Torah, jews and earth
Arthur Waskow
There are two major reasons for the American
Jewish community to take as one of its major
concerns—in prayer and celebration, in daily practice
and in policy advocacy—the protection of the earth*
environment. One is for the sake of the earth. The
other is for the sake of Jewish continuity, renewal
and vitality. Both are for the sake of God and Torah.
The modern age has been the greatest triumph of
work, technology, in all of human history. This triumph deserves celebration. But instead of pausing to
celebrate and reevaluate, we have become addicted
to the work itself. For five hundred years, the human
race has not made Shabbat. We have not paused to
reflect and reconsider, to take down this great
painting from its easel and catch our breaths before
putting up a new canvas to begin a new project.
The Danger of Denial
1) By adding its own wisdom and its own political
clout toward healing our wounded planet, the Jewish
community can increase the likelihood that this
healing will in fact occur.
Torah teaches that if we deny the earth its Shabbatot, the earth will make Shabbat anyway-through
desolation. The earth does get to rest. Our only
choice is whether the rest occurs with joy or disaster.
2) The Jewish community can recover a sense of
purpose other than repetition of the past, draw
authentically on one of the most ancient and vital
strands of its covenant with God, and in this way,
more honestly and effectively appeal to the visions
and energies of the next generation.
Adamah and adam, the humus and the human race,'
are now faced with such a moment of Shabbat
denied. Triumphant human technology, run amok
without Shabbat, brings the danger of impending
desolation. We can quickly identify several specific
areas in which these dangers are already clear:
From the tragic tale of Eden on, Torah teaches the
danger that human misuse of the earth will lead to
: hostility between the earth and the human race;
teaches that specific acts of human caring can soften
and perhaps heal this breach; and inscribes a code of
celebration, prayer and practice toward that end.
i The mistake of Eden, which is the act of eating
: wrongly that which comes from the earth, results in a
history of winning food from the earth only from toil
i and sweat, as the earth sprouts thorns and thistles.
• The first step of redemption from this troubled
history comes just after the liberation from slavery in
' Egypt, when manna comes as an Edenic food, and
brings with it the first human experience of Shabbat.
Shabbat, as in the last generation both Rabbenu
Abraham Joshua Heschel and Erich Fromm taught,
is the great challenge of the Jewish people to
technology ran amok. It asserts that although work
can be good, it becomes good only when crowned by
rest, reflection, re-creation and renewal. The
sabbaths of the seventh day, the seventh month, the
seventh year and in principle the seventh cycle (the
Jubilee at the fiftieth year) give not only human
beings but animals and even plants, the entire earth,
the right to rest.
ARTHUR WASKOW directs the work of The Shalom
Center in Philadelphia. He and his brother, Howard, have
. written Becoming Brothers.
51
- the multiplication of thousands of nuclear-weapons
warheads that, if exploded in a short period, could
devastate the planet;
- the creation of radioactive wastes, from nuclear
energy plants, that will need to be contained and
controlled for thousands of years;
- the galloping destruction of the ozone layer;
- the overproduction of carbon dioxide from massive
deforestations and the extensive burning of fossil
fuels in such a way as to increase the likelihood of
a major rise in world temperatures;
- the destruction of many species through
destruction of their habitats.
Torah teaches not that we abandon technology but
that we constrain it with Shabbat and all the
implications of Shabbat. What contribution can the
Jewish people make toward that process?
Prayer
Our festivals and celebrations already point in the
direction of healing the earth, but we rarely make
this explicit.
We could elevate the reading of the Song of Songs,
with its joyful celebration of an unforced relationship
with the earth, to a major (rather than a minor) role
in Pesah; we could restore the sprouting of plants
and the birthing of animals to a major place in the
Pesah celebration; we could teach that for a week we
eat the simplest food human beings can make as a
•i
way of reconnecting with our simplest earthiness,
and of reminding ourselves to live in simpler ways
throughout the year.
We could similarly take Sukkot as a time to
rediscover living in the simplest shelter human beings
can make, as a teaching toward year-long simplicity;
we could carry Hoshana Rabbah and its prayers for
healing the earth into public space.
We could make the celebration of the rhythms of
earth, moon and sun central to Hanukkah and
celebrate the Temple miracle of renewable olive oil:
if you will take your chances on renewable energy,
says God, I will indeed renew your sources and your
energy.
We could pause when we read the second paragraph
of the Sh'ma and listen seriously to its promise and
its warning that our choice to uphold the covenant
with God will make a difference to the rain, the
rivers, the earth, the sky. We could pause at every
brit milah and brit banot to welcome Elijah in
ou/rc/v€5--precisely to fulfill Elijah's task of
preventing utter destruction of the earth by turning
the hearts of the parents to the children and the
hearts of the children to the parents.
Practice
We could draw on the deepest teachings of kashrut
in order to add a code of eco-kosher practice. We
could ask:
Are tomatoes grown by drenching the earth in
pesticides eco-kosher to eat at the synagogue's next
wedding reception?
Is newsprint made by chopping down an ancient
and irreplaceable forest eco-kosher to use for a
Jewish newspaper?
Are windows and doors so carelessly built that the
warm air flows out through them and the furnace
keeps burning all night-are such doors and windows
eco-kosher for a Jewish Community Center building?
Is a bank that invests the depositor's money in an
oil company that befouls the ocean an eco-kosher
place for a UJA to deposit its money?
It is very likely that the answers to many of these
questions will be not simply "Yes" or "No", but "It
depends". We have always tried to balance values—
but rarely, in our recent history, have we taken as
one important weight in the balance the value of
each act that heals the earth.
52
Policy
•I
We can as an organized community take action in
,
the sphere of public policy. For example: we could i
decide that to prevent global wanning we will
!
actively campaign to reduce the use of oil and
gasoline throughout North American society, and
substitute the use of renewable energy. We could
actively urge and assist Israel to make itself (and its
unemployed new olim technologists and engineers) a
world center for earth-sensitive technology, including
solar heating and solar-electric automobiles.
Within the Jewish community, the most controversial 11
part of such a policy might be how we react to
efforts to find new oil fields outside the Middle Eastp,
or to encourage nuclear energy despite the risks of
radioactive waste. If we choose the earth-committed
path, we would oppose such efforts. Does this
strengthen Israel's enemies?
The greatest threat of an anti-Israel slant in US
policy comes from oil companies that have one foot j
in the Middle East. If they are given the green light
to spend billions on trying to open up major oil
fields in Alaska or similar places, there are three
likely results:
- first and most likely, that the unproved hypothetical
reserve proves to be a will-o'-the-wisp, the land is
despoiled and dependence on Middle East oil is
not reduced;
- second, that oil is found, the land is despoiled, oil
spills like the Valdez disaster follow, global
warming increases and dependence on Middle East
oil is somewhat reduced but at a rate lower than
would have resulted if the same amount of money
had been invested in energy conservation;
- third, that in either case, the oil companies increase
their power over American politics. That is not
likely to benefit Israel.
Far wiser, and cheaper, to decrease the power of the :
oil companies and decrease dependence on Middle
East oil by investing in renewable energy and
conservation-where the same dollar investment will
bring much greater and surer benefits.
Does environmental commitment threaten jobs and
profits? A massive program of energy conservation
would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in
rehabbing and retrofitting homes and businesses—and 1
pay for itself in energy savings. Conversions to solar
and electric autos and to mass transit could add,
rather than reduce, jobs and profits in the auto
industry. Higher gasoline taxes could be rebated to
i middle and working class people through coupons to
reduce mass-transit fares.
j A Message which Speaks to Oar Children
How do these three aspects of Jewish action-prayer,
practice, policy—address the question of Jewish
continuity and renewal? The next generation of Jews
(and of their friends who may fall in love with them
and then may enter, or not enter, the Jewish
community) will be attracted to Jewish life by having
real experiences of a vibrant Jewish community that
addresses their real needs. These may be needs for
spirituality, for a path of daily life, for action in the
world, for community.
The next generation of Jews, like their non-Jewish
contemporaries, also have a strong sense that
protecting or not protecting the earth now will have a
major effect on their lives—literally lives and deathsthirty or so years from now.
So: imagine gathering Jewish college students for a
summer month—not only to live close to the land but
also consciously to observe and understand the ecosystem they are part of, to learn how it is being
damaged, to learn what Jews can do to prevent that
damage, to celebrate Shabbat and experience its earthhealing meaning, to pray the Sh'ma with an earthy
consciousness, to learn how they can carry what they
have learned into changing the Jewish community and
the world and to reconnect year after year with each
i other and the next year's students, as a conscious corps
i of Jewishly committed healers of the earth.
If we can create such opportunities for acting to heal
the earth in a context of authentic Jewish prayer and
celebration, Jewish practice, Jewish policy advocacy and
Jewish community living, is not the next generation far
more likely to want to live and act Jewishly? •
Environmental actions and morality
Lawrence Goldmuntz
Everyone is an environmentalist. No sane person
wants a world that is made unhealthy by human
activity. Everyone would like to enjoy a world that is
LAWRENCE GOLDMUNTZ having sewed as a White
House official on science and energy, now heads a
Washington-based consultingfirm,Economics and Science
Planning.
53
aesthetically pleasing. Nobody would obliterate a
species arbitrarily. No one would capriciously waste a
resource to the point of exhaustion. Then why is there
so much social and political tension over
environmental issues? There are a number of reasons
having to do with who pays and who benefits, different
perceptions between experts and advocates, and
differing priorities on resource allocation.
Let us first discuss some issues associated with
resource allocation. While some environmental actions
are cost free, many are not. Using energy more
efficiently is frequently cost-beneficial. This means the
cost savings over the lifetime of a device can offset
any increase in the initial capital cost of the device.
This seems to be true for efficiency improvements in
many electrical appliances, some building techniques
and many manufacturing processes. There are few
arguments concerning these environmental programs
because everyone benefits.
But mandating an improvement in fuel economy for
automobiles is more contentious. The major technique
for improving automobile fuel economy, down-sizing,
unfortunately decreases automotive safety. Therefore,
the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and others,
lobby against increasingly stringent fuel economy
standards. The Insurance Institute has pioneered the
mandatory use of safety belts and passive restraints
(air bags) and is a very reputable organization
supporting automotive safety. They point out that the
number of deaths caused by automobiles has
decreased, but it is still close to 50,000 annually.
Environmentalists would have a difficult time showing
that the energy savings and, consequently, reduction in
pollution due to improved fuel economy, could
possibly offset the additional mortality and morbidity
due to down-sizing automobiles. A gas tax is
considered by safety-conscious people to be superior
to regulating fuel economy, since it discourages
consumption without impacting safety. But it has its
own disadvantages since it is a regressive tax,
impacting the poor more than the rich.
Is It Cost Effective?
The same sort of argument clouds the new Clean Air
Act, which is estimated to cost $30 billion annually.
Opponents of the measure say the health benefits derived from the more stringent standards do not come
close to matching their cost. The legislative process
that led to the Clean Air Act did not use, for rulemaking purposes, health cross-cut studies. If the
objective of the Clean Air Act is to improve health,
how does it compare to other programs—that may