My Jewish climate story goes back to my childhood. I was born and raised in the Catskills where my Holocaust survivor parents worked a small chicken farm. Exploring the local forests as a child and later as a Girl Scout kindled my love and respect for the natural world.
In my teens I served as a hiking and camping counselor at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires and hiked many sections of the Appalachian Trail. Life took me to New York City where I went to college and medical school and also delved into Jewish tradition, especially at Drisha Institute, a pioneer in advanced Torah education for women. Today, my work as a psychiatrist has broadened to include private practice and a career teaching clergy the basics of active listening and first responder intervention. I’ve been privileged to develop and chair the pastoral counseling program at the innovative rabbinical school, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT).
I’m so proud that JCAN and YCT embrace climate justice as a core Jewish value and that this was highlighted in a recent lecture offered by the Drisha Institute. Listening to Rabbi Dr. Mayse’s talk, summarized below, offered me the opportunity to meld my two loves of Torah and nature.
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In “As A Deep River Rises: Jewish Law, Theology, and Environmental Ethics,“ a talk sponsored by the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education on December 11, 2022 Rabbi Dr. Ariel Evan Mayse of Stanford University explored how we can draw on Jewish tradition to frame a response to the climate crisis. Mayse issued a powerful call to action, naming the crisis the greatest moral and existential crisis of our day and urging all religions to take it with the utmost seriousness.
In his remarks, Dr. Mayse asked if sustainability is compatible with a culture that champions growth and individual accomplishment and values overcoming the natural world. He wondered if we’re capable of shifting to a different model that respects nature and responds to the social and economic needs of the world’s diverse inhabitants.
Dr. Mayse finds the more usual responses to the climate crisis, including Bal tashchit (thou shalt not destroy) and Tikkun olum (repair the world), inadequate. He suggests that we consider what we hold holy in assigning value to things and in shaping our actions in response to the climate crisis and points to the story of the tower of Babel as a cautionary tale of hubris that demonstrates the danger of building higher and higher and valorizing technology.
He goes on to point out that in the book of Leviticus the land is not an object but a subject that interacts with its inhabitants in a web of reciprocity. And he notes that Jewish tort law as explicated in the Talmud adheres to an ethics grounded in obligation. So, just as it is imperative that people take responsibility for damage caused and return lost objects to their owners, we must consider the needs of communities devastated by climate destruction.
There’s so much more in Mayse’s talk; I highly recommend listening to his powerful lecture to gain fresh insight into Jewish perspectives on the climate crisis. Listen to his lecture here.
Michelle Friedman, JCAN NYC Steering Committee member