A word of Torah:
We are increasingly aware of the environmental crisis our planet faces but unfortunately, the traditional Jewish environmental concept--bal tashchit-- is totally inadequate as a guide to our response. While the injunction "not to destroy" prohibits wanton destruction, nothing in the concept prohibits, for instance, clearing all of the Amazon rainforest to make homes for people or farms for raising crops. Bal tashchit suffers from an anthropocentric view that today’s environmentalists perceive as the source of our current problem, not its solution.
Is there another source from the tradition to give us guidance? Pollution seems to me to echo the biblical sense that tum’ah/impurity can affect the world in ways that might not be visible but have a negative impact. In Leviticus, there is an understanding that impurity is an inevitable byproduct of existence. The task of the priests and Levites was to try to protect the sanctuary from impurity. The fear was that over time too much impurity would build up and that God would be driven away from the sanctuary. The Holy One “couldn’t stand” being in the presence of too much impurity.
In reconstructing the notion of impurity, we understand that it is no longer an invisible force infecting society, but a consequence of humans acting in ways that are detrimental to the environment. To put it in contemporary terms, tum’ah makes the world uninhabitable to human beings. Tum’ah is toxic to life. Such a state harks back to the story of Noah and the flood.
“When God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth. God said to Noah. ‘I have decided to put an end to all flesh.’ ” Gen. 6:12-13.
Finding that the deeds of humans have corrupted the earth itself, God decides to destroy everything, to cleanse the earth in the waters of the flood, the birth waters for a new world. What happens after the flood? Noah and his family and the animals of the ark are to reestablish the world. However, some things have changed. God has established a covenant that another flood by God will never destroy the world.
“I now establish My covenant with you and your offspring to come, and with every living thing that is with you—birds, cattle, and every wild beast as well—all that have come out of the ark, every living thing on earth.” (Gen. 9:9-10).
The covenant not to destroy the world is made with all living things, not just humans. It is now up to us, whom God has given power over the world, to make sure that we do not pollute the world and thereby bring a flood or any other form of nature run wild that could bring an end to all living things.
Just as the Torah believed that humans could not live without causing impurity, however unintentionally, so too we cannot live without leaving a carbon footprint on this planet. Learning how to offset our negative impact on the earth’s environment is a central mitzvah of our time.
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