Eco-Judaism: Does It Exist? 15
the dignity of the animal or the concern of the master for his valuable property.
The codes and the accompanying responsa literature break no new ground in the Jewish attitude toward nature. The halakhah was expanded and interpreted to fit new conditions. However, the general view of the natural world continued as before. Nature was grand and beautiful, but also without boundaries. Human beings needed to be protected from its forces as much as possible; it needed no protection.
The New World View
We may appropriately state that earlier ages have not prepared us for an understanding of the natural world as we now see it. We realize that the last century and a half have radically changed our view of nature as humans have increasingly dominated it. We have begun to work out a new relationship.
Four major changes and a host of minor ones have created a different view of the natural world. First, the age of exploration ended with the nineteenth century, and the entire world is now known. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, vast areas of the globe remained unexplored. They were inhabited by native peoples who had an even more limited notion of the world than the Europeans who came as explorers. In North America the frontier existed; central Africa remained unknown and unmapped. The mountains of central Asia were visited by only a few adventurers. Central and South America contained enormous areas of unknown mountains and forests. Many islands of the Pacific had never been mapped or even visited. Central Australia remained unsettled and wild. The Arctic and the Antarctic were just large areas on the map, almost untouched by human beings. A century and a half have changed all of this, and even the most remote portions of the world have become known in detail. The native populations have learned about the rest of the world, and the remainder of the world has appeared in their lands. Explorers have been replaced by miners, loggers, and welldrillers. Every portion of the globe has been opened to development or exploitation.
Second, we have developed technologies that can master much of the natural world. For example, forestry is no longer a matter of a large crew of men felling trees, but of enormous