By Yehuda Ganot

The Midrash recounts that when the Creator placed the entire world in front of man, he said to him: “Look how beautiful and good are my creations, take care not to spoil my world.” Since then, man has not ceased to spoil the world. He cuts down trees and does not plant any; he pollutes waters and does not purify them; technology marches forward, but the world marches backwards.

The pollution of our air and of our water sources, the destruction of nature and forests, the dwindling of natural resources and the fear of the “end of the world” are not alien to the haredi world. The haredim prefer leaving the global concern for the future of the world in the hands of the creator of the world, saying “the only one we can depend on is our Lord in heaven.” But religious people are highly obligated in respect of both the spiritual and physical destruction of the environment, which has spoilt the world the creator entrusted us to guard. One could say that Jewish religious law represents the first world organization for the protection of the environment. Almost two thousand years before anyone thought of the subject, the rabbis wrote in Treatise Baba Batra in the Mishna: “ One must keep one’s tree at a distance of twenty-five cubits away from a city” and the Talmud extrapolated from this that: “it is good for a city to have open space before it.” Well before the courts, the Ministry of the Environment and lawmakers took up the issue of disturbances caused by noise, Yeshiva scholars discussed these subjects in the chapter “do not dig” which deals specifically with these issues.

The heads of environmental organizations would do well to take into account the fact that Jewish religious law defined long ago strict laws governing where and how to build factories that may harm the environment, and when it is permissible to build plants close to residential homes when the noise level emitted by a plant disturbs those living close to it, etc. The religious approach to preventing suffering to animals is also discussed in the six Orders of the Mishna. Thus, for example, we are advised to thank dogs for restraining their tongues when we left Egypt and man is directed to take the cat and the ant as examples of how to be modest and diligent.

Take Tu Bishvat, the new year of the trees, the period of germination and blossoming of fruits, for which our Sages created a special blessing (which is recited across the world in the month of Nisan): “Blessed are we that nothing is lacking in the world and that the Lord created good creations and good trees to be enjoyed by man.”

It is true that some of the old Haredi areas in Israel are not models of beauty or environmental awareness. This is because, following the devastation of the Holocaust, the leaders of that generation concentrated on restoring the calling of the Jewish people by rebuilding the great communities that had been destroyed and enabling the Jewish people to return to the study of the Torah. However, there is growing awareness of the environment among young communities today and many awards for beauty have been given to Emmanuel, Betar and other settlements. One should remember that the statutes drawn up one hundred and twenty years ago by the founders of Petah Tikva and Mea Shearim included many ecological clauses and resemble the statutes of a modern, ecologically-oriented community.

Nonetheless, the first thing the Haredi public measures in a neighborhood is its level of spirituality. A young couple looking for a home will first of all enquire about the members of the community in that neighborhood, in order to assess whether they promote spiritual enhancement – and only afterwards do they look for scenic views and gardens. As the head of the national organization “Haredim for the Environment,” which we founded two years ago in Petah Tikva with the aim of rectifying the environmental sores in our neighborhoods, I try to persuade haredi communities across Israel that “environmental justice” can also be a part of haredi life.

True, we are most concerned with education and we are proud of this, but we will not accept, for instance, advertisements to which we are exposed in other areas. The “green freaks” who are known as their anti-advertisement campaigns can find in us a partner in the aim to prevent advertising companies from controlling every street corner, and this is not just because of the religious principle that “nakedness should not be seen” Haredi communities consider that the quality of the environment involves a union of the physical and the spiritual, as Rabbi Yaakov Emden attested to when he said: “he who takes care of his soul, also takes care of his body.”

By Tzur Shezaf

What is the most important thing in a man’s life? Indians would answer: “both this and that, and neither this nor that,” meaning nearly everything, or almost nothing is that important. As my English aunt, who passed away a few years ago, would say: it’s all the things we do not need but can’t do without.

The world existed before us and will exist after us. To be crazy about nature is an individual thing. It is not important for everyone. One can live on an island built of cement, lit by neon lights, with fast motorways, air strips, shopping malls, aggressive billboards, and all our information stored on the chip of a computer or cell phone. And one can live in a house with high ceilings (to keep cool during Mediterranean summers), with insulated walls against the heat and the cold, with large windows (to let in that wonderful light which shines most of the year), and remember that every window in a house is the frame of a view which we gaze at, and which our children gaze at. So it’s important that the view we see (and the house opposite) is worth looking at.

Of course, these are unimportant things. One can do without them. Most of us live in apartment blocks, use electricity, air conditioners, computers and remain immersed in this inner world. The environment is of no importance in terms of man’s survival. These are things we do not need but can’t do without. Can’t? Are we to believe an old lady who is dead, who was born at the beginning of the 20th century and who was a romantic idealist? The sister of my father, who never had a driver’s license and would go round excavating antiquities in order to learn about the agriculture of 2,000 years ago and how nature looked like then, who would read books and say that there is nothing one should not know?

The ancient terraces and springs of the Jerusalem hills are the scenes of my childhood. Grandiose plans aim to transform the entire area between Sataf and Bet Shemesh into an ugly housing estate. The demographic fear of having an Arab majority in Jerusalem is going to transform the little springs, ancient terraces and hillsides into cold, alienating houses built by contractors whose tenders were fixed by fast-footed politicians. The environment is of no importance. What’s a spring when the future of the Jewish people and its sovereignty are in the balance? To dip naked on a warm summer’s day in the waters of a spring; to lie between the conifers and hide with someone in the undergrowth, knowing that this is the way it’s always been – is absolutely of no importance. It’s far more comfortable to lie in a bed.

Why is it so important for me to restore the beach in Yaffo? For whom? For nature? For the world? The world doesn’t care. The seashore is something that has spiritual value in the Spinozic sense, for the world consists of the soul and God and we too have a bit of that soul. Healing the world is thus a form of self-healing. This of course is pure nonsense. Why should I care if the residents of Yaffo, Jews and Arabs, can take pride in the Mediterranean’s most ancient city? In its wonderful harbor which still survives despite the constant efforts to destroy it? With God’s help, we may succeed in persuading the national council for planning and construction that a piece of seashore open to everyone at the southern side of the harbor, the area which the Israel Lands Authority aspires to sell to entrepreneurs, is worth more? We don’t stand a chance. And more importantly – we don’t have the money. Civil servants don’t know how to measure things that have no importance but that we can’t do without.

So in what do I believe? In nothing. I doubt it. But I do have respect for the ancient world, for the natural history of the world of which we are a part, and I hope that one day, when I go back to one of the places I love so much in Israel, I will be able to look at a rock and say that I once hid there with someone and my daughter will look at the expression on my face and smile. I do not want anyone to move that rock and build on its site a shopping mall, a new road or high-tension electricity line. Because the environment, like love, and souvenirs, has no meaning in the material-financial world and can’t be measured in value, I, like the farcical figures of Cervantes, run around to protect all these things, that have no importance but that we can’t do without.