A Jewish Eco-Theology

For the past year, I have had the privilege of developing my thinking in religious environmentalism as a member of GreenFaith's Fellowship program. The program brings together leaders from multiple faith traditions to develop religious and moral voices in safeguarding the environment. Three pillars of study are Spirit (the sanctity of the earth and the natural world found in all religious traditions), Sustainability (harnessing the teachings of respective religious traditions to safeguard our planet) and Environmental Justice (adapting religious teachings of social justice to ensure clean, safe environments for all people wherever they live, work, study or pray). During the course of the program, I wrote a personal eco-theology that I am now sharing.

In reflecting on my commitment to safeguarding our environment as a mitzvah (sacred commandment) in Jewish tradition, three foundational verses in the Torah come to mind:

1. Genesis 1:26-27: Humanity is created in the image of God. While I understand the desire by some environmental theologians to reject an anthropocentric approach to environmentalism, I embrace it. I cannot imagine a world without human beings. I believe our purpose on earth is to act as partners with God in the betterment of the world.

2. Leviticus 25:23: "[God said], 'For the Land is Mine. You are but strangers and sojourners with Me.'" While humanity is unique among all creation, in the final analysis, we are mortal, finite beings. We come from dust and return to dust. We must resist the temptation of hubris that we own the planet and can do anything with impunity.

3. Deuteronomy 16:20: "Justice, justice you shall pursue." Bringing justice and righteousness into the world and fighting against injustice resulting from human inequity should be at the fore of our actions. Environmental justice speaks to me because it calls for us to create a just and equitable environment wherever we are.

Jewish religious teachings that have influenced my eco-spirituality

1. Abraham Joshua Heschel's notion of radical amazement is a compelling concept for me because it calls to mind the divine spark found in all of creation. It also calls for a sense of awe in the universe that is sorely lacking in an age of massive oil spills, nuclear reactor meltdowns and human trafficking of tomato pickers. If more people would have a sense of this radical amazement of nature, there would be greater appreciation of the limits of nature and risks posed by pushing nature beyond its limits.

2. Martin Buber differentiation between "I-Thou" relationships and "I-It" relationships is central to my eco-spirituality. In a consumerist age, we are inundated with goods and services, but meaningful relationships have suffered. I believe that cultivating a greater sense of human dignity for people in our midst is vital to comprehensive ecological stewardship.

3. A high point of the High Holiday liturgy is the liturgical poem "Un'taneh Tokef" that spells out the decrees to which every person will be subjected in the coming year: Who shall live and who shall die, who by fire and who by water. The poem then adds: "But repentance, prayer and righteousness can help the harshness of the decree pass." There are bad things that happen in the world over which we have no control: illness, death, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. We can't prevent these things, but it is in our power to take away the sting. We can't prevent earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis, but we can rally to help those who suffer, and we can alter our consumption habits so that energy sources (e.g., nuclear reactors) do not pose threats to entire cities.

Challenges to my eco-spiritual development

The false god of consumption plagues America and the American Jewish community in which I serve as a rabbi. Our society's culture of consumption challenges the Torah's values of humility and justice and promotes an ethos of hubris and self-interest. I rejoice that America has allowed my people to escape tyranny and persecution in Europe and elsewhere and to prosper here. I cannot take for granted that my great-grandparents came to America to escape pogroms and vile treatment in Russia. Their values of hard work, sacrifice and delayed gratification continued with the generation of my grandparents, the "Greatest Generation" who fought WWII and built our country into a major power. My generation to a great extent has lost these values and our nation and the world suffers as a result. Eco-consciousness reintroduces these values in what for me is a compelling way, but many in the broader community feel threatened and their sense of entitlement under assault. I see the current economic recession as an opportunity re-engage with time-honored values and to begin to reverse the damage that conspicuous consumption has wrought on society.

Another challenge relates to public policy. As an adult, particularly after the seminal moment of 9/11, I was drawn into environmentalism through my desire to achieve energy independence. Our society is dependent on petroleum from totalitarian countries that sit on most of the world's oil reserves. Because of principles I hold dear regarding democratic freedom, I knew America needed to wean itself off its dependence on foreign oil. Until the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, I wasn't totally convinced that exploration of new domestic oil fields was a bad thing. I'm now totally convinced. I've felt challenged again recently regarding oil exploration in Israel. The State of Israel, whose existence and security is vital to modern Jewry, has a lot to gain through energy independence and is a light unto the nations for its efforts to do so through sustainable means. Indeed, Better Place's leadership in developing infrastructure to support electric cars throughout the country is most inspiring. At the same time, efforts are hastily afoot to introduce fracking in Israel based on the discovery of rich oil and gas deposits in rock. This process has already poisoned water systems in the United States. I fear that Israel's adoption of this system will lead to environmental disaster in an area where water is already in deep shortage. Whether in America, Israel or around the world, I believe it is essential to keep the dual values of environmental stewardship and energy independence in sync with each other rather than in conflict with each other. We will be most successful fulfilling the precepts of the Torah described above when we reduce and hopefully someday eliminate our dependence on fossil fuel.

Ritual practices that strengthen my connection with Creation

As an observant Jew, I pray daily, and the discipline of prescribed daily prayer reinforces the concepts outlined above: We're created in the image of God, yet the earth is ultimately God's; our task is to help God maintain justice and repair the earth. Other specific Jewish rituals ground me with appreciation for creation. Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, provides me with a framework of mindfulness in how I eat. The various blessings said before and after eating various foods remind me of the ultimate Source of the food. Shabbat is a weekly set of rituals geared toward slowing down and appreciating creation rather than creating. My increased involvement over the years in environmental activism has seemed to make so much sense because it flows seamlessly out of rituals that I was already observing and, in turn, breathed new life into the rituals.

Power tempered by humility

In conclusion, a piece of Hasidic wisdom instructs people to hold in each hand a slip of paper: on one is written, "For my sake was the world created." On the other is written, "I am but dust and ashes." The teaching flows out of the principles in the Torah I outlined above. We are created in the image of God, but we are not God. Humanity's unparalleled wisdom and power needs to be tempered by humility. Together, we are channeled towards a life of purpose in restoring justice and repairing the world.

 

Follow Rabbi Edward Bernstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rabbiecb

Comments

[Allan Richter]

09:17 PM on 12/04/2011

“For the past year, I have had the privilege of developing my thinking in religious environmentalism as a member of GreenFaith's Fellowship program. The program brings together leaders from multiple faith traditions to develop religious and moral voices in safeguarding the environment.” (Edward Bernstein)

My comment is not intended to go to the substance of the value of “environmentalism”. Torah however, should not be politicized. It is sacred, creating the matrix for experiencing the holy, not political advocacy.

The author is also misusing language from the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria. While it might sound poetic and is common among liberals, it is doing a disservice to Judaism’s authentic theosophical tradition.

It is also noted that one cannot just create a new “mitzvah” (command from God) however much one is commitment to safeguarding our environment. The term is being misused.

GreenFaith’s multiple faith environmental fellowship might feel good but it is not Torah.

[LE PHILANTROPE AVERTI]

05:09 PM on 12/05/2011

Talmud is also not Torah!

[LE PHILANTROPE AVERTI]

04:55 AM on 12/06/2011

In fact Maurice Bucaille has explained in his book about Torah, Koran and Sciences that the Torah was modified and part of it hidden, the only book that is 100% preserved is the Koran.
Bucaille also proved that Koran (not suffering from the modifications) the content of Koran and Sciences are in agreement!

[empress trudy]

06:54 PM on 12/03/2011

How sad that your Judaism has devolved to the platitudes of recycling.

[realitytrumpsbull]

01:06 AM on 12/01/2011

I think if you want to help the environment, first step, get up off your knees. Prayer is nice, but actually doing things to reduce pollution, develop new technologies, that's kind of where it's at. 'God' gave you multiple miracles at birth, providing you got here with all OEM parts intact, you've got 2 eyes, 2 hands, 2 legs, and that mess between your ears that represents your reasoning capacity, such as it might be. And, over the years, the centuries, the millenia, the aeons of human history, we've also developed things like printed matter, the ability to store and retrieve information, represented in the modern context by exabytes and otobytes of digital storage, containing all the marvels and mysteries that have been thus far compiled and consolidated online.  From all of this, using our eyes, and (y)our hands, we can educate ourselves, accelerating the learning process and the ability of parties from all over the world to share information and develop and improve ideas(and steal them. See: Intellectual property theft).   Using our other god-given gifts, we can do things like transport ourselves over short distances, without burning a single amp or BTU, and we can develop new ways of doing various jobs that do not involve exclusive use of machinery, and we can retrain ourselves and break some of our bad habits, such as littering, and using our minds, figure out how to successfully digest the hundreds and thousands of tons of garbage that our society produces each and every week, and with any luck learn to prevent generating at least SOME of it. But, also using our minds, we can learn that today's world now contains something like 7 billion people, and avoiding certain ecological and related economic disasters will take nothing short of a miracle. You can't have your cake, and eat it, too, and people want a strong economy, which is antithetical to a virgin-pure environment because it uses resources and generates pollution. Everyone wants to get back to Nature, nobody wants to walk.

[Yael Greenberg]

12:45 AM on 12/01/2011

Oh my God, thank you. Especially for this: "The false god of consumption plagues America and the American Jewish community in which I serve as a rabbi." My thing is food. I work on a farm right now, and that same American Jewish community thinks I'm crazy and depriving my future children of a world of opportunity because farmers don't have a lot of money; what sort of parent will I be if I take my kids to Goodwill instead of Bloomingdale's? That same American Jewish community is totally blind to the ways in which my work is intrinsically Jewish and to the fact that we need to base ourselves in healthy soils in order to begin healing and create truly healthy communities. Thank you for your work.

[Baghooli]

10:44 PM on 11/30/2011

Actually no written records of Abrahamic religions are older than Persian empire of 500 B.C. and more accurately even much later than that, and those fine quality among "Eco-Theology" which are being wrongly contributed to Abrhamic faiths are copies of everyday life of Iranian culture which was codified in Zoroastrian religion, according to Greek historians Iranians had obsession on keeping land, water and even holly fires unpolluted (putting corpses on towers so not to pollute the soil)! there is nothing wrong with bragging about one's own theology, nevertheless give sources and credit due's to those who introduce these concept (such as Paradise, Truth and monotheistic religion) to humanities which predate all Abrhamic religions and are known as Zoroastrians and Iranians in general!

[Indra]

10:43 PM on 11/30/2011

Yeah why not.

[BurtonDesque]

09:19 PM on 11/30/2011

Theology is an over-complicated structure without any foundation.

[thunk]

08:25 PM on 11/30/2011

Methinks the green movement would have a lot more cred if it didn't insist on this fiction that the earth needs to be saved. We're poisoning ourselves. That's the problem. The earth's been through numerous extinction events, poisonings, climate changes etc and will probably survive us quite nicely. Our experience is beautiful but the earth is neither beautiful nor pristine nor unchanging and never has been.

[tploomis]

07:40 PM on 11/30/2011

Thelogy isn't a word, as far as I know. Maybe you meant theology.

[GraphicMatt]

11:43 AM on 12/01/2011

There is this thing called a "typo".....there is also this thing called "petty." Look them both up.

[ZeRealBigBoss]

06:54 PM on 11/30/2011

Man, even the ecology is now claimed by religion.

[SDLee]

05:49 PM on 11/30/2011

Certainly the jews around Miami and New York are uniquely positioned to understand and influence the debates on resource management in the modern world. And the application of ancient religious notions to these worldwide problems is just the right technique. Our contemporaries in Asia and Europe will be highly motivated to cooperate.

[methodman]

05:33 PM on 11/30/2011

I think a study of economic history would be also helpful. It is up to people to be aware of programs they can be a part of Oprah did that with her teach a person to fish program where people gave loans to African farmers to help them get their businesses started. People should get hemp legalized so that counties can get taxes, and other parts of that plant can be pressed into writing paper. rather than using trees. But my awareness is what helps others. I don't consider prayer a spiritual practice either. That is my book reading time.

[KrautMan]

04:38 PM on 11/30/2011

This eco-thelogy was brought to you by the be-fruitful-and-multiply-and-fill-the-earth-and-subdue-it crowd.

[ZenSufi]

05:56 PM on 11/30/2011

What better crowd to bring it?

[Rafi Simcha]

03:14 PM on 11/30/2011

Oh, also, don't you mean "Theology"? Never heard of "Thelogy."