The Ten Green Commandments

A Jewish perspective – Rabbi Dr. Rachel S. Mikva, Chicago Theological Seminary

 1. Take care of our common
home in peril.
Two stories….
Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai taught: A group was traveling
together in a boat, when one of them took a drill and
began to drill a hole beneath his seat. His companions
were alarmed and asked, “Why are you doing this?!” He
replied, “What concern is it of yours? I am drilling only
under my own seat.” They protested, “But the water is
coming in and sinking us all!”
– Leviticus Rabbah 4:6 (4th-5th c.)

The sage, Honi, was walking along a road and saw an old
man planting a carob tree. Honi asked him: “How many
years will it take for this tree to give forth its fruit?” The
man answered that it would require 70 years. Honi
asked: “Are you so healthy a man that you expect to live
so long and eat its fruit?” The man answered: “I found a
fruitful world because my ancestors planted it for me.
So, too, will I plant for my children.”
-Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 23a (6th c.)
2. Listen to the cry of the poor.
The overarching Jewish attitude toward the poor is best summed up by a
single word of the biblical text: achikha (your brother). With this word, the
Torah insists on the dignity of the poor, and it commands us to resist any
temptation to view the poor as somehow different from ourselves.
… A common debate among those involved in antipoverty work concerns
the relative value of direct service addressing immediate needs and of
advocacy or organizing addressing the need for systemic change. Advocates for
direct service argue that the hungry need to be fed today and that the
homeless need somewhere to sleep tonight. Those who prefer organizing or
advocacy point out that soup kitchens and shelters will never make hunger and
homelessness disappear, whereas structural change might wipe out these
problems.
The Deuteronomic response to this debate is a refusal to take sides, or
better, an insistence on both. Rather than advocate exclusively either for long-
term systemic change or for short-term response to need, [Deut 15] articulates
a vision that balances the pursuit of full economic justice with attention to
immediate concerns. In this reading, the text in question becomes a charge to
work for the structural changes that will eventually bring about the end of
poverty while also meeting the pressing needs of those around us.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing
Social Justice Through Jewish Law and Tradition (2010)
 Shemitah - A Yearlong Shabbat
• Let Rest & Lie Fallow: There is no seeding or plowing
of agricultural land. Take the time to form a new
relationship with work and rest. Allow your land, your
body, your workers, your economy of production and
consumption, to rest.
• Release With Faith: We are reminded we do not own
our land, resources, or even time, and that these are
Divine gifts.
• Creating Commons: All private agricultural lands are
declared public and become community commons.
• Shared Harvest: All harvested and stored produce are
declared ‘ownerless’ and shared equally.
• Fair Distribution: People collect what they need.
• Debt Release: All debts from previous years are
canceled at the conclusion of the Shemita Year.
Jubilee Release
n

• Land Redemption: Land is linked to family heritage and ancestral

zo
Ha

lineage, and always returns to such tribal connections.

m
fro

• Release of Slaves: Slaves are released from their work and are
d
te

free to return home, to their community and land.

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 3. Rediscover a theological vision of the natural world.
May it be my custom to go outdoors each day, among the
trees and grass, among all growing things… And may all the
foliage of the field—grasses, trees, and plants—awake at my
coming, to send their powers of life into the words of my
prayer, so that my prayer and speech are made whole
through the life and spirit of all growing things.”
-Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, ~1800, Sichot HaRan 227

The celebration of Creation, so central to the Psalmists, calls

out for revival in our day…. The urgent need to transform
human behavior in relation to the environment will be best
supported by a religious life that returns to the Psalmists’
consciousness of our human place within (not above) the
great symphony of Creation.
-Arthur Green, Radical Judaism (2010), p. 99

Let the heavens rejoice and the earth exult,

Let the sea and all within it thunder,
The fields and everything in them be jubilant;
Let all the trees of the forest shout for joy. (Ps 96:11-12)
 4. Recognize that the abuse
of creation is ecological sin.
Bal tashchit—Do not destroy. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch
(19th c.) taught that this principle of Jewish ethics is the
most comprehensive warning to human beings not to
misuse their power and despoil God’s creation. Speaking of
created things, he wrote:

“I lent them to you for wise use only; never forget that I
lent them to you. As soon as you use them unwisely, be it
the greatest or the smallest, you commit treachery against
My world, you commit murder and robbery against My
property, you sin against Me!”
∞∞
Teshuvah means repentance and return. The necessary
complement to ideas of sin, it requires:
• Recognition that we have sinned
• Remorse
• Confession
• Restitution
• Changing behavior so as not to repeat the sin
-Based on the summary of Maimonides (12th c.) in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Teshuvah.
See also: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/spiraling-towards-repentance/
5. Acknowledge the human roots of the crisis.
Reading the verse in Ecclesiastes, See
the works of God! (7:13), the rabbis
imagined the Holy One showing the
first hu/man around the Garden of
Eden and saying, “Look at My works—
how beautiful and praiseworthy they
are! All that I have created, I created
for your sake. Take care that you do not
despoil and destroy My universe; for if
you ruin it there is no one to repair it
after you.”
- Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7 (~7th c.)
Technological civilization is [humanity’s] conquest of
space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing
an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In
technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To
enhance our power in the world of space is our main
objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be more.
The power we attain in the world of space terminates
abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart
of existence….

There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have

but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to
share, not to subdue but to be in accord….

The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather

than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of
things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become
attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are
called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn
from the results of creation to the mystery of creation;
from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

-Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (1951) pp. 3, 10

6. Develop an integral ecology.
The unity of justice and Earth-healing is also taught by
our experience today: The worsening inequality of
wealth, income, and political power has two direct
impacts on the climate crisis.
On the one hand, great Carbon Corporations not only
make their enormous profits from wounding the Earth,
but then use these profits to purchase elections and to
fund fake science to prevent the public from acting to
heal the wounds.
On the other hand, the poor in America and around the
globe are the first and the worst to suffer from the
typhoons, floods, droughts, and diseases brought on by
climate chaos.
So we call for a new sense of eco-social justice – a tikkun
olam that includes tikkun tevel, the healing of our
planet. We urge those who have been focusing on social
justice to address the climate crisis, and those who have
been focusing on the climate crisis to address social
justice.
-- From the “Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis,” 2015
 7. Learn a new way of dwelling in
our common home.
(2017) THE UNION FOR REFORM JUDAISM RESOLVES TO:
• Encourage congregations to advocate from the local to
federal levels of government to uphold or go beyond the
commitments of the Paris Climate Agreement;
• Encourage congregations to take steps to educate and
prepare themselves and their neighbors for the impacts
of sea level rise, wildfires, increased extreme weather
events, drought, and other impacts of climate change;
and work with local organizations to provide relief to
those affected by these events.
• Continue to advocate for legislative, regulatory, and judicial
action to protect all communities from the damaging impacts of
climate change;
• Continue to advocate for the Canadian and U.S. governments to
uphold our international responsibilities to decrease the human
impacts of climate change; and
• Encourage congregations to work with interfaith and other
partners within their communities to advocate for and work to
implement climate change solutions.
 8. Educate toward ecological citizenship.
Jewish organizations with educational and activist goals include:
• Hazon
• Including the Teva Learning Center, Adamah Fellowship
• The Shalom Center
• Jewish Climate Action Network (JCAN)
• Canfei Nesharim: Sustainable Living Inspired by Torah
• Jewcology
• Jewish Ecological Coalition (JECO)
• Aytzim – The Green Zionist Alliance, Shomrei Breishit
• Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL)
• The Jewish Farm School
• Wilderness Torah
• The Religious Action Center
• Along with partnerships with GreenFaith, Seventh Day
Initiative, People’s Climate March, Interfaith Power and Light,
etc.
Ellen Bernstein, Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology,
and ed. Ecology and the Jewish Spirit

Arthur Waskow, Torah of the Earth (2 vols.)

Jeremy Bernstein, The Way into Judaism & the Environment

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Judaism and Ecology

Molly Cone & Roy Doty, Listen to the Trees: Jews & the Earth

Dov Peretz Elkins, Simple Actions for Jews to Help Green

the Planet

Ellen Bernstein & Dan Fink, Let the Earth Teach You Torah

Martin Yaffe, Judaism and Environmental Ethics

Ari Elon, Naomi Mara Hyman and Arthur Waskow, eds.,

Trees, Earth and Torah

Yonatan Neril and Evonne Marzouk, Uplifting People and

Planet: 18 Essential Jewish Lessons on the Environment
9. Embrace an ecological spirituality.
We are composed of four substances: mineral, vegetable,
animal, and human, the categories of created things. In our
pride, we foolishly imagine that there is no kinship between us
and the rest of the animal world, how much less with plants
and minerals. To eradicate this foolish notion God gave us
certain precepts….
Above all, we are bidden to be compassionate to all other
human beings: “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Next in order
come our relationships with the animals…; for this reason, the
Torah commands us to show pity to them, to send away the
mother bird. Then come the precepts governing the plant
world. Although they are further removed from us, we are
forbidden to cut down fruit trees and the like. After this come
the soil and inert matter—further removed but still akin to us.
Thus the land itself must be rested every seven years.
To conclude, the Torah inculcates in us a sense of our modesty
and lowliness, so that we should be ever cognizant of the fact The whole world of humans, animals, fish, and birds
that we are of the same stuff as the ass and mule, the cabbage all depend on one another. All drink the earth’s
and the pomegranate, and even the lifeless stone. water, breathe the earth’s air, and find food in what
was created on the earth. All share the same
- Joseph ibn Kaspi on Deuteronomy 22:6-7 (13-14th c.) destiny—what happens to one, happens to all.
-Tanna d’bei Eliahu (10th c.)
10. Cultivate ecological virtues.
Praise–Let all that breaths praise Adonai, HalleluYah
(Ps 150: 6).

Gratitude–Give thanks to Adonai, for God is good (Ps 118:1).

Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their portion (Pirkei Avot
(2nd c.) 4:1).

Care – God took the human into the Garden of Eden, to till
and to tend it (Gen 2:15).

Justice – Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive
and occupy the earth that Adonai your God is giving you
(Deut 16:20).

Work – Six days you shall labor… (Ex 20:9)

Sobriety – Alas, those who add house to house and join field
to field, until there is room for noone else (Isa 5:8).

Humility – Moses was a very humble man, more so than

anyone else on earth (Num 12:3).
Israel, your covenant with God is made of choices: holiness or profanity,
life or its destruction. You can never keep from choosing. If you set
yourself to love God with everything you have, to obey God with your
entire heart, God’s gifts will be yours: a vital earth, its seas and continents
moving slowly in their own way; the rain and sun and snow and clouds
forming and changing, each in their own way. If God’s unity is always
before you, all these will nourish and delight even longer than your days.
The hills, the rain forests, the ice floes and the deserts, the infinity of life
that nests and grows here on earth with us—every living thing will bless
you, will welcome you as neighbor. What you produce will multiply in
goodness, and you will not lack for what you need. But if you forget God
and choose instead to fashion gods of your own; if they spring up
everywhere for you in your endless thirst for something undiscovered,
you may lose everything you have: your family and your sustenance, your
reason for being and your place of burial.

This blue-green earth, so beautiful, so solitary, is as fragile as you are and as precious. Beware
lest in giving way to excess you risk too much. Remember this and take it to heart. Teach it to
those who come after you. Place it in their hands, plant it in their minds. Meditate on these
things at home and on the road, awake and asleep, in the beginning and at the end. Try to find
them in every place we call our home.

--From “Creating a Shelter in the Wilderness,” Shabbat service of the First Int’l Conf. on Judaism, Feminism and Psychology (1992)
—creative rendering of parts (Deut 6:5-9, 11:13-21) of the Shema recitation, a central rubric of Jewish liturgy