Keywords

11.1 Introduction

This chapter explores the nature-based praxis found with Judaism, with a focus upon the Reform Jewish tradition and notably the work of Neil Amswych, the former Rabbi of the Bournemouth Reform Synagogue, now Rabbi in Sante Fe, New Mexico, USA. Bournemouth is a seaside town on England’s south coast in the county of Dorset. It is a town with a long and historic relationship with Judaism (Fox, 2021; JCR, 2005), although until this time, the relationship did not have an ecological focus. Rabbi Neil and Dr Christina Welch, a Religious Studies scholar, met through student visits which she organised as part of her undergraduate teaching at the University of Winchester, where she lectures. CW learnt about Rabbi Neil’s environmental work during these discussions and became involved in the eco-action plan he developed. Rabbi Neil moved to Santa Fe in New Mexico in 2014 where he is Rabbi of the Temple Beth Shalom, and a self-confessed eco-Rabbi. This chapter does not explore his environmental work in the USA—although he is currently writing a book on Jewish Environmental Theology—but sets the wider Jewish theological context for Rabbi Neil’s environmental and sustainability work when he was in Bournemouth (with Interfaith Dorset Education and Action (IDEA)) grounding it within global Jewish eco-action.

Judaism

Judaism is the oldest of the three monotheistic Abrahamic faiths, and as such Christianity and Islam both share many commonalities with Judaism. Judaism’s history is written in the fabric of the Hebrew Bible which describes its close relation with God, as well as the main personalities and prophets who shaped the early history of the Jewish people from their exile in Egypt, their Exodus to the Promised Land and then diasporic dispersal into Babylon following the destruction of their Temple, and later across the lands of the Mediterranean. Small Jewish groups came to the UK at the time of the Norman Conquest. As Christianity forbade lending money, as non-Christians, Jewish communities in Europe found themselves close to the centres of mercantile power and were able to act as financiers. In spite of this anti-Judaic attacks were common in medieval Europe, and in 1290 King Edward I expelled all Jewish people from England and they only returned in the seventeenth century when Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, sought finance to combat Catholic Spain’s hold on the New World (sizeable numbers of Jewish people had been expelled from Spain and they rapidly formed a diaspora across the Atlantic worlds into North America, the Caribbean and Brazil). Diaspora and movement emphasise the leitmotif of the Jewish experience. Those Jewish communities with roots in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in particular became known as Sephardic (oriental) Jews. Communities of displaced Jewish communities from the medieval German Rhineland emigrated eastwards into what is now eastern Europe and western Russia where they formed a ‘pale’ of settlement and a cultural life celebrated in popular literature (e.g. the film Fiddler on the Roof). These Ashkenazi communities were again subject to anti-Judaic violence and many emigrated to the UK and the Americas from the nineteenth century. Some six million mainly Ashkenazi Jewish men, women and children were murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War. Today there are around 15 million people who identify as being Jewish, of these some eight million live in the USA, five million in Israel and the remainder dispersed across the globe.

11.2 From an Idea to IDEA

In 2007, Rabbi Neil had an idea. He called together over 100 faith leaders from across Dorset, inviting them to consider climate change, and how the county’s religions could help its almost 410,000 residents to become more climate-conscious. After a slow start, IDEA (Interfaith Dorset Education and Action) was formed with a remit to educate and empower faith communities across Dorset; it had an explicitly strong environmental ethos. Indeed, so eco-aware was IDEA that in 2008 Rabbi Neil presented The Earth Charter (EC, 2001–2021; Rockefeller, 2010) to Bournemouth Council, which subsequently became the first UK authority to adopt it. As a result of this, Rabbi Neil was chosen as the UK representative invited to speak at that year’s Earth Charter’s global online conference, and in 2012, he was invited to contribute to UNESCO’s book on The Earth Charter (Amswych, 2012b).

Rabbi Neil didn’t stop with IDEA though. In 2009, he was an instrumental part of what eventually became The Big Green Jewish Initiative (Lubetkin, 2013), a Jewish environmental and social action group, and by the end of 2010, having called together the 400 faith communities in Dorset, he invited their leaders or representatives to help create The Big Green Believer’s Agreement, a predominantly Dorset-based interfaith call to action to help stop global climate change. It took a year of long and complex negotiations to agree on a final text of the Agreement, by its launch in November 2011, around 10,000 people were involved in its aims.

Having raised the consciousness of local people of various faiths, Rabbi Neil set about raising the ecological consciousness of Reform Jews across Britain. In 2010/2011 he helped the Movement for Reform Judaism, a movement covering 20% of all British Jews, create its own overarching sustainability plan and commit itself to work towards total carbon neutrality (JC, 2011; RJ:B, 2022; RJ:E&CC, 2022). Further, with Palm Oil cultivation a key driver of global warming through mass deforestation (UCS, 2013), in 2011 Rabbi Neil wrote an article in the national newspaper The Jewish Chronicle, which raised the issue of palm oil use in kosher food (Amswych, 2011). In brief, kosher is the name given to food (and beverages) that are permitted within Jewish dietary law, a law/lore rooted in history and religious traditions, and include preparation, processing and presentation, as well as what can and cannot be eaten and drunk (MJL:KF, 2002–2022).

Although Palm Oil is not listed anywhere as non-Kosher, the environmental ethos embedded in Judaism highlights the sustainability of resources, whilst its social focus calls for justice for all life, and as such using palm oil, which Amswych highlights as an unsustainable cash crop, can be perceived as non-halachic (against Jewish religious laws/lores). Not only does the slash-and-burn of forest to clear land in order to grow palm oil cash crops cause detestation to the local areas affecting air quality and reducing habitat for the creatures that live there, but it releases carbon into the atmosphere, which has a negative global impact. It was Rabbi Neil’s dedication to environmentalism and mitigating the effects of climate change, and his work with and through IDEA, that led to him being shortlisted for the UK National Climate Week’s ‘Most Inspiring Leader’ award in 2012. But why did Amswych decide to lead the fight on environmental and sustainability issues? Because he knew it was a moral issue for the planet and all that lived on/in it, and as a Rabbi (a Jewish teacher) and a man of faith, he needed to lead by example, and so to the Jewish theology that grounds his faith-based praxis.

11.3 Eco-Theology in Doctrine and Practice

Judaism is an ancient religion with rituals that still resonate with its pre-monotheistic roots (JVL:AJH, n.d.), many of which are based around the seasons and the needs of agricultural people such as Shavuot. This festival today celebrates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai as well as the summer grain harvest. It is cited as the Festival of Weeks in Exodus 34:22 and Deuteronomy 16:10, and the Day of First Fruits in Numbers 28:26, and was one of three pilgrimages when Jewish men would bring first fruits as offerings to God in the Temple. A later agriculturally based festival is Tu-Bishvat. Celebrated late January to mid-February depending on the year, with this festival the very almanac of Judaism echoes seasonality in its primarily lunar-solar calendar, with each new month starting with the new moon (JVL:JHF, n.d.). Tu-Bishvat is known as the new year of the trees and honours the Jewish law/lore of Orlah, the prohibition against eating fruit during the first three years of a tree’s life, and Ma’aser oni, the obligation to set aside a portion of crops for the poor; an implicit act of social justice. Today, many Jews hold a Seder, an ordered ritual meal, on Tu-Bishvat to honour the seasons and God’s created world, with some being more explicitly environmental in terms of symbolism and readings from the Torah, the Hebrew Bible and its commentaries (see Hazon, 2019a). Tu Bish’vat also fosters Jewish environmental action with calls for tree planting, and suggesting Jews decrease their use of materials that are made from trees by, for example, moving to using only recycled paper and/or using toilet paper made from more sustainable products such as bamboo.

Although brief and somewhat simplistic, Tu Bish’vat as a New Year festival has its roots in the Mishnah, the oral traditions of Judaism. It was one of four annual tithes where the Israelites would bring one-tenth of their fruits to the Ancient Temple in Jerusalem as an offering to God. Trees are symbolic in Judaism with the Torah often referred to as the Tree of Life (Etz Chaim) and there is a Biblical prohibition against destroying fruit trees in times of war (Deuteronomy 20:20) that ensures people can eat even during military sieges. By the Middle Ages, long after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70CE, Tu Bish’vat was no longer a ritual for the legal dating of trees, and by the sixteenth century, it had been reimagined into a holiday. The development of Tu Bish’vat was accomplished by ‘Isaac Luria Ashkenazi, the father of contemporary Kabbalah’ (Gilad, 2014); Kabbalah is a form of Jewish mysticism (Dennis, 2022). Central to Kabbalah is the concept of Tikkun Olam; Tikkun meaning healing or correction, and Olam, the world. According to Rabbi Luria, known as Holy Ari, Tikkun is the first commandment of Kabbalah as when God created the universe, God’s:

infinite power had to restrain itself to bring about the creation of a finite world..[and] the Divine essence chose to focus on…our earth [but]…the self-imposed contraction of power…proved too powerful for the world [and] sparks of divine light fell from the heavens into the lower realms, where the remain concealed in the material world of rocks, animals, and people…to restore the world to its original condition [humanity] must search for an gather the fragments. (Fenyvesi, 1998, 75)

This means that within Jewish understanding, every action for the good of nature is an action that helps repair the world (Tikkun Olam). Social action, practice, is, therefore, embedded in Jewish theology, doctrine.

The concept of Tikkun Olam is also embedded in numerous Jewish eco-educational programmes. Teva, for instance, aims to ‘fundamentally transform Jewish education through experiential learning that fosters Jewish, ecological, and food sustainability’ (Hazon, 2019b) in the USA. Founded in 1994, Teva has educational programmes for children and young people aged from 2 years of age to 17 years of age which include summer camps, day schools and resources that can be used in the classroom. The Heschel School in Toronto, Canada, founded in 1996, incorporates as part of its curriculum a teaching and learning garden. Environmentalism and ecological literacy are in effect centred at this educational establishment through the Torah prescription to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19) combined with the Jewish principle of Tikkun Olam which recreates the world, repairs damage and brings goodness to the world. By foregrounding gardening, the children learn about seasonality, the need to nurture to bring about and sustain life, and the requirement to share in the bounties of life; being stewards of their own garden brings about not only a deep understanding of Judaism as a spiritual way of life but of the world and all that is in it as Created and worthy of respect (Ijaz & Mawson, 2020, 118; 122).

Jewish theology, however, centres on respect for the Earth in more ways than one. The first of the Abrahamic religions, both Christianity and Islam, share with it the notion of divine creation, with God forming the Earth and also humanity. And in all three religions, humanity is mythically formed from the very substance of the Earth (the dust of the Earth, Genesis 2:7) and is charged with tilling and tending the Earth (Genesis 2:15). But not only is humanity divinely formed, humanity is told by God to be careful stewards of the Earth and all the creatures and plants with whom humanity shares the earth. Included in this stewardship is that humanity must take only what is necessary from the earth’s bounty and store only what would be needed (Bal Taschit), including for Shabbat; the day of rest (Exodus 16:4–5). Here the link between environmentalism and social justice is clear; excess hoarding is problematic for all creation with greed impacting not only on all those unable to enjoy the produce of their labours through some taking more than their fair share, but by hoarding what is naturally provided, others (humans and non-human animals) are denied sustenance, and this includes the creatures who by feasting on fallers, help keep the soil productive.

Although Shabbat is a day off working for humanity (in remembrance that Shabbat was a day off from Creation for God), animals must be continued to be cared for on this day (Exodus 20:10), even if that is one’s daily job (Neustadt, 2022). Animals must not be worked on Shabbat; it is their day of rest too. The land too has a Shabbat; every seven years it must be rested (Exodus 23:10–11). For Jews this is a commandment from God but on a practical level this ensures the soil remains productive (Belovski, 2022). As such, care of place, animals and people (so all of creation) is at the heart of Judaism and its ethics, with environmentalism, sustainability and social justice deeply embedded (Amswych, 2012a, 2012b; Tirosh-Samuelson, 2002; Troster, 2010, 255).

Given Judaism’s inherent eco-ethos, it is unsurprising that as well as Rabbi Amswych and his environmental work in England (both within his own faith community and in wider interfaith settings), there are many grassroots and more organised Jewish initiatives that have responded to help repair the world in our time of catastrophic global climate change. In America, The Adamah (Earth) Fellowship in North-western Connecticut, USA, is a multi-denominational Jewish foundation dedicated to sustainable and organic farming, and ‘constructing a meaningful connection with nature’ (Immergut, 2008). Urban Adamah in California, which grew out of the Connecticut initiative, operates on similar principles but has incorporated permaculture into its educative practice enhancing the food for all social justice remit, as well as the need to keep land healthy (Gazek, 2012).

These are just two of the many American grassroots Jewish farming projects that foreground social and ecological sustainability (Berndtson & Geores, 2014), but they can be found from Australia (SA, 2022) to Israel (RAC, 2022), and covering many types of responses to climate change (Shalev, 2022). Indeed, Dov Maimon of the Jewish People Policy Institute has suggested that responses to climate change could, and indeed should, be a unifying cause for Jews regardless of their denomination (2021); there are multiple denominations within Judaism from varying Hasidic groups, often known as Ultra-Orthodox, through Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Liberal, to secular Jews whose identity is ethnic rather than religious (Kunin, 2009). As people of Israel, Jews are bound as much by blood as they are by belief (by being Jewish, even non-practising Jews share a bond based around Jewish myth), and central to Judaism in all its denominations, and for Jews as individuals seeking to live a spiritual way of life, is care for people and all that live in or on the planet.

The beginning of the world as understood in Judaism (as noted above with the concept of Tikkun Olam) centres on this concept of care. Thus whilst humanity may have been expelled from the original paradise of Eden (Genesis 3), the story is one that does not find the Earth denigrated. Unlike Christianity with its concept of the Fall and Original Sin following the disobedience of Adam and Eve to God’s prohibition on eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Madueme & Reeves, 2014), sin in Judaism is accrued personally in two ways; through disobedience against God’s laws/lores (Bein Adam Lamakom) which can be atoned for annually at Yom Kippur, and by not behaving correctly to (sinning against) other people (Bein Adam L’chaveiro) (Tauber, 2022). Further, in a Jewish feminist reading of Genesis, rather than Eve being (mis)understood as the first sinner (in Christianity it is generally understood that Eve was tempted by an evil serpent to take the fruit and then pursued Adam to taste [sin] also, Genesis 3:1–24), Eve can be understood as the first scientist, testing the information given to her by the serpent in the Garden of Eden about the Tree (Kadari, 1999; Meyers, 2021).

As well as the importance of trees, as explored above, the Earth too is extremely important in Judaism. With humanity being made from dust, and at death returning to dust (Genesis 3:19), the intimate connections between the very soil humans live on (and grow produce in), and the stuff they are Biblically made of is clear; damage to the earth is damage to oneself (Watling, 2009, 127). And whilst the places Jews historically resided (notably Israel and the Sinai desert) are ones where it is more obvious that a utilitarian view of environmentalism is needed, regardless of any religious concerns, in Judaism it is clear that God resides in the wild spaces too (Watling, 2009, 125); in effect, whilst keeping one’s own land in good condition to ensure good harvests is sensible, looking after all the land everywhere is important to God, and thus should be important to God’s stewards on earth—humanity. In the Bible, it is clear that with the rights that humanity has been given as stewards of the planet (such as being able to work the land to make it productive), comes the responsibility to avoid selfishness and bring wanton harm or suffering to all else that lives on/in planet earth. So, although the Bible informs people that humanity must be fruitful and multiply (must populate the earth, Genesis 1:28), the commandment to steward the planet (Genesis 1:26) is not one of species depletion and habitat destruction through human overpopulation; celibacy, however, is not encouraged in Judaism (Diamond, 2007).

According to the Torah, the world as created was good (Genesis 1:31) and full of God’s presence, and thus it is only God who can bring about plagues, floods and droughts to destroy some of the world, and Biblically these are brought about to punish human wrongdoings (Genesis 9; Exodus 1; Isaiah 19). Regardless of human views on the justice of such acts, the mindset of God is beyond the scope of this chapter, but that these are written in the Torah as acts of justice, the topic of justice (Tzedek) is important to raise. Benstein (2014) in his essay about justice and land use is useful here. Humans are to act justly, and that means justice to both humans and other-than-humans. Rabbinic Judaism, for instance, states that water should not be an ownable resource and should be available to everyone and anyone including non-human creatures and plants (although humans collecting enough for their needs in cisterns is permitted).

Further, although land can be owned, the ‘landless are guaranteed a free food supply though the laws of gleaning’ (Benstein, 2014, 314; Leviticus 19:9–10, Deuteronomy 24:19–22). As such, all creation should have access to the resources they need to live, and the Noah’s Ark story (see Genesis 5) stressed this, when it comes to created living things, all creatures regardless of their usefulness to humanity were worthy of life according to this Biblical tale. The Song of Creation, properly known as Perek Shirah, stresses this concept (Sefaria.org. n.d.). Composed c.1000 CE, it is an ancient text whose author is lost to history. It is not part of Jewish liturgy but contains many Biblical verses and at least one from the Talmud; the primary source of Jewish religious law (Halakha) and a guide for daily observant life comprising the Mishnah (written collection of Oral traditions), and the Gemara (Rabbinical analysis of the Mishnah). Perek Shirah talks of the heavens as the handiwork of God, and that all that dwell on and in the Earth are created. It speaks of the land being founded with wisdom and that all things that grew in it should not be needlessly destroyed (taking growing things for food is of course permissible).

Although as with all ancient religions, there is a utilitarian thrust in ensuring that land and working animals are properly cared for (including being given rest to recuperate) as this guaranteed continued productivity, Judaism affirms the right to a good/appropriate life for all creation. This arguably utilitarian background has stood Judaism well; their ancient ways of doing things are earthed in generation upon generation of practice, and rituals continue to echo the religion’s agricultural religious roots. This is perhaps most evident in the triumvirate relationship between God, the people and the land (specifically the land of Israel) where the people are judged through the land. If they are good, God rewards them with rains and bountiful crops, but if not, then their crops fail (see Deuteronomy 11:13–17; Jeremiah 11–20). As such, it is perhaps of no surprise that one Rabbi has proposed a New Year for the Animals, calling for a day to match Tu Bish’vat where Jews can rethink who they are in relation to non-human animals, and realign how they all treat non-human animals, which is often far too frequently not as it should be (Wittenberg, 2020).

11.4 Israel: People and Place

Although all creation is important in Judaism, arguably the most important of human places is Israel. This chapter will not enter into the politics of the State of Israel, but it is important to note that Israel is the name not only of a physical place, but importantly for the people (past, present and future), that are now known as Jews. Israel is the Jewish national homeland, and its landscape is embedded in Jewish history, culture, religion and identity. Israel was the home to the First and Second Temples, and was the Promised Land to the Jewish people when they were in exile (Neusner, 2000, 8). However, the Jewish Covenant with God specifies the people of Israel (people who are descended from Jacob) rather than Israel the place, and the Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, closes by asking for peace upon all the people of Israel (MJL:K, 2002–2022). But as Schweid has argued ‘the idealization of [Israel the people has also] culminated in [the] absolute spiritualization’ of Israel the place (2009: 538). As such, although there is a long history to Jewish environmentalism, especially in America (Jacobs, 2002), exploring Jewish environmentalism in Israel will cement the inherent link between people and place when exploring Judaism, as it is a country where, although officially secular, government policy and grassroots action frequently has a theological bent.

There are many charities and grassroots organisations in Israel dedicated to environmental issues, including the topic of tackling climate change (RAC, 2022), and there are also centres of education that incorporate environmentalism in their curriculum (Gerstenfeld, 2001, 10). At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), 120 Israelis including scientists, educators, activists and clerics attended; many of these were Jews although the country includes peoples from a variety of faiths. The Israeli delegation brought their inter-disciplinary approach to understanding and addressing global climate change and its consequences (Leichman, 2021). They noted that, for example, the Israeli government’s Environment Minister is working with the Organisation for Co-operation and Development (OECD) on climate change issues, and that leading Jewish environmentalists have called for legal frameworks in the country to co-ordinate cabinet ministries in combating climate change, notably by reducing emissions targets combined with an increase in the use of renewable energy.

There is also a move in Israel to establish joint projects on waste treatments and cross-border water pollution, and work internationally in the region to advance water solutions for decreasing desertification (Bassist, 2022). A recent article in The Times of Israel noted that by the turn of this century, temperature rises combined with land degradation and sea level rises could severely affect food production, water availability and even make swathes of the African continent un-liveable. The potential outcomes of such severe environmental problems are catastrophic with both political turmoil, and climate migration strong likelihoods (Surkes, 2021). And whilst it may seem, in the wake of impending doom, that individuals can do little, in Judaism it is clear that theologically every little action helps. This can be seen in that traditionally, people living outside Israel have donated money for trees to be planted in Israel at Tu Bish’vat; although noticeably, recently this practice has shown to be environmentally damaging and detrimental to the country’s natural eco-system and Jews outside Israel and now encouraged to plant trees (or pay for trees to be planted) in areas where they will do the most environmental good (Shofet, 2020). As people learn more about the planet and the impact of human actions as stewards of it, human actions can and do change, and as with Amswych’s idea, small actions can develop into bigger plans and bring about change on a broader scale. Thus, with Judaism’s inherent eco-theology, doctrine can support praxis and allow the Jewish people and work with nature and the planet as a whole.

11.5 Conclusion

This chapter has explored the role that Judaism as a spiritual way of life can play in environmentalism and sustainability. It has highlighted the Biblical emphasis on social justice in regard to nature and the environment, historically the utilitarian approach to the land and to animals that ensured productivity which plays out in the Jewish festivals such as Shabbat and Tu Bish’vat. It has noted the many grassroots initiatives that draw on the Kabbalistic concept of Tikkun Olam (healing the world) that bring this connection with the natural world into action, through educational programmes for children and young adults, to permaculture courses that are helping to make the desert green, and highlighted the role that Israel as a country has in governmental approaches to climate change.

Primarily though this chapter has focussed on the IDEA developed by Reform eco-Rabbi Neil Amswych who led an interfaith initiative in Dorset, England, to encourage people in the county and beyond of faith or no-faith to be more eco-conscious, he even managed to get organisations to sign the pledge to think more about nature, the climate and sustainable living and working, when developing policies. Amswych developed IDEA because Judaism is inherently eco-focussed, and as a Rabbi, his faith informs his actions. In Judaism, eco-doctrine supports eco-practice, and that for Jews globally being Jewish means taking their role as stewards of the Earth seriously. It also means they can support others in this goal, for Tikkun Olam means healing the whole world and all that live in it or on it.