FORESTS

Forests are a Jewish Concern Because…

• Deuteronomy 20:19 says that “when you make war against a city… lo tashchit, do not cut down its trees…” (“you may eat from them, but you may not cut them down – ki ha’adam eitz ha-sadeh [for is the human a tree of the field / is the tree of the field human], to withdraw before you into the city gates?”)
  
• The rabbis expanded this teaching into the law of bal tashchit, of not wasting or wantonly destroying anything.
  
• The 13-th century pietistic text Sefer Ha-Chinuch (529/530) writes: “Righteous people of good deeds ... do not waste in this world even a mustard seed. They become sorrowful with every wasteful and destructive act that they see, and if they can they use all their strength to save everything possible from destruction. But the wicked are not thus; they are like demons. They rejoice in the destruction of the world, just as they destroy themselves....”
  
• And the 19th century German Orthodox Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote: “... Apply [bal tashchit] to your whole life and to every being which is subordinated to you, from the Earth which bears them all up to the garment which you have already transformed into your own cover. Yea, "Do not destroy anything!" is the first and most general call of God.” (Chumash at Deut. 20:20; Horeb 56)
  
• Not to mention that trees in our tradition are symbols of the righteous (tzadik katamar yifrach – Ps. 92), and of wisdom and of Torah (eitz chayim hi – Proverbs 6).
  
• Finally, Shimon bar Yochai taught in the second century (Avot d’Rebbe Natan 31b) that “if you are holding a sapling in your hand, and someone says that the Messiah has drawn near, first plant the sapling, and then go and greet the Messiah.” Some say that planting the tree is exactly what brings the messiah.