Finding a Sanctuary in Nature

Finding a Sanctuary in Nature

After the drama of the ten plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea, and receiving the Torah at Sinai, the Biblical book of Exodus turns to what seems a much more mundane subject: building the first Jewish temple, a portable sanctuary known as the Mishkan. Where do we find such sanctuary today?

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Talk to the animals; listen to Nature

Talk to the animals; listen to Nature

Grackle talking at Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Julie Danan, 2018The Bible relates that King Solomon was known as the wisest of men. One verse suggests that he was able to converse about–the more-than-human world:

יְדַבֵּר֮ עַל־הָֽעֵצִים֒ מִן־הָאֶ֙רֶז֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּלְּבָנ֔וֹן וְעַד֙ הָאֵז֔וֹב אֲשֶׁ֥ר יֹצֵ֖א בַּקִּ֑יר וַיְדַבֵּר֙ עַל־הַבְּהֵמָ֣ה וְעַל־הָע֔וֹף וְעַל־הָרֶ֖מֶשׂ וְעַל־הַדָּגִֽים׃

He [King Solomon] discoursed about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; and he discoursed about the beasts, the birds, the creeping things, and the fishes.

I Kings 5:13

Although most commentators insisted that King Solomon’s communications were about nature, the Aggadah, Jewish legendary tradition, took it more literally: the King Solomon, in his great wisdom, could actually speak to the animals and plants in their own languages.

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The Ecology of Canaan, in the Eyes of Our Ancestors

The Ecology of Canaan, in the Eyes of Our Ancestors

Note: My friend and colleague Rabbi David Seidenberg is one of the leading scholars on Judaism and the environment. Whether writing about Kabbalah and Ecology, or the Biblical vision of a justice and sustainability, his teachings are both inspiring and timely. -JHD

by Rabbi David Seidenberg

 

I. The land that drinks from the heavens

Amphitheater at Caesarea, Julie Danan

Seven thousand years ago, Sumer, in Mesopotamia, was one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known — the creator of paradigms and inventions that spread the world over, including writing and the plow. It was moreover a morally creative civilization, the best of whose shepherd-kings took responsibility for the poor and articulated laws to protect them. Its collapse would have had a tremendous impact on the many civilizations it had touched, whether through trade or slaves or war or treaty.

The details of Sumer’s collapse remain the subject of debate. But some combination of ecological factors probably led to this collapse, including the Sumerians’ own over-farming of what had been marshlands and over-flooding those lands with standing water that came from the Tigris or Euphrates via a system of canals, along with over-logging of the slopes where the great rivers originated, which was carried out not by the Sumerians but by their trading partners to meet Sumer’s wealth-born need for wood. The land bloomed with salt as the original water table rose, the main staple crop that could be grown shifted from wheat to barley, the land’s fertility declined, and eventually, the land of Sumer was abandoned.

In the Genesis story, Abram, soon to become Abraham, left the Mesopotamian valley and Ur Kasdim with his family to head to Canaan. His story, set after the biblical dispersion from Bavel (Babylonia), seems to start at least one or two civilizations after Sumer. What is important is that the sought-after land of Canaan was archetypally the opposite of Mesopotamia — a hilly land dependent almost entirely upon rainfall, which could not be irrigated by diverting any river’s flow.

Though Mesopotamia was the matrix from which Canaanite and Israelite culture grew, the references the Bible makes to a land watered by rivers are not to Sumer. Instead, the land of Egypt, whose social system and wealth were sustained by the annual overflow of the Nile, takes Sumer’s place, becoming the biblical paragon of an unsustainable, hierarchical, idolatrous society radically out of sync with divine intention. Being out of sync was a function of Egypt’s ecology: because the river could be counted on to flood like clockwork, Egypt had no need to appeal to divine providence for rain.

This distinction, which to most modern ears would sound like a boon, is the reason for Egypt’s contumely and Canaan’s praise:

For the land that you are coming to is not like the land of Egypt, which you came out from, where you sowed your seed and gave drink with your foot (by pumping water from the Nile), like a garden of greens. [For] the land where you are passing over to is a land of mountains and valleys – through the rain of the heavens will she drink water 

(Deut. 11:10–12).

A land that must drink from the heavens, however, is a land subject to drought. And yet the Torah teaches this is the ideal land, the land of promise, because “the eyes of YHVH your God are continually upon her.” This mystical-sounding relationship describes a simple ecological reality, imagined from a divine perspective: the lack of human control over irrigation means that God is continually assessing whether the people merit rain.

Canaan was the opposite of the land of Egypt, which can go for centuries sustained by the Nile’s flooding and the technology of the pedal pump, no matter the state of the weather or the state of justice, until it finally gets its proverbial seven years of famine or its ten all-consuming plagues. Unlike Egypt, the feedback loop in Canaan is short and swift — the loop may be closed, the consequences felt, within a season or two. It is that very fact — that everyone’s tenure is tenuous — that makes Canaan/Israel a holy land.

Orange Blossom, Ashdod, Israel, Julie Danan

II. Sustainability

That this is the intended meaning is clear from the passage that follows, Deuteronomy 11:13–21, which Jews the world over recite as the second passage of the prayer called the Sh’ma. The first promise of the passage is the very definition of sustainability: “[Y]our days and the days of your children will increase on the land which YHVH swore to your ancestors to give to them, like the days of the heavens over the land” (Deut. 11:21). The second promise, the consequence of not listening to the covenant, follows: “the heavens will be shut up and there will be no rain, and the ground will not give her produce, and you will be destroyed quickly from off the good land which YHVH gives you” (Deut. 11:17).

What sustainability looks like is also specific to Canaan: the land will receive both early rains and late rains, the people will gather their grain and their wine and their olive oil, and there will be grass in the fields for their animals (Deut. 11:14–15).

Could the ancient Israelites have also realized that land watered by rainfall can never be made permanently infertile by salinization the way that the Mesopotamian valley was? Perhaps that is why a third promise is found in many similar passages (though not in Deuteronomy 11): a remnant of the Israelites will eventually return to the land, and the land will return to its fecundity (Lev. 26:42–45; Deut. 30:1–7).

The continuity of living on the land for as long as the heavens stay suspended over the earth was not simply a reward for obedience. Three commandments most determined one’s fitness to remain in the land: eschewing idolatry, allowing the land to rest, and doing justice for the poor, widow, orphan and stranger, that is, for the vulnerable. Sustainability in the ecological sense and in the social/political sense is a direct outcome of following the latter two.

Tying all three together was the observance of Shabbat, the weekly celebration of Creation and Creator, when agricultural activity stopped and animals and people rested. Shabbat in turn was a miniature version of the Sabbatical or Shmitah year, when land ownership was annulled, when poor and rich would be sustained equally from a common food supply, when wild animals would share the produce of the land with the people, when the land would rest, and when the people would recognize God’s sovereignty over the land (Lev. 25). The Sabbatical year was the capstone achievement of a society following the covenant.

One could say that the purpose of religion, from the Torah’s perspective, was to teach people how to achieve a true symbiosis with the land. This is what it means to “choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). If the mission of the Torah was to create a truly sustainable model of agriculture, then another way to frame that is that the Torah’s mission is to change the direction of what we now call the Anthropocene.

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This post first appeared on Times of Israel Blogs, and is reprinted with permission of the author.  Rabbi Seidenberg’s personal website is: NeoHasid.org. He is the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God’s Image in the More-than-Human World (Cambridge University Press), and teaches widely on Judaism and the environment.

Post adapted from “The Third Promise: Can Judaism’s indigenous core help us rise above the damaging politics of our time?” Read the expanded article, along with the footnotes for this article, at: tikkun.org/th

Featured Image: Sunrays at the Sea of Galilee in Winter, Julie Danan

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Let Nature Guide You Into a New Year

Let Nature Guide You Into a New Year

I treasure the late summer, just before the Jewish New Year, as a wonderful time to get out in nature, and I relate it to a Hasidic teaching. “The King is in the Field,” is a parable of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), founder of Chabad Hasidism. He likened Rosh Hashanah and the Awesome Days  through Yom Kippur to a time when a king is in the palace and it is very formal act to approach the throne.. But when the king is traveling to the palace anyone can approach him as he travels through the fields.

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The King is In the Field: A Meadow Gallery

The King is In the Field: A Meadow Gallery

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi taught a parable of a king on the way to the palace, who can be approached by everyone in the countryside with ease. His expression, “the King is in the field,” characterized the late summer month of Elul prior to the New Year, as a time when it is easier to access our connection to the divine within. Contemporary Torah teacher Gavriel Strauss, suggests that at this time of year we literally go out in nature, to a meadow or field, as a wonderful way to feel that spiritual closeness. Click on the featured photo above to activate the gallery, a photo series scenes at Otter Creek Preserve, Mamaroneck, and Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Pleasantville, New York (the second Egret in Fairfield, Connecticut). Photos by Rabbi Julie Hilton Danan.

Shemitah: The Sabbatical Year

Shemitah: The Sabbatical Year

Shemitah, the Sabbatical year (Levicitus 25), is a revolutionary Torah commandment: every seven years the land will lie fallow and enjoy a Sabbatical year of rest and release. The land needs to rest just as human beings need a weekly Sabbath.  (more…)

Tikkun Olam: Interfaith Dialogue in the Holy Land

Tikkun Olam: Interfaith Dialogue in the Holy Land

Jerusalem is a holy city to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and its very name means, “The City of Peace.” But the deep history and religious passions that make the city and the land sacred to so many have also contributed to strife. Although the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict can seem intractable, I continue to find hope and inspiration in the many individuals and organizations working tirelessly for peace. While governments can make treaties, individuals are the ones to make relationships.

The Interfaith Encounter Association, one of my favorite groups, brings together grassroot circles of Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others for deep dialogue and relationship building. To me, they are holy people. Watch the video for an overview of their work, and visit their website to learn more and to contribute.

 

Featured Image: View towards the Old City of Jerusalem from the Haas Promenade, by Julie Danan

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