Episode No. 153—How green are our festivals?

Given the devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton and other horrific storms around the world, all blamed on global warming, Sukkot, which arrives Wednesday night, offers us an opportunity to discuss this question: What does “green,” which symbolizes things environmental and ecological, have to do with Jewish festivals? The answer is “everything,” and so, that’s the topic for this week. 

Transcript

Welcome to Keep the Faith, the biweekly podcast in which we explore contemporary issues through the prism of Jewish law and tradition.

I hope everyone had a meaningful Yom Kippur and that all of you fasted had an easy one.

May we, our friends, family, and community, as well as the Jewish people worldwide and everyone in the world, have a truly joyous, healthy, prosperous, and, above all, peaceful 5785.

That goes double for everyone who suffered because of the devastation caused by the recent natural disasters that have beset our world, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton here in the U.S.

We pray for the speedy recovery of all the injured, spiritually as well as physically, we mourn for all who lost their lives and pray for those they left behind, and we pray that all of their basic necessities will reach every survivor who needs them.

We’re coming out early again this week because Sukkot begins tomorrow night. Given the devastation wrought by these natural disasters here and around the world, Sukkot offers us an opportunity to discuss this question:

What does “green,” which symbolizes things environmental and ecological, have to do with Jewish festivals?

The answer is “everything,” and so, that’s the topic for this week.

That answer underscores the relevance to modern life of our three Pilgrimage Festivals—Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot—and one so-called minor one, Tu B’Shevat. The difference between a major and a minor festival is that one may do all manner of work on the minor ones, while the major ones come with some Shabbat-like restrictions.

Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot are called Pilgrimage Festivals because their observance in biblical times included mandated trips to the Temple in Jerusalem, which obviously is no longer possible. All three have agricultural components to them. Israel’s agricultural season begins around Passover, when barley, the first grain of the year, emerges. Shavuot marks the beginning of the wheat-growing season and Sukkot, the Feast of Ingathering, celebrates the end of the yearly harvesting.

It’s this connection to the land and its produce that begins to explain the “green” nature of the festivals. For Shavuot and Sukkot, their “greenness” is far more evident than on Passover.

I’ll get to all that, but first let me review some of what I have said in the past about Judaism and the environment. The Torah understood the need to protect the natural world even if we humans back then didn’t understand that need—and even as some still don’t (or don’t want) to understand it. Part of the problem, of course, is that unless a person knows how to read it, the Torah is just words. Few of us know how to read it. To really read it, as I’ve often noted here, we have to be able to read between the lines. Fortunately, our Sages of Blessed Memory knew how to do that, which is why they expanded on the Torah’s legislation.

For example, there have always been people who cite Genesis 1:26 and Psalm 115:16 as proof that we can do whatever we want with our world. Genesis 1:26 states that we humans “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” Psalm 115:16 states, “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but God has given the earth to humankind.”

Read plainly, it would seem that we can do as we please with our world. Not so, said the great 12th Century commentator and grammarian Abraham ibn Ezra in his commentary to that verse from Psalms. People who believe that, he said, are ignorant. That’s his word, not mine, but I agree with him on that. Here’s how he put it:

“The ignorant have compared man’s rule over the earth with God’s rule over the heavens. This isn’t right, for God rules over everything. The meaning of ‘God has given the earth to humankind’ is that man is God’s pakeed over the earth and must do everything according to God’s word.”

Pakeed means steward or caretaker. It’s a specific term, referring to a commission for a specific task. That task, Ibn Ezra says, is found in Genesis 2:15: “And the Lord God took the human, and put him into the Garden of Eden to work it and to watch over it.” The First Human wasn’t put in the garden to abuse it, but to “work it” and, even more important, “to watch over it,” to make sure that it’s not abused in any way. I’ll have more to say about that in a moment.

In modern times, the late Conservative rabbi, Robert Gordis, echoed Ibn Ezra in an article published in the journal Judaism in 1976:

“To claim that [‘have dominion over’] provides ‘justification’ for the exploitation of the environment, leading to the poisoning of the environment, the pollution of the atmosphere, the poisoning of the water, and the spoilation of natural resources is...a complete distortion of the truth. On the contrary…, [Judaism] insists that humans have an obligation not only to conserve the world of nature, but to enhance it because the human is the ‘co-partner of God in the work of creation.’”

Torah legislation supports Ibn Ezra and Rabbi Gordis. Most important in this regard is Deuteronomy chapter 20 where the Torah sets out the rules of war, which includes a prohibition against destroying fruit-bearing trees because “is the tree of the field a person that it can escape from you into the besieged town?” It then adds this, “Only that tree that you know isn’t one that gives food, that one you may destroy and cut down to construct your siegeworks….”

Reading between the lines, the real prohibition in those two verses is against destroying anything of use to humankind or anything else. These verses created the category of law known as bal tashchit (“do not destroy,” often referred to as wanton destruction). I’ve discussed this category often.

The commandment begins by asking whether a tree can run away from us when attacked. The question is rhetorical; of course a tree can’t run away from an axe-wielding attacker. Behind that question, though, is a larger sentiment: No inanimate life form can escape from us. Because they’re as much a part of God’s Creation as we are, they’re to be protected, not rejected and destroyed. It follows, by the way, that if we must protect the inanimate life forms, we must also protect the animate ones, not just humans.

These verses then make clear that the Torah is talking about trees that produce food—for everyone and everything on this planet of ours. There has to be a sufficient, valid reason to destroy something that produces food and even then, only the type of tree “that you know isn’t one that gives food” may be cut down as long as there’s a sufficient, valid reason to do so. Otherwise, even that tree may not be cut down. There’s a catch here because we have to know that the tree doesn’t produce food. The absence of fruit itself proves nothing because it may not be the right season for that fruit. Besides, trees drop leaves, branches, and other organic matter, all of which enriches the soil with nutrients when they decompose. Trees help maintain the water cycle by absorbing and releasing water through their roots and leaves.

In other words, the commandment really is saying that we can’t down any tree without a sufficient, valid reason to do so.

Our Sages understood this commandment to mean that we may not wantonly destroy anything that “bears fruit,” meaning anything that has a purpose for humans or the rest of Creation. They understood that wanton destruction is irreparable. They even composed a midrash to make that point. It quotes God as warning the First Human: “Pay attention that you do not corrupt and destroy My world. If you corrupt it, there is no one to come after you to repair it.”

That’s a message we hear often these days from scientists and others about the future of our world, but our Sages were already trumpeting that message nearly two millennia ago.

Maimonides, in his law code the Mishneh Torah, puts it this way: “…even one who destructively breaks vessels or rips up clothing or tears down a building or seals up a spring or wastes food violates bal tashchit.”

Then there is this statement by a 14th-century rabbi, Aharon Halevy of Barcelona, who said it was “the way of the pious….They will not even destroy a grain of mustard [for no valid reason], and they are grieved by any destruction they may see. If it’s possible to save anything that is being spoiled, they spare no effort to do so.” This 14th-century rabbi never heard of the word recycling, but that’s what he was saying we had to do because of bal tashchit, do not destroy.

Among other things, our Sages declared that the principle of bal tashchit includes not burning fuels of any kind with abandon—not non-replenishing fossil fuels and not naturally replenishing vegetable ones. In other words, nearly 2,000 years ago, based on a 3,500-year-old Torah law about a fruit tree, abusing natural resources was already a no-no in the Jewish world. What applies to a lamp applies to cars. The faster we drive, the more fuel we burn. By speeding, we burn more fuel than we need, thus violating bal tashchit. Keeping the lights burning in rooms that are unoccupied, or heating homes more than is necessary for comfort, also violates this law.

The Torah’s laws, as interpreted by our Sages, require us to protect against air pollution, odor pollution, water pollution, and even noise pollution. These aren’t laws created today. They’re laws created by our Sages 2,000 years ago and by the Torah 3,500 years ago, long before the invention of the term “environmental protection” and long before anyone heard of global warming.

Being aware of the world around us and understanding that we’re merely God’s caretaker, as Ibn Ezra and Rabbi Gordis put it, is a big deal as far as Judaism is concerned—and that brings us back to the festivals. On Passover, this manifests itself outwardly in the requirement to count the days from the beginning of fully-grown barley stalks appearing until Shavuot and the appearance of the first stalks of wheat, and the bursting forth of the “first fruits.” Shavuot is known in the Torah as the Festival of First Fruits.

In a sense, the three festivals “build up” the emphasis on the environment, with Passover setting the stage. According to the late physicist, Orthodox rabbi, and author Yehudah Leo Levi, “The connection between Passover and the environment is somewhat indirect, but extremely profound. According to the Torah, one central purpose of the creation of the human being was to complete the development of the world God had created….”

Rabbi Levy explained the indirect connection between Passover and the environment by referencing the midrash about the irreplaceable nature of God’s world. Caring for the world and everything in it, the rabbi said, was why God took Israel out of Egypt.

That, then, is Passover’s “green” connection. The festival has so much meaning, however, that its “greenness” is justifiably not overt, whereas Shavuot and Sukkot are heavily invested in “green.”

When Shavuot arrives, the “greenness” of the Pilgrimage Festivals intensifies. The Torah actually designates Shavuot as the Festival of First Fruits and extends no other meaning to it. Our Sages, based on the chronology of the Exodus, determined that it’s also the festival recalling the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, which is how we refer to it today. The two themes are related, though. We’re supposed to decorate our homes and synagogues with all manner of flowers and greenery on Shavuot, based on the tradition that the Israelites found Mount Sinai covered in grass and lush with all manner of blooming things.

Another Shavuot custom is to eat dairy foods and fruit-based dishes, thus celebrating the produce of the field.

The “greenest” of the three festivals, though, is Sukkot, which this year begins tomorrow night, on Wednesday night. As Leviticus 23 explains, the harvest is in, and hopefully, it was a good one. Now, the Israelites are to take four species of growing things—a fruit, a vegetable, and two types of branches—and they’re to “dwell” in temporary shelters (“sukkot”) for seven days. The fruit is a citron, an etrog as we call it. The vegetable is a palm branch, known as a lulav. The two branches are myrtles and willows.

Our Sages decreed that three of the four species are combined into a single “package”—to the lulav are bound three myrtles, hadasim in Hebrew, and two aravot, two willow branches. Palm fronds are used to make their holders and to bind all three of these species together. The lulav is then taken in the right hand, and the etrog in the left. The two hands come together so all four are joined. One fruit, one vegetable, and two different kinds of branches are combined, a blessing is made, and the package is waved in six directions: east, west, north, south, towards the sky, towards the earth. It’s all about the environment—about our relationship to the land and our responsibilities to it.

Then there’s the sukkah itself. It’s supposed to be made out of wood, and it must have at least three sides. Boards are placed on top, and on top of the boards goes something called s’chach, a covering that could be bamboo poles, or pine leaves, or even leaves of palm trees; whatever is used, though, must have grown from the ground.

Nowadays, mainly because lumber can be so expensive and storing the lumber from year to year isn’t possible for many people, most people use canvas for the walls. Canvas is made from things that grow: hemp, flax, or cotton, most often. Fiberglass (sometimes called mineral wool) is also a material some use. Its primary ingredients are minerals that come from the ground.

Sukkot may be the most important period on the Jewish calendar. Above all else, it’s about the natural order of the world and the Creator whose word caused it all to come into being. The world out there goes underappreciated and undervalued. Sukkot forces us to recognize that world and how much we still need it. It forces us to consider nature as part of our very being; as part of the essence of our being. Everything about Sukkot is connected to the land, to the environment, and to nature.

The minor festival that connects to the environment is Tu B’Sh’vat, the 15th of the Hebrew month of Sh’vat. In Hebrew, Tu represents the number 15. Our Sages designated Tu B’Sh’vat as “the New Year for Trees” presumably because as the outside temperature in Israel warms, the trees there begin producing the vital nutrients required to bear fruit. First to put forth its bounty is the almond tree, which begins to bloom around that time, signaling the coming of spring.

Around 400 years ago, the mystic-minded rabbis of Safed added a new custom to the day. They instituted the Tu B’Sh’vat seder. In their kabbalistic view of things, trees represented the Tree of Life (Etz Chaim) itself. Through their seder, they hoped to encourage blessings to flow from the Tree of Life into the world, thereby fixing it (tikkun olam).

Our world is desperately in need of all kinds of tikkun, all kinds of fixing, and that includes the trees, and all other ecological and environmental issues.

Because “New Year” implies that there’s a whole year to follow, to mark Tu B’Sh’vat as a day onto itself misses the point. If our world needs tikkun, reducing carbon emissions in every way we can is a goal we must work on from one “Year of Trees” to the next. Celebrating Tu B’Sh’vat is very relevant today, so long as during the rest of the “year of trees,” we consider what bal tashchit really means and what we’re required to do about it.

Our major festivals have been around for 3,500 years, but if we approach and observe them with their full meanings in mind, they’re extremely relevant today—not just for their “green” nature, but for the way each of them encourages us to live moral and ethical lives the way the Torah intends for all people to live.

This is Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer. I hope you come back for my next podcast, and I’d like to hear what you have to say about this or my other podcasts. Go to www.shammai.dot.org—w-w-w-dot-s-h-a-m-m-a-i-dot-o-r-g—and email please.

If you want to read my column, and you don’t get the Jewish Standard, go to the columns page of my website. This Friday’s entry is about the need to start referring to what happened a year ago as October 7th and start calling it by the name that describes what it truly was—the Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah Massacre.

Chag sameach, wave that lulav, stay healthy, keep taking all precautions necessary to protect against all the viral diseases currently afflicting us, and, above all, stay safe!