Climate Change and Kiddush Hashem

Being concerned over climate change is a moral imperative, but can it be considered a legal imperative in Jewish law? I believe it is possible to conceive of it as such, and in doing so, can enlighten forgotten corners of our own religion.

My belief in Jewish law and teaching is based on two ideas: that we should start from a point of view that is strictly true, and that to the extent it conflicts with our secular or moral worldview, we should find out how to reconcile it, but not through apologetics. That is, by claiming that the law really is modern if we read it right, and not by claiming Jewish morals as transcendent over Jewish law, thereby ignoring the conflict. Rather, I believe that the Torah is holy and powerful, and that by using da’as [da’at] Torah, or spiritual thought-intuition gained through study, we can see how Torah can be extrapolated into new fields of inquiry and new paradigms of morality.

There are issues which have been examined intensely recently: issues of sexual orientation and gender identity, issues of marriage and descent, issues of charity to the non-Jewish community, issues of agricultural practices outside the land of Israel. One massive one that remains largely (though not completely) untouched within the Jewish world is climate change.

Climate change is a profoundly theological issue. One of the more overlooked aspects of Pope Francis’ papacy was his attempt to move the Catholic Church into a position against climate change. He wrote the encyclical Laudate si’ in 2015, building on his predecessors’ work. 

To establish standing, meaning to present the legal basis for the Catholic Church to concern itself about the Earth, Francis points out that the common home of all people is indeed the domain of a universal church. The actual title of the encyclical is a quote from St. Francis of Assisi, from whom Pope Francis took his name. 

“Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.”

Catholic doctrine looks for an external solution based on an internal revelation. Francis quotes an address Pope Benedict gave in 2005: “The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.” This is a call for “ecological conversion,” where opening one’s heart to Jesus translates to an open heart for the Earth. “Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”

From a Jewish perspective, the claim to universal jurisdiction is a very difficult one. Jews have no particular ecological obligations to places that are not under our control or are not the Land of Israel. We must not destroy fruit trees in war, we must not plant in the seventh year, we must wait three arboreal years to eat from a tree, we must refrain from working the Earth on Shabbat. We must not be wasteful (Bal Tashchit). These are important principles for us to preserve our relationship to the land. But if we don’t control the world, how do we justify telling others what to do? What impact can we have on the whole world if we don’t control it ourselves?

This dead end is resolved by establishing a legal jurisdiction over the world. We’ve traditionally done this process through the mitzvah of Kiddush Hashem. Kiddush Hashem, often defined as martyrdom, is much more than that. It is anything that sanctifies God’s Name, which often means public displays of compassion, meaning in front of non-Jews, and private devotion.

Rambam defines Kiddush Hashem, and its converse, Chillul Hashem, outside of martyrdom in his codex, the Mishneh Torah: 

“Whoever consciously transgresses one of the mitzvot related in the Torah, without being forced to, in a spirit of derision, to arouse [Divine] anger, desecrates [God's] name. 

Conversely, anyone who refrains from committing a sin or performs a mitzvah for no ulterior motive, neither out of fear or dread, nor to seek honor, but for the sake of the Creator, blessed be He - as Joseph held himself back from his master's wife - sanctifies God's name.”

This refers to a story between a Jew and a non-Jew. Joseph is sold into domestic servitude to Potiphar, but Potiphar’s wife aggressively tried to seduce Joseph. Potiphar’s wife, failing in this, sends Joseph to jail, accusing him of forcing himself on her.

Rambam continues with the idea that pleasant and good conduct is also a form of Kiddush Hashem. 

In other words, Jewish jurisdiction over the world is only in relationship to the Jewish ability to sanctify God’s Name. To the extent that Jews try to assert jurisdiction beyond this, it is usually in the context of “hastening” the Messiah, which does have universal jurisdiction. (There’s a lot of controversy over this as an idea, and is the core of the most fundamental splits in Jewish groups.)

Sanctifying God’s Name is not synonymous with spreading it. This sanctification can be done privately through good conduct, though it is of higher significance in public. 

However, God is, evidently, interested in positive public feedback. The most convincing argument in Moses’ arsenal to prevent God from destroying the Jewish people is to ask, what will the rest of the world think? Indeed, in Parshah Va’etchanan 4:6, Moses says “Observe them faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, ‘Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people.’”

Jewish jurisdiction is then territorial, but the “territory” can be expanded by wherever we are and wherever there is goodness to do and evil to avoid, and wherever our reputation can be enhanced. 

Now that we have established this, let’s examine Jewish thought over the sacredness of the entire Earth.

In our parshah Ki Tavo, Moses commands the children of Israel to write the Torah on a stone that is plastered, not directly on the stone. He also commands them to build an altar of unhewn stone:

“Do not wield an iron tool over them; you must build the altar of your God of unhewn stones.”

Everything sacred that is made of rock cannot be carved or attacked by human hands. This is true regarding the Temple, where the hewn stones of the Temple floor which one may prostrate on (unlike other hewn stones, upon which we lay a tallit in order to prostrate during the Aleinu prayer) were carved by the mysterious Shamir worm, which was created by God to carve stones at the dawn of time.

A mysterious divine force also carved the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai. According to Ki Tisa 31:18, “Upon finishing speaking with him on Mount Sinai, [God] gave Moses the two tablets of the Pact, stone tablets inscribed with the finger of God.” 

There is a Midrash that explains that God’s Finger carved the letters, including letters that stayed miraculously suspended in midair. This finger, according to one kabbalist, gave out light. “‘Written with the finger of God’ means that God drew the shape of the letter with His ‘finger,’ i.e. using one of the kinds of light at His disposal.”

The world itself was created on the Foundation Stone, the Even HaShtiya. Upon this stone, the whole world was formed. This same stone became the foundation stone for the Temple itself, sometimes described as an “umbilical cord” between Heaven and Earth. There is a tradition that the stone that Jacob sleeps on as a pillow in his journey is this same stone, with the land folding itself together so that it becomes one.

Moses’ great sin was carving a rock. Specifically, he was told to speak to a rock in order to let it give water to the grumbling Israelites. But he struck it instead — not just mere disobedience, but something much deeper, and was prevented from reaching the Holy Land. 

It may be understood to see that carving stones is a kind of violence done to the Unity of the Earth itself, for if any stone could be the Foundation stone, any carving can be the very dismemberment of the world itself. And from the Jewish-specific angle, this means the destruction of the Temple itself. Moses, who did not grasp the magnitude of this, may not have been trusted to build God’s House in the Land.

The foundation of idolatry is the carving of objects. Look at Rambam’s Guide for the Perplexed, who creates the story of idolatry: once upon a time, all peoples worshipped God and His servants, but overtime, people forgot God and knew only God’s servants, whom they called gods. Idolatry is thus the division of God.

The usage of nature, and the extraction of nature, as seen in Moses’ attempt to draw water out the rock as one would draw blood out of a person, is inherently violent. This violence tears apart the physical unity of the Earth in order to draw specific spiritual or physical powers out of it that are not accountable to God; this is the nature of Avodah Zara, of idol worship — it does not necessarily require morality or obedience to the Creator of All as a part of one's sacrifice or prayer.

To draw us back to Kiddush Hashem, we learn that there are no circumstances where one can be compelled to do three things without accepting death: Murder, Adultery and Idolatry. Refusing idolatry and proclaiming Oneness is not just a matter of spiritual or theological principles, but physical ones too. The act of creating an idol is physical, and the act of using one to empower oneself at the expense of the unity of the physical world, is of course, also physical.

Climate change is an act of extracting resources for oneself by tearing apart the world. Oil is only taken by carving rocks. Wind and solar, on the other hand, are gathered by windmills and panels that sit idly. There are hints of this danger at the very beginning of Creation, when precious metals are described in Genesis as being deposited the world over by the primordial rivers, a premonition of  the extraction to come.

It is an act of world unity, and recognition of a shared reality, that is the fundamental requirement to attack climate change. The Jewish role is to set an example, and proclaim the Holiness of God to the world, and In the World itself. This is the limit and mandate of our role and interest in defending the environment.