BIODIVERSITY

Caring for Creation: A Jewish Response to Preserving Biodiversity

by Rabbi Lawrence Troster

In the Noah story (Genesis 6-9), God instructs Noah to preserve all the creatures of the world, not only those obviously useful to humankind. The rabbis understood that we do not know God's purpose for every creature and that we should not regard any of them as superfluous. "Our Rabbis said: Even those things that you may regard as completely superfluous to Creation -- such as fleas, gnats and flies -- even they were included in Creation; and God's purpose is carried through everything -- even through a snake, a scorpion, a gnat, a frog" (Breishit Rabbah 10:7). In environmental terms, every species has an inherent value beyond its instrumental or useful value to human beings.

There are 1.8 million known species of animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and other kinds of life and perhaps from four to forty million species yet to be discovered. The current extinction rate is at least 1,000 species per year, almost all as a result of human activity. The earth is experiencing a loss of biodiversity that has not been seen since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Our ancestors could not have anticipated the loss of biodiversity that the modern world has produced; from their perspective, there was no natural extinction rate of species. God, they believed, had created all species at one time and there could be no new creatures. Only humans could cause extinction and bring about the loss of one of the members of the Creation choir. The Torah says:

“If along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life.” (Deuteronomy 22:6-7)

Ramban (Moses ben Nachman, Nachmanides, 1194-1270) in his commentary to the Torah, wrote:

“This also is an explanatory commandment of the prohibition you shall not kill it [the mother] and its young both in one day (Leviticus 22:28). The reason for both [commandments] is that we should not have a cruel heart and not be compassionate, or it may be that Scripture does not permit us to destroy a species altogether, although it permits slaughter [for food] within that group. Now the person who kills the mother and the young in one day or takes them when they are free to fly, [it is regarded] as though they have destroyed that species.”

It is evident from the first chapter of Genesis and other Biblical texts (Psalm 104, 148, and Job 38-41) that God takes care of, and takes pleasure in, the variety of life that makes up Creation. In Genesis 1, each kind of plant and animal contributes to the goodness of God’s creation. As each new species is called into being, God takes pleasure in how the new life brings a higher level of divine complexity and variety to the world. And this great complex web of life is also a source of God’s wisdom from which humanity still has much to learn (Job 12:7-9).

Although we might regard a species as unimportant or bothersome to human beings, God does not regard them so. In the Noah story (Genesis 6-9), God instructs Noah to preserve all the creatures of the world, not only those obviously useful to humankind. The rabbis understood that we do not know God’s purpose for every creature and that we should not regard any of them as superfluous. “Our Rabbis said: Even those things that you may regard as completely superfluous to Creation -- such as fleas, gnats and flies -- even they were included in Creation; and God’s purpose is carried through everything -- even through a snake, a scorpion, a gnat, a frog.” (Breishit Rabbah 10:7) In environmental terms, every species has an inherent value beyond its instrumental or useful value to human beings.

Therefore, we have an obligation to protect the choir of Creation by preserving habitats and by making sure that how we live will not cause the extinction of species. We must try not to pit the preservation of a species against human needs.