This past Monday on the Jewish calendar was Tu Bishvat, the birthday of the trees and the Jewish holiday that has come to symbolize our commitment to the environment. I think about the trees in our yard often - huge trees that offer tons of shade, and of course, that also deposit many leaves. Trees whose branches become heavy after an ice storm and trees that become natural bases for a baseball game.
The Torah teaches a concept called bal tashchit, the prohibition against deliberate waste. The primary example given is about cutting down trees. But the community of Jewish law makers, so many years ago, rendered this prohibition nearly irrelevant by stating that it was only operative if the actions were truly wasteful. That is, if someone gained anything from chopping down the tree, whether it was to use the wood or to let more sunlight in through a window, they had not transgressed this Torah law. In this way, no one ever ends up transgressing bal tashchit.
The environmentalist in me really doesn’t like this. It allows us to justify basically any behavior and not feel that we’re doing anything wrong. We know the dangers of our actions and the deteriorating planet we live on. And yet, we want to live our lives (understandably!) with a sense of comfort and not that we are constantly doing something wrong.
Rabbi Yair Bachrach, a 17th century German scholar of Jewish law, acknowledged that bal tashchit is essentially inoperative. When asked if it was permitted to cut down a fruit tree that was blocking a window, he stated that Jewish law permitted doing so. However, he suggested doing it in a different way to create a different type of relationship with our world. He taught that instead of cutting down the entire tree, the owner should cut back just the branches that were blocking the light. Yes, next time the branches grew he would have to cut them back again. He tried to impart the idea that mere convenience does not give us carte blanche in our relationship with the environment. He taught that we should choose the more sustainable way of doing something, even if it takes more effort.
I love his approach because it feels so understanding of who we are as humans, while taking into account the relationship that we are meant to cultivate with the earth. He is not demanding that we completely change our lives, but he’s trying to help us see how we can take small steps.
I think we’re meant to exercise some restraint in our relationship with the natural environment. Because of the autonomy and power that we are given as human beings, we are often led to believe that we can impose our will onto the earth. But we are in relationship - covenant, even - with our environment. That covenant comes with responsibilities. Just because we have the power to carry something out, doesn’t mean that we should always exert that power. I find the need to remind myself of this lesson often; it doesn’t come naturally to me. But I realize, and am reminded this Tu Bishvat, this is what our world needs, and this is what our sacred covenant with the earth demands of us.
