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Shalom! There are many traditional passages in the bible and in the Talmud which help us understand the importance of protecting the environment. In Genesis for example, it says that you should tend and guard the garden. We also have a principle based on a verse in the Torah portion of shelf team which says that when you are besieging a city, do not kill the fruit trees, the Rabbi said. That tells us not to do any unfortunate wastage, but there is an often overlooked passage in Deuteronomy chapter 23 which in some sense is basic hygiene, but gives us a very interesting insight into the world.
Now we know that Talmud tells us that the whole world is God’s, but listen to this passage, it says, “When you are in an area outside, you should be in an area outside your camp, where you can relive yourself. With your gear, you shall have a spike and when you, you should dig a hole and cover up your excrement, now why?” Obviously, we would say hygiene, but here it says, since the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and deliver your enemies to you, let your camp be holy, let it not find anything unseeingly among you, to turn away from you.
But besides having an environment that we can live in, and an environment that is hygienic, the Torah goes further to say that God abides in our camp, walks through our camp and that sort of human language way and should not find anything unseeingly, it is what when we pollute our environment when we least use or resources, when we waste wantonly, that is a violation of the sense that God is finding things that are important in our community and so that is one other reason why human beings must strive to protect the environment, to keep it free from pollution, to do our best to make a world befitting God’s presence.
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