Blogcast: A Reading of the Jewish Declaration on Nature

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Genevieve Kennabrae reads The Jewish Declaration on Nature, originally written in 1986 by Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg a prominent Jewish-American scholar and activist.

This is the 6th blogcast in our Faith for Earth blogcast series where we’ll be highlighting the commitments and calls for action faith traditions have made around caring for the Earth.

 This recording is originally from the Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement’s Faith for Earth Canvas Guide to the Faith for Earth: A Call for Action resource, a document created by the Parliament of the World’s Religions and the United Nations Environment Programme Faith for Earth Initiative. You can access the full Guide here. 

The festivals of the Jewish religion do call upon us to stand before God, in awe at God’s majesty, trembling before God’s judgments, but that is not the dominant mood of the Jewish faith. The festivals celebrate, in joy, the cycle of the season of nature. The rabbis even insisted that: “Anyone who has denied themselves any one of the rightful joys of this world is a sinner” (Baba Kama 91b). The highest form of obedience to God’s commandments is to do them not in mere acceptance but in the nature of union with God. In such a joyous encounter between humanity and God, the very rightness of the world is affirmed.   

The encounter of God and humanity in nature is thus conceived in Judaism as a seamless web with humans as the leaders, and custodians of the natural world. Even in the many centuries when Jews were most involved in their own most immediate dangers and destiny, this universalist concern has never withered. …Now, when the whole world is in peril, when the environment is in danger of being poisoned, and various species, both plant and animal, are becoming extinct, it is our Jewish responsibility to put the defense of the whole of nature at the very center of our concern…humanity was given dominion over nature, but was commanded to behave towards the rest of creation with justice and compassion. Humanity lives, always, in tension between its power and the limits set by conscience.  

This text is from The Jewish Declaration on Nature: Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, Vice President, World Jewish Congress, Assisi 1986.   

*Note: Slight changes have been made to this reading to make it gender-inclusive. The words that have been changed are in italics in the text. 

 This recording is originally from the Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement’s Faith for Earth Canvas Guide to the Faith for Earth: A Call for Action resource, a document created by the Parliament of the World’s Religions and the United Nations Environment Programme Faith for Earth Initiative. You can access the full Guide here.