Rabbi Genende and Caulfield Hebrew Congregation wish you a happy and peaceful Shabbat I haven’t been talking to the trees but lately I have been thinking about them. My interest was sparked by the evocative verse in last week’s parasha “For man is but a tree in a field” (Deuteronomy 20:19-20). The phrase comes in the context of a city under siege and the plea was not to cut down fruit-bearing trees as part of a military campaign. A scorched-earth policy was (and in some places still is) a military strategy. The rationale was, at least in part, a recognition that when you destroy part of the environment, you destroy part of yourself. We do after all breathe the same air and share the same resources as our enemies. This is probably one of the earliest ecological warnings in history and with the ice melting at an alarming rate in Antarctica, the honey bees under threat in many countries, species diminishing everywhere, it’s one that we should pay attention to. Regardless of where you stand in the climate-change debate, the environment is obviously under strain and needs our care and protection. Our consumer societies are frighteningly wasteful and in Australia we have an outsized environmental footprint, abusing our precious resources, eating more meat than we need to and squandering our water. When we sit down to eat dinner, the chips are on our plate are likely to have travelled 3000km from New Zealand’s South Island, the frozen peas some 16,000km from Belgium, the broccoli 1300km from Queensland. The more it travels, the more it costs us, the more it damages the environment. John Muir puts it well: “God has cared for those trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.” Ogden Nash expressed the same idea but with more humour: “I think I shall never see: A billboard lovely as a tree Perhaps unless the billboards fall I’ll never see a tree at all.” From the verse in Deuteronomy the rabbis developed a web of laws under the rubric of “ba’al tashchit” or unnecessarily destroying something of value. They issued a general prohibition against waste: “Whoever breaks vessels or tears clothing, destroys a building, clogs up a fountain or wastes food violates ba’al tashchit” (KIddushin 32a). The rabbis also extended this rule to laws like disposing of waste far from human habitation, banning garbage disposal that affected crops or the water supply. They even went as far as legislating against visual pollution and intolerable noise in residential areas. If we took these teachings on their own we could develop (as do some Jewish ecologists) a powerful argument that Judaism and environmentalism are one and the same. This is however far from the truth. The Halachik system is far too developed and savvy to take a simple stand on complex issues. Conservation is not an absolute value – we are not radical greenies. Halacha allows for natural resources to be destroyed in the course of constructive projects. The rights of humanity are carefully calibrated against the claims of nature; need verses greed is thoughtfully calculated. Torah recognises the ethical dilemma of how to weigh present needs against future possibilities. We are ultimately guests of God on this earth entrusted with a duty to protect it for future generations. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has suggested that the prophet Isaiah got it just right: “God, said Isaiah did not create the world to be desolate. He formed it to be inhabited. He gave man the intelligence to control nature. Therein lies his dignity. But He charged him with the duty of preserving nature. Therein lies his responsibility.” No, we are not Greenies, we don’t have one over-riding value of concern, but we are called on to be green-conscious and environmentally responsible. If we care about God, we should look after what belongs to Him. The Midrash put it simply: When God made the first human being; He took him on a tour of the trees of Eden. He said to him: “See how beautiful are My works. All that I have created, I have made for you. But be careful that you don’t ruin my world, for if you do there is no one else to fix what you have destroyed.” You don’t often hear a Jewish voice in the debate about climate change, the challenges of carbon-pricing or environmental issues. It’s time we were more vocal and it’s also time to develop a more rigorous and vigorous policy of environmental ethics in Israel and in our own communities (along the lines of our highly developed medical ethics). We don’t pray or talk to the trees but we do respect and emulate them. We believe in the value of having deep roots. We affirm that like the trees we reach upwards, always striving. “For man is but a tree in a field” buffeted by the winds and vulnerable, but also singular, sturdy and resilient. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Ralph Genende
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 00:15:10 +0000
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