The Parashah for the first day of Sukkot includes all of Chapter 23 of Vayikra, which is logical enough, as this chapter gives us the basic instructions on how to conduct services and sacrifices for this holiday, one of the three "pilgrim festivals" or reglim of the Jewish calendar, when all Israelites (more accurately, all men) were supposed to come to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices. In the case of Sukkot, of course, they were then to return home and live in booths or sukkothim for the following week, which is why prayers for rain are delayed until after Shemini Atzeret.
Rather surprisingly, however, the Prashah for Sukkot is not content to stay simply with Chapter 23, which is long enough, even when Sukkot occurs on Sabbath, but also includes a few verses form the end of Chapter 22. I have no explanation for this inclusion, but I intend to focus my Dvar on a single verse from this section: 22:281. This is the verse where, with specific reference to make sacrifices, we are told:
However, no animal from the herd or from the flock [alternatively: whether it is a cow or a ewe: Plaut] shall be slaughtered on the same day with its young.
This verse is often linked to one in Devarim(22:6):
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 together with the young.
It is perhaps obvious that these two verse would become part of the rationale for avoiding cruelty to animals, or by extension, to all creatures. In Hertz' words, "The principle here...is not to manifest God's pity for the animal, but to implant in man the virtue of mercy." There is extensive discussion on this subject in the Talmud, though much of it focuses not so much on the obligation per se as on whether its origin is Rabbinic or from the Torah itself. However, I want to pursue another dimension of the phrase, for it was also used by the rabbis, well in advance of today's ecological concerns, to argue against actions that would drive a species to extinction.
Among great Talmudists, the Ramban (Nachmanides) was most explicit in using these verses to argue against actions that might lead to the loss of any species. Writing in Spain in the first half of the 13th Century, he went so far as to say that, if anyone killed both a mother and her young, it was as if he had destroyed the species.2. Commenting on the verse in Devarim, the Rambam wrote that "it may be that Scripture does not permit us to destroy a species altogether, although it permits slaughter [for food] within that group. Now, one who kills the dam and the young in one day, or takes them when they are free to fly, it is as though he cut off that species."3 Another Spanish Talmudist, Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona, writing somewhat later in the Century, makes the same point rather more poetically in Sefer ha-Hinukh, his commentary on the 613 Commandments. With reference to the verse we will read today, he wrote:4
One should reflect that the watchful care of the Blessed God extends to all the species of living creatures generally, and with God's providential concern for them they will endure permanently.
With reference to the verse in Devarim, he wrote:
God's desire is for the endurance of God's species...for [every species] will find enduring existence through God.
Now, if we push these precepts to the limit, we find ourselves in big trouble. Paul Ehrlich has commented that there is probably no cubic meter on earth in which he could not find a unique species if he looked hard enough. And there is that troubling question of whether or not to destroy the last remaining culture of the smallpox germ. However, we do not have to go nearly to these limits to know that species extinction is a very real problem today. To quote from a recent issue of L'Avdah ul'Shamrah, the newsletter of COEJL:
In the next half-century -- less than one human lifetime -- the Earth could lose blue whales, giant pandas, tigers, black rhinoceroses and millions of less-known species. Entire ecosystem types, such as tropical dry forests, mangroves, and floodplain rivers could be damaged byond repair.6
The last point is the critical one. Some big mammals and spectacular birds excepted, we are no longer losing species because of over-hunting but because of habitat destruction. This was not, of course, something that even occurred to the rabbis. They were worried that human beings would tend to over harvest but on a one-by-one basis. In fact, I think it is fair to say that the rabbis did not think very hard about the issue of extinction. For one thing, neither they nor any else imagined that human beings could have so great an effect; for another, it was almost self-evident to them that it was chillul ha-shem for human beings to destroy something that God had created. The two verses, one in today's parashah and one in Devarim, were their proof texts, and they were sufficient for the problems they saw.
However, their problem is not our problem, at least not our principal problem. Psalm 15 (verse 16) says that, even if the heavens belong to God,? the Earth was given to humankind," and human beings have been extending their influence to every part of the globe. Modern Jewish ecologists have had to contend with the much more subtle threat of habitat destruction, and so they have gone searching for additional textual support. They commonly start with Bereshit 9:9:
Behold, I establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you, of the birds, of the cattle, and of every wild animal of the earth with you.
This statement comes, significantly, after the flood, after Noah was instructed to take two males and two females of every kind of animal (even then the need for back-up copies was recognized)6 -- and, in the case of kosher animals, seven pairs. (According to Hertz, this was to ensure a supply of sacrificial animals.) Surely the implication of brining in male-female pairs is to protect the biological heritage. (I am sure some of you remember Bill Cosby's Noah skit where he is complaining to God about trying to distinguish a male from a female mosquito!)
If the species lost today more from habitat loss than from over-harvesting, we should look for texts focusing on this issue. Not surprisingly, there are none -- at least none that I could find and cite as a proof text. However, Torah in its broadest sense is full of laws, stories, and prayers that indicate beyond argument that God is the owner and humans merely the operator of planet earth.7 Most poetically stated: "The earth belongs to God and the fullness thereof';8 and in legal form, almost every act involving use of nature is, halachically, preceded by an appropriate blessing.9
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson takes a different tack by focusing on repetition of le-minehu or le-minehem or le-minah -- each creature on the earth was created after its own kind.10 And, then, in each case, God declared that it was good! These phrases put a different slant on the subject of biodiversity than those the rabbis cited, for surely it is self-evident that, if God intended that a species exist, God also intended to provide habitat sufficient for that species to live and propagate.
We can of course confront the problem of habitat loss and species extinction simply as concerned human beings. However, we can also confront it as Jews. Work is well underway to develop a Jewish program on biodiversity. COEJL (the Committee on the Environment and Jewish Life) is urging every Jewish institute to join in a program they call Generation Noah for the purpose of ensuring "safe passage of God's creatures from one era to the next by learning about them and protecting their habitats."11 In so doing, we will join a long line of Jewish thought, and, as we all should know, so far as Judaism is concern, thought without action is not very impressive.
