For many rabbinic thinkers, the classical Jewish belief in a Creator of the world/universe reinforces a social ethic of human mutuality and support, as well as encouraging a special concern for protecting and sustaining our environment, the natural world. They connect the deliberate cessation of most agricultural activity every seven years [Shemittah] with all of these three: a Creator, an ethics of mutual support and practical benefits to our environment and the agriculture it sustains. In their minds, a Divine Creator cares for the natural world he has formed and the people he has fashioned.
Perhaps, we should think about the worlds that we create around us, individually and as a society:
Are they built on mutual respect and support, on the value of the people with whom we live?
Are they sustained by a special concern for preserving and protecting our part of our social and natural world?
Do we regularly make space for our own little world to regenerate?
Congregation Ohab Zedek 118 West 95th Street New York, NY 10025
