Eco-Judaism: The Torah Mandala and the Mystical System of Sustainability

By Rabbi Elisheva Brenner

In the Torah “holiness” is part of an idiosyncratic way of understanding how the cosmos came into being, our place in it (cosmogony) and the nature of reality (epistemology). To our ancient ancestors, the cosmos, the physical world as we experience it, all life was brought about by “the word of G-d.” Today we would regard “the word of God” as a metaphor for the energies, forces, karma, particle and wave plus the energy of human consciousness that concentrates, compresses, expands and contracts into what we experience as the physical and spiritual world. When the energies of life are in properly balanced, albeit dynamic, homeostasis, the life system has achieved a state of sustainability. In Torah-speak, that homeostasis, that sustainability, is called “Holiness.” The parts of the system as well as the objects, actions and time intervals used to maintain and correct the system are called “Holy.”

courtesy of mru-rosa, Flickr

We can find our way into the Torah’s way of understanding through the study of language and literary structural forms. Language is a window onto the way a people or culture perceives reality. It both arises from and reifies a culture’s epistemology. Biblical Hebrew is a language that for the most part, is made out of verbs and verb roots. This lets us know that our ancient Hebraic ancestors experienced reality as something in constant motion–even nouns and predicate adjectives are made out of verb roots–they represent motion in repose. In Torah, holiness/sustainability is a living system of systems just as we humans are living systems of systems. Each component of the system – humans, the Earth, nature, time intervals and the Godfield – are all in recursive relationship with every other part of the system. We humans are energy movers, drawing down from and sending up to the Divine source, and sending out to and receiving from other people, other life forms and the living Earth. The holiness system is in constant flux, needing to be balanced and corrected by human action.

Just as the systems of the human body exist in a structural form, so the cosmic system has a structural form. When we study the Torah according to its own ancient literary conventions, we find that just as the universe was spoken into existence, so the written words of Torah form a pictogram of the cosmos–a 3-D mandala made of words. The holiness/sustainability message is so central that it sits in the eye of the mandala, in the Holiness Code of Leviticus!

I first became interested in mandala form and the tendency of the human mind to “mandalize” visual memory in another forum… psychology. I did a master’s in counseling psychology at an Evangelist college in Atlanta, Georgia while I was in rabbinical school. That school did a lot of research on the integration of spiritual and religious parameters into the various psychological theories. It seemed to me then that the mandala, particularly the four-quadrant mandalas of Jungian psychology, related more to the horizontal dimensions of psychological geometry—they didn’t really model the “quest” dimensions of the psyche as well as some other models.

Our Hassidic rabbis psychologized cosmology in a way that addressed both dimensions. The four worlds model of Hassidut gives us a vertical dimension—every soul receives energy influxes from above to below and we “quest” from below to above as we elevate our consciousness toward the most abstract realm of communion with the Godfield. We express those energies in the world horizontally by way of what Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak called “talents.” Today we would call them personality traits. I brought Hassidut into my own research on personality theory and interpersonal psychology, and there it was—a mandala! The details of years of research aside, I eventually realized that this three-D geometry keeps repeating – in psychology, in chemistry, in nature, in halakhic reasoning and in Torah.

My final halakha project for ordination was about kosher meat. That brought me to reconsider many of my preconceptions about the sacrifices. For the first time (I admit), I really got into Leviticus. That interest continues to this day and informs my work and life as a rabbi. I read and reread works by Jacob Milgrom, Mary Douglas, and eventually, Moshe Kline. Those scholars in particular made me aware of how various literary structural forms used in Torah also reflect the cosmonology and epistemology of our ancient Hebraic ancestors. Those scholars convinced me that I, like so many others, kept imposing a Western linear reading on an archaic document.

New understanding brought many changes in my life. Take the way I pray, for example. I used to davven the traditional way. Now, I sit on the floor in a meditative pose with my coccyx, spine and head forming the vertical axis, the “quest” dimension, and the fringes of my tallit spread out in four directions. I imagine my head as the eye of the mandala. The tzitzit represent the mitzvoth and ethical commandments by which I interact with the world. I visualize myself as a mandala anchored by my vertical axis within the greater mandala of the cosmos. As I meditate, I focus on balancing my spiritual energies. On Shabbat I love to “travel” out of the physical world up to watch the angels doing the first “Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh (Holy, holy, holy),” praising the eternal sustainability of God, alone. I then go out of linear time to watch our people rejoicing after they, we, cross the Sea of Reeds. The energy field is very different in the Earthly realm.

It has also affected how I regard my work. My husband, Aleph Rabbi Dr. Hersh Saunders, and I started the Center for Eco-Judaism a few years ago. We farm and ranch on 415 acres in Southern Colorado. For both of us, our Jewish spirituality is expressed and reinforced through our interaction with the land and the growing and processing of our food. I imagine that this land is much like the land our ancestors encountered. Our actual experience here, along with our study of historical, climatic, and archeological information from the ancient world also changed our understanding of much of the Torah and inform the Eco-Judaism courses we teach.

If you are interested in the ideas I have laid out above, I invite you to study with me at the Aleph Kallah this coming July, in the week-long course titled “Eco-Judaism: The Torah Mandala and the Mystical System Of Sustainability.”

I am teaching this in the hope that it will invite other Torah students to join me in developing Eco-Judaism as a way of life. For it to be rich and compelling we need midrash, commentary, praxis, and responsa. There is a lot of room for creative thought and collaboration, here. As the saying goes, “iron sharpens iron.” The synergy of our collective mind will, no doubt, take us places we might never go alone.

Complicated as the individual channels of study may seem, it all gets fairly simple when it comes together. So, I will close with this quote from Pirke Avot V:27:

Effort is its own reward. We are here to do, and through doing to learn; and through learning to know; and through knowing to experience wonder; and through wonder to attain wisdom; and through wisdom to find simplicity; and  through simplicity to give attention; and through attention to see what needs to be done.

Rabbi Elisheva Brenner, JD, LPC, NCC, is executive director of the Center for Eco-Judaism in Pueblo, Colorado, a 415-acre farm, ranch, nature conservancy, and worship,research and teaching facility, and co-founder of Eco-Glatt, Inc. For more information, visit www.centerforecojudaism.com.

With All Your Heart, With All Your Soul, With All Your Might

“With all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might”. This is my mantra. Not because I am a person who davens three times a day reciting this phrase from its original source in the Sh’ma, but simply because I think it’s beautiful. Imagine a world in which we dedicated our whole selves to every mitzvah we preform, every fleeting thought we have. In a gemara in the tractate of Brachot, the Rabbis expound upon each of these segments: “With all your heart” they explain as what Freud might call the “id”—that is the most instinctual, animalistic parts of ourselves, “with all your soul” refers to our actual life, and “with all your might” commonly refers to our physical possessions. I strive preform every action with all my heart, soul, and might whether it’s loving God as the original texts indicates, loving a friend or a stranger as some scholars interpret, doing a project at work, or even something as mundane as grocery shopping (I said strive!). (more…)

Shmita: Weaving Relational Threads

Yigal Deutscher, Manager of the Shmita Project

The tribes of Israel have just gathered together, am echad b’lev echad, one nation with one synchronized heart, in alignment and in unity. They have just stood, in deep humility, in awe, in trepidation, witnessing and receiving a divine gift.

They have emerged from the brokenness of slavery; they have traveled through the wilderness for 50 days, only to stand together in this moment, before a mountain covered in fire, topped with thundering clouds, shimmering with lightning, rippling with the sounds of the Shofar. 1o utterances have emerged from the heart of creation; 10 utterances so clear and powerful that the tribes could actually see & feel each of them, as they echoed from the mountain, from the sky, from the ground and rock and sand below their feet, and from within their own beating hearts. (more…)

The Sabbatical Debt Release

By Yigal Deutscher

www.strikedebt.org

In the third and final mention of Shmita in the Torah, the concept of Shmita expands to directly influence economic and monetary systems. Until now (sources in Shemot & Vayikra), Shmita texts have been specifically in reference to land, agricultural practices, and annual harvests. Here, with the text of Devarim, the picture and implications of the Shmita Year is complete: Along with the practices of leaving land fallow, opening private lands as commons, collectively sharing the harvest, we are also to synonymously forgive debts. Once the Seventh Year arrives, all loans which are outstanding are released and all debts are cancelled. Here are some thoughts to consider regarding this practice (see the full text here):

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Review of “God’s Prayer: The Sacred Task of Living,”

“Why doesn’t God speak to people any more?” my five year old asked me the other day, after a few months of learning the stories of Genesis in her kindergarten. After all, God seemed to have so much to say to our ancestors. Why has He fallen so quiet lately?  A philosopher friend at our Shabbat table who heard the question answered her, “Maybe God does still talk to people, but not in the way that He used to.”

Perhaps an even more interesting question is, “what would God say today if He were to talk to people?” Would God criticize school children for the insufficient length of their blouse sleeves? Or weigh into the debate on whether public transport should run on Shabbat in Israel? Or perhaps offer an omniscient opinion regarding which presidential candidate was really best aligned with the interests of Israel and the Jewish people? Would God, in other words, talk about the sorts of things that we talk about?

Michael Kagan, in his important and powerfully-written new book, ‘God’s Prayer’, thinks not.  ‘God’s Prayer’ begins with a cry of anguish at the suffering and destruction that human beings are wreaking on Creation. “My Creation cries out to me. It is in pain…The cry of the Adamah has reached my ears… My precious Garden has been raped. The rivers have been diverted, the orchards ploughed over, the mountains dug through…” Michael Kagan’s God rails against the deafness of human beings; despite all of the prophets, sages and teachers that God has sent, we seem impervious to instruction. We continue to pollute and despoil the Earth even though we should know better.

God’s Prayer might be called a book of interfaith ecological prophecy. In a series of powerful chapters, the author addresses, in turn, the adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, excoriating them for their failures to live up to God’s hopes and their religion’s highest teachings. The section addressed to us Jews does not make comfortable reading but it is hard to deny the truth in it. The Jewish people suffered and died for God’s Word for millennia. Now we have returned battered, but not broken, to our land, what are we doing?  Are we communicating God’s wisdom to the world or are we preoccupied with trivialities (or worse)? Are we treating our cherished and prayed-for land with love, or are we trashing it? What was the point of our painful history? “Are you prepared to have died for nothing?” demands God. (Christians and Muslims come in for similar treatment. Let us be clear: neither Michael Kagan nor God is a self-hating Jew.)

Shabbat is at the center of the message that the Jewish People has carried through history. But it is not enough now simply to keep Shabbat, charges God’s Prayer. “Shabbat is love, loving and lover….”"the time has come to live Shabbat! The time has come to be the Shabbat.”

The book has forewords written by three distinguished religious leaders, Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi, Founder of Jewish Renewal, Rev. Richard Cizik, President of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, and Ghassan Manasra, a renowned Sufi teacher in Israel. Impressively, each testifies that the book says something powerful and relevant to their faiths.

One remarkable feature of ‘God’s Prayer’ is that that it claims to be God’s Prayer. Kagan would answer my five year old that yes, in fact God does still speak to people. And here I should add that Michael Kagan is a good friend of mine. He lives just down the road in Jerusalem. Michael has a Phd in Chemistry, a couple of post-docs, more than a dozen scientific patents to his name and he co-founded a string of high-tech and clean-tech companies, a number of which have been very successful. He is not a flaky guy. How, then, should one understand his description of the introduction of the revelatory experience that led him to write the book?

Is this a work of prophecy in the sense that Maimonides speaks of prophecy, as a state that will rest on those who achieve intellectual and spiritual perfection? Is it an instance of the Talmudic statement “From day of the destruction of the Temple, prophecy was given over to children and madmen?” (Bava Batra 12a)  I can personally testify that Michael, though a very fine person, is not perfect and neither is he a madman. Rather, if you need to locate this book, place it somewhere between New Age, where God speaks to people regularly, Jewish Renewal, and the contemporary spiritual revival in Israeli Religious Zionism. Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi puts like this in his foreword:
“In the Mutuality of the Mutuality that exists when people pray to the living God we all receive a response. Often we repress it. Just like the person who speaks to someone on the telephone and before they can get an answer, they hang up. Michael Kagan did not hang up. He made himself available to take down an answer, which he shares with us.”

Ultimately, categorization doesn’t matter so much. You put the book down thinking that if God were to speak to people today then this is the sort of thing He might well say. Most importantly, God’s Prayer leaves you wanting to be a better person, which is the most reliable indicator of true spiritual teaching.

“God’s Prayer” is an important contribution to the renewal of Jewish ecological thought. Too much of what passes as Jewish environmental teaching has consisted of cherry-picking Jewish texts and sources in search of justification for political views that we antecedently hold. Arguably, we still await a Jewish environmental theology that listens deeply to the breadth of relevant sources and lets them speak on their own terms. Meanwhile, Michael Kagan has given us one by listening deeply to the insistent inner stirrings of his soul.

‘God’s Prayer’ written by Michael L. Kagan, published by Gaon Books, 2012
Review by Yedidya Sinclair

Genesis and Human Stewardship of the Earth

Jewcology is a diverse platform for Jewish environmental activists to learn from each other in order to educate Jewish communities about our responsibility to protect the environment.

Hazon is excited to share these resources with you! We provide and promote ways to relate Jewish learning and Jewish teaching to environmental action and sustainability efforts.

By Rabbi Yonatan Neril[1]

The first two chapters of Genesis contain teachings with profound relevance for ourselves and our world today. After creating Adam and Eve, G-d blesses them, saying “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”[2] What does it mean for humans to subdue the earth and have dominion over other creatures?

One of the central precepts of Rabbinic Judaism is that the Written Torah must be understood within the context of the 2,300 year-old rabbinic tradition (including the Midrash and other works) that interprets it. While on the surface the words of this verse appear to give people license to degrade and subdue the earth, the Oral tradition makes clear that a wholly different message is being conveyed.

The Midrash teaches, “Rabbi Chanina said, ‘if he [the human being] merits it then [G-d says] have dominion, while if he does not merit, then [G-d says] he will be taken down.’[3] This teaching links human dominion of creation to humanity’s righteousness: if humanity merits through its righteousness, then it shall rule over nature. But if it does not merit because it does not act in an upright fashion, then humanity itself will descend and not be granted rulership over nature.

Another Midrash makes clear that part of human righteousness involves being stewards of the earth. The Midrash says that G-d showed Adam around the Garden of Eden and said, “Look at my works! See how beautiful they are — how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.”[4] Acting righteously thus involves treating the world with utmost respect; for this the human will merit dominion of creation.

Rabbi David Sears writes that the blessing to dominate “comprises a form of stewardship for which humanity is answerable to G-d. Both Talmudic and Kabbalistic sources state that it is forbidden to kill any creature unnecessarily, or to engage in wanton destruction of the Earth’s resources… The divine mandate for man to dominate the natural world is a sacred trust, not a carte blanche for destructiveness.”[5]

In the Torah, the order of domination is fish-birds-animals: “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” The Kli Yakar (Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz) explains that man has a greater ability to rule over land animals than birds (out of reach in the sky), and fish (out of reach and out of sight, in the sea). [6] If humans do not merit, then not only will they not dominate the fish, which are harder to catch, but also the birds and animals, which are easier.

Yet a glaring contrast emerges between the Kli Yakar’s 17th century description of the limited human capacity for domination of the animals, birds and fish of the natural world and what we know about the ability of contemporary society to dominate the land, air, and sea of planet earth.

For example, while the Kli Yakar emphasizes that fish are not visible to people, sonar, satellite data and the Global Positioning System (GPS) enable fishermen to effectively ‘see’ giant schools of fish with pinpoint accuracy. According to a study led by researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, these changes have contributed to a dramatic fall in fish populations in all of the world’s oceans.

When human mastery grows such that we seriously deplete the numbers of a particular fish, our continued access to this fish quickly diminishes. Our lack of righteousness leads us to lose our domination of this resource in the long-term.

Rabbi Daniel Kohn links the blessing to subdue (kivshuha) in our verse with the Mishna’s use of ‘subdue’ in the Ethics of the Fathers (Pirke Avot), in which Ben Zoma teaches, “Who is strong? The person who subdues their inclinations.” Spiritual discipline comprises true strength. A person must decide in their own life which desires to subdue and which desires to bring to realization.

Jewish tradition teaches us that we only merit the opportunity to rule the earth if we behave righteously. This includes the spiritual discipline to use our resources wisely, and subdue with a sense of moral responsibility. In our times, we have demonstrated our ability to subdue the earth. A central question facing humanity concerns whether we will exhibit the strength to rein in our desires. If we do not, we may be taken down by our lack of righteousness. May we summon the strength to conquer our short-term desires, live with righteousness, and merit an enlightened dominion of the planet G-d created.

1 The author would like to thank Evonne Marzouk for her helpful editorial comments.

2 Genesis 1:28

3 Or, let others (the besasts) rule over him (footnote of Soncino translation) Midrash Genesis Raba (Vilna Edition), 8:12, translation by Soncino Press. The Maharal explains in Gur Aryeh to Genesis 1:26 that “the verse uses ‘v’yirdu’ for ‘ruling,’ from the root resh-dalet-heh, rather than the more common ‘mashal,’ so that it can be expounded as if it were from the root yud-resh-dalet, ‘declining, degenerating,’ as well.” (From Artscroll Rashi Bereishit)

4 Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 7:13

5 The Vision of Eden, Orot: Spring Valley, NY, 2003, p. 69-70

6 To Genesis 1:26

Rabbi Yonatan Neril founded and directs Jewish Eco Seminars, which engages and educates the Jewish community with Jewish environmental wisdom. He has worked with Canfei Nesharim for the past six years in developing educational resources relating to Judaism and the environment.

These materials are posted as part of Jewcology’s “Year of Jewish Learning on the Environment,” in partnership with Canfei Nesharim.  Learn more at http://www.jewcology.com/content/view/Year-of-Jewish-Learning-on-the-Environment.

Holy Use: Relating to Resources Sustainably

Jewcology is a diverse platform for Jewish environmental activists to learn from each other in order to educate Jewish communities about our responsibility to protect the environment.

Hazon is excited to share these resources with you! We provide and promote ways to relate each of our Holiday Resources to specific sustainability tips and suggestions! The Hazon Food Guide has sustainable kosher options for all sorts of food  which might be considered during chagim (holidays). Find out more: Hazon’s Bike Rides and Food Programs all contain resources which relate to sustainability issues and ideas!

By Rabbi Yonatan Neril

When something breaks, the question may arise, repair it, or get rid of it and buy a new one? We can answer a question with a question: If it is cheaper to buy a new one, why should I go through the hassle of trying to repair it? With material goods so abundant and cheap today, it is easy to throw things away. We discard clothing and appliances and buy new ones instead of repairing them, or throw away useable items because they are a few years old and maybe outdated by new products. (more…)

New program – Jews and Earth: A Growing Community

Why was Adam’s “consequence” to work the soil? Why were many of the Bible heroes shepherds? How does Torah view working the earth? What guidance can the Torah offer us? How can our community grow through the Torah’s agricultural values? (more…)

Rejuvenating Ourselves and Our Planet

Jewcology is a diverse platform for Jewish environmental activists to learn from each other in order to educate Jewish communities about our responsibility to protect the environment.

Hazon is excited to share these resources with you! We promote the interrelatedness of shabbat as a time to reflect on environmental and sustainable ideas through many of our programs and resources. Our Food Guide has kosher sustainable meat options, Greening Your Shabbat Table, Sustainable Kiddush, and all of our Food Programs help you to draw connections between Jewish tradition and contemporary food issues.

By Rabbi Yonatan Neril

In modern society, we are running, speaking, and thinking at an exceptional rate, and oftentimes we continue all week long without slowing down.  Constantly doing, always mobile accessible, habitually multi-tasking.

If being too busy is a malady of modern man, slowing down on Shabbat may be a key remedy. The Torah teaches, “These are the things that the Divine commanded to make. Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have sanctity, a day of complete rest to G-d…”  Achieving sanctity and complete rest is the stated goal of Shabbat. Yet how can this happen? (more…)

Sustainability in the Land of Israel

Jewcology is a diverse platform for Jewish environmental activists to learn from each other in order to educate Jewish communities about our responsibility to protect the environment.

Hazon is excited to share these resources with you! We work to create a healthier and more sustainable Israel through our Israel Ride, our Sustainable Food Tour, and Siach (conversation). Learn more about sustainability in the land of Israel using this resource from Jewcology:

By Rabbi Yonatan Neril

Abraham and Sarah came to Israel over 3700 years ago.  Since then, significant populations of Jews have spent over 1600 years living in the Land of Israel.  For much of this time, Jews have been involved in growing crops, tending fruit trees, and shepherding animals, activities critical to providing food to sustain those living in Israel. Yet they also presented challenges to environmental sustainability in the Land.

How did Jews manage to live in the Land for so long? While the Torah teaches that Divine Providence (in response to the people following the commandments) played the fundamental role, the Oral Tradition as redacted in the Mishna also provides insights. (more…)