Down the Road

…because Jews have faced the threat of extinction on account of radically evil, human acts, Jews have a distinctive vantage point from which to speak about the destruction that humans now inflict on God’s creation…to protect God’s world from further abuse by humans is a Jewish moral obligation. —Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Judaism and Ecology

Just down the road from the lush, old growth forest, about a five minute drive from my parent’s home, lies stark clear cut that spans a vast number of acres. I haven’t stopped before, but today I pulled off the road, walked past a parked truck with a bumper sticker that said “I love my lab” with a picture of a yellow lab, and onto a wide path with clear cut on either side. It smelled a bit of rotting trash, such a contrast from the scent of moss and pine.

I believe the person working the clear cut, likely steering the machine piling the logs far in the distance, loves his/her laboratory retriever. I believe the person has to earn a living, and perhaps her/his family has been in the business for generations. I believe there are always many sides to reality, and yet, as I listened to the trees falling with a kind of precision and rhythm, as my eyes scanned the bare land, it all felt terribly raw and desolate. It was difficult to connect with a sense of “sanctuary” here, but more chilling, was the sense that my children and children’s children would experience the old growth forests as even more of a rarity.

Ve’asu li mikdash veshachanti betocham—And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them (Exodus 25:8). I have always read the “them” in this verse as God asking us to create sacred spaces (physical and spiritual) where we can form deep connections between each other, right here in the present. In addition, I now read this verse to mean: And let them make Me a sanctuary [in all creation] that I may dwell among them [in this moment, and for future generations].

These words from Art Green resonated deeply today—

…the new tale will need to achieve its own harmony, summarized with no less genius than was possessed by the author of Genesis 1. It will need to tell of the unity of all beings and help us to feel that fellow-creature hood with trees and rivers as well as with animals and humans. As it brings us to awareness of our common source, ever-present in each of us, so must it value the distinctiveness and sacred integrity of each creature on its own, even the animals, or fish, or plants we eat, even the trees we cut down. If we Jews are allowed to have a hand in it, it will also speak of a human dignity that still needs to be shared with most of our species and of a time of rest, periodic liberation from the treadmill of our struggle for existence, in which we can contemplate and enjoy our fellow-feeling with all that is. This sacred time also serves as a model for the world that we believe “with perfect faith” is still to come, a world of which we have never ceased to dream.—Art Green, Judaism and Ecology