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I've Got the Whole World in my Hands

05/23/2019 04:35:01 PM

May23

I once turned a rock into a bookend. It initially was a hulk of soapstone with a blueish-green hue that was in the form of what a typical person would define as rock-shaped. But after hours with a metal file, and sheets of sandpaper, I carved and polished the stone into a heart-shaped piece of art designed to hold up books in the middle of a shelf. Creating something from scratch is a rewarding experience. It is quite amazing that I can turn a slab of rock into something with utility, or raw ingredients into a fancy bread or a cake, or an empty canvas into a work of art. And while constructing furniture from assembly directions or making a cake from a box is also rewarding, it only provides me a fraction of the satisfaction as making something from basic materials and ingredients does. Yet, what if I have the equation all wrong? What if I should be a little more wary of my power to transform raw materials and manipulate them to my will?

Judaism asks this very question of humanity. In Parshat B’har we learn of the laws of sh’mittah, of letting the land remain fallow and unworked. “Six years you may sow your field, and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest; a sabbath of the Lord” (Leviticus 25:3-4). In this seventh year, the Israelites are prohibited from working the farmland and making the land yield to their whims. And while admittedly, this prohibition would not inhibit someone from filing down a slab of stone, the law still makes me pause and wonder about humanity’s drive to dominate nature and manipulate the Earth to our will. The law suggests that the land and Earth is not mine to do with what I wish. Rather, the law reminds me that I have a responsibility to the land, and to the larger natural world.

In an age of human created climate change, an era that understands that homo-sapiens supplanted other human species, and in a society that finds discarded plastic in the deepest parts of the ocean, I wonder if the ability to manipulate nature is as amazing as I initially thought it to be. Perhaps it behooves humanity to contemplate the cost of manufacturing and engineering. Surely for six years we can create and manipulate, but perhaps we ought to tone it down for that seventh year. Or perhaps we ought to tun it down each week; each Shabbat. Or perhaps more generally we can reduce our tendency to control nature by 1/7 in every moment. Maybe then, we can be most responsible with our relationship with the natural world.

Shabbat Shalom

Fri, March 29 2024 19 Adar II 5784