News and Reviews
Being Brother-Keepers And Earth-Keepers
by Vivienne Cato
There is a midrash (rabbinical story that 'reads between the lines' of Torah) about a group of people travelling together in a boat. One of them suddenly takes out a drill and starts boring a hole under his seat. His fellow-travellers are aghast. "What are you doing?!" they ask him. "What's it to you?" the man says, "I'm already drilling under my own seat." To which they reply, "But the sea will drown us all!"
The idea that we are all responsible for each other's welfare - that we are 'all in the same boat' - is inherent in Jewish tradition. It's the responsibility that Cain tried to shrug off when needled by God about his brother's whereabouts. Being created in the image of God (in Hebrew B'tzelem Elohim), we humans have been given power - and also the obligation to care for those less powerful than ourselves, including other manifestations of life. Adam was given authority to name the animals in the Garden of Eden; but he also had to respect their rights - for example by not eating them. Vegetarianism is implicitly the modus vivendi until after the Flood, by which time we poor humans had indicated that we were not really up to the job.
The sin of environmental devastation is often laid at the door of the (so-called) Judaeo-Christian tradition. Genesis 1:28, inviting humans to have dominion over nature, seems to give us carte blanche to lay waste the high places of the earth. But taking quotes out of context is always a dangerous business. Rarely do the finger-pointers remember that a mere 18 verses on, in Genesis 2:15, the human's role in the Garden - that is in the world - is specifically said to be 'to work it and to guard it'. Here we have the origins of stewardship nestling side by side with those of dominion.
If there ever was a time for dominion, that time is past. Just as we have indeed multiplied and filled the earth, so we have dominated ourselves to the edge of catastrophe. Careful husbanding - or should that be partnering? - of the planet's once-rich resources is not only a spiritual obligation, it is a grimly pragmatic one.
We are all still fresh from the turn of the century and the millennium. For decades now we have collectively lived under a Damoclean sword that threatens to end life as we have known it. Nuclear weapons, climate change, loss of biodiversity: there are so many reasons to fear that we could not make it to the end of the 20th century. Yet we did. The problems have not gone away, but having survived to the other side of that symbolic time boundary creates a subtle psychological effect, a chance to start again. For our fates are not yet all sealed. It need not all end in disaster. Once our hearts and minds change, action follows. It is easy to feel disempowered by the scale of what needs to be done, and by our own lack of power and influence. But every small action counts. And like drops of water joining up to make a puddle, the puddles a lake and the lakes a sea, when they merge they take on a new and undeniable force.
The peaceful and massive protest in Seattle recently to halt the global carveup by the World Trade Organisation is a symbol of this collective force; and maybe the start of a new reality. Participants were diverse, from all over the world, but connected via the Internet, itself symbolically and in reality maybe the most powerful tool for merging. They came together in a single, desperate cause, and won the battle, if not yet the war. Most there probably would not describe themselves as religious. Yet in taking the action they did, they represent what we all need to do to fulfil the challenge laid down in Deuteronomy 30:19: 'I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life - if you and your offspring would live.'
© REEP, Vivienne Cato