The Ecological Imperative
Family Edition

The Parsha in a Nutshell

Having already  explained with many of the aspects of worship in the Promised Land, Moses now turns to the laws of society. He begins with the roles of courts, judges, and officers that should be established every city. There is to be a Supreme Court to deal with difficult cases. There are to be three main types of leader: a King, Priests and Levites, and Prophets. Warnings are issued against sorcery and witchcraft, and against false prophets. Cities of refuge are to be set up as sanctuaries for those who kill accidentally or unintentionally. Conspiring witnesses who testify falsely are to be punished. Moses then explains the laws of warfare. The parsha concludes with the atonement procedure to be followed in the case of an unsolved murder.

The Core Idea

It Once Happened...

There was once a royal family who lived in a palace with wonderful gardens. In those gardens there lived thousands of diverse, beautiful creatures. They were of great variety and colour, and they turned that place into a kind of paradise that everyone could enjoy. There was only one thing in those gardens that the royal family disliked: near the centre stood the remains of what had been, centuries ago, a great tree, but now it was withered, grey and dry.

This bothered the King and Queen so much that they finally ordered it to be cut down and replaced by a beautiful stone statue of an even grander tree. Sometime later, the princess said to her parents, “Everyone talks to me of the famous beauty of our gardens and the many creatures that populate them. But today I looked all around, and I’ve hardly seen anything other than the statue and a few small birds! The King and Queen saw to their horror that the princess was correct. They had spent so many months admiring the new statue that they hadn’t noticed that hardly any animals remained in the gardens. Without wasting time they sent for the court’s experts and advisers, but no one could explain what had happened.

Many years later a young gardener was presented to the princess, with an explanation of what had happened, and how the animals could be returned. “It is a lack of moths, your Majesty. Particularly their waste.” All those present laughed at the gardener’s words, but the princess stopped them. “I want to hear what you have to say.”  The gardener continued, very seriously, explaining how the gardens’ big animals fed mainly on the colourful birds, who owed their appearance to their own food, composed of glow worms, who in turn fed on various rare species of plants and flowers that grew only so long as there was enough fertilisation from the moths for them... and the moths were in turn food for many other birds, whose waste encouraged the growth of many plants that fed other insects and animals, and which were vital to their existence... And the gardener would have kept speaking without pause if the princess had not sighed, “But where did the moths go? And how can we get them back?” 

“Well, nowadays all the moths and other animals from your garden are at mine. Long ago my father collected that old tree you had torn out from the middle of the garden, and he planted it in our garden. Since then, every spring, from out of that tree come thousands and thousands of moths. With time, the moths attracted the birds, and new plants and trees grew, providing food for other animals that, in turn, provided food for others… And now, my father's old place is filled with life and colour. All thanks to the moths from the big old tree."

“Excellent!” exclaimed the princess! “Now we’ll be able to recover our gardens. Let us hurry. My people will all want to help. Within a week everything will be ready."  “Your Majesty, I’m afraid that cannot be,” said the gardener. “If you like I can try to recreate the gardens, but it may take many years for the natural balance to return. Things like these do not depend on how many people work on them.”  The face of the princess was sad and pensive, understanding how delicate was the balance of nature, and how careless her parents had been to break it so carelessly.

So the gardener and the princess decided to build a vast public park next to the gardener’s land.

And with the help of her willing people, they managed to see the new park finished in much less time than it would have taken to re-establish the balance of nature in the garden palace.   

A retelling of The Natural Garden by Pedro Pablo Sacristan

Thinking More Deeply

The earth is not ours. It belongs to its Creator, to God Himself. That is the point of the very first chapter of the Torah: “In the beginning, God created…” He made the world, and He is entitled to lay down the conditions within which we live in it as His guests.  The logic of this is immediately played out in the story of the first humans. In the first chapter of Bereishit, God gives a command to humanity: “Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (1:28). “Subdue” and “rule” are verbs of dominance. In the second chapter, however, the text uses two new verbs instead. God placed the first man in the Garden “to serve it [le’ovdah] and guard it [leshomrah]” (2:15). These are words of responsibility. The first term, le’ovdah, tells us that humanity is not just the manager but also the servant of nature. The second, leshomrah, is the term used in later biblical law to explain the responsibilities of someone who undertakes to guard something that does not belong to them.

How are we to understand the difference between the two opening chapters of Bereishit? Quite simply: Bereishit 1 tells us about creation and nature, the reality mapped by the natural sciences. It speaks about humanity as the biological species, Homo sapiens. Humans have the unique ability to dominate nature and exercise control over the forces that shape the physical world. This is a matter of fact, not value, and it has increased over the period of human civilisation. As former U.S. President John F. Kennedy once said: “Man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.” Power is morally neutral. It can be used to heal or wound, build or destroy. 

Bereishit 2, by contrast, is about morality and responsibility. It tells us about the moral limits of power. Everything has its boundaries. We have the power but not the permission; we have the ability but not the right. The earth is not ours. It belongs to God who made it. Therefore we are not the owners of nature but its custodians. We are here to serve it and care for it. 

This explains the story that immediately follows, about Adam, Eve, the serpent, and the forbidden fruit. What the fruit was, why the serpent spoke, and what was the nature of the first sin – all these are secondary. The primary point the Torah is making is that, even in paradise, there are limits. There is forbidden fruit. Not everything we can do may we do.

Few moral principles have been forgotten more often and more disastrously. The record of human intervention in the natural order is marked by devastation on a massive scale. Within a thousand years, the first human inhabitants of America had travelled from the Arctic north to the southernmost tip of Patagonia, making their way through two continents and, on the way, destroying most of the large mammal species then extant, among them mammoths, mastodons, tapirs, camels, horses, lions, cheetahs, and bears. 

A similar pattern can be traced almost everywhere human beings have set foot. They have consistently been more mindful of the ability to “subdue” and “rule” than of the responsibility to “serve” and “guard.” A Midrash sums this up, in a way that deeply resonates with contemporary ecological awareness: "When God made man, He showed him the panoply of creation and said to him: “See all My works, how beautiful they are. All I have made, I have made for you. So take care that you do not destroy My world, for if you do, there will be no one left to mend what you have destroyed.” (Kohelet Rabbah 7:13) 

Environmental responsibility seems to be one of the principles underlying the three great commands of periodic rest: Shabbat, the Sabbatical year, and the Jubilee year. On Shabbat all agricultural work is forbidden, “so that your ox and your donkey may rest” (Exodus 23:12). It sets a limit to our intervention in nature and the pursuit of economic growth. We remind ourselves that we are creations, not just creators. For six days the earth is handed over to us and our labours, but on the seventh we may perform no “work”. Shabbat is thus a weekly reminder of the integrity of nature and the limits of human striving.  What Shabbat does for humans and animals, the Sabbatical and Jubilee years do for the land. The earth too is entitled to its periodic rest. Behind this are two concerns. One is environmental. As Maimonides points out, land which is overexploited eventually erodes and loses its fertility. The Israelites were therefore commanded to conserve the soil by giving it periodic fallow years, not pursuing short-term gain at the cost of long-term desolation. The second, no less significant, is theological: “The land,” says God, “is Mine; you are but strangers and temporary residents with Me” (Vayikra 25:23). We are guests on earth. 

Another set of commands is directed against over-interference with nature. The Torah forbids crossbreeding livestock, planting a field with mixed seeds, and wearing a garment of mixed wool and linen. These rules are called chukim or “statutes.” Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (Germany, 1808–1888), like Ramban, understood chukim to be laws that respect the integrity of nature. They represent the principle that “the same regard which you show to humans you must also demonstrate to every lower creature, to the earth which bears and sustains all, and to the world of plants and animals.” They are a kind of social justice applied to the natural world: “They ask you to regard all living things as God’s property. Destroy none; abuse none; waste nothing; employ all things wisely.... Look upon all creatures as the household of creation." 

So it was no accident that Jewish law interpreted the law against cutting down fruit-bearing trees during war as an example of a more general mitzvah against needless destruction, and more generally still, against acts that deplete earth’s non-renewable resources, or damage the ecosystem, or lead to the extinction of species. If that applies even in war, how much more so in times of peace. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Tehillim 24:1). We are its guardians, on behalf of its Creator, for the sake of future generations.

From the Thought of Rabbi Sacks

Around the Shabbat Table