Delve into the subsoil of Judaic values

The Obama administration appears serious about confronting looming environmental crises, especially global warming and resource depletion.

But political and technological adjustments may well not be enough to confront humanity’s ecological challenges. Fundamental personal lifestyle changes, particularly in our Western materialistic values and consumer-oriented ways, may be necessary. 

Such profound changes, whether dictated by prudence or disaster, will ultimately prove as much spiritual in character as political and economic.

This forthcoming week, including the holiday, Tu B’Shevat and the Torah portion, Beshalach, presents a particularly apt time to inquire whether there is a Jewish environmental ethos to which we should hearken.

Tu B’Shevat, the new year of the trees, has recently begun to develop environmental overtones. Like many Jewish holidays, it is tied to the natural calendar and so lends itself to ecological interpretation.

In classical Judaism, it had marked the calendar date from which to calculate fruit tithing.  Later, the Kabbalists developed a Tu B’Shevat seder, a spiritual ceremony relating to the fruition of the Tree of Life here on Earth.

In modern Israel, Tu B’Shevat became a day of tree planting as the chalutzim (pioneers) sought to reclaim the environmentally ravished land. Communal action was related to ecological change.

Now, environmentally-concerned Jews are trying to engraft environmental meanings onto the contemplative format of the seder or through communal environmental activities.

But often such contemporary actions merely echo secular issues in a Jewish communal context rather than delving into the subsoil of genuine Judaic values.

Psalm 104 praising the glories of Creation is already traditionally read on Tu B’Shevat. This holiday of the trees and Tree of Life should now be reconceived to imbue an ethic of responsibility to Creation, just as the Pesach seder has taught our responsibility for liberation and justice.

This week’s Torah reading, Beshalach (Ex. 13:17- 18:16), calls out for us to question our materialistic lifestyles and consider spiritual alternatives.

At the beginning of Beshalach, Pharoah has let the Israelites go, and they are about to enter the wilderness in their journey back to the land of their forebears.

But after generations of slavery, they lacked the communal wherewithal and individual resilience to live as a self-governing people. God, therefore, chose to lead them on a roundabout route through the desert, during which progress they would be honed by austerity and would acquire the discipline their survival as a culture would demand.

Among the attributes lacking was an appreciation for the full breadth of a meaningful existence beyond a cramped notion of purely material existence.

Despite twice having been saved by God in the exodus and the parting of the sea, they had not yet come to trust in the spiritual grounding of their existence.

In the face of seeming hardship, they soon called out to return to the bread and fleshpots they had known as the crux of their existence as slaves in Egypt.

Then the miracles of manna and quail occurred, and they discovered means of subsisting even in the harsh conditions of the wilderness. More importantly yet, they experienced the first Sabbath and learned, as Deuteronomy taught concerning this experience, that “man does not live on bread alone.” (Deut. 8:3)

Manna appeared each morning with the dew, and they were able to collect it in sufficient amounts to meet their needs. On the seventh day, however, they were instructed for the first time to observe a respite from their work.

They were not to gather manna but rather found that the manna they gathered on the sixth day sufficed for the seventh as well.  Manna gathered on the seventh day or quails eaten in greed (Num. 8: 4-34) rotted or overly sated.

Their first lesson regarding survival in the austerity of the wilderness was that the measure of material wellbeing was one of sufficiency and no more.

Further, the essence of a fuller existence than as mere slaves was in a respite from material appetites and rather to be satisfied by spiritual fulfillments, the breadth of which would soon be revealed at Sinai.

Thus the ecological ethos of Judaism which we confront this week is that the fullness of existence may be achieved not in material satiety, but with simple sufficiency. In a time of material challenge — or at any time for that matter — compensation, indeed fulfillment, is to be found in spiritual aspects of life. 

In this era of restructuring our lives to new ecological realities as well, our truest satisfaction will be found, not in continued material accumulation, but in a revitalized spiritual practice appropriate to our times and challenges. We must tap our Judaism to play a critical role in future ecological reform.

Peter Goldberg is a member of Congregation Shir Hadash, where he co-chaired the congregation’s Shmittah/environmental committee last year. He works as a criminal defense lawyer with the Wisconsin Public Defender.