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Torah and the Environment Clause

Torah and the Environment

About eight years ago, while on a congregational tour of Israel, our bus driver veered off the main road, squeezed onto a narrow dirt trail, and eventually parked our bus under a cluster of trees.

"Everyone out," commanded our tour guide.

And so, at about 11:30 that Tuesday morning, thirty-four participants on our first group tour of Israel poured off our bus and found themselves on hot ground in an open field.

"We are here," our guide announced,"to symbolically work the land for fifteen minutes before the next stop on our itinerary."

Our tour had signed up to participate in the Lecket program, which, according to the ancient Biblical model, enables farmers to set aside one tenth of their fields for the benefit of those in need.

A representative of Lecket - Israel's national food bank - provided us with instructions. "The owner of this field has designated vegetables for you to pick," she said in a monotone reserved for tourists. "Do what you can in the next fifteen minutes."

We began working the ancient land. But something remarkable happened after about five minutes. Congregant after congregant began approaching me.

"Can we stay longer?"

"Can we skip lunch?"

"Is the next stop on our tour really important?"
 
I stood up from the ground and observed everyone on our tour -- Jews, Christians, young adults and seniors -- digging into Israel's sacred soil. It was moving them to the core. 

Over the next ninety minutes, we filled dozens of baskets with vegetables. Our fingernails were soiled with rich brown earth. Our clothes were dotted with sweat.  Basket after basket was filled for the needy: we brought forth food from the earth.

Jews have always had an odd relationship with the earth.  We were originally called Israelites, implying an organic connection with the land of Israel. Yet so often during our history, we have been separated from our land.

A movie I recently viewed about the Jewish Gaucho movement in Argentina asserted that "the times when the Jewish people have been most lost - and subject to assimilation - is when we have been separated from the land."

The narrator spoke not only of the land of Israel, but also of the Jewish connection to the earth itself - our lives as farmers, ranchers, laborers.

It sounds odd today when we consider the affluent life so many of us lead in North America. Many of us earn our bread through cerebral pursuits, yet for many of us, the most basic, sacred, and spiritual times we have enjoyed in our lives have involved some connection with the land.

Some spent summers working on a kibbutz, or picking fruit or vegetables from a field or orchard. Some tend gardens. These are profoundly spiritual times.

One of the greatest lessons my father ever taught me as a child - amidst all of his business pursuits and travels - was how to plant a vegetable garden.

There is something so special when our knees touch the ground and we create life from a seed, a sprout or a sprig.
This is Genesis.

As the Torah teaches us this week, this is exactly what we are supposed to do.

There is often much discussion about this week's Torah portion, Bereshit (Genesis),  as we recite the portion which describes the creation of the world. 

I am often asked by Hebrew school students, "Was the world really created in seven days? Is this a true story? Do you believe in evolution?"

And although I have my opinions of what the Torah is trying to tell us, in the end, I answer, "No one really knows."

What I do find inspiring is one sentence which appears in the Torah just after the creation of Adam and Eve. It is tucked in just before story of the Tree of Knowledge.

Says the Torah, in what I like to call the environmental clause, "and God put man (and woman) in the Garden and Eden, to till it and look after it." (Genesis 2:15) 

This is a Biblical clause, from opening chapters the Torah which instructs us to protect the earth and sustain it.

As we know, humankind has not honored this commandment well.  We are so eager to embrace prosperity, to acquire more possessions, to travel further and faster, we have wantonly extracted from the air, water, and earth, without honoring and replacing what we have taken.

Before becoming a rabbi, working with an environment study in the Canadian north, I observed first hand, permafrost melting in areas which used to remain frozen - and songbirds disappearing from northern regions.

An elder once noted as he held up a deformed fish he caught that morning from Lake Athabasca, "I am so sad that we are failing our creator." he said.  "You see, we do not inherit the earth from our elders - but we borrow it from our children."

A Kabbalistic teaching holds that there were six worlds which existed prior to the one we currently inhabit.  It reminds us, "This is the last one you will receive. Till it and tend to it." 

We have failed to look after the earth in so many ways.  Municipal recycling efforts in most areas of United States are meager at best.  Remarkably, against the crushing scientific evidence, the topic of global warming is still debated in this country.

Perhaps most of all, we have lost our personal connection with the land.

This summer, CTI will return to Israel for its fifth congregational trip since 2008. We will not only work on a kibbutz, but we stop at a farmer's field, and pick vegetables to distribute to the needy.

And we will feel complete.

Until then, there is so much we can do to foster our connection with the land.  We can plant a tree.  We can tend to our gardens.  We can feel the earth in our hands.
It is what the Torah tells us to do.

................................

In 2011, three years after that first congregational trip, CTI returned to Israel and again found ourselves parked in an open field.

Within minutes, we were on the ground picking tomatoes.

As we toiled the earth, our bus driver, Avi, observed us from his front seat. It is usual while tourists visit sites for bus drivers to remain in their vehicles and either sleep or read.

But as we continued to pluck tomatoes from the earth, we suddenly noticed Avi on his knees next to us, digging and picking faster than anyone.

"I may be a bus driver now," he told me.  "But I grew up in a Moshav, a farming settlement. I am most happy when I am close to the earth."

And together, during the next hour, our group - congregants, guide and bus driver -- picked enough tomatoes to feed thirty five families for a week.

We are told in this week's Torah reading to work the earth, and to watch over it.  The Torah inspires us to remember that we are most complete when are closest to the land.

When we think of it, so much of the food we now acquire comes in packages stacked in grocery stores.

We need to renew our connection with the land.  It is a commandment which was imparted to Adam and Eve, and therefore extends to you and me.

Let us remember in particular this week, as we recount the creation of the earth and humanity, that there exists an unbreakable connection between ourselves and the earth.

Let us never stray too far from that timeless bond.

For this is the last earth we will inherit, therefore let us continue to till and tend to it.

Each in our own way.

Shabbat shalom, v'kol tuv (with all goodness)
 
Rabbi Irwin Huberman