either have to stop smoking or file the article away in a drawer.” Since I had a commitment to publish the article, I left my pipes at home when we went on sabbatical to Oxford and have not smoked since.
Despite the widespread social condemnation of their practice, many smokers today view their habit as a strictly private matter and insist that no one has the right to interfere or to tell them to stop. Contemporary rabbis controvert this claim by quoting Maimonides :“The Sages forbade many things that involve mortal danger. Anyone who does these things or says‘I am endangering myself and what does it matter to others’ or‘I do not care’ is to be flogged[by the rabbinic court].”"
This situation parallels the status of man as the guardian of nature, not as the owner of nature that we have seen above. According to halakhah , human beings have stewardship over the body given them by their Creator but not dominion, and they may not jeopardize their own lives.
We have come full circle from the relationship of the individual to nature, to other individuals, and now to himself or herself. In Jewish ecology, man is a steward answering to the Creator but never having full control.
So in conclusion, we must ask if we are not the masters of this flesh and blood frame, to whom, then, do our body and life belong? In his glosses on the Shulhan Arukh, Rabbi Moses Rivkes (d. 1672) stated that“the Torah warned us about preservation of life because God graciously created the world to benefit His creatures so that they may be aware of His greatness and may serve Him by observing His commandments and Torah .”?’ Here is the essence of the mitzvah character of ecology.
Notes
1. Francois M. de Voltaire, Candide (New York : New American Library, 1961) p. 16. This is a caricature of the systematic optimism of Gottfried Leibniz. Gen. Rabbah 8(Vilna edition) The letters aleph and mem of the word meod are exchanged.
. Commentary to Gen. 1:28.
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