Editor: The following is a rare departure from a Sabbath Torah Commentary / Bible Study into a controversial social issue by the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary .
…How should we read the blessings and curses of Ki Tavo as the Jewish year 5773 draws to a close? It’s hard not to read the verses of blessing differently than our ancestors did, now that Jews are resettled in the Land of Israel (ha-aretz). “Wandering Arameans” for many centuries, we as a people have now come home. But it is equally hard—at least for me, this year—not to read the verses of curse differently, knowing that our generation faces the clear and present danger that we will exhaust the bounty of Planet Earth (ha’aretz, in the other meaning of the word). I used to be among those who believed that doomsayers like Al Gore were indulging in hyperbole. No more. I now walk around shaken by the conviction that the curses that threaten us as a consequence of global warming will surely come to pass, unless humanity acts quickly and decisively to prevent them. Those curses will, without doubt, be more far-reaching than the worst that Deuteronomy imagined, and—unlike the latter—will likely prove irreparable.
Moses’s message is inflected in 2013 by the fact that even the politicians of the world, who have every reason to deny the gravity of the problem, agreed at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009 that any increase in the temperature of the globe beyond historic levels must remain below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or the very future of the planet will be in jeopardy. The world’s scientists seem agreed that even the 0.8-degree increase that has already taken place has brought consequences more serious than many had expected. A 2-degree upsurge will mean that some island nations that exist right now will entirely disappear. For drought-stricken Africa, the impact will be devastating. And we are headed in this direction. Current carbon output will take us past the 2-degree target in fewer than 15 years.
What to do? I confess, I do not know. The answer is not to be found in Deuteronomy, just as the details of the just social order that it commands Jews to institute are not given there. But the command to steward God’s Earth as wisely as we can seems, to me, what the Rabbis called pshita—so obvious that it cannot be contested. The threat facing the planet, as described by innumerable scientific studies, seems equally to be pshita. Disagreements over details should not cause us—or permit us—to look away from the grim facts on which there is virtual unanimity. We know what Moses means when he commands us to “listen, O Israel,” and we understand the tremendous gift represented by the command to choose life, choose goodness, choose blessing. These stand before us as opportunity and challenge. “These are the terms of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to conclude with the Israelites in the land of Moab” (28:65), and which we seek to follow still… (more)
