Chavurat Lamdeinu
Prayer - Study - Community
I Lift Up My Eyes Unto the Mountains

Rabbi Ruth Gais
Rosh Hashanah 5769
September 30, 2008
Chavurat Lamdeinu
Madison, NJ                                I Lift Up My Eyes Unto the Mountains

After having viewed the documentary, “Keeper of the Mountains”

I lift up my eyes unto the mountains;
From where does my help come?
My help comes from Adonai,
Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip;
Your guardian will not slumber;
See, the guardian of Israel
Neither slumbers nor sleep!
Adonai is your guardian,
Adonai is your protection
At your right hand.
By day the sun will not strike you,
Nor the moon by night.
Adonai will guard you from all harm;
He will guard your life.
Adonai will guard your going and coming
Now and forever.

To the ancient Israelites and all of the other peoples who lived long ago in the Near East and
Mediterranean basin, the supreme God either lived on top of or from time to time touched down
upon the highest mountain in the region. In Greece, Zeus lived on top of Mt. Olympus. In flat as a
pancake ancient Sumer, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, people built false mountains,
ziggurats, and found their God there. We have Mt. Sinai, where God revealed the 10
commandments.  On top of Mt. Moriah, the highest peak in Jerusalem, site of the Akedah, our holy
temple was built.
There are many other sacred mountains all over the world and many other sacred spaces, some
because they are unique, like Ayres Rock in Australia, some because they are so high, like Mount
Everest, and many more that are sacred to maybe a handful of people or even one person
because in that place some apprehension of the divine happened. I imagine every one of us has
such a place. Maybe it’s a spot at the beach where one dawn you understood the universe as you
never had before. Maybe it’s beside a quiet river at dusk. Maybe it’s a park bench in the city during
lunch hour. Maybe it’s lying on your back in your backyard at midnight in August, as you watch for
shooting stars.
Mountain top removal is a desecration. Quite literally, it is destruction of the sacred, de-
sanctification, we could also call it. Watching mountain top removal is like watching a rape; what
is left afterwards is the exhausted, humiliated, brutalized, almost lifeless body, no longer treated
as sacred, not loved, but violated, destroyed.
Mountain top removal is an horrible and obvious example of humans’ thoughtless desecration of
our planet. I can show you plenty of less obvious but equally brutal and potentially deadly
examples right around here. I can take you to superfund sites maybe 10 miles away where you
can see Agent Orange leaking out of containers into the earth across the street from houses and
playgrounds. The fact is that everyone in NJ lives no more than 10 miles from a superfund site, the
difference in communities like Newark or Camden is that some of us live 100 yards from a
superfund site. I can take you to illegal incinerators spewing contaminants into our air. And almost
down the street from here, the beautiful Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, is bordered by
municipal landfill that, as of 2003, was leaching poisonous mercury, PCBs and other contaminants
into its waters. When we do Tashlich later on, look at the muddy Passaic river, and think how
polluted iit is.
I doubt that any of this is news to you. And I hope you are filled with outrage and ready to help stop
environmental degradation now and forever. All of us, I hope, are much more aware not just of the
threat of global warming, but of the myriad affronts  to our natural world. What I want to talk about
today, Rosh HaShanah, as we celebrate the birthday of the world,  is the back story of Jewish
environmental action. I want to talk about the scriptural basis for environmental concern. The
“why” to environmentalism. This answer is not just because it will lessen pollution or help, birds,
frogs, or polar bears, though those are important and true answer, but there is a bigger,
underlying answer to explain why we, as Jews, are commanded to act.
Let’s start at the beginning, or almost. On the 6th day, God made man.”And God created man in His
image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. God blessed them
and said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the see,
the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on the earth.” (Gen. 1: 27, 28) “Master the
earth, and “rule” over all its creatures – that would seem to be a mandate for us to do whatever
we liked: strip mining, mountain top removal, drilling for oil, chopping down forests, filling the seas
with plastic waste, obliterating entire species of animals. And indeed, this is one of the critical
texts for those who would argue that God has given us a blank check to do whatever we want to
on our planet.         
In the next chapter of Genesis, however, we can find an alternative to the idea of humans as quasi
“masters of the universe.” “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to till
it and tend it.” (Gen. 2: 15) Here we come across the idea that humans’ role in the natural world is
to take care of it, to be its steward, not its master. And in fact, it is this role that is the one most
often emphasized in our scriptures. Again and again in all sorts of places we read as we do in
Psalm 24, “The Earth is the Lord’s and all that it holds, the world and all its inhabitants.”
Foolish us! We might have thought that the earth and the sky and sea belong to us. Not at all! The
earth belongs to God. Plain and simple. This is the crucial underpinning of all environmental
awareness. I’ll say it again: The earth belongs to God. Psalm 115 might seem to contradict his. It
says, The heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He gave over to humankind.” But almost 900
years ago, the commentator Ibn Ezra set us straight. He said:
The ignorant have compared human-kind’s rule over the earth with God’s rule
over the heavens. This is not right, for God rules over everything. The meaning
of but the earth He gave over to human-kind is that human-kind is God’s steward.

But, you may argue, how do we balance our human needs with our knowledge that the world is
incredibly precious because it is God’s? The mitzvah that guides us here is that known as “Bal
Taschit- do not destroy,” and we learn about this in Deuteronomy 20:19-20:
When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in
order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax
against them. You  may eat of them, but you must not cut them down.
Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged
city? Only trees that you know do not yield food may be destroyed;
you may cut them down for constructing siegeworks against the city
that is waging war on you, until it has been reduced.

The Rambam,  Maimonides, writing his law code, the  Mishneh Torah, Book of Judges, Laws of
Kings and Wars 6:8, 10, in the 12th century explains this passage:

It is forbidden to cut down food trees outside a [besieged] city, nor may a
water channel be deflected from them so that they wither, as it is said: You must
not destroy its trees (Deut. 20:19). Whoever cuts down a food tree is flogged [39
times].
And not only during a siege; whenever a food tree is cut down with destructive
intent, flogging is incurred. But it may be cut down when it damages other
trees, or it damages a field belonging to someone else; or its value for other
purposes is greater [than of its food yield]. The Torah forbids only wanton
destruction.        
Not only one who cuts down food trees, but also one who smashes household
goods, tears clothes, demolishes a building, stops up a spring, or destroys food
on purpose violates the command: You must not destroy.!.(Deut. 20:19).

In the late 19th century, Samson Raphael Hirsch, Horeb: A Philosophy of Jewish Laws and
Observances, expanded the Rambam’s explanation. Hirsch said:

This prohibition of purposeless destruction of fruit trees around a besieged city
is only to be taken as an example of general wastefulness. Under the concept of
bal tashchit, the purposeless destruction of anything at all is taken to be
forbidden, so that our text becomes the most comprehensive warning to
human beings not to misuse the position, which G-d has given them as master
of the world and its matter, by capricious, passionate, or merely thoughtless
wasteful destruction of anything on earth. Only for wise use has G-d laid the
world at our feet when G-d said to humanity, “subdue the world and have
dominion over it.” (Genesis 1:28) ..Destruction does not only mean making
something purposely unfit for its designated use; it also means trying to attain
a certain aim by making use of more things and more valuable things when
fewer and less valuable ones would suffice; or if this aim is not really worth
the means expended for its attainment. [For example] kindling something
which is still fit for other purposes for the sake of light;...wearing down
something more than is necessary...consuming more than is necessary...On the
other hand, if destruction is necessary for a higher and more worthy aim, then
it ceases to be destruction and itself becomes wise creating. [For example]
cutting down a fruit tree which is doing harm to other more valuable plants,
[and] burning a vessel when there is a scarcity of wood in order to protect
one’s weakened self from catching a cold.
These then are two of the foundation stones of Judaeo-Christian environmentalism: The world is
God’s, we are just temporary inhabitants upon, put here to tend it and care for it for our short
while. That’s number one.
And the second is: Bal Taschit: Do not wantonly destroy what God has put on this earth. As Rabbi
Hirsch said so well, we are commanded to use wisely what God has given us. “The purposeless
destruction of anything at all is taken to be
forbidden, so that our text becomes the most comprehensive warning to
human beings not to misuse the position, which G-d has given them as master
of the world and its matter, by capricious, passionate, or merely thoughtless
wasteful destruction of anything on earth”
I worry that the myriad of other things that need our attention at home and in the world will slow
down or derail the still young environmental movement. That happened before after the energy
generated by the first earth day in 1970 slowly melted away and there’s enough bad stuff going on
right now to divert our attention. That’s why I wanted us to recognize and embrace the moral
imperatives that Judaism provides us – the earth is the Lord’s, take care of it and Don’t wantonly
destroy.
Remember these principles and let them guide you in small but meaningful actions: recycling
everything you can, cans, bottles, paper, electronics; reuse your plastic and paper bags, use
fluorescent lights, support clean energy – all the things you’ve been reading about and, I hope,
doing. And get involved in bigger actions – stopping mountain top removal, cleaning up our oceans,
join the Passaic River keepers, or friends of the Great Swamp, whatever you become interested in.
The late, great Paul Newman said it well:
The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running
for sainthood, I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back
into the soil what he takes out.”


k.y.r

Mah rabu maasecha, Adonai, culam b’hochman asita.
How many are the things you have made, Adonai;
With wisdom you made them all;
The earth is full of Your creations….
You renew the face of the earth ( Ps. 104. 24…)