When thinking about the Jew’s relationship and responsibility to the natural world, it is worthwhile checking out a mishnah in Pirkei Avot that might make you think that Environmentalism is a waste of time for Jews.
The mishah reads: “Rabbi Yakov said: If you are walking along the road reviewing your studies, and you stop to look up and say ‘what a beautiful tree’ or ‘what a beautiful field’ then it is considered as if you committed a corporeal sin.”
This seems to be quite damning for anyone who might be interested in appreciating the beauty of nature. The mishnah isn’t simply talking about the problem with interrupting your Torah study, because it specifically mentions someone who is outside and distracted by nature. In addition, the punishment seems quite severe.
In order to understand this Mishnah, we need to really analyze the specific language that was used. The word the Mishnah uses is “hifsik” - he stopped learning. According to _______ the mishnah was talking about someone who thought that he could relate to G-d better through Nature than he could through the Torah. He felt that he would leave his Torah and rely solely on the Environment to become close with G-d.
Rabbi Kenneth Brander further emphasized the point by explaining that some people have the misconception that Nature and Torah are completely separate. That in order to appreciate Nature, they have to abandon the Torah. The Mishnah teaches us just the opposite - by using the Torah as a lense to view the world, we will have a richer and fuller appreciation of Nature.
Achad Ha’Am took a very different approach by saying that the issue at hand was that this person was not in the land of Israel. Israel is the Holy Land, and only there is there strong enough of a connected between the Jewish people and the Land for a distraction in learning to be justified. We cannot become distracted by the Land outside of Israel because it will pull us from our learning. Only in Israel can we have the synthesis of the Land of Israel and the Torah of Israel.
With this new understanding of the Mishnah in hand, we can use this year’s Tu B’Shvat to better appreciate Nature, and find those links between our Torah study and the world we live in.
