Rabbi Lawrence Troster2013-05-23T05:40:08-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=rabbi-lawrence-trosterCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Rabbi Lawrence TrosterGood old fashioned elbow grease.How I Observe Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Daytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30205022013-04-05T13:15:22-04:002013-04-05T17:59:41-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/aliyah (the honor of saying blessings over a part of the Sabbath Torah reading), I am called by my Hebrew name: Eliezer ben Yaakov Meir ve-Leah. My family follows the Ashkenazi custom of naming children after deceased relatives and I am named after my great-uncle Eliezer.
So who was Eliezer? His real name was Lejzor Trajster (the original Polish/Yiddish spelling of my family name: pronounced Lazar Treister) of Lagow, Poland, and he was one of my grandfather's older brothers. I have a picture of him on a postcard sent from Lagow to Toronto in the 1930s to the all the relatives of the Jewish community who had immigrated in the previous decades -- my grandfather came to Toronto in 1905 -- to ask them for contributions before the High Holidays for the Free Loan Society (Gemilut Hesed Casa) which gave people interest-free loans to help them make a living. This was the highest form of tzedakah according to traditional Jewish ethics. He was a member of the governing board of the society (see the postcard below; he is No. 5), and I have also learned that he was a member of the Kehilla's (Jewish communal organization) board of directors in 1932, who were charged with raising money for food to help the poor who constituted a significant percentage of the community.
So I don't personally need Holocaust memorial services or memorials to remind me of the loss of Lejzor and his family or his sister Nacha and her husband Hershel Dales, or his other sister Fradle and her husband Elyeh Vigorny, nor does my wife need such reminders to remember her father's uncle Karl, his aunt Paula and their four daughters Miriam, Ruth, Susan and Liesl, or any of the rest of our families that by chance and the cruelty of nations never made it out of Europe.
And I don't like it when the Shoah is appropriated by politicians for their political agendas or when people start calling each other Nazis. Every great historical tragedy needs to be remembered for what it really was and for who were the victims -- there is no need for a competition of suffering. And it is appalling when people use the fear and the loathing of Nazism for trivial political points and paranoid conspiracy theories. And as for those pathetic people who pretend to be Nazis with their salutes, flags and marches, I have nothing but contempt and scorn, not fear.
I understand that many people want and need to have memorials, services and museums. I do see how important they can be to remind people of the horror of the lives lost. But every year on Yom Ha-Shoah my wife and I light six memorial candles for the murdered millions of our people. And I need only remember my name.
]]>My Kiddush Cup and Deeds of Lovingkindness to the Earthtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29897342013-04-03T11:06:59-04:002013-04-03T23:11:48-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/
I did not think much of this group until I got to rabbinical school and learned that "Malbishis Arurum" was the Yiddish form of the Hebrew Malbish Arumim, "clothing the naked," and that this group of old ladies many years before (in the 1930s during the Depression) had been formed as a social welfare group that collected and provided clothes and shoes for Jewish orphans in Toronto. By the time of my Bar Mitzvah in 1966, they were no longer needed because of the general social welfare laws but continued to exist as a group of old friends, marking each other's celebrations like the Bar Mitzvah of a grandson.
I also eventually learned that Malbish Arumim is the one of the classic rabbinic ethical actions of what was called Gimilut Hasadim, "deeds of lovingkindness." Here is one of the Talmudic sources for this critical Jewish value:
Rabbi Hama son of Rabbi Hanina further said: What means the text: You shall walk after the Lord your God? (Deuteronomy 13:5) Is it, then, possible for a human being to walk after the Shechinah [God's Presence]; for has it not been said: For the Lord Your God is a devouring fire? (Deuteronomy 4:24) But [the meaning is] to walk after the attributes of the Holy Blessed. As God clothes the naked, for it is written: And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skin, and clothed them, (Genesis 3:21) so should you also clothe the naked. The Holy Blessed One, visited the sick, for it is written: And the Lord appeared unto him [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre, (Genesis 18:1) so should you also visit the sick. The Holy Blessed One, comforted mourners, for it is written: And it came to pass after the death of Abraham, that God blessed Isaac his son, (Genesis 25:11) so should you also comfort mourners. The Holy Blessed One, buried the dead, for it is written: And He [God] buried him [Moses] in the valley, (Deuteronomy 34:6) so should you also bury the dead. (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 14a)
These are the four classic ethical actions of Gemilut Hasadim: clothing the naked (malbish arumim), which God did when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden; visiting the sick (bikkur holim), which occurred when God appeared to Abraham immediately following his circumcision and the tradition interpreted this appearance as being during the time that Abraham was recovering; comforting the mourner (nihum aveilim), which is interpreted from God's appearance to Isaac right after Abraham's death; and burying the dead (kevor meitim) because God is depicted as burying Moses.
Gemilut Hasadimwas often concretely expressed in Jewish communities from the Middle Ages to the modern era with various social welfare groups that fulfilled each of these actions as well as others that were also considered aspects of lovingkindness.
It is obvious that Gemilut Hasadim is concerned with ethical action between human beings but could there not also be deeds of lovingkindness to the earth from which we all have come, which provides us with all we need and to which we all will go? I find such an ideal in Psalm 104:13-14:
God waters the mountains from God's lofts; from the fruit of Your works the earth is sated. God makes the hay sprout for cattle, and grass for the labor of humankind to forth bread from the earth.
Just as God takes care of the earth for all God's creatures (and Psalm 104 is all about how God cares for both human and non-human life) so must we show lovingkindness for the earth. If we are to follow the divine attributes one of the main characteristics of God in classic Jewish sources is that of ongoing care for all of Creation.
My teacher in Jewish ethics, the late Rabbi Seymour Siegel, once said that we must imitate God but not impersonate God. The first is piety, the second is idolatry. We have made great idols of our ability to harness the resources of the earth, damming rivers, moving mountains and creating great structures that reach to the sky. We have done all this in a spirit of conquest and control. While we have gained great benefits from our labor, it is time to now think of how to treat the earth with kindness as we have maimed it to the point where it will soon no longer be able to absorb all the alterations that our power has imposed on it. We need to include all of Creation: the animals, plants, rivers, oceans, mountains and air in our deeds of lovingkindness.
That is what I will also think of when I next raise my Kiddush cup at my Seder.]]>Cleaning Out the Leaven on Passover -- in Body and Spirittag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29265092013-03-24T12:25:45-04:002013-03-24T12:25:20-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/hametz). Why is this so important? According to the Torah, the Israelites did not eat leavened bread because they did not have time to bake it on their way out of Egypt (Exodus 12:34; Deuteronomy 16:3-4) and so it is prohibited as part of reenacting the Exodus every Passover. But this historical explanation only deals with the surface of the prohibition of leaven. In the laws of sacrifice at the beginning of the book of Leviticus (Leviticus 2:1-16; 6:7-16) there is one sacrifice which is made from semolina wheat: the minha offering. All forms of this offering must also not be leavened and so there is a significant connection in these laws to the upcoming holiday of Passover.
The grain offering may be baked, roasted on a griddle or fried in a pan. Despite the way the offering is prepared, it must be unleavened (matzah) and thus contain no se'or (sour dough yeast) or it is leavened bread. Leavened bread is for normal human consumption but only matzah can be used on the altar of the Tabernacle/Temple as an offering to God. However, during Passover, even the human community must eat only matzah and must eliminate all leaven from its habitations (Exodus 12:15).
And so while there are many issues in these laws that call out for explanation and investigation, the most obvious one is: Why is leaven banned in the Tabernacle/Temple at all times and also during the week of Passover? A deeper explanation connects both of these practices.
The late Bible scholar Jacob Milgrom, in his commentary to Leviticus, explained that "Fermentation is equivalent to decay and corruption and for this reason is prohibited on the altar..." Leaven is a symbol of both death and life in that it smells like death and yet produces the growth of the bread or the beer or the wine. While it is acceptable for people to eat leaven during normal times, it is prohibited on the altar as an offering to God because God is life itself and death cannot be in God's sanctuary. Thus leaven is not fit for sacrifice.
This means that during the week of Passover every Israelite home and the entire Land of Israel itself became one great altar to God, all without hametz. As a spiritual practice, abstaining from leaven for one week allows us, in this symbolic system, to attain a ritually higher state of connection to God.
As Bible scholar William Propp also points out, the removal of leaven has still deeper meaning:
Yeast is in theory immortal. The Israelite chronometric system, however, and their entire world-view presuppose that time is not a continuous stream. It is and must be periodically interrupted... [e.g. he Sabbath, Sabbatical Year, and the Jubilee] The laws of unleavened bread ensure that the bread by which people live does not transcend time, at least within the Holy Land. Once a year, all yeast must be killed, with a week of separation before the souring of a new batch...Leaven symbolizes the undesirable: misfortune, evil intensions and especially ritual impurity. To purge it is to make a fresh start, to experience catharsis. This understanding fits well with the historical context of the holiday. In the month of the New Grain, the Hebrews cast off centuries of oppression and assumed a holier, more ascetic status for their desert wanderings and subsequent national life. (Anchor Bible Commentary to Exodus 1-18, p. 434)
Jewish commentators though out the ages have interpreted hametz in a similar fashion. Philo of Alexandria the Jewish philosopher (20 B.C.E.-50 C.E.) interpreted the prohibition of leaven to the idea that during Passover we must return to a more natural state of living since leavening is a product of human art (or techne in Greek from where we get our word technology) or rather the human manipulation of the natural world:
The interpreters of the holy scriptures do also say that the unleavened food is a gift of nature, but that leavened bread is a work of art. Since, therefore, the vernal festival (Passover) is a commemoration of the creation of the world, and since that it was inevitable that the most ancient persons, those formed out of the earth, must have used the gifts of the world without alteration ... the lawgiver ordained that food which was the most suitable to the occasion, wishing to kindle every year a desire to walk in the paths of a holy and rigid way of Life ... For they are all unleavened, the clearest example of an unmixed food which has been prepared not by human skill for pleasure but by nature for the most essential use. (The Special Laws 2:159-160)
In the New Testament, Paul uses the metaphor of leaven (I Corinthians 5:7-8) as a homiletical device to talk about the need for spiritual and moral removal. His use of this metaphor shows that his audience was well-versed in this ancient Jewish interpretation.
And in rabbinic literature, leaven is often used as a metaphor for the evil inclination or yetzer ha-ra (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 17a).
Preparing for Passover then is not only about removing the physical leaven from our homes but also about the spiritual of the law: The cleaning out of our homes should also be a cleansing of our spirits, a renewal to the meaning of our Exodus experience and the new Creation that is spring.
The original version of this article was published in The Jewish Standard.]]>Dark Green Environmentalism: On Tu Bishvat, Jews Must Move Beyond 'Light' Activismtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24762492013-01-15T11:40:50-05:002013-03-17T05:12:01-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/
And while the present Jewish environment movement has been doing a very good job on educating and activating the Jewish community on the issues of food sustainability and energy conservation, there is still a great deal of work that needs to be done. I find that much of Jewish environmentalism is based on an underlying philosophy of what has been called Light Green environmentalism. This is an environmentalism that seeks to solve issues like sustainability and climate change through green consumerism, new technology and green job promotion. All of this is good but it will not solve climate change, environmental injustice or species extinction. It ignores the role of population and development in the environmental crisis; and it ignores the serious critiques the world economic system which is a major component in creating climate change and environmental injustice. Light Green environmentalism is based on a stewardship ethic which still privileges human needs and refuses to incorporate a more biocentrist approach to environmental ethics. In other words, a Dark Green environmentalism.
I believe that the Jewish community has been reluctant to enter into this Dark Green environmentalism for a number of reasons one of which is that we are afraid to face the kind of self-analysis that Dark Green requires, we have avidly embraced the new technology, and a lot of our community's wealth comes from many of the industries and corporations that have come under this critique. Thinking Dark Green also means putting aside much of our anthropocentric ethics and create a new ethical system that incorporates the reality of modern technology.
The philosopher Hans Jonas was one of the leaders in creating such a new ethical system for the modern technological age. He created an environmental ethic that arose from his fear of the destruction of humanity and from the need to create a philosophical basis for humans' responsibility to save themselves and the planet. His response to the environmental crisis is most fully elucidated in his book, "The Imperative of Responsibility."
In this work, Jonas argued that the environmental crisis emerged from the human impact on the natural world, which is greater and more far-reaching than in any previous age. This unique and novel power comes from modern technology, which is also radically different from the technology of previous ages. Previous ethical systems, centered on interpersonal dealings within relatively narrow horizons of space and time, are no longer adequate to deal with the moral issues now raised. "Modern technology has introduced actions of such novel scale, objects, and consequences that the framework of former ethics can no longer contain them" ("Imperative of Responsibility," p. 6).
For Jonas, the lengthened reach of our deeds moves the principle of responsibility into the center of our ethical stage. His theory of responsibility, which he saw as the correlate of power, must therefore be proportionate to the range of modern power. Humans must also have greater foresight into the possible impact of new technology what Jonas called "scientific futurology." Even with this greater foresight we will not be able to fully predict the effects of modern technological power: "As long as the danger is unknown, we do not know what to preserve and why." We can learn what to avoid from the "revulsion of feeling which acts ahead of knowledge, to apprehend the value whose antithesis so affects us. We know the thing at stake only when we know that it is at stake" [Italics in original].
Since we are so uncertain about the effects of our technology, and because it could have such far-reaching implications for the human race as well as the rest of life on earth, caution is now "the core of moral action." This ethic of caution is also found in the Precautionary Principle, an ethical theory which states that an action, particularly one resulting from the introduction of a new technology, should not be carried out if the possible but as yet unknown results of that action are deemed by valid scientific opinion to have a high risk of being negative from an ethical point of view. The principle states that, when results cannot be determined with some kind of precision, actions which might lead to significant harm should be delayed or shunned. According to the Precautionary Principle, new technology should be assessed for indication of harm rather than proof of harm; a cost/benefit analysis of possible harm is not sufficient. The onus of proof of safety is on those who create the technology.
What are at stake are not only other forms of life but also the very survival of humanity and for Jonas the survival of humanity was a central ethical principle. In previous ages, human action might lead to the elimination of a tribe or a nation, but now all of humanity is at risk. Therefore any technology, which can put humanity at risk, is immoral. "Never must the existence or the essence of man as a whole be made a stake in the hazards of action."
In many Jewish traditional texts, trees are often used as a powerful metaphor for life (see Psalm 92:13-15). One of these metaphors is the Tree of Life which appears in Genesis 2-3 and in the book of Proverbs as a symbol of Wisdom. There are also a number of accounts of people being buried by trees (see for example Genesis 35:8), which may express a desire that they participate in the eternity of the Tree of Life. This symbol reflects our belief that a tree which reaches up to heaven, lives a long time and can provide us with the sustenance that is given to us by God. It is an appropriate symbol for us to celebrate at this time of year and make us reflect on how we can preserve it.
This was originally was published on www.jewcology.com.]]>Justice Not Triage: The Year of the Protestertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11654052011-12-29T06:27:27-05:002012-02-28T05:12:02-05:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/Time magazine made The Protester its Person(s) of the Year. Beginning with the Arab Spring, mass protests (sometimes turning into civil war as in Libya and Syria) have spread to Greece, Israel, Spain, the United States, Canada, China and Britain. In each case there were local causes and reasons for the ignition of the protests.
But despite the initial causes, there is a common foundation to every one of these protests, a theme that was often overlooked in much of the mainstream media. For example, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has often been characterized as lacking a platform or a list of demands. And while some of this description is true; the instigators of OWS are looking to start a conversation about the state of the country and are not seeking to create a political movement. But OWS has certainly changed the language of the political discourse: job creation and income disparity are now being seriously discussed by some politicians.
I believe that the heart of the appeal, the reason that protests have spread across the world, is the desire for justice.
Justice is a value that often lies behind law which attempt to express and concretize that value across society. There are two kinds of justice: distributive justice and participatory justice. Distributive justice means the fair distribution of resources in a society. It does not mean that everyone has to have the same amount of wealth; it only says that the distribution should be fair.
Participatory justice is about the fair distribution of power that allows all citizens a measure control in governance and societal decision making. In the environment movement, both of these ideas of justice are found in environmental justice defined as:
The equitable distribution of environmental risks and benefits; fair and meaningful participation in environmental decision-making; recognition of community ways of life, local knowledge, and cultural difference; and the capability of communities and individuals to function and flourish in society.
(David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. )
Participatory justice is a distinctly modern idea as in many traditional ethical systems the assumption is that a just ruler will enact equity for the good of the people and in accordance with the will of God. This can be seen in the Bible in the famous prophecy of Isaiah 11 where a descendant of David will be someone who will:
Thus he [the king] shall judge the poor with equity and decide with justice for the lowly of the land. He shall strike down the ruthless with the rod of his mouth and slay the wicked with the breath of his lips. Justice shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulness of his waist (Isaiah 11:4-5).
In the modern world, participatory justice demands that the political system enfranchise the entire population and that there be a system of checks and balances to prevent corruption and the concentration of power in the hands of the wealthy and the few.
Distributive justice, however, is well established in most religious traditions. In Judaism, it is based on the ideas that all human being are created in the image of God. As such, we must see all people as having equal value and dignity. This ideal will only be fully realized in the Messianic Age and it is also inevitable that power and wealth imbalances will occur in human societies as we have the free will to do evil, not only good.
The solution to these balances is found in Judaism in the concept of tzedek, usually translated as righteousness. This concept, which is so important in the Hebrew Bible and later in Rabbinic Judaism, may be seen as the practical attempt to return things to a better balance in which power is somewhat restored to those who have been denied it by the imbalances that human activity inevitably produces.
In the Hebrew Bible, tzedek has a core meaning of "equity." There are many laws in the Torah which attempt on a day-to-day basis to bring about some measure of tzedek into every area of life. In Leviticus 19, for example there are laws directed to protecting the poor, workers and the powerless. There are also regulations meant to insure an honest justice system and a fair economy.
There are also other examples of laws in the Torah which attempt to redress the power and economic imbalances in human society such as the laws of the Sabbatical year (Exodus 23:11, Leviticus 25:2-5, Deuteronomy 15:1-4) and the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-24). In fact, as Bible scholar Jeffery Tigay has pointed out, there is a whole program in the Torah for "preserving a balanced redistribution of resources across society" [Jeffrey H. Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy, Jewish Publication Society, 1996, p. 145.] (See for example: Exodus 22:24-26, Leviticus 25:36-37, Deuteronomy 23:20-1, 24:6, 10-13, 17).
According to the late biblical scholar Moshe Greenberg, the laws of the Torah try to preclude the concentration of any kind of power in human society since this is a challenge to God's power. It is possible, he asserted, that in the books of the prophets, one can see how these laws were actually lived out. The prophets were the advocates of this ancient value which often came into conflict with those in power.
Rabbinic Judaism encoded this idea of tzedek in its concept of tzedakah which is usually improperly translated as "charity." Moses Maimonides, the great medieval philosopher and rabbinic legal authority, encoded the obligation to give tzedakah into eight levels of helping out the poor. The lowest levels are those where the poor person receives help but he/she is still in a subordinate power position to the giver. Emotionally, the giver, by his/her attitude, often does not see the poor as being equal and has no real desire to correct the economic and power imbalances -- they only have a sense of obligation to tradition. The higher levels of tzedakah increase the dignity and equality of the poor. The highest level is where the donor gives the poor a gift or loan, or enters into a partnership or finds them work so that they will no longer need to beg from other people or from the public poor fund. Thus the greatest form of tzedakah/tzedek has the greatest redress of the societal imbalance of justice. There is an almost complete equalization of power between the donor and the poor. The poor, in fact, cease to be poor.
In every case, the street protests have at their base the anger over injustice in the economy and in the political system. When the wealthy and the powerful control all the resources, and do not share power with the majority of a country's citizens, they are in effect jettisoning them from society. This is what theologian Richard L. Rubenstein has called the triaging of excess populations. In his book "The Age of Triage," (Boston: Beacon Press: 1983) Rubenstein has written that the modern age should be characterized as "a revolution of rationality" which has produced prosperity but at the price of creating large numbers of superfluous population. Governments and states have utilized three main strategies for eliminating excess population: incarceration, expulsion and extermination.
Triage, however, is not only to be found in direct conflict. It can also come from the exploitation and neglect of the weak by the powerful. Globalization of the world economy has rendered many workers superfluous through technological change and through the increasingly transnational character of large corporations. This corporate triage is what lies behind the arrogance of the 1 percent in their treatment of the 99 percent. The result of this triage is societal unrest, instability and an inevitable increase in violence, poverty, disease and war.
The protestors demand justice and not triage. Tzedek means working towards the equitable distribution of resources and sustainable development. Continuing with triage means the continual "cutting" out of populations by war, famine or disease, so that those remaining can still survive at a level of existence that is not sustainable. Triage is a return to social Darwinism where the strongest survive and the weak perish.
As a Jew, my tradition says that a world of triage is a world where the earth is cursed and peace is impossible. It is not surprising that many religious communities have supported the street protests as they often have had a special role like the ancient prophets in challenging the accepted economic and social orders. We should heed the call of the Torah: tzedek, tzedek tirdof: Justice/Equity, Justice/Equity you are to pursue in order that you may live and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving you! (Deuteronomy 16:20).]]>Veterans Day: What My Father Taught Me About Wartag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10799232011-11-11T07:11:49-05:002012-01-11T05:12:01-05:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/
During World War II my father was a lieutenant in the Canadian Army, in the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa, a machine gun regiment which fought from D-Day and the battles following it in Normandy, Belgium and Holland. He never really talked about this much but he kept gun operation manuals in the basement. I eventually learned that he had fought in some of the heaviest fighting on the Western front. He didn't tell his children about that, he only told us the funny stories.
But my father didn't think that war was funny. My father for a long time would not let me have a toy gun. Guns were not toys, they killed people.
Growing up in Canada on every Nov. 11th at 11 a.m., Remembrance Day, when the guns fell silent in 1918, everyone stopped what they were doing for a moment of silence. We bought plastic poppies from army veterans and we learned the poem "In Flanders Fields."
My father was born in 1913 the fourth of seven children. My grandfather had been forced to serve in the Czar's army in the Russo-Japanese War and had hated it so much he never spoke of his experience his entire life. He came to Toronto in 1905 having apparently deserted the army.
My father grew up in the Depression. He had to work his way through university and graduated as a chemical engineer but being Jewish he could not find a job. He had also been a Boy Scout, even reaching the highest level. But to my knowledge he never fired a gun until he joined the army, became an officer and ended up in the Camerons, with a kilt for a dress uniform.
My father thought the war was one of the worst times of his life. He had volunteered to fight (until late in the War, the Canadian army was and all volunteer force). He and my mother met before the war and courted during it by mail throughout the entire war. We still have his letters which are full of news about family, friends, affection and reflections on the war. When he was about to shipped overseas in January 1943 he wrote:
It is rather difficult to put in writing all the things that go racing through your mind now that the time has come for me to leave. I guess it is like an unfinished symphony, so much to be done, the finish depends upon so many future factors.
Please don't feel too badly, it is just fate. I am just a little pawn in a gigantic game. A serious game but very necessary in such troubled times. Perhaps I can add my little bit to bring back peace and happiness to our lives and to countless thousands. Our individual heartbreaks and sorrows are small in comparison to the world in general...
We have an old home movie taken on his last leave home at my grandparents' summer cottage, just before he was sent over. My cousin Sheila, only about five, marches around for the camera in my father's hat. Everyone is smiling. But he didn't tell my grandparents that he was being shipped overseas and he couldn't even face writing them. He had my mother tell them.
My father never told us about being in a battle. He did tell us how he narrowly escaped death in Holland when his amphibious vehicle missed being blown up by a floating mine. The one ahead of him was hit. Or when an artillery barrage took out his jeep while he was standing beside it and at the last second he jumped on top of his driver in a trench. There was no pride in the telling; just a kind of scared awe.
He would rather tell us the story of the salami my mother sent him or how the cook in his unit was so glad to be transferred from a unit where the men would ask for fired eggs to be put onto their bare hands. We would laugh; it was like the summer camp stories I used to tell my daughters. He never told us what it was like to kill people and I never thought of my father as a killer.
He hated the false glory attributed to the war in popular culture. When "The Longest Day" was on TV he would point out how wrong it was and how there were no Canadians in it. He had landed the third morning after D-Day on Juno beach when the outcome was still uncertain. He told me how frightening the preparation for the invasion was. Everyone was organizationally lined up so that you knew, he said, that you were the replacement for the one in front of you when he would be killed and there was someone behind you for when you were killed. He was a replacement for a lieutenant who had been killed on D-Day.
My father detested false bravado and the glorification of war. He knew that he had a role in winning the war. He didn't need personal glory. He just wanted Canada's role to be acknowledged. That was good enough for him.
My father shaped my ideas about war in ways I only later realized. During the Vietnam War, we would talk about it, knowing none of our family or friends were going to be called up. The war was constantly in the news and I met draft dodgers and deserters around town. When the My Lai massacre occurred, and I said something about it, my father got upset and said that I didn't understand how things like this could happen in war.
Then he told me the story about a unit commanded by a friend had encountered Nazi Youth troops in a field in Normandy. They feigned surrender and when the Canadians went forward to capture them, they dropped down in the tall grass. Others, hidden, then fired their guns and killed several of the Canadians. When the Nazis were finally captured, this friend shot them all. My father told this story with a quiet anguish. War is always evil, he was saying to me; terrible things always happen. But sometimes war is necessary. We had family who never made it out of Europe. I am named after my grandfather's brother Lazar who was killed along with his wife Golda and their two children in the death camp of Treblinka.
The war shaped my father's life. By the time he came back chemical engineering had advanced so much he would have had to go back to school. It was too late; he was married and he had to work. During the war he started smoking which was one factor that led to his death. He always had a fierce desire to be with his family when other dads went golfing. We always ate dinner together. The war made him so adult, so responsible, so much a man.
His funeral was on Remembrance Day, November 11, 1984.
(My father Jack Martin Troster and my grandmother Rose Troster at his homecoming party in late 1946. My mother Lilian Stone and my great-aunt Rose Shulman are in the background)]]>Simchat Torah: Remembering Creation One More Timetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10075602011-10-19T12:20:38-04:002011-12-19T05:12:01-05:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/
The late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, in the last collection of his work that was published in the year that he died, has a wonderful poem about this celebration:
The Jewish people read Torah aloud to God
all year long, a portion a week,
like Scheherazade who told stories to save her life.
In this poem, Amichai reverses the usual rationale for reading the Torah. Jews normally think of the Torah reading as a way to constantly remind them of God's saving acts, the covenant with God and its commandments and the rich stories of our ancestors. In this poem Amichai is saying that the real purpose is to remind God of God's activities in the world as a way of keeping God interested in keeping the Jewish people alive. This is a wonderful and humorous inversion of an important Jewish practice and makes for great poetry if not for logical theology. It is a kind of "sacred parody" that Jews have often used to deal with the disconnect between what should be and what is in the world.
But the Torah reading is really about reminding us, not God, about who we are, where we came from, what we believe and what we should do to change the world. So every year at Simchat Torah we finish reading the book of Deuteronomy and begin again with Genesis.
And I believe that we need to be reminded of Creation even if one might think that spring is the better time. And while Passover in the spring does have its Creation elements, Sukkot was and is primarily a Creation festival, celebrating both the bounty of the fall harvest and need for the winter rains to ensure the fertility of the land. And the fall also reminds us of the cycle of life as much as the spring. Without the ending of fall, the beginning of spring cannot come.
When the fall harvest occurs, our ancestors might forget where it really comes from. After all, when your stomach is full, you might not be thinking of being grateful. As we are warned in Deuteronomy 8:10, 14, 17:
When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you ... beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God ... and you say to yourselves, "My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me."
Now, we in the developed world don't have to really notice what season it is and worry about the harvest. We can always just go to the store and keep things in our refrigerators. Our real reminders are mostly commercial ones: back-to-school sales, Columbus Day sales, Halloween candy, Thanksgiving sales, Christmas catalogues. We have mostly lost a sense of seasons, except perhaps for a change of clothes or moving air conditioning to heating. We are surrounded by the technology of our own power and forget the ultimate Source of that wealth.
So we need be reminded of Creation; the story of Genesis 1 does not have to be read in a literal way to keep its power and impact. It is a story of the emergence of order from chaos and a process of the expression of meaning in the universe. The priestly authors of Genesis 1 saw the number seven as the number of perfection and harmony and embedded it in many ways in the Hebrew text. There are seven days of Creation. There are seven words in the first verse and 14 in the second to cite just a couple of examples. One scholar has suggested that the original context of Genesis 1 was as a piece of liturgy in the Temple in Jerusalem, chanting the appropriate words each day of the week. Within this setting, Genesis 1 is a hymn not only of what was but what should be: a world of perfect harmony and peace.
One of my favorite reminders of the coming of fall is a Japanese maple in our front yard. The leaves turn in the fall from a dark green to a glorious blazing red -- a final burst of light before they fall off and the tree sleeps in the winter.
Like Scheherazade we tell stories to keep ourselves alive -- truly alive to the rhythms of Creation of which we are so intimately part of. So I will celebrate Simchat Torah and hear again the chanting of the Creation, look at our tree and pray that the world will come to be what it should be. ]]>With Perfect Trust and Doubt: A Yom Kippur Reflection on the Dynamics of Faithtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9940422011-10-05T16:00:45-04:002011-12-05T05:12:01-05:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/
Today the word "faith" is often understood in the popular mind with something that I consider a caricature of real faith. Faith is supposed to be simple (and therefore, in some sense, "pure" or "innocent"); irrational in the face of (often scientific) facts that might contradict it; and static, unchanging and therefore solid and sure.
This, however, is not a picture of my faith or the faith of so many others. Real faith, in my opinion, is complex, transformative and dynamic.
It is dynamic because it evolves in the life of an individual and in the history of their faith community. In the life of an individual, faith has numerous stages. In Protestant theologian James Fowler's book "Stages of Faith" (following the models of psychiatrists' Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development and Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development)b he demonstrated that faith changes throughout one's life to different levels of understanding and personal integration. In the history of a whole faith community many essential beliefs and practices can also evolve, find different characteristics and even "die" if they no longer serve a community's needs. The community helps to shape and maintain faith of its adherents. It is usually "conservative" in the sense of preserving traditional theology, values and rituals, while reinterpreting them in light of changing conditions. "Tradition" therefore means constant renewal. The dynamism of a living faith tradition is creative.
Real faith is transformative in that it should change people to a greater observance and understanding of their community's value systems. Real faith does not keep people where they are; it becomes a lens through which their lives are affected every day. Real faith not only should change an individual but a community and, in some way, the whole world.
Finally, real faith is complex. I don't believe that there is such a thing as a "simple faith." Real faith is an ongoing process that includes doubt. Here it is important to distinguish between "belief that" and "believe in." When one says, "I believe that God exists," it means that the person is stating their position on the existence of God based on whatever reasons and evidence they have brought together. When one says "I believe in God," they are expressing trust in the actions of God in the world; what is usually called divine providence. In the complexity of real faith there is a process of both trust and doubt in God and in the idea of a world of meaning and order.
This is not an "irrational" process. It is, however, "non-rational" in the sense that it may be very personal, emotional and existential -- a different kind of truth from the process of seeking objective universal truth.
There are times when I awake in the morning and the whole world is filled with the Glory of God; a world of divine beauty and order. Then, I read the news and I feel like Jeremiah: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are the workers of treachery at ease? (Jeremiah 12:1b). As a person of faith, every day I am faced with the same question: Is there order and goodness in the world or is the world chaotic, unjust and meaningless?
...living life in the presence of the Redeemer, even when the world is unredeemed. After Auschwitz faith means there are times when faith is overcome. ... We now have to speak of "moment faiths," moments when Redeemer and vision of redemption are present, interspersed with time when the flames and smoke of the burning children blot out faith--though it flickers again ... faith is a life response of the whole person to the Presence in life and history. Like life, this response ebbs and flows. (From "Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity and Modernity after the Holocaust" in "Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era," edited by Eva Fleischner, p.27)
The High Holiday liturgy calls on us time and time again to have trust in divine mercy, to trust that our sins will be forgiven and to trust that the world really does have meaning, beauty and order. It calls on us to repent and to change because each one of us can make the world a little closer to the vision of Redemption where only justice and mercy will prevail. So among the many reasons that people go to synagogue on Yom Kippur is that it is a time for the whole community to reaffirm that the world makes sense; together it is easier to maintain that trust.
Even if the texts sometime seem alien to our lives, many more times they have recharged me with deep trust and at the end of Yom Kippur I feel renewed, refreshed, cleansed and ready to face another year. ]]>An Environmental Confession for the High Holidaystag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9420862011-09-07T18:34:58-04:002011-11-07T05:12:02-05:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/
The Jewish concept of repentance is called Teshuvah ("return" in English) and one of the critical aspects of repentance is the act of confession. In the High Holiday liturgy are numerous public confessions that are couched in general terms for a whole series of sins.
Jews confess primarily in public rather than in private, and in general terms rather than in specifics, because this allows everyone in the community to confess without shame or embarrassment. Public confession also binds the sins of one person to that of the whole community so that all take responsibility for one another. While Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) once wrote that we confess in specific terms only for sins between one person and another, sometimes it is worthwhile to confess publicly for other kinds of sins. If we have sinned against a particular person, we are supposed to go to them, confess and ask forgiveness. If they have died, we are supposed to go with a minyan of ten people and confess over their graves. In all our acts of repentance, we are supposed to try and undo the damage we have caused.
While the traditional list of sins is fairly comprehensive, the time has come to add a new one: the careless destruction of Creation. At a conference for Jewish environmental scholars that I once attended, I heard an environmental educator say that we can become more environmentally aware and responsive by publicly confessing our environmental sins. He then proceeded to do so. Everyone there laughed a nervous laugh of embarrassment, because we all realized, without saying a word, that we all have such sins to confess.
I, too, have committed environmental sins in my life. Here is one that would be more fitting to confess over a river in Northern Ontario (you will soon see why), but because this is the season of repentance, I do it now.
When I was sixteen, as part of my summer camp program, I went on a canoe trip in Northern Ontario and I participated in a frog massacre. I had been going to this camp in Haliburton for nine years, and now I was a CIT (counselor in training). Five of us and a "tripper" (a counselor who specialized in taking out canoe trips) set out in two canoes from the middle of Algonquin Park for a six-day trip that would take us to North Bay.
It was a wonderful trip and we had many adventures. Somewhere along a river about a day east of North Bay, we came across an area that was filled with frogs of many different kinds. One of us hit a frog with a paddle, and then we all went a little mad, completely out of control. We began killing the frogs as we went, and I can't even tell you how many we destroyed. Afterwards, I remember feeling a little ashamed, but we said nothing about it to each other. It was one of those mindless adolescent acts of cruelty that unfortunately seem often to be a part of growing up.
Every once and awhile, I have thought of this thing that I did. I eventually learned that since the 1980's the world frog population has been in sharp decline, probably caused by human created environmental factors such as disease, habitat destruction, toxic pollution and pesticides. This decline is a serious risk to biodiversity. Unfortunately, the causes of this decline are still not properly known even with continuing research. The extinction rate of frogs and other amphibians is anywhere from 211 times the background extinction rate to 25,039-45,474 times. The frog is a kind of environmental canary in the mine, warning us of the overall decline in the earth's ecosystems.
My unwitting part in the frog's decline has been in the back of my mind for some time. Since I believe, that on some level, we must treat all life with the same kind of ethical concern with which we treat each other, I felt that I must confess. (The Jewish tradition believes that one should confess for sins done both knowingly and unknowingly.) To do the frogs justice, according to Maimonides' rules, I should go back to that river and make confession there. Maybe someday I will get the chance to do so but that should not stop me from confessing now.
At a religious environmental conference called "Ground for Hope" at Drew University in 2005 (co-sponsored by Drew and GreenFaith) I participated in creating an interfaith worship service in which I wrote an environmental confession. It begins with a meditation (called a kavanah) which is meant to help the penitent to focus on the particular sin and ends with a traditional declaration done in the style of the main High Holiday confessional called the Al-Chet ("For the Sin of ... ) and at the service, although done in English it was chanted in a traditional melody:
Lord, our Creator, we awaken each morning to the dawn chorus of Creation. Our ears hear the birds of the sky singing to the world that they are still alive, our eyes see the flowers of the earth opening to the light of the sun. We smell the scents of the fresh morning air. How many are the things You have made O Lord, the universe is full of Your creations! And yet we ignore these sounds, sights and smells. Instead of the birds' song we hear only the sound of cars and machinery. Instead of the sight of green, brown and gold we see only the gray of concrete. Instead of the fragrance of flowers we smell only the sting of pollution. We experience only the fruits of our own creations. We know only of our own works which too often have wasted Your creation and silenced many of the voices of Your choir. We think we understand the world when only a fool thinks they can fathom the depths of Your designs. May You give us the strength and the wisdom to see, smell and listen to Your creation and be moved to protect and cherish the blessings that You have given us. May we no longer be moved by greed and destruction to waste Your world for if we destroy it there will be no other. We now know that the destruction of Your Creation is a sin.
And so for the sin that we have sinned against You by despoiling Your Creation, forgiving God, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
(From: Rabbi Lawrence Troster & Jane Ellen Nickell, "Cries of Creation, Ground for Hope: Faith, Justice, and the Earth Interfaith Worship Service," in: Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller, eds.,Eco-Spirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth, [New York: Fordham University Press, 2007].)
For over 25 years I have been active in the Jewish and interfaith environmental movements. I have written articles, given speeches and participated in conferences and joined local, national and international organizations. I have also tried to change the way I live to lessen the impact that I have on the earth. Perhaps one of the reasons for my involvement in environmentalism has been an attempt to bring about some kind of healing for what I had done. In Hebrew this is called a tikkun and is also part of the process of repentance.
Maimonides said that the true measure of one's repentance is found when you are faced with the same situation and you do not repeat your sin. This is a very high standard when it comes to sins against creation, since in modern life there are so many things that we do every day that are detrimental to Creation. Nonetheless, this should not stop us from trying to undo the damage we have caused to God's creation.
We can begin by confession.
]]>Hans Jonas: The Most Inspiring Teacher That I Never Mettag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9210302011-08-11T13:10:40-04:002011-10-11T05:12:01-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/Hans Jonas, who died in 1993. While I deeply regret never having met him nor studied with him, studying his work has been enough to make me one of his followers.
Hans Jonas was one of the most important 20th century Jewish philosophers. But within the Jewish community, he is virtually unknown. However, outside of the Jewish world and especially in Europe, Jonas is considered to have been one of the most important thinkers in environmental and medical ethics. Jonas was also one of the most original thinkers about the ethical implications of modern technology. And it was through his work on the meaning of God after the Holocaust that radically changed my own personal theology.
I first encountered the work of Hans Jonas while still an undergraduate. I took a course on religion in the late Roman Empire and I read his book on Gnosticism. Later, after I became a rabbi, I read Jonas's essay "The Concept of God After Auschwitz," which was included in an anthology of writing about the Holocaust. At the time, I really could not quite comprehend what he was doing -- it was too radical for me at the time -- and it was a long time before I came back to his work. As my interest in bioethics and environmentalism grew, so did my reading of Jonas whom I rediscovered through the work of his student Leon Kass. Year by year, Jonas's philosophy and theology spoke to me more and more. I now consider his work to be one of the foundations of my own thinking and writing on environmental ethics, bioethics and theology. In 2003, I wrote an article on Jonas and his theology of God after the Holocaust and since then, I have tried in my own writing to make people aware of Hans Jonas, his life and his work.
Jonas was born in 1903 in Mönchengladbach, Germany and in 1921 began to study at the University for the Science of Judaism in Berlin. At the same time, he studied with the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultman at the University of Marburg. He received his doctorate under Heidegger in 1930. Jonas was one of a group of Jewish students of Heidegger, which included Hannah Arendt, Leo Straus, Karl Lowith, Herbert Marcuse and Emmanuel Levinas.
In 1933, the German Association for the Blind expelled its Jewish members. Although not blind himself, Jonas was outraged that a disability he felt should create a common solidarity among those who had it would be so betrayed. For him, it was the final straw. Jonas left Germany, and after a year in London, ended up in Jerusalem, where he was part of an exile community of German Jewish scholars. Jonas took a personal vow that he would return to Germany only in the uniform of a conquering army. When war broke out in 1939, he joined the Jewish Brigade of the British 8th Army and specifically volunteered for combat duty at the front lines even though he was offered a position in army intelligence. Jonas spent five years in the army, which included being part of the 1943 Italian campaign where he saw a great deal of action. He fulfilled his vow, arriving in Germany in the uniform of the British army. But then Jonas learned that his mother had been killed in Auschwitz in 1942.
He returned to Jerusalem and when war broke out in 1948 he joined the Israeli army and again served in combat. In 1950 Jonas moved to Canada, where he taught in Montreal and Ottawa. In 1955, Jonas was given an appointment to the graduate faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City. Jonas also publically broke with his old teacher: At a conference at Drew University in 1964, Jonas gave a speech in which he showed that Heidegger's philosophy had inevitably led to his association with Nazism. Jonas received a standing ovation and his speech began the reassessment of Heidegger's wartime activities, which has been the subject of many recent books.
It was at the New School that Jonas wrote his most important books: "The Phenomenon of Life" (1963) and "The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age" (1979). This last work sold more than 200,000 copies in Germany and received the Peace Prize of the German Bookseller Association in 1987. In 1992, just days before his death, he received the Premio Nonino Prize in Italy. After his death, an important collection of his essays was published under the title, "Morality and Mortality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz."
In November 2005 there was a conference devoted to the life and work of Hans Jonas at Arizona State University, which eventually produced a volume called "Judaism and the Phenomenon of Life: The Legacy of Hans Jonas," the first major academic assessment Jonas in English. The conference brought together leading historians, theologians, philosophers, ethicists, environmental thinkers and political theorists from all over the world. Jonas's widow as well as two of his children and one of his grandchildren attended the conference and were able to provide fascinating biographical commentary to the scholarly presentations. I presented a paper as part of a panel on Jonas' environmental ethics which became a chapter in the conference volume.
When Jonas received the Premio Nonino Prize, his acceptance speech, "The Outcry of Mute Things," were the last words he publically spoke, as he died only a few days after returning from Italy. He ended the speech with the following words:
It was once religion which told us that we are all sinners, because of original sin. It is now the ecology of our planet which pronounces us all to be sinners because of the excessive exploits of human inventiveness. It was once religion which threatened us with a last judgement at the end of days. It is now our tortured planet which predicts the arrival of such a day without any heavenly intervention. The latest revelation -- from no Mount Sinai, from no Mount of the Sermon, from no Bo (tree of Buddha) -- is the outcry of mute things themselves that we must heed by curbing our powers over creation, lest we perish together on a wasteland of what was creation.
I consider these words to be truly prophetic and they deserve to be heard again and again. Hans Jonas stands as one of the most significant Jewish thinkers of the 20th century, who always displayed what one scholar called "the unwavering moral integrity" that was the "hallmark of his life and work." I continue to be inspired by both his courage and his writing.
The original version of this was first published inThe Jewish Standard.
]]>Ethical Responsibility And Climate Change: We're All In The Same Boattag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8933942011-07-13T11:27:20-04:002011-10-25T19:47:51-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/
But the most important influence on my decision to become part of this movement comes from the fact that I'm a parent. I learned about climate change from the scientists, and as the parent of two little girls (twins, now 32 years old), I worried about the world that they and their children would live in. I assumed I would not live to see the most severe consequences of climate change, but they would.
Now, they have both grown up, and I have grandchildren. Now, I'm even more concerned. I grew up in a middle class suburb of Toronto. My family never lacked for food, clothing and other necessities. My parents sent me to summer camp in Northern Ontario, where I was able to spiritually encounter Creation on many canoe trips. I never thought that my descendants might not enjoy the same kind of life that I had. Now I do, and the immediate concern with my children and grandchildren's future has brought home to me the moral issue of climate change into a more immediate way.
Climate change is moral issue. We must say this loudly and continually. I believe, as do many others in the religious environment movement, that this declaration has been missing in the debates over climate change policy. We have heard about economics and ecosystems and threats to our lifestyle, but not whether it is immoral for a society to prosper without concern about how their actions are negatively impacting the lives of others.
Part of the reason people don't see climate change in terms of morality is that it is not close to them in both time and space. Climate change is occurring gradually and its greatest impact will be in the future. We have trouble seeing how our actions will affect the future beyond our own lifespan. And the people who are already being affected are generally not people we know. They are an abstraction for whom it is difficult to be empathetic. But empathy is a key prerequisite for ethical action. That is why looking at my daughters and grandchildren motivates me to speak and to act. Just because we live in one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world does not guarantee that somehow they will be able to avoid the impact of climate change.
Yet there is also an moral imperative for me to look beyond my immediate family. I also have an ethical responsibility to those whom do I don't know and to future generations who are not my descendants. I even have an ethical responsibility to non-human life. The common good extends to the whole biosphere and to life yet to emerge.
I began to better understand my wider responsibility several years ago when I was on a panel discussion at a conference at the United Nations on the moral implications of climate change. I was the religious voice on the panel. One of the other participants was the former U.N. ambassador from the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. I had never heard of Tuvalu, but I quickly learned that all its inhabitants, because of rising sea waters due to climate change, were making plans to leave and move to Australia. Within 20 years, Tuvalu will disappear, the first state in human history to cease to exist because of climate change. There are 10,000 people on Tuvalu and people have lived there for 3,000 years. Did the Tuvalese cause the climate change that will destroy their homeland and ancient culture? Who is responsible? I am. We are. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, "Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible."
Here is a great rabbinic midrash from around the second century C.E. on collective responsibility:
Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai taught: It is to be compared to people who were in a boat, and one of them took a drill and began to drill a hole beneath him. His companions say, "Why are you doing this?" He replied: "What concern is it of yours? Am I not drilling under myself?" They replied: "But you will flood the boat for us all!"
Recently, this midrash made me think about a monumental sculpture called "The Spirit of Haida Gwaii," which was created by the late Canadian Haida artist Bill Reid. (The Haida are a Pacific Northwest native tribe that lives in British Columbia.) It shows a traditional Haida cedar dugout canoe which carries 12 human and animal passengers representing the various animals and people of Haida mythology. This work is symbolic of the variety and interdependence of the natural environment of the Haida's homeland.
We are all in the same boat, humans born and still not born, animals born and still not born, the whole of the great Seder Bereshit, the Order of Creation that God declared "very good." Whether we continue to paddle through calm waters is up to us.
This copy of 'The Spirit of Haida Gwaii,' is found outside the Canadian embassy in Washington.
]]>The Spice-Box of Earth: Remembering Where We Come Fromtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8759982011-06-24T14:11:32-04:002011-08-24T05:12:01-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/
Out of the Land of Heaven
Down comes the warm Sabbath sun
Into the spice-box of earth.
(From "Out of the Land of Heaven," The Spice-Box of Earth, Bantam Books: New York, 1968, p. 70.)
This poem was written in homage to the painter Marc Chagall and seems to be a verbal invocation of one of Chagall's painting. The rabbi thrusts his hands into the "spice-box of earth, finds the sun and makes it a wedding ring for the Sabbath Queen.
In using the phrase "the spice-box of earth" Cohen was using the image of the spice-box from the Jewish Havdalah ceremony, which is performed each Saturday night to mark the end of the Sabbath. In that ceremony, three ritual items are used: a cup of wine, an ornamental box filled with spices, like cloves, and a candle made from at least three twisted strands.
Havdalah (Hebrew meaning "division") begins 40 minutes after sunset with the recitation of biblical verses. These verses all have references to redemption since the Sabbath day is considered a taste of the Messianic era. As such, there is always the hope that the final redemption has come before the end of the day and the Sabbath will continue forever. Havdalah marks what is called a "liminal moment," a boundary between the sacredness of the Sabbath and the ordinary days of the week. In most religious communities crossing liminal boundaries is accompanied by rituals. Havdalah is one such ritual in Judaism.
Then there is a blessing over the wine. From ancient times, wine has marked sacred time. We then bless the spices and smell them. It is an ancient belief that on the Sabbath we receive an extra soul that is now leaving us and we need the smell of the spices to revive us from this loss. We then bless the candle and we hold up our hands to see the shadows which remind us of the division of light and darkness. Finally we conclude with a blessing that blesses God for the divisions between day and night, light and darkness, Sabbath and the rest of the week, the Jewish people and the other people of the world. It is a ceremony of great beauty that brings to mind not only the other times when we performed Havdalah and the people we shared it with but also the ancient stories of Creation and Redemption.
The Jewish tradition is filled with blessings for such moments but also for many experiences of life or encounters in the natural world. There are blessings for eating bread and fruit; blessings for drinking water and wine; blessings for seeing the sea or a rainbow or seeing the first blossoms of spring. These are sacred pauses that are meant to open our ideas to wonder of all existence. The late scholar Max Kadushin called the theology behind the blessings "normal mysticism" by which he meant that they are designed to bring us to an immediate experience of God in Creation through everyday experiences. What seems to be mundane becomes holy in our eyes.
When I came upon Cohen's poem some years ago, the image of the spice-box of earth reminded me not only of Havdalah but also the fragrances of the natural world: grass, trees and flowers. Often, such fragrances evoke memories of when we first smelled those scents. For me, the smell of the trees on a warm summer night brings back very specific memories of teenage experiences many years ago. Walking in a forest after a rain makes me think of canoe trips in Algonquin Park in northern Ontario.
But what if from time to time we plunged our hands directly into the earth? We would then smell the deep aromas from the earth itself: the heady and unadorned smell of decomposition, worms and leaves. We would open up our senses to the kind of smells we usually seek to cover up with human-made perfumes. The spice-box of the earth changes every moment and is constantly filled with a complex diversity of elements. Every time and everywhere you smell it, it will be different. And in a very real way the sun is within the spice-box of the earth since all life processes comes from the initial energy of the sun.
It has been shown scientifically that our sense of smell is a powerful memory trigger and certain scents evoke very clearly scenes from our early life. The parts of our brain that process smells are contained within the sections of our brain that are the sources of our emotions and where emotional memories are stored. So scents, emotions and memories are entwined. Our sense of smell also works much more quickly than our other senses in sending its messages to be processed.
That is why smells have such an immediate and potent effect on us. Deep in each of us are memories of how we connect with the earth, how we are of the earth and how we will go back to the earth. These are the memories that we have suppressed or covered over with artificial perfumes.
Maybe we need to create a new ritual to regularize this experience. I believe that we need to find a liminal moment at least once a week where after days spent feeling disconnected to the earth, we reconnect with the spice box of earth by plunging our hands into the earth, the source of our selves. In order to reconnect with Creation it is time to smell and feel once again the spice-box of earth to revive our souls.
Praised are You, Adonai our God, who rules the universe, Creator of all kinds of spices.
]]>Four Biblical Voices on our Relationship to Creationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8595492011-05-11T07:43:19-04:002011-07-11T05:12:01-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/
A case in point: Genesis 1:26-28 is often quoted to show that the "Bible" condones environmental exploitation by humanity because God creates humanity in God's image and then commands them to "Be fertile and increase, 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 the earth." Taken out of context, it appears that humanity has been given free rein over Creation, but that interpretation fails to understand that being created "in the image of God" does not mean that humans have the right to be God. As my teacher in ethics, the late Rabbi Seymour Siegel said, we are to imitate God, not impersonate God. We are the agents of God's power on earth and that power is only granted us by the grace of God, a power which is limited and carefully bounded by accountability. This is shown in the very next verses in which humans are only allowed to eat a vegetarian diet. Permission to eat meat is given only after the Flood. In addition to the original context, it is always important to see how a religious tradition later interpreted its sacred texts as the original meaning may have been understood very differently in later generations. And in the case of Genesis 1:26-28, the later Jewish and Christian traditions never interpreted these verses to refer to unqualified human permission to exploit Creation.
There are, in fact, at least four different models in the Hebrew Bible about the human relationship to Creation. Each voice comes from a different source and each one still has something to teach us today. I have called these four models: the Caretaker, the Farmer, the Citizen and the Creature.
The Caretaker
Genesis Chapter 1 is part of what modern biblical scholars call the Priestly or P source, which was probably written by priests from the Temple in Jerusalem and received its final form in the fifth century B.C.E., although many P texts in the Torah were originally written several centuries before that. This particular biblical voice sees humanity as the caretakers or stewards of Creation on behalf of God. They believed that Creation was "very good" in the sense of being harmoniously ordered at the beginning and it was only humanity who could maintain or destroy that order.
The Caretaker model is also expressed in Psalm 8 which is a poetic meditation on the reality of the power that humans have over the rest of God's creatures. But it is also about humility and responsibility. The author of the psalm was standing outside at night looking at the millions of visible stars (which were celestial creatures in his cosmology) and wondering why God even notices humanity at all. The psalmist shows astonishment at the power of humans, which he characterizes as little less than the celestial creatures: Why should God have elevated such lowly creatures to such heights of power? The psalm expresses an underlying paradox that amazes the poet: the insignificance of humanity before the power and majesty of God, who has nonetheless granted humanity a divine-like control over the other creatures of the world. This power is reflected in the fact that humans have the ability to catch, to kill and to eat all categories of animal life, both wild and domesticated, birds and fish. This psalm speaks of the reality of human power and how that power sets us apart from all other creatures. It is the recognition of the effect we have had on every part of this world. There is no place and no creature that has not felt the presence of human power and it is naive of us to think otherwise.
The Caretaker model recognized both human power and human responsibility. It speaks to us today because humanity does have real power in the unprecedented reach of our technology to affect the environment. We must acknowledge that with this power comes what the philosopher Hans Jonas called an "imperative of responsibility" since all life, not only human life, is threatened by our misuse of our knowledge and technological skill.
The Farmer
The second model is found in Genesis 2. In this source, (called by biblical scholars J after the use of the divine name YHVH which was originally transliterated as Jehovah and probably written in the 10th century B.C.E. in Judea), God forms a human (in Hebrew: adam) from the earth (Hebrew: adamah). One biblical scholar suggested that adam should really be translated as "earthling" to show the intimate connection between human beings and the earth from which they come and to which they are connected by the need to cultivate the ground in order to live. The ground will also be the place they return to when they die (Genesis 3:19).
God then plants a garden and places the human in it "to till it and tend it." The verbs have a root meaning of work and protect but the verb for "work" (l'ovdah) can also mean "to serve." Therefore, the earthling both works and serves the land as the source of all humanity's life-giving sustenance. This original balance of working, serving and protecting the earth is disturbed after the disobedience of the humans in the story of the eating of the fruit of knowledge in Genesis 3. Humans are now punished by having to toil hard in order for the earth to give forth its produce. What was once guaranteed is now contingent on human behavior. In this model, the land is not an inert substance but alive and morally sensitive to human action. This moral responsiveness is found in the story of Cain and Abel where God says to Cain that "your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground!" (See also Leviticus 18:28 where the land will "spew" the people out for acts of immorality.)
In many other texts in the Hebrew Bible, the places where humans dwell are akin to a garden: settled, ordered, peaceful places of plenty. Outside of human cultivation is the "wilderness" (Hebrew midbar). This term does not have the positive connotation that we now often give it. In the Hebrew Bible it is often depicted as a place of disorder, deserts, demons, wild dangerous beasts and migratory brigands. The Prophets often connect the continuance of human settled order to human righteousness and warn that the settled places will become "wilderness" if society continues to oppress the poor and the powerless.
We can learn several important messages from this model: first of all, our deep connection with the earth. Everything we eat and use ultimately comes from the earth. By eating the food grown in the earth we really are earthlings: the same substances that come from the earth make up our physical selves. So we really come from the earth and we will really go back to it when we die. Secondly, we can learn a kind of agrarian ideal: we have to live with the soil, not only exploit it. We must not only work it but serve it and protect it. Thirdly, we must learn that economic and political oppression are linked to environmental degradation. This has been found to be true time and time again across the world and helps to create conflict and social unrest. If we want to keep our gardens fruitful and sustainable, they must also be just.
The Citizen
If the first two models of human/creation relationship are stewardship models which privilege human welfare, the third and fourth models are more biocentrist or, from a theological perspective, creation-centered. A creation-centered model is a holistic, more universal model. Creation theology sees the universe as a place where humans are part of an order in which they do not necessarily have a prime place. Humanity is, in this model, part of a Creation community in which they are, to use Aldo Leopold's terms, citizens and not conquerors. The first kind of this paradigm can be called the Citizen model of the human/natural world relationship and is the religious counterpart to Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic.
The Citizen model, like the Caretaker and Farmer models, is an attempt to control human power over the natural world but starts from different initial principles.
Leopold's Land Ethic limits human power by tying humans to a larger ethical community that includes the whole biosphere. Leopold's impetus came from a sense of the tragic loss of biodiversity that he saw around him as a forester and conservationist. Leopold asserted that contemporary ethical theory is inadequate to protect the biosphere and must now be expanded to include non-human life and the landscape itself. He wrote:
"There is yet no ethic dealing with man's relationship to the land, to the animals and plants which grow upon it ... The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, water, plants and animals or collectively the land. ... A land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it."
In this new ethical approach, something is right when it "preserves the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
A biblical version of the Land Ethic is found in Psalm 148. The psalm is a creation hymn, a poetic map of the universe. It reflects the Israelite cosmology of a three-part universe: God, heavens and earth, or heavens, earth and Sheol (the underworld). The psalm's structure portrays Creation as divided between a heavenly choir and an earthly choir. The heavenly choir includes the sun, moon, planets and stars, whose role it is to praise God and to act as witnesses to a revelation of God. The earthly choir consists of the forces of the natural world, the landscape, animal life (both wild and domesticated) and all kinds of humans. They are copying the heavenly choir, uniting with them in the same role and singing the same song of praise to their Creator.
The universe reflected by Psalm 148 is a harmonious order in which humans have no primacy even if they have their own special place. They are part of the earthly choir and join in the activity of the heavenly choir in a unification of purpose. There is no dominant human power over the rest of Creation. Psalm 148 pictures human society as part of a community of worshippers, which includes animal life, the forces of the natural world, such as the weather, the landscape and the heavens. The purpose of this community and therefore the purpose of all life is the praise of God.
Psalm 148 and Leopold's Land Ethic emphasis the interconnectedness of all life in one moral community. From the recognition of belonging to that community arises an ethical imperative. In Leopold, this interconnectedness is derived from the common evolutionary origins of all living creatures and their ecological interaction with the environment. In Psalm 148 the interconnectedness is derived from the common origins of all Creation from God. From this model, humanity must find a way to create a sustainable relationship with the whole choir of Creation.
The Creature
The final model is what I call the Creature model. From this perspective, humans have neither primacy nor even a special place in God's eyes. This is the most biocentrist and radical perspective in the Hebrew Bible and is found in only two sources, which stress humanity naiveté and arrogance.
In the Book of Ecclesiastes 3:17-21 the author says:
"So I decided, as regards men, to dissociate them [from] the divine beings and to face the fact that they are beasts. For in respect of the fate of man and the fate of beast, they have one and the same fate: as the one dies so dies the other and both have the same life breath; man has no superiority over beast, since both amount to nothing. Both go to the same place; both came from dust and both return to dust."
According to most biblical scholars, the author is responding directly to Psalm 8 and its picture of humanity as little less than the celestial beings and being radically different than animals. Here humans and beasts are the same: they come from the earth, they live, they die and then they return to the earth. This is an example of the intertextuality that I mentioned earlier. The author is rejecting the Caretaker model of humanity and asserting that we are the same as any other creature. One of the radical challenges that Darwinism made to traditional religious views of humanity was essentially the same: There is no qualitative difference between all species of life. They all evolved from the same original organisms. Modern genetics has shown us how close that relationship is. For example, humans and their primate cousins, the chimpanzees, have some 98 percent of the same genetic structure. This knowledge is important for us to realize in forming an environmental ethic as it replaces human arrogance with a sense of our real connection to all life.
In the Book of Job in chapters 38-42 there is another version of the Creature model. These chapters, which come near the end of the Book of Job, are God's speeches to Job out of a tempest. They are the climax to a work that is a meditation on the nature of evil in the world. The Book of Job is a parable about a pious man whose piety is tested by God through the loss of all his possessions, his children and his health. Job's friends come and give him conventional explanations for his suffering. He demonstrates that the traditional theology for his suffering is inadequate, cruel and immoral. Job demands an accounting from God for this injustice and, finally, God appears in a tempest to answer him.
But God does not directly address Job's objections. Instead, God asks a series of rhetorical questions about whether Job can match divine power and wisdom in creating and sustaining the world. The speeches are magnificent poetic evocations of the breadth, diversity and terrible beauty of God's creative power. Humans or human society are not even mentioned in these speeches. In the final chapter (42), Job admits his ignorance and limited perspective about God, accepts his suffering and is silenced. God then rewards him with the restoration of his wealth and the birth of new children. Job eventually dies "old and contented."
These final chapters have been subject to numerous interpretations. Whatever the meaning of God's answer to Job, it seems evident that God is trying to demonstrate to Job that divine providence is radically different from the conventional theology Job believed in and expected to work. Concerning these chapters, biblical scholar Jon D. Levenson concluded, "The brunt of that harangue is that creation is a wondrous and mysterious place that baffles human assumptions and expectations because it not anthropocentric but theocentric" (Creation and the Persistence of Evil, p.155-6).
Chapters 38-41 are powerful responses to human arrogance and myopic anthropocentrism. The author of Job is telling us that we are not always the center of God's concern and that we can never understand fully the workings of God's universe or the nature of God. We can, however, find deep spiritual nourishment in the contemplation of Creation. By contemplating the "wondrous and mysterious place" that is Creation; we can look beyond ourselves and be brought to a better understanding of perspective on the universe.
These four voices from the Hebrew Bible can be seen as complimentary not contradictory. The editors of the biblical canon evidentially found it important to include them all as they must have resonated with the community that found these works to be sacred. Today, we need not choose one over the other but understand how the wisdom they represent can still teach us to care for Creation in humility and love as the most primary expression of God's revelation.
]]>10 Teachings on Judaism and the Environmenttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8449732011-04-06T20:10:57-04:002011-06-06T05:12:01-04:00Rabbi Lawrence Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-lawrence-troster/1. God created the universe.
This is the most fundamental concept of Judaism. Its implications are that only God has absolute ownership over Creation (Gen. 1-2, Psalm 24:1, I Chron. 29:10-16). Thus, Judaism's worldview is theocentric not anthropocentric. The environmental implications are that humans must realize that they do not have unrestricted freedom to misuse Creation, as it does not belong to them. Everything we own, everything we use ultimately belongs to God. Even our own selves belong to God. As a prayer in the High Holiday liturgy proclaims, "The soul is Yours and the body is your handiwork." As we are "sojourners with You, mere transients like our ancestors; our days on earth are like a shadow..." (I Chronicles 29:15), we must always consider our use of Creation with a view to the larger good in both time (responsibility to future generations) and space (others on this world). We must also think beyond our own species to that of all Creation.
2. God's Creation is good.
In Genesis 1:31, when God found all of Creation to be "very good," this means several things.
First of all it means that Creation is sufficient, structured and ordered (the rabbis called it Seder Bereishit, the Order of Creation). It is also harmonious. It exists to serve God (Psalm 148). This order reflects God's wisdom (Psalm 104:24), which is beyond human understanding (Psalm 92:6-7, Job 38-39). All of God's creations are consequently part of the Order of Creation and all are subject to its nature (Psalm 148). Humans are also part of the Order, which can be said to be a community of worshipers.
3. Human beings are created in the image of God.
Human beings have a special place and role in the Order of Creation. Of all God's creations, only human beings have the power to disrupt Creation. This power, which gives them a kind of control over Creation, comes from special characteristics that no other creature posseses (Psalm 8). This idea is expressed in the concept that humans were created in the image of God (tzelem Elohim). In its original sense, tzelem Elohim means that humans were put on the earth to act as God's agents and to actualize God's presence in Creation.
This also has ethical implications which stem from the fact that human beings have certain intrinsic dignities: infinite value, equality and uniqueness. It also means that human beings possess God-like capacities: power, consciousness, relationship, will, freedom and life. Human beings are supposed to exercise their power, consciousness and free will to be wise stewards of Creation. They should help to maintain the Order of Creation even while they are allowed to use it for their own benefit within certain limits established by God (Genesis 2:14). This balance applies to both human society as well to the natural world. Since the time of the expulsion from Garden of Eden, Creation has tended to be out of balance because of the human impulse toward inequality resulting from the misuse of its powers for selfish ends. The earth is morally sensitive to human misdeeds (Genesis 4, Leviticus 18:27-30).
4. Humanity should view their place in Creation with love and awe.
It may be said that there are two books of God's revelation to humanity: The Torah and Creation itself. The book of Creation can help us to perceive ourselves as "living breathing beings connected to the rhythms of the earth, the biogeochemical cycles, the grand and complex diversity of ecological systems." (Mitchell Thomashow, Ecological Identity) This knowledge is gained both through an understanding of Creation through scientific knowledge. In Judaism, this can be understood as the fulfillment of the commandments to love and to fear God (Deuteronomy 6:5,13). Rambam (Moses Maimonides, 1135-1204) interpreted these commandments in the following way:
"When a person observes God's works and God's great and marvelous creatures, and they see from them God's wisdom that is without estimate or end, immediately they will love God, praise God and long with a great desire to know God's Great Name ... And when a person thinks about these things they draw back and are afraid and realizes that they are small, lowly and obscure, endowed with slight and slender intelligence, standing in the presence of God who is perfect in knowledge" (Mishneh Torah, Sepher Madah, Hikhot Yesodei Ha-Torah 2:1-2).
Thus, when we study Creation with all the tools of modern science, we are filled with love and a sense of connection to a greater order of things. We feel a sense of wonder but also a sense of awe and humility as we perceive how small we are in the universe as well as within the history of evolution. Love and humility should then invoke in us a sense of reverence for Creation and modesty in our desire to use it. We should, according to Abraham Joshua Heschel, see the world as God-centered, not human-centered. By putting God at the center of life, we see the sacred in everything and the natural world becomes a source of wonder and not only a resource for our use and abuse.
5. The Sabbath and prayer help us to achieve this state of mind.
The Sabbath is a way to begin to engender this sense of love and humility before Creation. It is also is a way to living a sustainable life. For one day out of seven, we limit our use of resources. We walk to attend synagogue and drive only when walking is not possible. We do not cook and we do not shop. We can use the day for relaxation, contemplation and to ask ourselves: What is the real purpose of human life? Are we here on earth only to get and to spend? As Rabbi Schorsch has written: "To rest is to acknowledge our limitations. Willful inactivity is a statement of subservience to a power greater than our own" (To Till and to Tend, page 20).
Prayer also helps us to recognize that everything we are, everything we have and everything we use ultimately comes from God (Babylonian Talmud, Brakhot 35a). When we say a blessing, we create a moment or holiness, a sacred pause. Prayer also creates an awareness of the sacred by taking us out of ourselves and our artificial environments and allowing us to truly encounter natural phenomenon. Prayer creates a loss of control which allows us to "see the world in the mirror of the holy." (Heschel) We are then able to see the world as an object of divine concern and we can then place ourselves beyond self and more deeply within Creation.
6. The Torah prohibits the wasteful consumption of anything.
In Judaism, the halakhah (Jewish law) prohibits wasteful consumption. When we waste resources we are violating the mitzvah (commandment) of Bal Tashhit ("Do not destroy"). It is based on Deuteronomy 20:19-20:
"When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? Only trees that you know do no yield food may be destroyed; you may cut them down for constructing siegeworks against the city that is waging war on you, until it has been reduced."
This law was expanded in later Jewish legal sources to include the prohibition of the wanton destruction of household goods, clothes, buildings, springs, food or the wasteful consumption of anything (see Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 6:8, 10; Samson Raphael Hirsch, Horeb, 279-80). The underlying idea of this law is the recognition that everything we own belongs to God. When we consume in a wasteful manner, we damage Creation and violate our mandate to use Creation only for our legitimate benefit. Modesty in consumption is a value that Jews have held for centuries. For example one is not supposed to be excessive in eating and drinking or in the kind of clothes that one wears (Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Discernment, chapter 5). Jews are obligated to consider carefully our real needs whenever we purchase anything. We are obligated when we have a simchah (a celebration) to consider whether we need to have elaborate meals and wasteful decorations. We are obligated to consider our energy use and the sources from which it comes.
7. The Torah gives an obligation to save human life.
The Jewish tradition mandates an obligation to save and preserve life (called in Jewish legal sources: pikuach nefesh) based on an interpretation of Leviticus 18:5, "You shall
keep My laws and My rules, by the pursuit of which man shall live: I am the Lord (See Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 74a)." Jewish law forbids us from knowingly harming ourselves (Leviticus 19:28). There are also numerous sources mandated the proper
disposal of waste is properly and that noxious products from industrial production must be kept far from human habitation (see for example, Deuteronomy 23:13-15, Mishnah Baba Batra 2:9) In the Jewish tradition, the public good overrides individual desires.
While there are many useful and even lifesaving technologies that come from modern chemicals and materials, we have an obligation to be cautious in their use. Pikuach nefesh
demands that we consider the impact of our use of chemicals and other materials, not only in the short term but also in the long term. For the Jewish tradition, the Precautionary Principle can be seen as a modern form of the warning not to tamper too much with the boundaries of Creation.
8. The Torah prohibits the extinction of species and causing undo pain to non-human creatures.
Our ancestors could not have anticipated the loss of biodiversity that the modern world
has produced; from their perspective, there was no natural extinction rate of species. God, they believed, had created all species at one time and there could be no new creatures. Only humans could cause extinction and bring about the loss of one of the members of the Creation choir. In the Torah there is a law that says:
"If along the road, you chance upon a bird's nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life" (Deuteronomy 22:6-7).
Ramban (Moses ben Nachman, Nachmanides, 1194-1270) in his commentary to the Torah wrote:
"This also is an explanatory commandment of the prohibition you shall not kill it [the mother] and its young both in one day (Leviticus 22:28). The reason for both [commandments] is that we should not have a cruel heart and not be compassionate, or it may be that Scripture does not permit us to destroy a species altogether, although it permits slaughter [for food] within that group. Now the person who kills the mother and the young in one day or takes them when they are free to fly, [it is regarded] as though they have destroyed that species."
It is evident from the first chapter of Genesis and other Biblical texts (Psalm 104, 148 and Job 38-41) that God takes care of, and takes pleasure in, the variety of life that makes up Creation. And although we might regard a species as unimportant or bothersome to human beings, God does not regard them so. The rabbis understood that we do not know God's purpose for every creature and that we should not regard any of them as superfluous. "Our Rabbis said: Even those things that you may regard as completely superfluous to Creation -- such as fleas, gnats and flies -- even they were included in Creation; and God's purpose is carried through everything -- even through a snake, a scorpion, a gnat, a frog" (Breishit Rabbah 10:7). In environmental terms, every species has an inherent value beyond its instrumental or useful value to human beings. Related to this idea is the concept of Tzar Baalei Chayyim, the prohibition of hurting animals without good purpose (based on Deuteronomy 22:6, 22:10, 25:4, Numbers 22:32, Exodus 20:8-10, Leviticus 22:27-8). These concepts bring to our relationships with the non-human world limits and controls over our power and greed.
9. Environmental Justice is a Jewish value.
The Torah has numerous laws which attempt to redress the power and economic imbalances in human society and Creation. Examples are the Sabbatical year (Exodus 23:11, Leviticus 25:2-5, Deuteronomy 15:1-4) and the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-24) There is a whole program in the Torah for creating a balanced distribution of resources across society (Exodus 22:24-26, Leviticus 25:36-37, Deuteronomy 23:20-1, 24:6,10-13,17). This is an expression of the concept of Tzedek, which means righteousness, justice and equity. It is the value, which tries to correct the imbalances, which humans create in society and in the natural world. In the modern world, globalization has strived to achieve the free movement of people, information, money, goods and services, but it can also create major disruptions in local cultures and environments. While globalization has created great wealth for millions of people, many millions more have been bypassed by its benefits and has had in some cases a negative impact upon the environment and human rights. The Jewish concept of Tzedek demands that we create a worldwide economy that is sustainable and that is equitable in the distribution of wealth and resources.
10. Tikkun Olam: The perfection/fixing of the world is in our hands.
There is a midrash (rabbinic commentary on the Bible) which Jewish environmentalists are fond of quoting:
"When God created the first human beings, God led them around the garden of Eden and said: 'Look at my works! See how beautiful they are -- how excellent! 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 repair it'" (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah, 1 on Ecclesiastes 7:13)
In the Jewish liturgy there is a prayer called Aleinu in which we ask that the world be soon perfected under the sovereignty of God (l'takein olam b'malkhut Shaddai). Tikkun olam, the perfecting or the repairing of the world, has become a major theme in modern Jewish social justice theology. It is usually expressed as an activity that must be done by humans in partnership with God. It is an important concept in light of the task ahead in environmentalism. In our ignorance and our greed, we have damaged the world and silenced many of the voices of the choir of Creation. Now we must fix it. There is no one else to repair it but us.
A version of this was originally published at GreenFaith.org.]]>
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