in some way an expression of
God and are to some extent intrinsically related to
each other.
Contrary to Michael Wyschogrod, who holds that in Judaism
“nature per se is not sacred,”22
because holiness belongs only to the Creator, Green
obliterates the ontological gap between the Creator
and the created. Instead he adopts the monistic, emanationist
ontology of kabbalah, according to which “multiplicity
is the garbing of the One in the coat of many colors
of existence, the transformation of Y-H-W-H, singularity
itself—Being—into the infinite variety of
H-W-Y-H, being as we know, encounter, and are
it.” Green also endorses the kabbalistic tendency
to blur the distinction between creation and revelation.
Both are forms of God’s self-disclosure and both
should ultimately be understood as linguistic processes.
The natural world is ultimately a linguistic structure
that requires decoding, an act that only humans can
accomplish because they are created in the image of
God. “Each human mind,” says Green in accord
with kabbalah, “is a microcosm, a miniature replica
of the single Mind that conceives and becomes the universe.
To know that oneness and recognize it in all our
fellow beings is what life is all about.” Thus,
Green unambiguously privileges the human in the order
of things, a view that is vehemently rejected by many
environmentalists, especially those associated with
deep ecology.23
From the privileged position of the human, Green derives
an ethics of responsibility toward all creatures that
acknowledges the differences between diverse creatures
while insisting on the need to defend the legitimate
place in the world of even “the weakest and most
threatened of creatures.” For Green, a Jewish ecological
ethics must be a torat hayim, namely, a set of
laws and instructions that truly “enhances life.”
He does not specify what these can be, but he does provide
a Jewish way of thinking about environmental ethics
and the policies that could derive from it.
Like Green, Michael Fishbane illustrates how the traditional
language of Judaism could be reinterpreted to think
about nature in light of contemporary ecological concerns.
But if Green takes his point of departure from the paradox
of unity and multiplicity, Fishbane reflects on the
paradox of God’s creative act. The Bible depicts
the creation of the world as the result of divine speech:
God spoke and the world came into being. If nature is
God’s speech, nature itself reveals God. Fishbane’s
implicit indebtedness to kabbalah is evident when he
regards creation as an act of God’s self-revelation.
In Fishbane’s own words: “God’s speaking
is the world’s fullness, an infinite revelation
at the heart of creation.” The creative/revelatory
act, however, has two aspects: one is the creative energy
that brings things into existence, and the other is
the perception of what exists. Fishbane captures these
two aspects by differentiating between “Breath”
and “Speech.” The divine Breath is the creative
power that vitalizes everything, whereas Speech is that
which articulates things, making them distinct and accessible
to human perception. Fishbane then identifies “Speech”
and “Breath” with the two central categories
of rabbinic Judaism—“Written Torah” and
“Oral Torah,” respectively. He states: “the
Oral Torah is eternally God’s breath as it vitalizes
being, ruha be-ruha (‘spirit within spirit’),
whereas the Written Torah is this same reality contracted
into the vessels of human cognition, language, and experience.”
In Fishbane’s poetic theology of nature, the
terms “Written Torah” and “Oral Torah”
no longer denote a certain body of Jewish literature,
Scripture and rabbinic deliberations respectively, but
two coordinates that invite Jews to organize their experience
vis-à-vis the natural world. As much as the Written
and Oral Torah are interdependent in traditional Jewish
thinking, so are humans interdependent on the natural
world and the divine creative energy that vitalizes
it. Fishbane expresses the duality of the human condition
by using yet another set of terms: “natural eye”
and “spiritual eye.” As part of nature, human
beings have a physical body and perceive the world through
“the natural eye,” namely, through their bodily
senses. But humans are also possessed with the ability
“to perceive the world with God’s Oral Torah
in mind.” That is to say, humans are aware of being
different from other creatures, but they are also able
to see what they have in common with other beings. When
we become aware of the “organic coherence”
of which we are a part, we are able to exhibit “precious
attentiveness to the multiform character of God’s
Written Torah . . . [while being] attuned to the Oral
Torah speaking in and through it.” Becoming aware
of the “Godly nature” of everything that exists
is precisely the purpose of Jewish prayers, blessings,
and acts of sanctification, according to Fishbane. These
are ways in which Jews acknowledge the limits of human
speech, while using language. At the same time we also
become aware of and attuned to “the rhythms of
other persons and things by adjusting our breathing
patterns to them and their way of being.” Fishbane’s
theology of nature calls people to live as part of nature
and at the same time to seek to transcend the natural.
The ethical conclusions of Fishbane are the same as
Green’s: we must be attuned to the rhythm of nature,
we must do our best to protect God’s nature, and
we must recognize that we and everything else in the
natural world are linked to each other. Whether kabbalah
and Hasidism, its modern offshoot, could be legitimately
used to anchor contemporary Jewish ecology, is questioned
by other scholars in this volume.
From constructive Jewish theology of nature the volume
moves to consider the Bible and rabbinic literature,
the foundation documents of Judaism. The essays of the
second section advance this conversation in interesting,
new directions. Evan Eisenberg presents a comparative
reading of the biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden
in light of the sacred narratives of other Near Eastern
cultures and what is known today about the civilizations
of the ancient Near East: the riverbed civilization
of Mesopotamia and the terraced-hills civilization of
the Canaanites, of which ancient Israel was a part.
By establishing the ecological facts behind the Garden
of Eden narrative, Eisenberg proposes a rather somber
reading of the biblical narrative that carries a moral
lesson about the relationship between humans and natural
wilderness.
In Eisenberg’s comparative study, the Garden of
Eden is a mountain that functioned as a “cosmic
center,” a “world-pole,” or the “navel
of the world.” It is the source of life. Eden,
however, was not a place fit for human dwelling, since
humans are animals with a unique capacity to make tools
and produce farming, writing, and urban dwellings, in
short, to create civilizations.24
In Eisenberg’s secular, anthropological reading
of the biblical narrative, the Fall of Man was a necessary
process of self-expulsion, or self-alienation from nature.
Eden belongs to God, and not even gods or angels could
remain in it, let alone humans. To develop their potential,
humans had to leave Eden and create civilization, which
inevitably destroys the very natural resources at human
disposal. According to Eisenberg, the tragic human condition
cannot be avoided, but its scope can be minimized, if
we become aware of it. The biblical Garden of Eden narrative,
therefore, should function not as a place to which we
aspire to return but as a source of wilderness: “we
must revere it, draw sustenance from it, [and] keep
it alive.” Conversely, we must be cognizant of
the fact that our civilizational accomplishments have
separated us from the sources of life, and that the
quality of our life has been drastically reduced since
the dawn of civilization. Eisenberg does not offer a
way out of the human conundrum, but he suggests that
if we become aware of our tragic ecological situation,
we may be able to minimize its scope.
How are humans to negotiate their tragic relationship
with the natural world? In traditional Judaism answers
to such a question have to be sought, in principle,
in rabbinic sources that apply divinely revealed Scripture
to concrete human situations. The essays by Eliezer
Diamond and David Kraemer treat these sources from two
distinct, but complementary perspectives. Whereas Diamond
focuses on halakhic (i.e., legal) discourse, Kraemer
looks closely at aggadic, that is, the nonlegal, homiletical,
and speculative aspect of rabbinic Judaism. From their
detailed textual analyses emerge general principles
that could be most useful for contemporary thinking
about ecological problems.
Humans are social animals and their interaction with
each other requires cooperation as well as mechanisms
for conflict resolution. Diamond wrestles with one aspect
of contemporary ecological problems: pollution. He considers
the effects of pollution, not on natural environment,
but on humans. More specifically, he is concerned with
the problem of environmental justice.25
Since conflicts about pollution pit the interest of
the individual against the interest of the community,
Diamond examines how the Mishnah and subsequent medieval
and modern legal sources, including rulings by the Supreme
Court in Israel, deal with such conflicts. Diamond shows
that halakhic sources struggled with the tension between
personal and conventional standards, established the
parameters of unacceptable pollution, were aware of
the difference between inflicting nuisance or discomfort
and causing economic deprivation, and that they have
evolved over time because they addressed changing life
circumstances. While Diamond reasons within the parameters
of Jewish legal sources, the ramifications of his essay
extend beyond the boundaries of Jewish society, for
whom this reasoning is normative. He convincingly argues
that halakhic reasoning about notions of conventionality
and equity in environmental matters could be applied
meaningfully to the problem of global warming. Such
application requires a careful analysis of concrete
human situations as well as a creative analysis of Jewish
legal sources.
The same interpretative creativity can be applied to
the nonlegal rabbinic sources that expressed rabbinic
theology and shaped religious practices. Kraemer advances
our understanding of Jewish views on the relationship
between humans and nature by looking at death rituals.
On the basis of a comparative analysis with Zoroastrian
and Egyptian death rituals, he argues that in all human
societies death rituals are rooted in a certain view
about the origins of humanity. In rabbinic death rituals
the dead body was to be placed in the ground immediately
after death. While one can rationalize this ritual by
appealing to the hot climate of the Near East and the
need to avoid early decomposition of the body, Kraemer
cogently argues that the rabbinic rationale for the
practice was linked to the biblical narrative of human
creation. The Bible, however, has two creation narratives:
Genesis 2:7 depicts the creation of the first human
from the earth, whereas Genesis 1:26 highlights that
the human was created “in the image of God”
(be-tzelem ’elohim). The two creation narratives
have very different consequences concerning the relationship
between humans and the natural world. According to the
earthbound story, the human (’adam) comes
from the earth (’adamah) and must return
to it at death; according to the second narrative, humans
are in some sense “above” the earth. Kraemer
shows that rabbinic death rituals privileged the earthbound
narrative, thereby signifying the essential link to
the natural world. From this, Kraemer derives a rabbinically
based ecological ethics: the relations between humans
and the earth is “a relationship not of subduing
or conquest, but of natural partnership. An act of abuse
against the natural world is an abuse against humanity,
and vice versa.” It follows that humans must not
“view the natural world as ‘other,’ something
to serve our needs, something to exploit.” Rather,
“our needs are part of, and must be harmonized
with, the needs of the natural world.”26
Kraemer does not tell us how to accomplish the reconciliation
between conflicting needs, but it stands to reason that
further exploration of halakhic sources could provide
an answer.
In his response, Eilon Schwartz clarifies Jewish approaches
to the natural world by delineating four models. The
first focuses on human rationality and posits an instrumental
attitude toward nature. Schwartz admits that this model,
in which human rationality manipulates the world to
satisfy human needs, makes Judaism susceptible to the
accusation of the environmental movement that Judaism
endorses human domination of nature. Yet, the Bible
offers a second model that affirms human responsibility
toward the earth, highlighting the partnership of humans
with the earth and its inhabitants. These two models,
Schwartz argues, need not be understood as mutually
exclusive, as Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik proposed in
his famous essay,27
because human physicality can be “a source of deep
spiritual meaning.” While Schwartz agrees that
the second model is attractive, he confesses to a certain
discomfort with it, given his own environmentalism that
is inspired by the wilderness tradition. Therefore,
Schwartz finds the teachings of Abraham Joshua Heschel
akin to his own sensibility, because Heschel highlighted
the “radical amazement model.” Whereas this
model belittles the human and calls for humility in
light of nature’s awesomeness, the fourth model,
the “holy sparks model” of Lurianic kabbalah
and Hasidism, makes the human deeply involved with the
transformation of nature. Schwartz insightfully suggests
that this religious model was given a secular twist
in Zionism, where it cohered with Romantic nationalism,
on the one hand, and with Nietzsche’s philosophy
of life, on the other hand. With a greater awareness
to the diverse models within Judaism, Jewish environmental
education has more options and can avoid the sense of
crisis and despair articulated by Soloveitchik’s
religious existentialism.
All Jewish reflections about the natural world, as Michael
Wyscho-grod has already noted, take their point of departure
from the belief that God created the world and that
God is the source of the moral order. The third section
of the volume examines more carefully the doctrine of
creation in the Bible, rabbinic texts, and Jewish philosophy.
Stephen A. Geller’s analysis of the Book of Job
captures the core problem in Judaism: the tension between
the belief that God created the world and the belief
that God revealed His Will to Israel in the form of
law, the Torah. The Book of Job is the earliest manifestation
of this problem. According to Geller, the book reflected
a crisis of faith in Israel during the sixth century
BCE, after the destruction of the First Temple. The
crisis pitted the “Old Wisdom tradition” against
a “new militant monotheism” and its covenantal
theology, articulated in the Book of Deuteronomy. The
ancient Wisdom tradition saw the origin of nature and
the origin of the moral order to be the same. Wise is
the one who observes nature and knows how to live rightly
in accord with it. By contrast, the new Deuteronomic
faith posited a covenant law that is discussed in terms
of Sinaitic revelation. Geller highlights the tension
between the Old Wisdom tradition that proceeded “from
God through creation and nature to morality,” and
the covenant faith that ‘deriv[ed] all morality
from revelation to humankind, i.e., Israel.” According
to Geller, then, the Book of Job is a hybrid of intellectual
piety and covenantal piety, a mixture that is best evident
in the speeches of Job’s friends. The author of
the Book of Job does not resolve the tension logically,
but the book ends with an emotional solution to the
tension. In chapters 38–42, the climax of the book,
the author of Job “wants to rescue a role for nature,
but he realizes that this can be achieved only by abandoning
the demand for understanding itself.” The proper
attitude toward nature, according to the Book of Job,
is expressed in the category of the “sublime”
as understood by the English poets of the eighteenth
century. The sublime combines humility, terror, awareness
of one’s insignificance, and fear with feelings
of exaltation, forgetfulness of self, and fascination.
The conclusion of the Book of Job is that “Revelation
and nature cannot be reconciled by human wisdom.”
Although Geller succinctly captures the tension between
the doctrines of creation and revelation, the history
of Judaism did not follow his conclusion. What is true
about the Book of Job, if one accepts Geller’s
reading, is not true about Jewish philosophy. The Jewish
philosophic tradition was grounded in the assumption
that human reason can indeed bridge revelation and nature
and that the same rational ability to fathom the laws
of nature can and should be applied to the interpretation
of God’s revealed Will and Wisdom in Scripture.
For the philosophers, the laws of nature, in principle,
could not contradict the truths of revealed Scripture,
and it is the task of the Jewish wise man to sort out
the relationship between knowledge about the natural
world and the true meaning of revealed Scripture.
Focusing on the Jewish philosophical tradition, David
Novak explores how the doctrine of creation relates
to the idea of nature, and more specifically to the
concept of natural law. Writing both as a historian
of Jewish thought and as a constructive Jewish theologian,
Novak argues that in the classical sources of Judaism—especially
in medieval Jewish philosophy—there is an elaborate
discussion of natural law. The relationship between
the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of revelation
has to be configured in the context of a natural law
theory. Novak argues that all theories of natural law
are necessarily teleological and that they presuppose
a hierarchical order of the universe. After elucidating
four possible ways to configure the telos of the universe,
and critiquing the relationship between creation and
revelation in the thought of Saadia Gaon (882–942)
and Moses Maimonides (1135/8–1204), Novak proceeds
to articulate his own understanding of the interplay
of creation, revelation, and redemption. His views are
shaped by the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929).
Properly understood, Novak argues, creation is not in
time; it is prior to the experience of every creature;
and redemption is “not yet,” that is, it is
beyond what humans can know or experience in the present.
All that humans have is revelation, yet revelation is
not a one-time historic event, but is “God’s
presence in us, with us, and for us.” It is the
ever-present “Giving of the Torah to Israel,”
an act which organizes all meaning for Jews. Novak argues,
therefore, that nature cannot be grasped as a mere given,
or an abstraction of the human mind. Instead, nature
is “something that can only be grasped abstractly
from within our historical present, a present whose
content is continually provided by revelation.”
On the basis of Rosenzweig’s philosophy, Novak
proceeds to present what he considers to be the best
theory of natural law in Judaism. Novak’s theological
position can be endorsed by Orthodox, Conservative,
and even Reform Jews who accept the primacy of revelation
in organizing Jewish life, but it may be difficult for
secular Jews for whom the category of revelation is
meaningless or who view Judaism as the culture of the
Jewish people.
Whereas Novak focused on the philosophical interpretations
of the doctrine of creation, Neil Gillman looks at the
link between the doctrine of creation and Jewish liturgy
and ritual. Gillman’s assumption coheres with the
claim of Kraemer in the previous section: Jewish rituals
express the underlying theology of rabbinic Judaism
better than Jewish philosophical theology. Gillman shows
how the Jewish marriage ceremony and the prayer of the
morning service are organized on the basis of the doctrine
of creation that is the linchpin of the sacred narrative
of Judaism. Again in agreement with Kraemer, Gillman
shows that the rabbis privileged the earthbound creation
narrative in Genesis 2:7 and that they ascribed deep
spiritual meaning to the physicality of creation. Gillman’s
interpretation of the doctrine of creation is decidedly
critical of the intellectualism of Maimonides as much
as it is at odds with Soloveitchik’s reading of
the creation narrative. In Gillman’s exposition
of the marriage ceremony, the ritual should be understood
as a reenactment of the act of creation that fuses “the
two worlds, the transcendent mythic world of the creation
story and the actual, real world of the two people who
are getting married.” Liturgical acts are not mere
ceremonies; they are theology in action. Gillman then
looks carefully at three elements from the morning service
in which God’s creative activity is blessed. He
shows how the rabbis intentionally changed the biblical
phrase (Isaiah 45:7) to convey their theological views
about God, the world, and the origin of Evil. The liturgical
language posits God as an omnipotent creator ex nihilo,
who renews nature daily and whose “power ranges
not only over nature but over history as well.”
The Jewish normative attitude toward the natural world
is expressed not through systematic reflections of the
philosophers but through the daily liturgy obligatory
to observant Jews.
In the response to these three papers, Jon D. Levenson
clarifies Geller’s reading of the Book of Job while
raising questions about Geller’s claim that the
fusion of intellectual piety and covenantal piety in
Job is similar to that found in late Stoicism. Levenson
is most critical of Novak’s “Judaizing the
classical and Roman ideal of natural law” and of
Novak’s understanding of revelation. Levenson argues
that Novak “leaves it unclear about how we are
to derive any specific norms from natural law and what
we are to do when these norms and those of the revealed
law conflict.” With a veiled critique of philosophical
discourse, Levenson expresses preferences to the study
of liturgy as the authentic expression of Jewish views
on creation and revelation, in accord with the essay
by Gillman.
If it is true, as Novak claims, that verbal revelation
is the only context through which Jews can experience
the natural world, how does revelation organize Jewish
attitude toward nature? In traditional Judaism revelation
is understood to be the origin of morality, and so how
does morality, the prescriptions and prohibitions of
Judaism, relate to the natural world? Does morality,
as articulated in the Torah, stand in opposition to
nature? Is the human called by God to transform nature?
Does Judaism bridge the distinction between nature and
morality? The essays in this section wrestle with these
questions.
Shalom Rosenberg’s essay documents the diverse
conceptions of nature in Judaism that flow from different
understandings of revelation. In Jewish sources, Rosenberg
correctly notes, the term “nature” has a variety
of meanings. “Nature” is used generally to
denote “the cosmos or . . . the biological world,”
as well as more specifically to denote the nature of
humans, which for some philosophers was identified with
the human capacity to reason. Moreover, the meaning
of the term “nature” has varied over time
in accordance with the function assigned to it. For
example, in the modern period “nature” is
evoked as a way to criticize existing ethical and legal
situations, but it can also be used to justify existing
morality presumably anchored in the social order. “Nature”
can also refer to the belief in the existence of more
basic laws that cut across traditions and create a bond
between all people. Or, “nature” and “natural
law” can be presented as something that “transcends
not only space but also time and allows us to judge
different historical cultures.” Since morality
can be said to relate to nature in different ways, it
is incumbent on those who generalize about these issues
to be attuned to the rich canvas of Jewish views on
the interplay between nature and revealed morality in
Judaism.
In the Bible, claims Rosenberg, ethics stands in opposition
to the natural world. In rabbinic Judaism a more subtle
view emerges in the context of recognizing the stability
of nature, on the one hand, and the ability of humans
to learn from the ways animals conduct themselves, on
the other. In medieval philosophy one finds extensive
discussion of the natural world as well as of human
nature, which the philosophers identified with rationality.
The philosophers articulated a teleological natural
morality, where nature is established as a means to
reach the unique goals of man. Most instructively, Rosenberg
shows that the medieval philosophers regarded the Torah
itself as natural law, because it is the Torah that
“brings one to perfection.” The inherent identity
between Torah and nature was challenged by the sixteenth-century
Jewish theologian R. Judah Loew of Prague (c. 1525–1609),
for whom “morality rises beyond nature” and
acts of loving kindness surpass nature. In kabbalah,
Rosenberg correctly states, “reality becomes a
language. Nature is transformed into a symbol of the
divine.” The relationship between Torah (and hence
morality) and the natural world is ambiguous in kabbalah.
For some kabbalists the Torah stands for nature, whereas
for others the Torah is the paradigm of nature. Of the
modern thinkers who reflected on the relationship between
morality and nature, Rosenberg singles out Samson Raphael
Hirsch (1808–1888), the founder of Neo-Orthodoxy
in Germany, and shows that in Hirsch’s analysis
of the commandments nature “is not only a model
for us in its fulfilling law . . . [I]t places on humans
its own demands, its own mitzvot [commandments].”
Rosenberg concludes that human obligations toward nature
include not only respect for nature, but also the specific
commandments that are detailed in the Bible. These commandments
specify the boundaries within which humans should interact
with the natural world.
A different and novel attempt to articulate Jewish
ecological philosophy is offered by Lenn E. Goodman
within the matrix of “an ontological theory of
justice.”28 In such
a theory, all things that exist are good and their intrinsic
value is the foundation of their deserts. Goodman’s
point of departure is the intrinsic deserts of animals,
plants, and eco-niches that flow from the particular
“project” of each thing. Using Spinoza’s
language, Goodman refers to this project as “conatus,”29
and claims that this is the basis of human respect for
“all beings—to the extent possible.”
Goodman admits that this theory is a form of naturalism,
but he denies that it is a form of materialism. Instead,
Goodman shows that his hierarchical theory of deserts
can be derived from the language of the Bible as elaborated
by rabbinic sources. Good-man successfully demonstrates
that the Bible and rabbinic sources recognized the inherent
deserts of animals or the human obligation to alleviate
the suffering of an animal. The command to be compassionate
toward animals affirms both human superiority over other
animals as well as human responsibility toward nature.
Good-man’s ecological ethics exemplifies the notion
of human stewardship of nature,30
even though Goodman explicitly rejects vegetarianism,
in contrast to Rosenberg who endorses it.31
Goodman does not explain how the killing of animals
for the sake of human consumption is compatible with
recognizing the inherent value and desert of the killed
animals. Likewise, he does not account for the fact,
noted by both Fishbane and Rosenberg, that destruction
is integral to nature and that species naturally engage
other species in a struggle for survival.
Some of the issues left open by Goodman are addressed
by Moshe Sokol. He begins by rejecting Steven Schwarzschild
and Michael Wyschogrod, who highlight the opposition
between Judaism and nature. Such a claim, Sokol avers,
is simply incoherent because “Judaism cannot disapprove
of trees and grass.” He maintains that it is more
accurate to say that “the Bible and rabbinic Judaism
objected to certain conceptions of nature but not to
nature’s constituents.” In agreement with
Rosenberg, Sokol notes that the category “nature”
is a human construct that has changed over time. If
one is to explain the presumed conflict between Jews
and the natural world, one must turn to the sociology
of the Jews as urban people to find the proper explanation.
Sokol differentiates between two questions: 1) what
are Jewish constructions of nature and how do they relate
to each other? and 2) what, if any, are the implications
of the varying constructions of nature for developing
a useful environmental ethics? The first question is
addressed by Shalom Rosenberg in this volume. Sokol
attempts to answer the second question.
Sokol’s main concern is to explore dominant paradigms
about the relationship between God and the world and
to ponder whether they can be used as a foundation for
a Jewish ecological ethics. He differentiates between
the “transcendist position,” whose main exponent
is Maimonides, and the “immanentist view,”
represented by kabbalah and Hasidism. Sokol shows that
one cannot simplistically equate either of these views
with a given ethical implication or recommendation in
regard to the natural world. Respect toward the natural
world is not a necessary outcome of an immanentist outlook,
as is commonly argued, since respect for nature is specifically
stated by Maimonides, the advocate of the transcendist
position. Conversely, Hasidism, which has served as
inspiration for contemporary Jewish environmentalists,
cannot be said to be more “green” than its
opposition, either in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries or today. Sokol then examines three models
for the relationship between morality and nature—“environmental
anthropocentrism,” “environmental biocentrism,”
and “environmental theocentrism”—and
shows what is problematic about each of them and why
none of them could tell us how to treat the natural
world.
Sokol’s original contribution to Jewish ecological
reflections is the suggestion that we should shift our
focus from an ecological ethics of duty toward nature
to an ecological ethics of virtue. Environmental virtue
ethics will include “a deep sense of humility,
not only individually but species-wide; the capacity
for gratitude; the capacity to experience awe and sublimity;
the virtues of temperance, continence, and respectfulness,
among others.” The data for the desired character
traits of the environmentally virtuous person could
come from the very sources of the Jewish tradition,
both halakhic and homiletic.
In his response, Barry S. Kogan’s exposes Goodman’s
indebtedness to medieval Neoplatonic ontology and questions
Goodman’s attempt to ascribe rights of persons
to nonhumans, especially after a century that has seen
the catastrophic results of the failure to respect human
life as such as sacred. Kogan finds Rosenberg’s
reading of Hirsch more attractive because “the
study of ecology, the policy implications that follow
from its findings, and the practical intent of the huqqim,
as explained by Hirsch, would all be religiously mandated.”
As for Sokol, Kogan challenges his misrepresentation
of Schwarzschild and Wyschogrod. While Kogan agrees
that theology that emphasizes transcendence does not
necessarily desacralize the world and that those that
highlight immanence do not necessarily culminate in
unqualified reverence and awe toward all things natural,
Kogan challenges Sokol’s overly schematic classifications
of Jewish approaches to nature.
The complexity of Jewish approaches to nature is manifested
most acutely in the Jewish mystical tradition. The essays
in this section prob-lematize any attempt to anchor
Jewish theology of nature in kabbalah. Neither kabbalah
nor its eighteenth-century offshoot, Hasidism, accepted
the natural world as a given that must be preserved
and hallowed. In both cases, the corporeality of the
natural, especially as manifested in the human body,
is viewed either as a veil that hides the truly spiritual,
namely, God, or as a negative obstacle that prevents
the human from attaining unity with God. To the mystic,
who claims to possess knowledge of the linguistic foundation
of nature, the world of nature is a symbol of divine
reality that has to be decoded and thereby either spiritualized
or transcended. Nature is not to be celebrated for its
own sake.
Elliot R. Wolfson shows that the key to the kabbalistic
approach to nature lies in the claim that nature is
a mirror of the divine. This is not a mere metaphor
but a metaphysical claim about the very structure of
reality. In kabbalah, as Wolfson succinctly states,
“the ten resplendent emanations (sefirot),
which make up the divine pleroma, are the archetypal
spiritual beings that function as the formal causes
for all that exists in the physical universe.”
For the kabbalists, there is “one ultimate reality,
the divine light, which manifests itself in the garb
of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet that
derive, in turn, from the four-letter name, YHWH, the
root word of all language, the mystical secret of the
Torah.” The corporeal world that we perceive through
the senses is by no means ultimate reality. Rather,
“the corporeal world reflects the spiritual forms
in the manner that a mirror reflects images. Just as
the image is not what is real but only its appearance,
so nature is naught but the representation of that which
is real.”
Wolfson argues that kabbalistic ontology cannot be
labeled as either “pantheism” or “immanentism,”
as is commonly done, because kabbalah harbored competing
pantheistic and theistic views. Most importantly, Wolfson
explains that the kabbalists were not interested in
the natural world encountered outdoors, but in the mysterious,
esoteric events within the Godhead that are ultimately
manifested in the physical environment. What matters
to kabbalah is not nature itself— which functions
as a veil of divine reality—but the act of penetrating
the hidden nature of God. Wolfson then moves on to show
that the poetics of nature as the mirror of God is heavily
genderized. Nature is identified with the Female, the
Shekhinah, but “she is no more than the
looking glass that reflects what is genuinely real,
the masculine image, which is attributed more specifically
to the phallic gradation,” Tife’eret.
Wolfson’s careful unmasking of the androcentric
nature of kabbalistic symbolism undermines any attempt
to use kabbalah in order to recover the lost Goddess.
Wolfson concludes by showing the connection between
the kabbalistic, spiritualist ontology and the ascetic
practices and makes it patently clear that the kabbalists
were not only de facto remote from the natural world,
but that they denied that the natural world as we know
it is holy.
Kabbalah, especially as developed in the Land of Israel
during the sixteenth century, was the ideational basis
of Hasidism. Indeed, it was Hasidism, as popularized
by Martin Buber, which brought kabbalah to the knowledge
of the Western world and to the attention of the environmental
movement.32 In Buber’s
representation, Hasidism articulated a positive attitude
toward nature, since the I-Thou relationship could be
had not only with persons but also with trees and animals.
Buber’s rendering of Hasidism was vehemently criticized
by Ger-shom Scholem and Rivkah Schatz-Uffenheimer. Jerome
(Yehudah) Gellman revisits the critique and further
endorses it on the basis of a close reading of those
very sources that Buber claimed to have used. Defending
himself against his critics, Buber admitted that his
reconstruction of Hasidic theology and practice cannot
be derived from the teachings of the founder of Hasidism,
R. Israel Baal Shem Tov (known as the Besht) (1698–1760),
but from the teachings of his disciple, R. Jacob Joseph
of Polonnoye, and his disciples. By analyzing the texts
that Buber used in his reconstruction of Hasidism, Gellman
shows that Buber ascribed to his Hasidic authors views
that they did not in fact hold. Gellman concludes that
neither Buber’s portrayal of Hasidism nor Hasidism
itself could serve as a foundation of Jewish ecological
theology.
Gellman’s skepticism about Hasidism is further
corroborated by Shaul Magid, who focuses on the works
of the Besht’s grandson, R. Nahman of Bratslav
(1772–1810). R. Nahman wrote homiletical discourses
and symbolic tales. In the former, the attitude of the
Hasidic master to the natural world is “exclusively
pejorative.” Magid explains that for R. Nahman
“nature is not identical with the natural world.”
Instead, “nature” (teva) is a human
construct on the basis of our perception. Nature is
deceptive because it “appears perfect . . . in
its stability and predictability.” This appearance
“is actually the source of its imperfection.”
In contrast to “nature,” R. Nahman posited
the “world” (‘olam), a term that
is used to “refer to the natural world in a constant
state of renewal” from its divine source. It is
“unstable, dynamic, and unpredictable.” When
we perceive the stability of nature, we actually sever
the natural world from its divine creative source. In
his homiletical discourses, then, R. Nahman placed nature
in “diametrical opposition to miracle and divine
providence.” The symbolic tales of R. Nahman, however,
reveal a more tolerant attitude toward nature, enabling
humanity to live simultaneously within and apart from
its external environment. On the basis of a close reading
of R. Nahman’s last tale, “The Seven Beggars,”
Magid uncovers a view of nature that enables humanity
to co-exist with nature but not be part of it.
In her response to the three presenters on the Jewish
mystical tradition, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson further problematizes
the kabbalistic approach to nature. The notion that
nature is a mirror of the divine actually gave rise
to two different attitudes toward nature. According
to one, the corporeality of nature was to be transcended
through kabbalistic sanctifying acts. According to the
other, the belief that kabbalah contains the knowledge
of the linguistic foundation of the natural world led
to a proto-experimental approach to nature, characteristic
of so-called practical kabbalah. Tirosh-Samuelson agrees
with Gellman and Magid that eighteenth-century Hasidism
could not serve as the basis of environmental theology,
since its application of the rabbinic sanctification
of nature through observance of divine commandments
leads to spiritualization, and hence, annihilation of
the empirical world.
The rich Jewish tradition, this volume demonstrates,
can support a deep respect toward nature that translates
into human stewardship of nature. In the twentieth century
the Jewish thinker who reconfigured the relationship
between God and natural world most elaborately was Abraham
Joshua Heschel (1907–1972). Edward E. Kaplan presents
Heschel’s “depth theology” of the caring
God who “calls for human beings actively to redeem
[the world].” Approaching the Bible, not as “human
theology but as God’s anthropology,” Heschel’s
point of departure was the notion of wonder or radical
amazement, which Schwartz has also discussed in this
volume in support of his own environmental sensibilities.
Kaplan explains how Heschel’s writings were designed
to enable the reader to shed or question all habitual
ways of thinking, and gradually to begin “to perceive
the world as ‘an allusion’ to God, as an object
of divine concern.” While Heschel’s outlook
was rooted in kabbalah and Hasidism, he used the kabbalistic
notion of “allusion” to reawaken in Jews the
reverence toward nature. Reinterpreting the Jewish tradition,
Kaplan shows, Heschel instructed twentieth-century Jews
to develop the notion of “kinship with the visible
cosmos” and to grasp the reciprocal relationship
between God and the world. The world is the object of
God’s concern or love. Heschel presented a vision
of interrelatedness of humans, other beings, and God,
and emphasized human responsibility to God, “who
is both within and beyond nature and civilization.”
Kaplan, along with Eilon Schwartz, correctly views Heschel
as a major ecological Jewish thinker whose theology
could inspire sound environmental policies.
Translating Jewish ecological reflection into action
is by no means a simple matter. The volume concludes
with essays by Tsvi Blanchard and Mark X. Jacobs that
reflect on the challenges to Jewish environmental activism.
Blanchard notes the tension between the secular nature
of the environmental discourse and Jewish religious
commitments. Before Jews could join the environmental
discourse, it has been important to realize three things.
First, even if Jewish sources harbor a certain conception
of the natural world, they did not imagine the ecological
situation we face today. It is not self-evident that
the solution to the environmental crisis could be found
in the traditional Jewish sources. Second, Jews were
never in a position to formulate policies for the society
at large, but only for their own communities. Third,
the ecological movement regards the Bible very critically
as the source of a negative attitude toward nature that
gave rise to destructive policies. Blanchard proposes
a way to overcome these difficulties by focusing on
select Talmudic sources that blend religious and secular
aspects. This model, he claims, would enable Jews to
join the general environmental discourse and to speak
as committed Jews. Blanchard shows that the rabbis considered
human action and were attentive to scientific information,
implying that there is room within the religious tradition
itself to consider nondivine aspects. He illustrates
how the rabbis considered intentional modifications
of the environment and the harmful side effects of improper
positioning of certain substances. Like Diamond, Blanchard
invites Jews and non-Jews to grasp the general principles
of Jewish legal sources and to realize how they can
be applied to very practical issues that confront the
environmental movement. He concludes that “analysis
of the Jewish material might help in drafting possible
policy strategies as well as in framing the key questions
to be asked and answered.”
The volume concludes with Mark X. Jacobs’s overview
of the Jewish environmental movement, its history, accomplishments,
and challenges. There is no doubt that the movement
has succeeded in raising the awareness of Jews about
environmental and ecological matters. The movement has
also added a significant Jewish presence to other faith
communities in the United States which are deeply concerned
about the environmental crisis. However, Jacobs admits
that the leadership of the Jewish community lacks passionate
commitment to environmentalism and that the very affluence
of Jews in North America militates against it. Jacobs
voices concern over the tension between the Jewish environmentalists,
who are motivated by deep religious insights, and the
“relative weak role of Judaism in the lives of
American Jews.” Thus, contemporary Jews rather
than Judaism are the obstacle to a vital Jewish environmentalism.
This volume intends to contribute to the nascent discourse
on Judaism and ecology by clarifying diverse conceptions
of nature in Jewish sources and by using the insights
of Judaism to formulate a constructive Jewish theology
of nature. Given the complexity of the Jewish tradition,
it is impossible to generalize about Judaism and ecology.
Some voices within Judaism are compatible with contemporary
environmentalism, and others are either in direct conflict
with it or manifest uneasiness about it. Thus, one voice
expresses a deep respect for the natural world created
by God that is translated into obligations to protect
the natural world from human abuse. This voice is rooted
in the view that the human is but a steward of God’s
earth and is totally compatible with conservationist
policies. Another voice within Judaism highlights the
opposition between the human and the natural. Only humans
can receive and respond to divine obligations “to
be holy as I the Lord am holy,” and only humans
can transform the natural world through prescribed acts
that sanctify the natural. From this perspective any
attempt to identify nature with God is a form of idolatry
that Judaism is determined to eradicate. And finally,
there is the voice that denies reality to the natural
world. The natural world, the world that is accessible
to us through the senses, is but a mirror of a divine,
noncorporeal reality. Created in the image of God, human
beings are most capable of transcending their natural
veil, and to fathom or penetrate the ultimate reality
beyond the veil. However one interprets this idea, it
leads to negative attitudes toward nature, be they indifference,
suppression, or manipulation of nature. In short, whatever
stance one wishes to highlight results in a different
understanding of Judaism vis-à-vis the natural
world.
Generalizing about Judaism and ecology is also difficult
because Jews today do not agree about the meaning of
Judaism. Not only is Judaism defined in both religious
and secular terms—and the gulf between religionists
and secularists grows ever deeper—religiously committed
Jews do not agree about the meaning of the foundational
tenets of Judaism or the way of life that should flow
from them. Whether one considers the sources of Judaism
to be normative, compelling, suggestive, or troubling
shapes how one treats what Judaism has to say about
environmental matters. This volume respects pluralism
in contemporary Judaism and does not seek to impose
unanimity and consensus. Yet, precisely because the
volume includes thinkers of all branches of contemporary
Judaism, it implicitly argues that the current ecological
crisis is indeed a Jewish issue. I will go even further
and say that because Jews have faced the threat of extinction
on account of radically evil, human acts, Jews have
a distinctive vantage point from which to speak against
the destruction that humans now inflict on God’s
creation. If Jews stand in covenantal relationship,
and are called to mend the world, Jews cannot ignore
ecological matters in the name of more pressing social
issues. To protect God’s world from further abuse
by humans is a Jewish moral obligation.
As Jews become more ecologically aware, however, Jewish
thinkers will have to become more familiar with the
contemporary environmental discourse and its nuances
debated among deep ecology, social ecology, political
ecology, ecofeminism, and conservationism.33
Each of these perspectives has a different understanding
of the place of the human in the order of things and
the attitudes toward nature that flows from it. A future
reflection by Jewish thinkers on ecological matters
will also require a deeper immersion in contemporary
science, especially the sciences of physics, cosmology,
the life sciences, and the cognitive sciences. To speak
theologically and philosophically about the desired
relationship between humans and the natural world requires
holding informed views about the natural world. A Jewish
discourse on ecology is thus inseparable from the so-called
dialogue of science and religion, in which the Jewish
voice is still underrepresented. When Jews enter the
dialogue of science and religious dialogue in greater
number, they will affirm what medieval Jewish philosophers
have taken for granted: since God is truth, there can
be no conflict between what is true in science and what
is true in Judaism.
As Jews become more conversant with this literature
and, hopefully, environmentalists become more informed
about Judaism, it may become clear not only how Judaism
is compatible with conservationism, but also where Judaism
conflicts with the radical activism of Earth First!
or with the metaphysical claims of deep ecology. Conversely,
as the conversation between Judaism and ecology develops,
it might question a strict secularist approach to being
Jewish. Judaism is a religious civilization and the
sources of Judaism are all religious sources. To speak
about environmentalism from a Jewish perspective entails
a religious outlook. The volume cannot tell Jews how
to define the meaning of being Jewish for themselves.
It only charts the issues that must concern anyone who
takes Judaism and ecology seriously.
1 The extensive ecological literature
cannot be cited here. For readers unfamiliar with it,
a good introduction is provided in Ecology: Key Concepts
in Critical Theory, ed. Carolyn Merchant (Atlantic
Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press, 1994). A quick perusal
of this volume bears my point: environmentalism has
had little or nothing to do with Judaism.
Return to text
2 Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical
Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155
(1967): 1203–1207.
Return to text
3 That Arthur Waskow, a Jewish environmental
thinker and activist, had to make the case for Jewish
involvement in environmentalism in the 1990s attests
to the relative limited interest in this topic in the
organized Jewish community. See Arthur Waskow, “Is
the Earth a Jewish Issue?” Tikkun 7, no.
5 (1992): 35–37.
Return to text
4 For further discussion
of this point among contemporary Jewish thinkers, consult
Eilon Schwartz, “Judaism and Nature: Theological
and Moral Issues to Consider while Renegotiating a Jewish
Relationship to the Natural World,” in Judaism
and Environmental Ethics, ed. Martin D. Yaffe (Lanham,
Md.: Lexington Books, 2001), 297–308.
Return to text
5 This position is explained most
succinctly by Michael Wyschogrod, “Judaism and
the Sanctification of Nature,” Melton Journal
24 (spring 1991): 5–6; reprinted in Judaism
and Environmental Ethics, ed. Yaffe, 289–96.
Most modern Orthodox thinkers share this viewpoint.
Return to text
6 See Steven S. Schwarzschild, “The
Unnatural Jew,” Environmental Ethics 6 (1984):
347–62. This essay elicited a serious debate and
some serious criticism. See Jeanne Kay, “Comments
on the Unnatural Jew,” Environmental Ethics
7 (1985): 189–91, reprinted in Judaism and Environmental
Ethics, ed. Yaffe, 286–88; and David Ehrenfeld
and Joan G. Ehrenfeld, “Some Thoughts on Nature
and Judaism,” Environmental Ethics 7 (1985):
93–95, reprinted in Judaism and Environmental
Ethics, ed. Yaffe, 283–85. The debate is discussed
in Martin D. Yaffe’s introduction to his volume.
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7 See Eric Katz, “Nature’s
Healing Power, the Holocaust and the Environmental Crisis,”
Judaism: A Quarterly Journal 46 (1997): 79–89;
reprinted in Judaism and Environmental Ethics,
ed. Yaffe, 309–20.
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8 It is true that Zionism included
religious positions as well. For the religious Zionists
the return to the land was understood in terms of being
able to perform the land-based commandments of Judaism
and thus coming closer to God. For an overview of the
function of the land in Zionist thought, consult Arnold
M. Eisen, “Off Center: The Concept of the Land
of Israel in Modern Jewish Thought,” in The
Land of Israel: Jewish Perspectives, ed. Lawrence
A. Hoffman (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1986), 263–96.
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9 The main ideologue of Socialist
Zionism who provided the rationale for the Jewish return
to nature was Aharon David Gordon (1856–1922).
For analysis of Gordon’s philosophy, see Eliezer
Schweid, The Land of Israel: National Home or Land
of Destiny, trans. Deborah Greniman (Rutherford,
N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985); idem,
The Individual: The World of A. D. Gordon (in
Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1970).
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10 It is instructive to note that
Zionism regarded the purchase of land from Arabs as
“redemption of land” (ge’ulat ha-qarqa),
thus framing a secular activity in religious terms.
See Ge’ulat ha-Qarqa be-’Eretz Israel Ra‘aion
u-Ma‘aseh, ed. Ruth Kark (Jerusalem: Yad Ben
Zvi Publication, 1990). I thank Dr. Ada Schein for directing
me to this book.
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11 The kibbutzim, the agricultural
settlements created by Socialist Zionism, were most
creative in developing new rituals for the Jewish festivals.
While rooted in the Jewish tradition, these innovative
rituals all celebrated the seasonal cycle of nature
and the fertility of the land, but they did not refer
to God and did not seek justification in rabbinic sources.
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12 See Susan H. Lees, The Political
Ecology of the Water Crisis in Israel (Lanham, Md.:
University Press of America, 1998); Water and Peace
in the Middle East, ed. Jad Isaac and Hillel Shuval
(Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1994); and Miriam Lowi, Water
and Power: The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the
Jordan River Basin (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993).
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13 For an overview of Israel’s
environmental perils and the activities of the environmental
movement, see Alon Tal, “An Imperiled Promised
Land,” in Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000
Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought, ed. Arthur Waskow,
2 vols. (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2000),
2:42–71.
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14 The works of Nogah Hareuveni,
listed in the bibliography of this volume, are typical
examples of this trend.
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15 For responses by modern Orthodox
thinkers to White’s charges, see Norman Lamm, “Ecology
in Jewish Law and Theology,” in his Faith and
Doubt: Studies in Traditional Jewish Thought (New
York: Ktav, 1972), 162–85; Jonathan Helfand, “Ecology
and the Jewish Tradition: A Postscript,” Judaism
20 (1971): 330–35; idem, “‘Consider the
Work of G-d’: Jewish Sources for Conservation Ethics,”
in Liturgical Foundations of Social Policy in the
Catholic and Jewish Traditions, ed. Daniel F. Polish
and Eugene J. Fisher (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1983), 134–48; idem, “The
Earth Is the Lord’s: Judaism and Environmental
Ethics,” in Religion and Environmental Crisis,
ed. Eugene C. Hargrove (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia
Press, 1986), 38–52; Aryeh Carmell, “Judaism
and the Quality of the Environment,” in Challenge:
Torah Views and Science and Its Problems, ed. Aryeh
Carmell and Cyril Domb (London and Jerusalem: Feldeim
Publishers, 1976), 500–25.
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16 The rise of Jewish interest
in environmental issues reflects in part a growing realization
that the ecological crisis is a religious issue and
that world religions have been crucial to the shaping
of human attitudes toward the physical environment.
The emergence of a religious ecological discourse during
the 1970s and 1980s was concomitant with the flourishing
Religious Studies as an academic discipline committed
to the comparative study of world religions. Typical
examples of comparative religious ecological discourse
in which Judaism is represented are Spirit and Nature:
Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue, ed. Steven
C. Rockefeller and John C. Elder (Boston: Beacon Press,
1992); and Worldviews and Ecology, ed. Mary Evelyn
Tucker and John A. Grim (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University
Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1993;
reprint, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996).
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17 The organization was associated
with the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote,
Pennsylvania, and its main activity was to publish educational
material. The materials are available in Judaism
and Ecology, 1970–1986: A Sourcebook of Readings,
ed. Marc Swetlitz (Wyncote: Shomrei Adamah, 1990).
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18 A representative sample of Jewish
environmental writings in America is Ecology and
the Jewish Spirit, ed. Ellen Bernstein (Woodstock,
Vt.: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1998).
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19 For an overview of these themes,
consult the essays in Judaism and Ecology, ed.
Aubrey Rose (London: Cassell, 1992).
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20 For a succinct expression of
the covenantal model for Jewish ecology, see Bradley
Shavit Artson, “Our Covenant with Stones: A Jewish
Ecology of Earth,” Conservative Judaism 44,
no. 1 (1991): 25–35; reprinted in Judaism and
Environmental Ethics, ed. Yaffe, 161–71.
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21 For an overview of the relevant
sources, consult Torah of the Earth, ed. Waskow,
1:212–14, which includes information about Jewish
organizations committed to environmentalism.
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22 Michael Wyschogrod, “The
Sanctification of Nature in Judaism,” in Judaism
and Environmental Ethics, ed. Yaffe, 294.
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23 On Deep Ecology, consult Deep
Ecology for the Twenty-first Century: Readings on the
Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism,
ed. George Sessions (Boston and London: Shambhala,
1995). In many respects, however, there is quite an
overlap between Green’s reflections and the views
of deep ecology. The reason for it is historical. Many
of the insights of deep ecology, especially as outlined
by Arne Naess, are indebted to the philosophy of Spinoza,
who was, in turn, familiar with kabbalah.
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24 Eisenberg’s reading is
in accord with the consensus among developmental anthropologists
who believe that toolmaking is the determining mark
of homo sapiens. For a summary of the debates
among anthropologists, consult Ian Tattersall, The
Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know about
Human Evolution (New York: Oxford University, 1995).
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25 A main concern of the environmental
justice movement is the dumping of toxic wastes in poor
neighborhoods that are populated predominantly by African
Americans. Environmental justice is thus commonly conflated
with the accusation of racism and pertains as well to
Mexican Americans and to Native Americans. See Robert
Bullard, “Environmental Racism and the Environmental
Justice Movement,” in Ecology, 254–65,
and the literature cited there.
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26 Kraemer’s conclusion, as
well as that of other contributors in this volume, accord
with ecological thinking that highlights respect for
nature. See Paul W. Taylor, “The Ethics of Respect
for Nature,” in Environmental Philosophy: From
Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, ed. Michael Zimmerman
et al. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993),
71–86.
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27 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “The
Lonely Man of Faith,” Tradition 7 (1965):
5–67.
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28 See Lenn E. Goodman, On Justice:
An Essay in Jewish Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1991).
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29 For exposition of Spinoza’s
theory, see Richard Mason, The God of Spinoza: A
Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 142–46.
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30 See David Ehrenfeld and Philip
J. Bentley, “Judaism and the Practice of Stewardship,”
Judaism: A Quarterly Journal 34 (1985): 301–11;
reprinted in Judaism and Environmental Ethics, ed.
Yaffe, 125–35.
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31 Whether Jews should be vegetarians
is one of the themes of Jewish ecological discourse.
For an overview, see Louis A. Berman, Vegetarianism
and the Jewish Tradition (New York: Ktav, 1982).
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32 For an example of Buber’s
influence on |
