Today I was thinking about Earth Day in connection with Jewish values, and it occurs to me that we desperately need to find a way to get beyond the traditional framework of “baal taschit” (do not be wasteful) in our discussions about protecting the natural environment, to the more difficult work of uncovering Jewish perspectives that regard the nonhuman world as a moral subject worth considering in its own right.

The standard biblical text we tend to refer to in discussing our obligation to protect the environment from a halachic standpoint is Deuteronomy 20:19:

“When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?” (Source: Sefaria.org)

Aside from the morally problematic context of a war of conquest (i.e. “when in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it…”), this commandment’s specific emphasis on fruit-bearing trees indicates a concern that is primarily focused on preserving a natural resource useful for humans. Admittedly the end of the verse seems to expand the field of concern somewhat with a question that seems to at least open the possibility that the trees themselves might have their own concerns. However, the way in which this commandment has been treated in the halachic literature tends to avoid that path, viewing the commandment primarily through the lens of the natural world’s utility to human beings.

I think this is an area where the only way forward is to look beyond the halachic framework and begin interrogating poetry for values. In biblical poetry, where the trees and the mountains sing praises to God, we can find a willingness to explore the avenue of empathy toward the natural world that tends to be ignored in the halachah. In poetry, nature (or rather, the variety of natural phenomena existing in the world) does not appear simply as a resource to be preserved for humanity, but as a subject to be related to – what Martin Buber refers to as a you rather than an it.

This may not be the only realm in which it would be necessary to go to poetry in order to supplement a gap in the incomplete moral vision of the halachic system. I tend to think that aggadah (i.e. the fields of narrative, poetry and speculative thought) ought to have at least as important a role to play in developing our sense of the Jewish ought as the halachah.