Jews Have a Responsibility to Fight Climate Change

Jews Have a Responsibility to Fight Climate Change
Yui Mok/Pool via AP

Is there a Jewish responsibility to fight climate change?

Yes! With an exclamation point! The scientific consensus that we face serious climate challenges is overwhelming, and our responsibility for the earth goes back to the origins of the Jewish people. The biblical tradition, much more than the later rabbinic tradition, was rooted in the people's connection with the earth. They were shepherds and farmers. Many aspects of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, are actually about what it means to have a functional versus a failed relationship with the earth. The story of the Garden of Eden is the story in which God, speaking for Reality, says, "There is amazing, wonderful abundance here, eat of it, enjoy it. Just exercise a little self-restraint!"

And the humans can't restrain themselves, and the abundance vanishes. And at the end of the story, Reality, or God, says, "Now you'll have to work every day of your life with sweat pouring down your face to get barely enough to eat." It's like what happened in the Gulf of Mexico 11 years ago, when the lack of self-restraint by the oil company cost the lives of workers and poisoned much of the life of the Gulf.

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