Right Relationship; Deuteronomy’s Parapet; and ScandInavian Design: a Dvar-Torah-travelogue

​A number of American Jewish, and Israeli, climate activists recently met up in Denmark, thanks to the generosity (and dedicated organizing by the staff) of the Wexner Foundation.  We were treated to a whirlwind exposure of initiatives, people, and cultural currents that make Copenhagen a world leader in sustainability.  So much there is worthy of emulation!
 
Partway through, I had the honor of giving the Dvar Torah, in which I referenced some of those delightful Danish discoveries, along with the weekly Torah portion, Ki Titzei, which happens to contain my go-to verse for climate Torah.  Here it is, fleshed out, in three parts – with photos and bits of travelogue between.  I hope that others can find here a fraction of the inspiration that we received from the experience….

Rabbi Fred’s Dvar, 11 Sept. 2024, Part I:
 
A bissel Torah (bit of religious learning), from three main sources:  American naturalist Aldo Leopold -- Scandinavia, specifically Danish design -- and this week’s parasha.    
 
Ki Tetzei, late in Deuteronomy, has the best sequential non-sequitur in Scripture, Deut 22:6-8.  It start with the famous kan tzipor: should you wish to take a fledgling or an egg out of a multigenerational nest, first shoo away the mother bird, then take the young – so that you may live a long life.  Though imposing that pain on a mother seems rather cruel – avoidable, like so much of our environmental footprint, by eating lower on the food chain – the 13th century Nachmanides (Ramban) says there’s something bigger here:
שֶׁלֹּא יַתִּיר הַכָּתוּב לַעֲשׂוֹת הַשְׁחָתָה לַעֲקֹר הַמִּין אע"פ שֶׁהִתִּיר הַשְּׁחִיטָה בַּמִּין הַהוּא, וְהִנֵּה הַהוֹרֵג הָאֵם וְהַבָּנִים בְּיוֹם אֶחָד, אוֹ לוֹקֵחַ אוֹתָם בִּהְיוֹת לָהֶם דְּרוֹר לָעוֹף, כְּאִלּוּ יַכְרִית הַמִּין הַהוּא.   “For Scripture doesn’t permit a killing that uproots an entire species – even if the slaughter [of one] from that species is permitted – and here, the murder of the mother and the children on the same day…is tantamount to the extinction of that [entire] species.” 

On this:  just yesterday morning, Dr. Katherine Richardson of the IPCC reminded us that Earth and its climate are actually here for the duration; it’s life, so much of which is dependent on a predictable climate, that’s the rare gift – thus the biodiversity crisis is at least as urgent as the climate crisis.

              Enter American naturalist Aldo Leopold – in A Sand County Almanac, published posthumously a few generations ago, in the year of Israel’s first armistice, 1949.  He described the need for species protection this way:  “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”  And:  “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Dvar, Part II: 

              Then the very next verse, Deut. 22:8 – if there’s one “take-home” bit of climate Torah I can offer, this is it.   “Ki tivneh bayit hadash, when you build a new house – v’asitah ma’akeh l’gagecha – you must make a parapet (protective railing) around your roof -- וְלֹֽא־תָשִׂ֤ים דָּמִים֙ בְּבֵיתֶ֔ךָ כִּֽי־יִפֹּ֥ל הַנֹּפֵ֖ל מִמֶּֽנּוּ , that you not bring blood-guilt into your house, lest the one who might fall, falls from it.”

              What’s a ma’akeh / מעקה , parapet?  Rashi (11th C.) says it means “a fence around the roof, and notes that [Targum] “Onkelos renders it by תיקא; the fencing is like a casing (תיק) which guards things that are within it.”

              Hizkuni (13th C., citing Talmud Ketubot 41), adds:  לרבות כל דבר המזיק, this verse’s logic “extends to anything that might cause damage.”  K’gon, kelev ra, a ferocious dog, or sela ra’u’a, a shaky ladder.  Around anything potentially dangerous, take reasonable precautions.

So, today, what else in our midst, that’s our responsibility, “might cause damage”?   Toxic cleaning supplies?   A slab of kosher veal (speaking of the pain caused to a mother when the young is taken to satisfy a human craving)?  Any slab of meat, given its vastly higher carbon footprint?  A thermostat set too high or low, privileging perfect comfort over energy efficiency?  Even simply a too-big house, heating and air-conditioning way more cubic footage than anyone needs? 

              Who among us is even asking such close-to-home questions these days – and yet, how can we not?  Yesterday at Blox the brilliant Ditte Lysgaard Vind, acclaimed author and leader in sustainable design, noted that reduce comes before reuse (and way before recycle) -- and she specifically flagged that they’re “Now working on the fewest square meters needed to preserve a high quality of life”.   Might we move toward the same?

Reducing, making do with less, she noted, brings us closest to respecting planetary boundaries, which are inviolable.  They’re like the laws of physics -- ki yipol ha’nofel, that the one who falls, will fall, hard.  So put up the damn parapet! 

              Take reasonable precautions!  On climate, don’t conduct an uncontrolled science experiment with the only biosphere we’ve got.  And on species, remember Leopold:  the first precaution of intelligent tinkering is to not throw away any part, however small.  This is the precautionary principle – a key piece of Torah for the Anthropocene, straight from Devarim, kaf bet, pasuk chet.

D'var, final installment:
 
              That said, the topic committed to a year ago* and recycled today, transcends this or any parasha.  It’s the Torah of “right relationship”.  I’d offfered this to Angie as “a frame for ecology, and society, and the spiritual life, rolled into one”.  “Right Relationship” is a broad concept, not narrowly a verbatim piece of Aggadah, but a deeply Jewish idea. 

A favorite example of Right Relationship comes from the bottom of Talmud page Berachot 35a.   Rav Yehuda said that Shmuel said, “anyone who enjoys [something] from this world, without [offering] a blessing, is as if they’re ‘enjoying’ it straight from the holy reserves on high” -- i.e., they’re stealing it from God.  The prooftext:  ‘The Earth is God’s, and the fulness thereof’ -- ״לַה׳ הָאָרֶץ וּמְלוֹאָהּ״, Psalm 24:1 (also a key text for Liberation Theology, from our Latin-X Catholic cousins).  Rabbi Levi counters, yeah it’s written “the Earth is God’s and all within”, but it’s also written in Psalm 115 (you may know this from Hallel), ״הַשָּׁמַיִם שָׁמַיִם לַה׳ וְהָאָרֶץ נָתַן לִבְנֵי אָדָם״ -- “the Heavens are God’s Heavens, yet the Earth God has given to humankind!” 

So which is it?  לָא קַשְׁיָא , it’s not hard to reconcile:   כָּאן קוֹדֶם בְּרָכָה,
כָּאן לְאַחַר בְּרָכָה – this one, Psalm 24, in which all belongs to God, applies before one says a blessing; this one, Psalm 115, saying it’s now ours, applies only after a blessing – after a restoration of Right Relationship.

After all, v’achalta v’savata, uverakhta!  (Deut 8:10, you’ve eaten, and you’ve been satisfied, so now you bless).   Which should mean not just that you discharge your halachic obligation to utter a precise verbal formula – but more broadly that demonstrate gratitude, reflect on your bounty, and then commit to ensuring that others around you can similarly enjoy, and that those who come after you can too.  That’s “right relationship.”

So much of Copenhagen as a city, Dansk as a culture, is about right relationship – of old and new; of water with land; of people with ecosystem and with one another.  Danish design:  simplicity, and beauty, and efficiency, with a touch of the ethical.
​

Consider this very season, here, in 1943 – hundreds of ordinary Danes risking their lives, after the resistance sent word that the Nazi occupiers were about to round up the Jews – ferrying them across the Oresund, to safety in Sweden just a few miles away.  More than a touch of the ethical.  [We’ll hear about this later at the shul, from Rabbi Melchior, whose ancestor canceled services and told folks to go into hiding then cross the sound.  It’s also worth turning into folk singer. UU Reverend and eco-activist Fred Small’s stirring song, “Denmark 1943”; I cry every time].

And we learned from Thomas Becker at String – the grandson of a brave Danish Jewish newspaper publisher, jailed in 1942 his anti-nazi writing, who died in Theresienstadt – that this whole region is interconnected and shares affinity, with Copenhagen (Denmark) and Malmo (Sweden, across the Oresund) being two of the local hubs.  I know exactly one word of Swedish, lagom – it means enough, sufficient, just right.  In another language, that’s “Dayenu.”  Yes, sufficiency – simplicity [kimmutz in Mussar], enough-ness – is as Jewish, as it is Scandinavian. 

           Without an ethic of sufficiency, there is no right relationship.  With such an ethic, sustainability is possible.

Everything now depends on us getting this right, on re-designing our economies and geographies and homes and menus and communal priorities around right relationship, with each other and the world, before we reach climatic tipping-points and devastating species extinctions from which there can be no recovery.  So, we need to cultivate: 

Right relationship WITH OTHERS – any others, put up your damn parapet! – and especially the marginalized and vulnerable. 

Right relationship with OUR OWN DESCENDANTS, al shileshim v’al ribe’im, to the 3rd & 4th generation – a century or so, just how long our carbon emissions stay aloft, wreaking atmospheric havoc.  “L’dor vador” (our oft-said mantra meaning 'from generation to generation') is not just an expression, it’s a demand.

And right relationship with NATURE ITSELF, with CREATION.  For – to come back full circle to that Wisconsin genius, Aldo Leopold:  “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” 

Friends:  Let’s do the RIGHT thing. 

 
* Note:  This dvar was given on the morning of Sept. 11, 2024 -- the anniversary of an American tragedy, and nearing the yartzheits of those killed a year earlier in Israel.  One of many compounding losses from Oct. 7th was the postponing of this planned gathering by nearly a year:  that brutal setback to peace and justice in and around Israel, also set back innumerable collaborations and efforts to address the climate-biodiversity-ecological crises, which have only multiplied in the interim.  May we only be agents of wholeness – shalem / shleimut, which is literally at the root of shalom and salaam, both…