Welcome to Week 2, Judaism and Ecology brought into the present using the patterns of orienting, grounding, nurturing, and transforming. Contemporary Jewish responses to the environmental crisis are intimately connected to older religious ideas and practices. These traditional perspectives originate long before Earth Day in the United States in 1970, the Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972, and the resulting implementation of environmental policy legislation. Contemporary Jewish responses to ecological issues have diverse expressions. These many historical lineages are interwoven with considerations of Torah, Covenantal law, and Jewish theological concepts regarding the natural world. We will consider some of these responses in terms of the religious pathways then of orienting, grounding, nurturing, and transforming. In summary, then, we can ponder the ways in which these diverse developments have shaped contemporary Jewish religious ecology and religious cosmology. We have used the concept of orienting in these discussions of religion and ecology to suggest that religions provide guidance in human communities by appealing to a divine source of morality. That creative source can be seen as primarily transcending the universe but also immanent within it. God as the source of biblical law and morality stands outside of both nature and human society. For Judaism broadly considered, the divine is primarily transcendent. Even in such mystical traditions as Kabbalah and Hasidism, the divine is immanent yet beyond this world. We have seen how the Israelite religion forged originating and overlapping covenantal relations in Torah or written law. The covenant with Abraham is marked by circumcision of male children. The Covenant after the flood at the time of Noah is made by God with all created existence and is marked by a rainbow. The covenant at Sinai with Moses is signaled with the Ten Commandments or Mitzvot. By following covenantal law, humans transform, sanctify, and correct nature, as well as perfect society bringing about tikkun 'olam, the repair of the world. Rabbinic Judaism continued this biblical perspective even as it produced oral law as an orienting implementation for the written commands of Torah thus some later rabbis in their oral interpretation would speak of Torah and nature as identical sources of ethical behavior for humans. The 15th-century Jewish teacher, Isaac Arama wrote the words of the Torah are identical with natural justice. There is no distinction between them. Everything teaches us that the laws of God are true, that is to say, true nature. The study of nature however never received the same affirmation in early Judaism as the study of Torah until the enlightenment period. From the 18th-century then, some European Jews considered emancipation from traditional religious beliefs and practices and turned towards empirical study of the natural world. Another means of orienting in Judaism considered in relation to such sacred places as Jerusalem in the Holy Land, prior to the 20th-century holocaust, orthodox Jewish thinkers often located modern Judaism in terms of the dispersion of the Jews from their homeland in Israel as well as from lands such as Spain where Jewish communities has resided for centuries. One seminal orthodox Jewish voice exploring relations with nature in light of the exile experience was Samson Raphael Hirsch. Hirsch continued and he countered the negative effects of exile by presenting nature as a parallel exemplar of Torah responsibility thus each place in which Jews found themselves provided examples of covenantal response by the land and by the diversity of that place. In describing nature, then Hirsch likened natural law to the obligations of prescriptive law in Torah. Hirsch wrote everything around serves God. Every created thing has a place assigned to it. For God to work on it, in it, and through it according to His laws, everything serves God. Each thing in its place, in its time with the strength that it has and with the means at its disposal fulfills the words of God, brings His offerings in His hands, and He adds it to the entire building, all are servants of God. Hirsch is remarkable as the founder of 19th-century Neo-Orthodoxy and Judaism. In doing this, he articulated the role of nature as fulfilling its own law or Mitzvot just as humans have their covenantal law. In coming to this position, he was also responding to the modern reform movement that emerged in Judaism in the enlightenment period. In Reform Judaism, revelation in Torah was understood largely in the historical analysis of individuals, communities, and the times of the different writings in Jewish scriptures. Hirsch recognized that this modernist analysis was a reduction of the deeper religious implications of Torah. Writing from out of the pain of Jewish dispersion in exile, Hirsch saw the interiority of the human heart as a unique way of knowing that was different than critical analysis. Remarkably, he saw that revelation of the inner human heart as resonant with the interiority of created life namely with the subjectivity of creatures. Hirsch wrote, "As every living thing extends its image to your spirit, as it enters the human heart, the heartstrings respond as they do to the cry of pain which is heard throughout the entire creation, to all the voice of rejoicing that bursts forth from the mouth of a joyous soul." Hirsch handed on to those who continue orthodox reflections on Judaism and Ecology careful distinctions regarding the covenantal character of human to human relations and the integral connections of human to creatures. In this legacy, Hirsch translates that Genesis chapter 1 verses 26-28 not as "Dominion" or "Conquering" of nature. Rather, he sees Judaism as having an orienting vision and so he uses the word "Orienting" rather than dominion and so this orients this human earth vision towards the transactions in the natural world as exemplified by Adam in Genesis Chapter 2 verse 15 who protects and worries over nature. Hirsch's hope is that the human will not be placed in the role of Noah, that is, saving creatures from extinction. These orthodox reflections on human relations with the natural world continue in light of increasing awareness of the environmental costs of industrial extraction and economic emphasis on growth. Another prominent orthodox thinker, Joseph Dov Soloveitchik brought Jewish spirituality as corrective to what he perceived as a magnified glorification of humanity in industrial technology. He called for recovery of the Adam image in the Garden of Eden namely religious commitments to humility and courage to counter our ecological and existential crises. Judaism and Ecology continues to be a concern to such contemporary Jewish thinkers such as Larry Troster and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson. Rabbi Troster has carried orthodox Jewish thought into his reflections on the meanings of green faith and for our times, the sense of the implications of Jewish faith in the environmental greening. He has also been a leader in thinking through the implications of evolutionary cosmology and the ecological thought for Judaism. Professor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson of the Arizona State University has been the author and editor of major works on Judaism and Ecology. She explores for example the ongoing tension in Judaism between doctrines of creation and doctrines of Revelation as well as perspectives on feminism and Jewish environmentalism. We have used the concept of grounding in these discussions of religion and ecology to suggest that religion locates individuals and community inland, and here we see an ultimate expression of that in the remaining Western Wall of the temple and the outpouring of piety that is in this place-based setting. But we want to extend this understanding in the formation of Judaism in its continuation into the present that land biodiversity and expanded understandings of the community of life undergird and support these religious ecological implications. These place-based understandings that ground Judaism then are both ancient in the countryside of Israel and Palestine as well as in agricultural practices in Kibbutz pilgrimages to the Western Wall of the temple and labor on the land as covenantal relationships. One strand in Jewish environmentalism that needs to be considered is the Zionist turn towards establishing a homeland for Jews in the formerly Ottoman-ruled Palestinian territories. These sensitivities and sensibilities to the land are evident in such ancient settings as the Dead Sea where we know the Dead Sea Scrolls were located in caves along the shores of the Dead Sea and the Qumran communities that we now associate with the Dead Sea Scrolls obviously are interacting with these monumental landscapes and so also the setting of Masada and the resistance to Roman occupation in the eventual destruction of the temple in 70 of the current era that the Masada has itself become in the contemporary period a focus for this piety on the land that we're associating with Zionism, and embedded in these ideas then again is this connection with the land and agricultural practices. Zionism, as the 19th and 20th-century movement, brought renewed attention to the meaning of land in Judaism. While Zionism is primarily a secular development, we will consider several expressions that have religious implications and that open perspective on secular spirituality in the land in Judaism and Ecology. Zionism sought to reverse the alienation of Jews from the land. These restrictions with regard to land in Judaism had been set in place by the anti-Semitic laws, pogroms and historical prejudice during the centuries of diaspora from Israel and exile into the larger Mediterranean and European world. These movements deprived the Jews of ownership of land and the consequent transitions from rural to urban communities often involve Jewish communities in commerce, finance, and transport of goods. Three key features of the Zionist efforts to connect with land were returned to the homeland of Israel since it's central to understanding Zionism. But embedded in that, we also see a rejection of what Zionism described as the Rabbinic myth of Torah, so an effort to move from Revelation and scriptures to something in the land. Recovery of Jewish culture that would overcome the alienation from nature brought on by both the exile experience and the perceived biblical emphasis on divine transcendence. While secular Zionists figures such as Theodore Hertzl are seminal to the emergence of the state of Israel, these brief considerations today are three voices who brought religious and cultural issues to bear on Zionism namely Martin Buber, Aharon David Gordon, and Abraham Isaac Kook. Martin Buber represents a significant religious perspective on cultural Zionism. He moved from the covenantal legal obligation of Orthodox Judaism to a reinterpretation of direct covenantal relations with divine presence. His language for articulating this relationship has become seminal for many studies of religion and ecology that is Buber distinguished an "I-Thou" relationship with the world as direct and unconditional whereas an "I-It" relationship was seen as indirect, conditional, and functional. Buber proposed the "I-Thou" relationship as appropriate for personifying nature so as to re-establish the inherent rights of creatures and places. His word pairs, "I-Thou" and "I-It" explored existential polarities in which others whether, humans, or non-human, or divine were seen as mutually enhancing and not subsumed in universal or philosophical categories. Buber did not see the "I-It" relationship as totally negative, rather he felt it described modern industrial relationships with the world. Thus Buber acknowledged the usefulness of pragmatic and utilitarian interactions with the world as "I-It" relations but his effort marks one of the lineages of Zionism that attempted to put forward an inspiring perspective in which Jewish culture engage the world with more empathy than simply use relationships. Aharon David Gordon brought labor Zionism interconnection with a crisis of modernity as alienation from the natural world. In effect, Gordon made a religion of labor when he settled in Palestine in 1904 to work in agricultural settlements. Aharon David Gordon saw labor on the land as creating a new Jewish person and culture instead of traditional tourists study then, the proposed physical productive labor was seen as a way to become a partner of God in the process of creation. Rejecting secular forms of consciousness that he identified with modern technology and utilitarian productivity then, he saw labor as key. Gordon held that the experience of labor on the land would overcome the heresies of alienation from the land and isolation from God and the universe. Gordon saw the union of the worker with God as redeeming human nature by immersion in a universal nature experienced by labor on land. In these ways, Gordon presented a modern, radical, and spiritual environmental vision to counter the allure of the social Marx's emphasis on secular struggle. Finally, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, Abraham Isaac Kook brought Jewish Kabbalistic thought to bear on secular Zionism. Deeply immersed in religion, rabbi Kook was sensitive to the challenges of Zionism and articulated his own understanding of the negative effects of diaspora and exile and Jewish peoples. Returning to Israel and the establishment of the Jewish state were for rabbi Kook, the beginnings of spiritual renewal of energies lost over the centuries of exile. Kook also came to Ottoman Palestine in 1904 as Rabbi to Jaffa near agricultural settlements dedicated to secular zionist ideals. This defined his efforts throughout his life to bring cooperation among such diverse groups as labor and religious Zionists. In his work, the Lights of Holiness, Kook described a fourfold song in which one sings of self and another of the people, another of humanity, and of the fourth, he writes, "Then there is the one who rises to wider horizons, until she links herself with all existence, with all God's creatures, with all worlds, and she sings her song with all of them. It is of such a one as this that tradition has said that whoever sings a portion of song each day is assured of having a share in the world to come, and then there is the one who rises with all these songs in one ensemble, and they all join together their voices, and together they sing their songs with beauty, each one lends vitality and life to the other. They are sounds of joy and gladness, sounds of jubilation and celebration, sounds of ecstasy and holiness." Kook was able to accomplish this theological vision because he held that nature was the visible material expression of divine reality, and we can see in the Chagall image this bringing together of the human images and the symbols of Judaism with the natural world. Rather than collapsing nature into materialism, Kook argued that there was more to physical reality. For example, even though Zionists were secular, they were effectively reviving Jewish religious and cultural life. Through this renewal, rabbi Kook maintained the stunted spiritual life of the Jewish people throughout the world would be renewed. In these ways then, Zionism can be understood as having made significant contributions to the development of contemporary Judaism and Ecology. We see in these sections on orienting and grounding, ways in which the Jewish community has found the resources to both retrieve from the past its fundamental religious understandings of ecological relationships and move forward into new ways of renewing itself and its religious ecologies and religious cosmologies.
