Humanity and Creation
Discussion questions
- God gives humanity the world to rule over in this passage. What context does this give for the mitzvot from Deuteronomy?
- What other consequences might this worldview create?
The Covenant and the Eretz Yisrael
Discussion questions
- What is the role of the natural world in general, and of Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) in particular, in the covenant between God and Israel?
- Do the consequences for sin listed seem reasonable? Are they reflected in the world today?
How should Jews approach the natural world?
(ז) ... רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן אוֹמֵר, הַמְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּרֶךְ וְשׁוֹנֶה, וּמַפְסִיק מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ וְאוֹמֵר, מַה נָּאֶה אִילָן זֶה וּמַה נָּאֶה נִיר זֶה, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ:
(7)... Rabbi Jacob said: if one is studying while walking on the road and interrupts his study and says, “how fine is this tree!” [or] “how fine is this newly ploughed field!” scripture accounts it to him as if he was mortally guilty.
They emerged from the cave, and saw people who were plowing and sowing. Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai said: These people abandon eternal life of Torah study and engage in temporal life for their own sustenance. The Gemara relates that every place that Rabbi Shimon and his son Rabbi Elazar directed their eyes was immediately burned. A Divine Voice emerged and said to them: Did you emerge from the cave in order to destroy My world? Return to your cave. ...
"The Unnatural Jew," Steven S. Schwarzschild 1984 Environmental Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Journal Dedicated to the Philosophical Aspects of Environmental Problems 6: 347-62.
I began by calling myself an urban man for more than half a millenium. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that as a Jew I have been an unnatural man much longer. Well before the rise of towns and cities, Jews were not supposed to reside where there are no synagogues, physicians, artisans, toilets, water supplies, schoolteachers, scribes, organized charities, or courts. An "ignoramous" or 'am-ha'aretz (literally, a "man of the land," "peasant") is frowned upon by "civilized," pious people. Irving Agus, in his historical studies summarizes: "The Jews were the first self-ruling town-dwellers of Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages." Was it only a pun when the Talmudic rabbis warned against the use of Torah as a spade ([Pirkei] Aboth 4:7)? Or were they warning against subordinating intellectual and moral pursuits to material ends?
"The Promises of Exiles: A Jewish Theology of Responsibility," Laurie Zoloth 2002 Visions of a New Earth
Jews do not offer a theology of return to Eden, not a time when plants or animals are animated with equal moral worth. The very blessing of humanism is the ability to work, and to rest, to tame, subdue, harvest, alter, co-create nature. The environment, in Jewish texts, is not Paradise, it is the actual world, and it more than needs us—it would be a restless wilderness without our hands, a place for beasts, not children, not learning, not avodah, the word for both service, [sic] and the word for faith.
Discussion questions
- What does each of these passages say about the importance, or lack of importance, of the natural world?
- The passages appear to put for conflicting views about the natural world; why are both reflected in our tradition?