GREENING SYNAGOGUES RESOURCES

Why Energy is a Jewish Issue

1. Energy Conservation is an Ancient Mitzvah (commandment)

Rav Zutra, in the Talmud (Shabbat 67b), mandates fuel efficiency, saying that those who burn more fuel than necessary violate the law of not wasting (bal tashchit). And a 13th century German pietistic text, Sefer HaChinuch (529), suggests that:

“Tzadikim (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 rasha’im (wicked) are not thus; they are like demons. They rejoice in the destruction of the world, just as they destroy themselves.”

Given what we know today, where human-induced climate change is underway, what decisions – the mileage our vehicles get, for example – make us a tzadik or a rasha?

2. Shabbat Puts the Weekly Brakes on Consumption

Across the spectrum of Jewish observance, Shabbat is central – it’s the weekly celebration of the completion of Creation. Shabbat stands for something more important than producing and consuming, more sacred than “economic growth” as the end-all-and-be-all. In place of consumerism’s energy use and pollution, Shabbat holds out community, learning, prayer, food, rest, music, love, and friendship as our ideal. These values are infinitely sustainable and grow-able, unlike the cars and chemicals and day-trading of the workaday week.

Shabbat extends still further: we withdraw from the economic and energy-consuming rat-race not just one day a week, but also one year every seven, through the Sabbatical. And that’s not counting festivals, or the jubilee every 50th year. So more than two-sevenths of our lives, at least, should be spent away from an obsessive focus on production, consumption, and growth.

3. Our Energy Consumption Leaves Too Little for the Rest of Creation

Though created in the Divine Image, humans are not the purpose of creation. As Maimonides (12th C Egypt, Guide to the Perplexed, 3:13) said: “It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of humanity’s existence … [rather] all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes.”

Emissions from our fossil-fuel energy consumption – air and water pollution, poisonous mercury, smog-forming ozone, and carbon dioxide – endanger all of Creation, and threaten to push overstressed species over the brink. Yet “even those creatures you deem superfluous in this world – like flies, fleas, and gnats – nevertheless have their allotted task in the scheme of Creation” (Midrash, from about the 8th century – Exodus Rabbah 10:1).

Furthermore, not all of humanity is endangering the rest of Creation. With only 4.5% of the world’s population, Americans produce over 25% of its greenhouse gases. This is an issue of justice, as in “justice, justice, you shall pursue, in order that you and your children may live” (Deut. 16:20). Rising seas from global warming will affect Tuvalu and Bangladesh more quickly than New York or LA; new vectors for tropical disease will mostly hurt those who can’t afford health care; and so on. “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor … love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:16, 19:18).

4. The Precautionary Principle

Judaism (like logic!) teaches us to act warily. No law or value is more important than Pikuach Nefesh, the saving of a life. Deut. 22:8 tells us, “when you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof” – we submit to the extra construction expense not because someone will fall off the roof otherwise, but because someone might. The same must apply to the enormous gamble we’re now taking with God’s creation, and with our own descendants.