In describing the attributes of Bezalel, the artist who fashioned the Mishkan (Tabernacle) where the Israelites worshiped in the wilderness, the Torah says that he "was filled with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge." These traits, according to Midrash Sh'mot Rabbah are not only the virtues necessary to establish a site of Torah learning and observance, they are also, in fact, the very traits that God relied on to create the world: "With these three things the world was created, as it says in the Book of Proverbs, The Holy One with wisdom founded the earth; with understanding established the heavens, with knowledge the depths were shattered.'"
The Midrash asserts, in the face of those who would place "nature" and creation on one side of a divide, and "civilization" and Torah on the other, that the very traits that fashioned the one fashioned the other too. The God who created the world is also the God who gives a wise and profound teaching to guide our lives toward holiness and justice. We neglect the one at the expense of the other; we pillage the one to the detriment of them both.
This is no mere theoretical assertion. Instead, it goes to the core of a debate within the Jewish world among those religious leaders who seek to understand what Judaism has to say about the environmental crisis in which we find ourselves.
Indeed, a great exigency addresses us all: our refusal to take seriously the rhythms of nature and the restraint of ecology have brought us to a sad and dangerous place: our air grows more dirty by the year, our waters are less potable, acid rain bores a hole through the ozone, vast bioregions are on the brink of disappearance, taking with them thousands of species that will never reappear. Our erosion of topsoil and our focus on single crops, our reliance on ever more poisonous pesticides to feed an exploding human population.
Within Judaism, environmentally sensitive rabbis and leaders have suggested that the wisdom of our tradition can offer a valuable perspective and needed insights to successful shape attitudes that can lead to regeneration of a more healthy relationship with our planet. Paradoxically, many of the advocates for this positive portrayal of an ecologically-sensitive Judaism do so at the denigration of traditional Judaism. Among these thinkers, learned voices speak of the need to assert the God of Creation in contrast to the God of Revelation.
Traditional Judaism, they say, was always uncomfortable with God as the Creator. Why else, they note, would Rashi need to justify starting the Torah with the creation story? The center of gravity for rabbinic Judaism, they assert, lies with the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai and the observance of mitzvot. Consequently, it is in Revelation—God's revealing divine will to humanity—that traditional Judaism focuses. As a result of that focus, the world is de-sanctified. No longer is the planet a living, loving mother; instead it now provides the resources to meet the needs of a demanding humanity. God, the Sovereign, turns the earth over to us, and we may do with it what we will to meet our own needs.
The results of this emphasis on knowing God through Revelation and minimizing the consequences of God as Creator, has been disastrous: the earth is a toolbox for human exploitation, and God justifies our abandoning responsibility for life on the earth. In an age in which humanity may finally end the possibility of all life on our planet, we must re-configure Judaism to place weight on God as Creator. The God of Torah is simply too permissive of human license.
Besides presenting what looks like a caricature of rabbinic Judaism (God as Creator is quite prominent in midrash, in Talmud, and in the Siddur), this viewpoint presents no defense to the defects of the other extreme. Human beings, rather than being the pinnacle of Creation now are simply one small, last-minute part of that creation. If so, then our extinction is only a "problem" from the perspective of humanity, not that of nature. For the sake of biodiversity, we shouldn't eliminate even the most virulent virus. We should not kill a fish even to feed a starving child.
Judaism rejects this idolatry of creation no less than it would reject any equation of God and God's world. The world is not our play toy: we were given it as stewards, to care and to nurture it. But it's owner is God—the One who created it and all living things, the One made us in the divine image and who instructed us to care for the rest of creation, the One who gave us torah.
It is by rooting our responsibility for the earth in the notion of mitzvot, of being commanded by God as members of the Jewish community, that we can escape the two extremes of recklessly exploiting the earth as though accountable to no one and of thinking ourselves so infinitesimal in nature that our deeds have no consequence and our needs no merit.
Wisdom, insight, and understanding are needed now no less than in the past. They are to be found, as always, in God's greatest works—the works of Creation and the ongoing works of Torah. Both need our partnership; both require our participation.
And God is waiting.
Shabbat Shalom!