34 | AUGUST 12 • 2021
I
n the course of setting out the laws of
war, the Torah adds a seemingly minor
detail that became the basis of a much
wider field of human responsibility and is
of major consequence today. The passage
concerns a military campaign
that involves laying siege to
a city:
“When you lay siege to a
city for a long time, fighting
against it to capture it, do not
destroy its trees by putting
an ax to them, because you
can eat their fruit. Do not cut
them down. Are the trees people, that you
should besiege them? However, you may
cut down trees that you know are not fruit
trees and use them to build fortifications
until the city at war with you falls.
” (Deut.
20:19–20)
War is, the Torah implies, inevitably
destructive. That is why Judaism’s highest
value is peace. Nonetheless, there is a
difference between necessary and needless
destruction. Trees are a source of wood
for fortifications. But some trees, those
that bear fruit, are also a source of food.
Therefore, do not destroy them. Do not
needlessly deprive yourself and others of
a productive resource. Do not engage in a
“scorched earth” tactic.
The sages, though, saw in this command
something more than a detail in the laws of
war. They saw it as a binyan av, a specific
example of a more general principle. They
called this the rule of bal tashchit, the
prohibition against needless destruction
of any kind. This is how Maimonides
summarizes it: “Not only does this apply
to trees, but also whoever breaks vessels or
tears garments, destroys a building, blocks
a wellspring of water, or destructively
wastes food, transgresses the command of
bal tashchit.
” This is the halachic basis of an
ethic of ecological responsibility.
What determines whether a Biblical
command is to be taken restrictively or
expansively? Why did the sages take this
seemingly minor law to build out a wide
halachic field? What led the sages in the
direction they took?
The simplest answer lies in the word
“Torah.
” It means law. But it also means
teaching, instruction, direction, guidance.
The Torah is a lawbook like no other
because it includes not only laws but also
narratives, genealogies, history and song.
Law, as the Torah conceives it, is embedded
in a larger universe of meanings. Those
meanings help us understand the context
and purpose of any given law.
THE EARTH BELONGS TO GOD
So it is here. First and foremost is the fact
that the Earth is not ours. It belongs to its
Creator, to God Himself. That is the point
of the first chapter of the Torah: “In the
beginning, God created …
” He made it;
therefore, He is entitled to lay down the
conditions within which we live in it as His
guests.
The logic of this is immediately played
out in the story of the very first humans.
In Genesis 1, God commands humanity:
“Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the
fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and
over every living creature that moves on
the ground” (Genesis 1:28). “Subdue” and
“rule” are verbs of dominance.
In Genesis 2, however, the text uses
two quite different verbs. God placed
the first man in the Garden “to serve it
[le’ovdah] and guard it [leshomrah]” (Gen.
2:15). These belong to the language of
responsibility. The first term, le’
ovdah, tells
us that humanity is not just the master
but also the servant of nature. The second,
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH
The Ecological
Imperative