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

