Rabbi Josh Ratner or it's so nice to have you here this afternoon and we're delighted for our students to get to know a little bit more about Judaism and ecology but first let me say a few words about you and your background we share a Columbia background don't we in terms of education, and you were an undergrad, and then you also did a law degree there. Yes. Then went on to the Jewish Theological Seminary in the same area, so that was many years. Quite a few 12 years in Morningside New York. Well, tell us first why you went from law school and practicing law to back to rabbinical school. Great well first it's a real honor and treat for me to get to be here today and speaking with you and speaking to your students, so thank you for the opportunity. I was a practicing lawyer for about five years and a lot of what animated me to want to go into law, sense of trying to pursue justice and help the under-privileged didn't really manifest itself in the work that I was doing coming out of law school and I felt a disconnect between the work I was doing at the law firm I was at, from my religious life as well and so those two pieces first the work not being as fulfilling as I thought would be and secondly the bifurcation between religious identity and professional identity knot at me and over a course of a couple of years I realized that I needed to pursue a different path and hopefully achieve similar goals, but that I could do so from becoming a rabbi. That's great and also for our students and others you went to JTS, Jewish Theological Seminary which is a conservative seminary great seminary. My grandfather taught at Columbia, and he was a founder actually at the National Conference of Christians and Jews many years ago. Tell us, there's Orthodox, there's conservative, there's reform and so what is conservative just briefly in terms of practice. Sure, ideologically in between reform and orthodox so what Conservative Judaism tends to believe is that traditional approaches to Jewish law, Jewish textual study matter but don't necessarily hold a veto when modern issues come to the fore. There's an embrace of our tradition, but also eyes open to present realities and different societal needs and in a balancing and the weighing of those two together. Whereas reformed tends to embrace modernity and individual autonomy to pick and choose what practices one wants to have. Orthodoxy tends to believe that tradition has more of a veto on what we can do that what has been written down is what is, and we don't really deviate from it, so Conservative Judaism is a flexible space between those two positions. Right. Actually, Ismar Schorsch, a past Chancellor of JTS was a great proponent of Judaism and ecology and when we first went there to engage some of the faculty they were some of the first to participate in the Harvard conferences, so we have a lineage here to fulfill. Let's begin with the question that everybody struggles with about Genesis and the Hebrew Bible and there's Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 until on. But the argument as you know and our students know is Lynn White wrote a controversial piece in 1967, he was a historian of technology. It was published in Science Magazine, and he said, ''Well this Dominion thing is a problem for Judaism and Christianity'', and in fact, he was laying at the feet of these traditions some of the blame of our environmental crisis not all. But let's have you give your sense, both textually and how this has been understood in the Jewish tradition, the issue of dominion in Genesis. Sure, so a couple of things I'd like to share first in Genesis 1 whether there is discussion of dominion over the birds and the fish. In the Jewish tradition, it's not usually treated quite as literally as Lynn White makes it out to be. The notion of dominion is always coupled with a sense of responsibility and obligation. There are Rabbinic teachings that say that if initially Adam and by application humanity acts the way that God wants us to act in terms of our relationship to the natural world then it will be deserving of dominion which means some oversight capacity. If we don't act as God would want us to act, if we don't act in a morally correct manner then we will not have that Dominion. The dominion wasn't understood in terms of the rabbinic imagination is something that's absolute, it's something that's earned by way of the conduct of the effectuate towards nature. But the second point which I think is a little bit broader and maybe even more important is that in the Jewish tradition, Genesis 1 is always balanced by Genesis 2, the two can't be read in a vacuum from one another, and Genesis 2-15 where there's the notion of Adam and Eve being told to till and to tend the garden Shomrei casts a different valence over this notion of our relationship with the natural world in that, yes we are able to access the world. Judaism doesn't accept asceticism from nature but stewardship, guardianship are imperative in understanding what that relationship looks like and so there's no room for exploitation of nature, there's no room for pure consumption without consequence. Any consumption has to be taken from the perspective of stewardship and so there's always a longer-lasting relationship. That's a little bit on my response to how Judaism looks at Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Right. Just a little follow-up to that, some people would say, we're moving from dominion to stewardship just as you've said, a more creative and constructive understanding of the passage but also relationship to nature broadly speaking for all these traditions. There's some however who also say in both Judaism and Christianity, well stewardship sounds a little human-centered anthropocentric, and maybe we need to move beyond that even. I don't know if you have a response to that. Sure. I won't speak to religions generally even though I enjoyed getting a bachelor's in comparative religion. It's been a little while, so I'll stick with my comfort zone. Judaism I think expresses an important counterbalance to the Western notion of property rights that I think is part and parcel of Lynn White's critique. The Western notion one can own property and have total control over what one does with that ownership. It's one of the Lockean and inalienable rights that comes out of the enlightenment. Judaism that's never really been an approach that's been embraced. I will start with the natural world being gods and where God places us in a position to be custodians. To be chaperones, to be stewards. But not to control, not to own, it's not ours in some deep intrinsic way and I think that is a really important check on the anthropocentric perspective on our relationship to nature. If it's not ours to begin with, then we need to be extra careful with how we utilize it. Right, so it's the creator bestows on us this role. Right. Yes. Thank you. Now moving towards the present circumstances, many Jewish families have a wonderful Friday evening celebration of Shabbat and the day of rest and a special gathering of their family and food and lighting of the candles and prayers and so on. Can you tell us maybe how your own family or other families are incorporating this sensibility of the environment of care for creation into their Shabbat practices? Sure. There are many different theories into what Shabbat is or what it can be. But one of the ones that I find most compelling is that it's about finding comfort and acceptance with what we have. A lot of the religious laws pertaining to Shabbat have to do with preparations prior to Friday evening so that when Friday evening sets in and then throughout the day. Saturday until Saturday evening, you already have prepared for you what you need for that 24-25 hour period of time and so that you can enjoy what you have without needing to create a new. This notion of cessation from creation which is obviously part of the biblical notion of six days God creates the world and seventh day God rests is a key component I think to watch about can be. I'll speak briefly about how that relates to environmentalism and then also how we encapsulate that with my family. I think if we can find a way to pause from the Western imperative to constantly create. If you look at Western economic models it's always about growth, growth, and more growth. Shabbat is a counter-cultural response to that saying, sometimes it's okay to say enough, and let's enjoy what we have instead of needing to produce more. I think that's a gift that Judaism can bestow upon all humanity in the sense that it's healthy to take a little break from consumption, production, growth and to enjoy the bounty what we have. How do we do that at home? A lot of it has to do with unplugging from technology, it has to do with for example not checking emails, not doing work, it's much easier nowadays to do work on the day of rest than it was when you had to go into an office to do it. It's right there at your fingertips quite literally, so a lot of it is unplugging. A lot of it also has to do with the preparations that I do and spring and summer when it's possible with my family we will do that as well. I take my five-year-old daughter, so I'll take her to a CSA community support agriculture farm near our house, and we go picking for tomatoes and pick up our produce on Friday afternoon and bring it home and prepare it, so we have actually farm to table eating on Friday night which is a really nice way to connect to nature. A lot of it is doing that prep work and showing my family that prep work and then teaching them sometimes reluctantly that here's what we have for the next 24-25 hours. This is all you're going to get so don't complain too much about it. But teaching them the value that we can live with what we have, and we don't always need to run to the market or go someplace else to get more than we can actually be satisfied with what we have. Yeah. So they wouldn't maybe watch television either or. In an ideal world, it's a negotiation, it's always conservativism if there's a given take, it's more in traditional modalities, so we're somewhere in that mix. Yes, and this notion of tradition and modernity is so central isn't it to this adaptation of all of these traditions but in particular to the ecological crisis, the social justice issues that have been your concern as well. I love the de-plugging from email, of course, we all need a lot of that, and before we go to some other questions, it strikes me, the people encyclical is really putting together this concern that we share for social justice and so on and for the environment. Eco justice for example or integral ecology it's being called and all the traditions are responding very strongly to that. I don't know if you have a comment about this ecology and justice coming together. Absolutely. In terms of Jewish law, there aren't often real clear delineations of here's environmental justice, here's labor rights, here's this and that. They're all combined together in different ways. It's not as compartmentalize and easy to get at, but there's certainly is an understanding that a lot of Jewish texts and Jewish laws that have to do with the rights of the poor, they have to do with the rights of the marginalized, apply equally any environmental lens. There also a whole series of laws having to do with what we would in contemporary legal parlance call public nuisance about limitations on what tannery's and other early medieval factories could do in terms of how noxious odors and other pollutants impacted neighbors. You could only have a tannery if you had enough space around you, where there is one to their houses nearby. I really enjoy that aspect of my tradition that going back hundreds if not thousands of years was attuned to this notion of we can't just do what we want with what we have and not care about the consequences to those around us. This notion of public space, public greeneries, and a shared space that can't be taken over by anyone to the detriment of others I think is important in conjunction with other texts we have about. Sense of the commons. Yes. A sense of the commons and a sense that time we together. In the agricultural society in which treason emerged there are a lot of laws in the Hebrew Bible about leaving the certain portions of your fields ungleaned so that the poor can take from them and a sense that that's an inherent part of what it means to be in a society that it's again not all private ownership to do with what you want that you have an obligation to those less fortunate to leave some for them and their protection. Right, and the Kibbutzim in Israel would illustrate that common care in a community sensibility right, for the land, and for the people. Absolutely.
