I had never taught a class at a sewage plant before, but I did this past week. Much to my surprise, it was an experience that changed the way that I think about this week's Torah portion.

The class was the final meeting of a course I taught with Professor Arthur Urbano of Providence College and William Patenaude, Principal Engineer with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. Our three-part course, "Conversations with the Earth," investigated the Catholic Church's teachings on the environment, traditional Jewish understanding of our relationship to the natural world, and contemporary public policy approaches to environmental protection.

It is a topic that has attracted increasing attention in the last year. In May of 2015, Pope Francis published his second encyclical, Laudato Si', which calls on the world for "swift and unified global action" to address environmental degradation, a destructive culture of consumerism and global warming. In the Jewish world also, there have been increasing calls for environmental justice.

In the first two meetings of the course we studied the opening chapters of Genesis. We saw how, in both Catholic and Jewish interpretation, this text looms large in our understanding of our relationship to the natural world.

In the first chapter of Genesis, God says that human beings shall "rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth" (Genesis 1:26, emphasis added). The second chapter says that God "took the human being and placed him in the garden of Eden to till it and tend it" (Genesis 2:15, emphasis added). The Torah offers two different visions of the relationship between human beings and nature: We are here to rule the earth, and we are here to care for the earth. So, what are we? Rulers or caretakers?

We are both. That is the wisdom of Catholic tradition and Jewish tradition. That is also the wisdom of the Warwick Wastewater Treatment Facility on the banks of the Pawtuxet River.

The facility exists because modern cities and towns require massive amounts of water to sustain their large populations. The plant treats millions of gallons of water each day to keep the population of the west side of Narragansett Bay from drowning in its own waste. There is no question that, to meet our needs and desires, we have diverted resources and exerted strong control over natural processes. We rule over nature. 

However, we also give back to nature and care for it. Over the centuries, we have learned that, if we only take from nature, we ultimately will destroy ourselves. The entire point of a modern wastewater treatment plant is to make sure that the clean water that we take from nature is returned the same way we got it. That is our obligation as caretakers charged with the task to "till and tend" the earth.

Do we always do as good a job as we should to take care of the earth? Of course not. Our society is still grappling to understand and redress the harm we have done to our oceans, our rivers, the air, the land, and the climate. Balancing our roles as both "rulers" and "caretakers" of nature is, in part, the duty of engineers and lawmakers. They have the job of making sure that we reverse the harm we have done and to protect the earth in the future.

And religion also has a duty to transform our relationship with the natural world. We need to heal, not just the planet, but also ourselves. We need to forgive ourselves for ruling unwisely and we need to rediscover the joy of living in balance with the natural world. We need to remember that this world was given to us as a gift to celebrate, not to destroy. Even when our role is to "rule," we must not forget that we, too, have a Ruler whom we must serve.

This week's Torah portion, Vayikra, describes the sacrificial offerings that the ancient Israelites brought to the Tabernacle (and, later, the Temple) to worship God. As modern people, we often think of animal sacrifices as a primitive and superstitious practice that we are better off without today. Perhaps we are. However, we also should be mindful of how the ancient sacrificial offerings symbolized and reinforced a belief that we must practice balance in our relationship with nature – a belief that is sorely missing from the world today.

​The ancient Israelites did not slaughter and burn animals on an altar because they did not appreciate the lives of the animals they raised. In fact, just the opposite is true. They made sacrificial offerings as a symbol of appreciation for the gifts that they had received from God and the earth. An animal sacrifice was a way of acknowledging to God that nature's bounty belongs to God. We are permitted to take a share to sustain our lives only if we complete the cycle by returning a portion back to God who is the source of all life.

This week's Torah portion also establishes a ritual for seeking forgiveness from God through animal sacrifices when we err. The Torah specifies, "When a person unwittingly incurs guilt in regard to and of the Adonai's commandments about things not to be done… the person shall bring the bull to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before Adonai and lay hands upon the head of the bull" (Leviticus 4:2,4). Affirming the cycles of the natural world – life and death – and acknowledging our indebtedness to God is a way of finding forgiveness. 

We need to feel forgiven for our sins against the natural world. In order to heal the earth, we first need to heal ourselves. We need to restore our balance with the natural world – the take and the give – in order to lift ourselves out of a cycle of guilt, despair and hopelessness about our relationship with the natural world.

If we allow ourselves to be convinced that we have plundered and desecrated the natural world beyond our ability to fix it, then we will do nothing to repair what we have done and the cycle of destruction will continue. If, on the other hand, we take the necessary steps to start giving back to the earth as much as we take, we can restore our sense of balance, our hope for a better future, and renew our role as the world's humble caretakers. 

We don't have to sacrifice bulls to do that. But we do have to listen to the wisdom of the wastewater treatment plant. We can do a much better job of closing the loop of our relationship with the natural world, just as the ancient Israelites did when they gave back to God some of what they had taken. Today, we do that by replacing the clean water we use – drop for drop. We do it by planting new trees when we cut others down to build our homes and cities. We can do that by reclaiming the carbon dioxide that we release into the atmosphere to slow and reduce climate change.

We need to stop convincing ourselves that there is nothing we can do and that the destruction of the earth by human beings is inevitable. It's not. We can restore what we have broken. We can heal ourselves and heal the world.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Tu BiShvat: The Tree and the Renewal of Creation
​Tzav: Transformation through Fire

Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812) is mostly remembered today as the founder of Chabad, the chasidic movement that — long after his death — became associated with aggressive outreach to non-orthodox Jews. 

(Sorry, there is no quiz here, just a little Torah. I hope you're not disappointed.)

Shneur Zalman also was the author of the Tanya, the great chasidic philosophical work that describes the Chabad approach of applying rigorous intellectual scrutiny to Jewish mysticism. His aim was to create a system that would appeal to and stimulate the intellect as a way of gaining deeper spiritual connection to God. 

An example of Shneur Zalman's approach can be seen in this week's Torah portion, Vayikra. The first portion of the book of Leviticus focusses on the offerings of animal and grain sacrifices that were brought to the Temple in Jerusalem in ancient times. In typical chasidic fashion, Schneur Zalman had no interest in the actual mechanics of sacrificing animals. He saw the sacrifices as symbolic of our inner spiritual life. 

He commentary notes an odd construction of a verse at the beginning of this week's portion:

Schneur Zalman wondered why the verse says, "When a person offers from you a sacrifice…," instead of, "When a person from you (i.e., an Israelite) offers a sacrifice…" To the ear of a person familiar with the usual syntax of biblical Hebrew, the phrase does seems a bit odd.

Schneur Zalman explained that the unexpected word order conveys meaning. The sacrificial offering, he wrote, truly is from you. That is, it is composed of an aspect of your being. 

Schneur Zalman brings us more than clever word play, and more than an emotional appeal to be more attached to God. He wants you to be intellectually and introspectively engaged in the way you worship God. He wants you to think about your animal nature — the part of your mind that is impulsive, frightened, easily angered, and the part of your mind that chases after things that are not good for you. He does want your fervor and devotion, but he also wants your ability to analyze and to consider yourself.

Notice that the commentary does not call upon you to reject or to deny your "animal soul." That would be an impossibility and an exercise in self-loathing. Rather, he asks that you offer that part of yourself up to God. Identify it, know it, accept it, and tame it so that it will be transformed from a personal stumbling block into a symbol of a new relationship with God — one in which you know yourself more deeply and, thereby, come to know God more deeply.

This is not easy work. The teaching calls on you to be a spiritual warrior and to fight a long battle to know your own nature. It wants you, through the abilities of your mind, to improve and elevate yourself to a higher plane of being. 

In a way, it is ironic that Chabad today often is identified with a hyper-observant Judaism that seems to ask people to turn their minds off rather than to engage their intellect to gain greater connection to God. Schneur Zalman asked his students two hundred years ago to do something quite different. He wanted them to cling to God through deep, skeptical inquiry. 

We grow closer to God when we use our intellect to probe who we are and what our life's meaning is. God has given us minds to understand ourselves and our world more deeply — including our evolving approach to gender inclusion, understanding of history and science, and our tolerance and respect for people of different cultures and traditions. By facing the challenge, we elevate our animal nature into something that allows us to reach toward our highest selves.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Terumah: What to Give the God Who Has Everything
The Problem with Certainty

This early master of Chasidism said that when the verse refers to a person who "does one of them," it really means a person who observes a mitzvah, not one who violates it. He observed that:

That, says Levi Yitzchak, is a much more dangerous place to be than just committing a sin. A person who turns the performance of a mitzvah into an opportunity to get a swelled head of self-righteous glory is much less likely to even recognize that such behavior, truly, is sinful. It would have been better that he or she had never done the mitzvah at all than do it in a prideful way. Levi Yitzchak states boldly that such behavior is "no mitzvah at all." He says. "Rather, it is a transgression. It is called a sin." 

Attitude counts. From the perspective of Jewish tradition, attitude can matter more than the actual deed. A mitzvah, after all, is a commandment — something that we have been asked to do by God. If we turn it, instead, into a cause for celebrating ourselves, we're not really listening to God. We're only listening to our own egos.

Does that mean that a person should not feel good about writing a check to help the needy? Does it cancel out the good you have done if you take pleasure in studying Torah? Of course not. The mitzvot are intended to bring joy into our lives, but it is the joy of joining ourselves to God, not of inflating our opinion of ourselves.

This is the difference between the emptiness of self-serving joy, and the fullness of joy that connects us to others. It is a distinction that is subtle, but real. It is the difference between the person who makes a large donation to the synagogue and angrily insists upon the plaque dedicated to his or her honor, versus the person who gives merely for the pleasure of helping his or her community. 

So, the next time you do something wonderful, make sure you know for Whom you are doing it. Get the full joy out of your mitzvah by doing for the sake of giving back to your Source, not for the sake of feeding your ego.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Vayikra: The Joy of Contrition
Bamidbar: A Song of Humility