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LEVITICUS — 26:34 rest

LEV1128 For all of the questions in this case study, two teachings arise for me as transcendently important: One is the contemporary consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a council of scientists from around the world, that planet earth is becoming overheated, that this poses very serious dangers to human civilization and to the web of life in which the human race came into existence, and that this process is mostly due to the actions of the human race itself. The second is the warning in ancient passages in Leviticus 26:31-35 and 26:43 that failure to let the earth rest, as described in Leviticus 25, will bring about social and ecological calamity: famine, drought, and exile. Leviticus is, I think, encoding the accumulated experience of farmers, shepherds, and orchard-keepers on the western edge of the Mediterranean as sacred wisdom. These are the sharpest and most poignant teachings, but not the only relevant ones. The traditional second paragraph of the Shema, for example, taken from Deuteronomy 11:13-21, warns that if we follow the sacred teachings that flow from the One Who/That is the Unity of all life, then the rain, the soil, the sun, and the seed will unite to make our herds and our crops prosper and we will live well; but that if we turn to “afterthought gods” (Elohim acherim), then the earth, the river, and the sky will become our enemies. For me, the God of forethought, or flow, of the Whole is YHWH, Whose name cannot be pronounced but only breathed because God is the interbreeding of all life. … For me, these teachings are not sacred just because they are embedded in what we call Torah. They are sacred because they embody lived and living experience. And they point to what I can see around me: that human action can despoil, and is despoiling, our earth. Human beings, as well as entire species, are dying as a result. … It is also important to pursue the hands-on practices of an “eco-kosher” life-path, in which not only food but everything else we “eat” from the earth--like coal and oil--must be consumed in a way that seeks to heal the earth. Perhaps even more importantly, it is necessary for Jews to advocate vigorously for changes in public policy. It has become clear that governments will take effective action on the climate crisis only if the public insists on serious change. I encourage action based on the following seven principles, which are deeply rooted in Jewish tradition, and which should act as a yardstick for measuring the success and integrity of Jewish and interfaith efforts to shape U.S. and world policy on the climate crisis:... 2. The cost to those responsible for spewing CO2 and methane into the atmosphere must be greatly increased through taxation and/or “cap and trade” legislation that requires payment from carbon producers according to the damage they are causing. The underlying Jewish principle here is captured in Exodus 21:28-30: “When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox is not to be punished. If, however, that ox has been in the habit of goring, and its owner, though warned, has failed to guard it, and it kills a man or a woman--the ox shall be stoned and its owner, too, shall be put to death. If random is laid upon him, he must pay whatever is laid upon him to redeem his life.” (By Arthur Waskow, "Jewish Environmental Ethics: Intertwining Adam with Adamah")

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NUMBERS — 15:35 death

NUM170 In a world where life was cheap and Jewish lives considered [by non-Jewish sovereigns] of virtually no worth whatsoever, it is even less surprising that Jews were extremely reluctant to seek death as a means to punish other Jews. Even a casual reader of the Torah, however, would discover that Jewish tradition considered capital punishment to be an unremarkable part of the Jewish justice system. The death penalty was prescribed for a whole range of offenses that would seem to us to be fairly petty crimes, or hardly criminal at all. In Numbers 15:32-35, for instance, God tells Moses to stone to death a man who was discovered gathering wood on Shabbat. Certainly, though, the untimely clearing of brush is not considered a criminal offense, capital or otherwise, in any state that I have ever heard of. For a civilization that so highly values life, this carelessness with capital punishment stands out at best as an anachronism, and at worst as a moral failing that calls into question that compassion and love of the divine author of Jewish law. The Rabbis apparently agreed with that assessment and went to considerable lengths to read capital punishment out of the Torah. They parsed the verses with precision to restrict capital punishment to rare cases. For example, they defined the “disloyal and defiant” son who was to be publicly put to death as required by Deuteronomy 21:21, as being a male who was disobedient after eating gluttonously from partially cooked meat and making himself drunk on partially diluted wine. Even then, he was still only considered a “disloyal and defiant” son if he had eaten the meat and gotten drunk in the first three months after turning thirteen years of age, and only if the wine and meat were purchased cheaply with stolen money--and so forth. The requirements that the Rabbis constructed from their careful reading of just a few verses in the Torah lead them to conclude that there never was, nor would there ever be, a situation in which a “disloyal and defiant” son could be lawfully executed. The early Rabbis did not see themselves as being empowered to change the substantive law. To them, the Torah was God-given and of unquestionable authority, defining offenses and setting their punishments. But the Rabbis could and did alter procedural requirements to tilt the playing field sharply against the imposition of capital punishment. In the oft-quoted formulation from the Mishnah from Makkot 1:10, if a court imposed more than one death sentence in seven years, it was considered murderous. Another Rabbi responded that if a court imposed more than one such sentence in seventy years, it was to be considered murderous. Rabbi Akiva and his colleague Rabbi Tarfon, both giants of the early Rabbinic era, then stated that had they been members of the court, no defendant would ever have been executed. And yet, the last word in this Mishnah was given to Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, who became the president of the Sanhedrin (the rabbinic High Court) and was a key figure in the formation of post-Temple Judaism. He said of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon that “they too increase the murderers in Israel.” With that, the Mishnah turned its attention to other matters, leaving later generations to draw their own conclusions about a question that was not practical, but entirely academic, given the lack of a properly constituted rabbinic court sitting in session on the steps of a functioning “Third Temple” in Jerusalem. According to Jewish tradition, only such a court could properly render a capital verdict.

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NUMBERS — 35:32 priest

NUM423 The simple reading of this source is that the City of Refuge is just that, a safe haven for one who kills unintentionally. The source Numbers places a statute of limitations on the killer’s stay there, tying it to the death of the High Priest. It is thus not clear if, according to Numbers, staying in the City of Fefuge is a matter of protecting the unintentional killer, equivalent to a prison term, or a matter of atonement, as the Rabbis of the Talmud would seem to understand it. If so, this would be the closest the Jewish tradition comes to the notion of a jail term. (By Uzi Weingarten and the Editors)

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DEUTERONOMY — 13:5 follow

DEUT599 Rabbi Hama, son of Rabbi Hanina, said: What is the meaning of the verse, “You shall follow the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 13:5)? … [It means that] a person should imitate the ways of the Holy Blessed One. Just as God clothes the naked... so too you should clothe the naked [poor]. The Holy Blessed One visited the sick... so too you should visit the sick. The Holy Blessed One buried the dead... So too you should bury the dead. The Holy Blessed One comforted mourners... so too you should comfort mourners.  Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 14a (By Uzi Weingarten and the Editors) DORFF-RUTTENBERGSOC 5

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DEUTERONOMY — 15:4 needy

DEUT712 A common debate among those involved in antipoverty work concerns the relative value of direct service addressing immediate needs and of advocacy or organizing addressing the need for systematic change. Advocates of direct service argue that the hungry need to be fed today and that the homeless need somewhere to sleep tonight. Those who prefer organizing or advocacy point out that soup kitchens and shelters will never make hunger and homelessness disappear, whereas structural change might wipe out these problems. The Deuteronomic response [15:4-11] to this debate is refusal to take sides, or better, an insistence on both. Rather than advocate exclusively either for long-term systematic change or for short-term response to need, this passage articulates a vision that balances the pursuit of full economic justice with attention to immediate concerns. In this reading, the text in question becomes a charge to work for the structural changes that will eventually bring about the end of poverty while also meeting the pressing needs of those around us. (By Jill Jacobs, "Jewish Political Ethics in America")

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