The Eco-Environment Values of Judea and Samaria

J Street has a Rabbinic Director.  He is Rabbi Lawrence Troster who will spearhead efforts to build and cultivate a J Street rabbinic leadership and attempt to strengthen J Street’s presence in synagogues and other Jewish community institutions across the country.

Rabbi Troster received his BA from the University of Toronto and his MA and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing a D. Min. in Ecological Ministries at Drew Theological School.

Environmentalism is an important topic in Judaism.  My neighbor, Rav Dov Berkovits, is involved here in Israel and with Canfei Nesharim in developing the theme of a Torah based approach to understand and act on the relationship between traditional Jewish sources and modern environmental issues amongst teachers and the public. And involved in this project: the Eco-Activist Beit Midrash (EABM) in Jerusalem’s Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo. We are no strangers to eco-environmental issues.

Here are of Troster's Green Faith leture topics which include: God Must Love Beetles; A Jewish View of Biodiversity and the Extinction of Species; Grasping the Tree of Life: Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Sustainable Living; The Blessing of the Place Where You Are: Jewish Environmental Spirituality and Practice; God of Creation/God of Destruction: An Eco-theological Perspective on Evil.

Actually, most of that is quite applicable to what we revenants are doing in Judea and Samaria - not only living in a blessed place but improving it and caring for it with full cognizance of environmental demands as reflected in traditional religious sources.  As Rabbi Troster himself notes, environment also includes humans:

7. The Torah gives an obligation to save human life.
The Jewish tradition mandates an obligation to save and preserve life (called in Jewish legal sources: pikuach nefesh)...[and] forbids us from knowingly harming ourselves (Leviticus 19:28)...Pikuach nefesh...[in] the Jewish tradition, [is] the Precautionary Principle [that] can be seen as a modern form of the warning not to tamper too much with the boundaries of Creation.

8. The Torah prohibits the extinction of species and causing undo pain to non-human creatures.
...Only humans could cause extinction and bring about the loss of one of the members of the Creation choir...It is evident from the first chapter of Genesis and other Biblical texts (Psalm 104, 148 and Job 38-41) that God takes care of, and takes pleasure in, the variety of life that makes up Creation. And although we might regard a species as unimportant or bothersome to human beings, God does not regard them so...Related to this idea is the concept of Tzar Baalei Chayyim, the prohibition of hurting animals without good purpose...

Indeed.

And I would suggest that Rabbi Troster realize that his new organizational employer could be engaged in very unfriendly and life-threatening activities vis a vis not only the earth, the soil, the plants and the animals on it but in a place called Eretz-Yisrael, a people, the Jews, are in danger from a destroyer who does not tolerate diversity or distinctiveness.

I hope he considers all that in his new position.

^