Eco-Judaism: Does It Exist? 9

struggle between the forces of good and evil nor were there a variety of demons from the wild portions of nature who had to be feared. The firm belief in One Creator God , therefore, meant that nature was not hostile and that it was possible to view it as grand and awesome.

The Bible thus leaves us with a broad appreciation of the beauty and awesome force of nature. Its environmental concerns can be summarized by the verses in Genesis that describes how God gave the natural world into the care of human beings:“Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on the earth’. God said,‘See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food”(Gen. 1:28, 29). In addition, we have the statement:“The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to till it and guard it”(Gen. 2:15), a much narrower statement limited to the garden of Eden.

The Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods

By the time of the end of the Mishnah (200 C.E.), the major theo­logical issues reflected in the Bible lay in the past. Some leanings toward pantheism continued to be expressed by intellectual scholars, philosophers, and mystics during this period and throughout Jewish history, but this had little impact on the average Jew.’ Let us now see whether the Mishnah and the Tal­ mud developed a broader approach to the natural world and to environmental issues.

The poetic wonder of the natural world is largely absent from the Mishnah and Talmud . The Mishnah was devoted to cre­ating an easy-to-read system of religious regulation that gov­erned all aspects of life whereas the Talmud included discussions of these texts and adaptions of them to new cultures and sur­roundings. A broader appreciation of the natural world appeared in sections that dealt with worship and in occasional brief statements by scholars. The great divide between the world of the scholar and the ordinary Jew was crossed by the liturgy. The prayer book incorporated a series of blessings to be recited upon seeing an unusual natural sight, thereby the wonder of nature became part of ordinary life,® as benedictions over food,