Nature, to the Jewish faith, is a bit contradictory. On one hand, it is said that "Judaism does not take nature to be inherently sacred or worthy of veneration. In fact, such worship is precisely what the Bible considers to be idolatry." While on the other hand, the original founding agrarian Jews kept "proper treatment of the soil, animals and vegetation of the land of Israel in order to maintain Israel's religious ritual purity and moral integrity."
In favor of the Jews succeeding in properly integrating good care for the earth with religion, there is the argument of the nature based Jewish holiday of Sukkot. By living in a sukkah with no stable roof, the people were able to be more in touch with God. Since God, as proven in Genesis, created the earth and all its natural baggage, they are respecting nature by celebrating. However, as time moved on and economic systems changed as well as several politically destabilizing events for the Jews, they lost their agrarian roots (no pun intended) significantly in the 10th century when Islamic law began to impose and the Bourgeoise Revolution happened. Jew then became integral parts of merchant cultures and business. Agrarian roots were found again when the Jewish people, after much harassment, succeeded in their zionistic motives and returned to Israel. Due to much conflict once again even in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was difficult to make the desert bloom. Finally, it was achieved but by secular Israelis and not the fundamental Jews we associate with the holy land.
Religions of the world fascinate me and as I did not know much about Judaism, I found this chapter very interesting to read. One particular part of the chapter that I found especially intriguing was when it was analyzing the scripture that the Jews use to learn about the relationship between God and Israel. The part I found interesting was when the chapter said that the scripture quotes “Since God is the sole creator, it is God’s prerogative to sustain or to destroy Nature.” This statement reminded me a lot of Annie Dillard’s thinking. This statement would support her thinking a lot, for example how when it came to deformed babies, she believed that since God was the creator, he created these deformed babies (she paid no attention to scientific reasoning). This statement backs up Annie Dillard’s thinking by saying that God is the sole creator so he alone has the power to destroy things as well. It is curious to note that later, the chapter talks about how as Jews were integrated into modern society, many Jews no longer regarded the written and oral Torah as the source of truth about the physical universe and looked to science rather than religion. They followed the path that Annie Dillard refused to, to find more concrete answers about the environment that they felt religion could not provide for them.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI found Anum's comment very interesting. Like her, I feel like I don't know too much about any other world religions besides my own. Now that I am in college, I think it is more important than ever to become familiar with the basic teachings of each religion, especially since we are surrounded by people of different faiths. I also found what Anum mentioned ("Since God is the sole creator, it is God's prerogative to sustain or to destroy Nature") to be interesting as well. This section of the reading reminded me of the three different models of God's intervention that we have been discussing throughout the semester. This reading, like Anum's comments pointed out, also reminded me of our first paper, specifically Annie Dillard's novel. While it is never 100% clear what exactly Dillard is trying to say, it is clear that she regards God as the sole creator, the only figure in charge of either sustaining or destroying Nature. Like I mentioned in my post about the ELF article I found, it is very interesting how different subjects in this class relate to each other; this has made me think about the subjects at hand in different ways, since they are all interconnected.
ReplyDeleteGoing through this article, it seemed that the author took me in various different directions. Perhaps because the Jewish tradition is so ancient, there is an exceedingly great number of philosophies and variations of thinking that contribute to the Jewish history as a whole. At one point, the author revealed so many different rabbi rationales that some started to contradict each other. Nevertheless, Jewish thinkers are constantly careful to adhere to the Torah and additional sacred texts, such as the Mishnah. (Even if their doctrines do not arise from the texts directly, they make an effort to justify their rationale with support from these teachings.)
ReplyDeleteA recurring theme seems to be that the well-being of nature is strongly linked to the well-being of humans. First, it was believed that human morality itself played a key role in natural processes. When Jews acted morally, in accordance with the Torah, the land would produce well and the Jews would, in turn, benefit from the land. Then, the continuation of the land’s fertility was emphasized and similarly equated with human welfare. Again, all the teachings go back to Scriptures, which proves to be the ultimate authority in the way Jews relate to nature, far surpassing any rabbi’s opinion. Thus, the virtues and responsibilities explicit in these sacred texts should reveal that Jews generally aim to be good managers of their land, and nature as a whole. This is so because it does not belong to anyone but God, just as they themselves belong to God.
So I guess that, too, relates to God being the sole Creator and consequent Sustainer of nature and all things.It seems that this belief is so fundamental that it is difficult to stray from finding it and addressing it in many different ways.