Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation

The premise that “you and what you possess are God’s” ( Avot 3:7) underlies most of Talmudic thinking, both about the environment and about the nature of mitzvot in general. The doing of mitzvot acknowledges that we live in a God-centered and not a human-centered universe, that because of God’s ownership, we have a variety of obligations to the Divine Will. The rabbis further believed that many mitzvot, such as the Sabbatical year, had as their central purpose the reaffirmation of God’s ownership of the land ( Sanhedrin 39a).

Master of the Universe, grant me the ability to be alone. May it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grass and all growing things, and there may I be alone, and enter into prayer.

In order to serve God, one needs access to the enjoyment of the beauties of nature, such as the contemplation of flower-decorated meadows, majestic mountains, flowing rivers. For all these are essential to the spiritual development of even the holiest people.

It should not be believed that all the beings exist for the sake of the existence of humanity. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes, and not for the sake of something else.

Note: Both Maimonides and his son, Abraham, wrote that one could come to love God by contemplating God’s great works in nature, and that such contemplation was in fact essential to spiritual development ( Sefer HaMada 2:2).

The Jewish philosopher, Bakhya ibn Pekuda, wrote that Jews should engage in “meditation upon creation” to sense God’s majesty (“Duties of the heart,” 137).

Abraham Abulafia began a tradition of Jewish mysticism that included outdoor meditation. And the mystics of Safed developed intricate Tu B’shvat seders to celebrate the presence of God in nature.

Mystics though they were, they did not restrict their relationship with nature to contemplation. They treated nature with great respect in deed as well as thought. “The principles of wisdom must extend to animals, trees and plants” (Tomer Devorah , 3).

If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life. (Deut. 22:6)

Torah does not permit a killing that would uproot a species, even if it permitted the killing of individuals of that species. And here, the one who kills the mother and the child on the same day... it is as if that person has made that species extinct.

Winter is gone, gone is my sorrow. The fruit tree is in flower, and my heart flowers with joy. O hunted gazelle (reference to Shekhina, the presence of God), who escaped far from my hut, come back. Trees of delight sway among the shadows.

Not thine is the earth, but thou belongeth to the earth, to respect it as Divine soil and to deem every one of its creatures a creature of God, thy fellow-being.... Consider the things around you. I lent them to you for wise use only; never forget that I lent them to you. As soon as you use them unwisely, be it the greatest or the smallest, you commit treachery against My world, you commit murder and robbery against My property, you sin against Me! This is what God calls unto you.

“Whatever God created has value,” begins Louis Ginzberg’s 1956 edition of Legends of the Bible , publication of the Jewish Publication Society. “The whole creation was called into existence by God unto His glory, and each creature has its own hymn of praise wherewith to extol the Creator. Heaven and earth, Paradise and hell, desert and field, rivers and seas — all have their own way to paying homage to God.

“The hymn of the earth is ‘From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, glory to the Righteous.’ The sea exlaims, ‘Above the voices of many waters, the mighty breakers of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty.’”

“The grasshopper has a lesson to teach man. All the summer through it sings, until its belly burst, and death claims it. Though it knows the fate that awaits it, yet it sings on. So man should do his duty toward God, no matter what the consequences.

“The stork should be taken as a model in two respects. He guards the purity of his family life zealously, and toward his fellows, he is compassionate and merciful.

“Also the celestial bodies and the elements proclaim the praise of their Creator — the sun, moon, stars, the cloud and the winds, lightening and dew.... The stars sing, ‘Thou art the Lord, even Thou alone; Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all things that are thereon, the seas and all that is in them, and Thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth Thee.’

“Every plant, furthermore, has a song of praise. The fruitful tree sings, ‘Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy, before the Lord, for he cometh; for He cometh to judge the earth; and the ears of grain in the field sing, ‘The pastures are covered with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy; they also sing.’

“Great among singers of praise are the birds, and greatest among them is the rooster. When God at midnight goes to the pious in Paradise, all the trees therein break out into adoration, and their songs awaken the rooster, who begins in turn to praise God....”

“Today, when we encounter God as a nesher, a griffin vulture (as we do in Deuteronomy 32:11), we must pause to examine just what is intended by the term. But we may surmise that then, when people first encountered that way of depicting God, they knew that the reference was to God as a fiercely protective parent, one who carries its young on its back to help them learn how to fly. Similarly, when Isaiah compares Israel to a terebinth oak in the fall (as in 6:11-13), his listeners could appreciate immediately the two-edged nature of his metaphor. The terebinth is most glorious just before all its leaves drop -- but it is also among the hardiest of trees, even sprouting again from a cut-off stump.

“No modern audience can appreciate as intuitively as the listeners of old the Song of Song’s lyrical description of spring flowers reappearing on the Earth, or of a lily among the thorns. So too, the psalmists’ hymns to all of creation, joining with the song of heaven’s birds and young lions at their hunt (see Psalms 104 and 148). And consider the difference between a modern dweller in cities and the ancients in comprehending the sheer power of God’s promise to Abraham that he would have descendents like the stars in the sky: in the one case, the stars are perceived only through a haze of light and soot; in the other, the night sky dense with brilliant stars was part of the common experience.

“The language of nature came to the people naturally, as it were, for their lives were bound up with the richness of the land, with the pastoral and agricultural economy of the time. That is why they tended the land so lovingly, that is why the cycles of their celebrations followed the seasons of the land (see Leviticus 23). And though their efforts to tame the land, to make it more productive and more dependable, were often marvels of ingenuity, they understood the limits to their mastery — for they knew God as Sovereign of the Land, and through such institutions as the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee (Leviticus 25), they acknowledged God’s prior ownership.

“It followed that they had to treat the land well -- not only give it rest, but to respect and plant trees, keep water sources clean, create parks near urban areas, regulate sewage disposal, avoid causing pain to animals. And they understood intuitively as well the connection between their responsibility to care for the earth and justice: Since the land was God’s, not only should it be protected, but its rich produce should be shared with the poorest of God’s children (Leviticus 19).

In a world where warfare typically included efforts by the victor to degrade the land of the vanquished — cutting down trees, fouling water, and salting the Earth — our forebears behaved exceptionally. They developed the principle of bal tash-chit , do not destroy (Deuteronomy 20:19). Do not cut down trees even to prevent ambush or to build siege engines; do not foul waters or burn crops even to cause an enemy’s submission. And if, even in extremis, one is to avoid causing needless harm to the environment, al akhat v’khama — how much more so — during the ordinary course of life.

We speak then of a time when people were possessed of an ideal vision of harmony, of shlemut, wholeness and peace. No, it was not an idyllic time, for they could not fully translate their vision into reality. No Eden, not any longer. The promised abundance had to be teased and more often wrested from the Earth by the sweat of the brow, and the seasons had a way of being fickle, not bestowing their appointed blessings. Hence work, hence prayer, hence, too, Shabat, a time to rest from work, a time to remind themselves of God’s endless beneficence, a time to dream of a time yet to come, when the world will be entirely Shabat. And in that final and endless time, the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and humankind will be at peace with all of nature.

In short, our ancestors knew the wonderful reciprocity of Creation: Creation’s sheer magnificence turns the heart towards the Creator (see Isaiah 40), and the heart that has turned to God opens, inevitably towards Creation, towards the awesome integrity of the natural universe that is God’s gift.

Rabbi Stephen Pearce, Senior Rabbi of San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El and founder of the Interfaith Task Force to Save the Headwaters Forest, reflects on the Jewish Talmudic tradition (from Eruvin 13b, which was written more than 1500 years ago) and its relevance for forest protection.

“Jewish Biblical tradition demands stewardship of the Earth. The story of Adam and Eve is one which the rabbis chose to comment on. They depicted God admonishing Adam and Eve with these words: ‘See how magnificent and beautiful my world is. Do not corrupt or destroy it, for if you do, there will be no one to set it right after you.’”

About this passage, Rabbi Pearce says that the implication for forests today is that we cannot replace what is irreplaceable. He compares the harvesting of old growth redwood trees to tearing down the Washington Monument and using its stones to build a shopping mall. “We need to treat old-growth forests with the same sanctity that we afford landmark buildings,” he concludes.

Headwaters Forest is the most significant unprotected ancient redwood forest on earth. This Headwaters story is not about the environment versus industry, or the environment versus jobs, or the environment versus private property. This story is about desecration. Desecration of ancient trees that have survived centuries and even millennia of drought, fire and infestation, but are helpless against the chain saw. Desecration of fish, birds, voles, salamanders, whose lives are interwoven with numerous other species of the forest. Perhaps nowhere is the web of interconnectedness more apparent than in the ancient forest.

“How proud we are of our victories in the war with nature, proud of the multitude of instruments we have succeeded in inventing, of the abundance of commodities we have been able to produce. Yet our victories have come to resemble defeats... Selling himself into slavery to things, man becomes a utensil that is broken at the fountain.” ... “It is when nature is sensed as mystery and grandeur that it calls upon us to look beyond it.”

“When we desecrate Adamah, the earth, we endanger Adam, our very being.” This is a powerful teaching in the sacred language of our tradition. The Hebrew word for human being is “adam,” and “adamah” is the word for the earth. Note how similar are the words. Indeed we are “earth” and “earthling,” -- not identical, but indeed intertwined. In the language itself, the medium of Creation, is contained the profound wisdom of our tradition that it is impossible to act on the earth without also acting on human beings.