Lech Lecha is one of my favourite sidrot. It’s full of beautiful verses, but this year I’m focussing on none of them. I’m turning instead to that spiritlessly down-to-earth description of why Abram and Lot had to part ways: ‘The land couldn’t support them to live together.’ There are two reasons why.
The first is that I’m in Yerevan at COP 17, the UN’s nature and biodiversity conference, and it’s all about who and what land can, and cannot, support. Rashi expands on the verse: what it really means is that just wasn’t enough pasture for both Lot’s and Abraham’s flocks. That’s one of the big issues here: how do we balance all the needs? We want progress and prosperity. We need sufficient and sustainable natural resources. We need to produce enough food. As one delegate says, ‘You can phase out fossil fuels (I wish we would!) but you can’t phase out food.’ Yet we also want, and need, biodiversity; the much-quoted target is 30 x 30, that is – 30% more by 2030. But animals require not just habitat, but significant, connected areas of it, with woodland, prairie, and rivers. Without fungi, insects, birds, animals, trees, plants, we’re lost. Indigenous peoples and local communities need their rights and traditions recognised and respected. That’s the challenge: how do we make all this possible when there’s no Planet B. And yet, and that’s the mood and the hope here at COP 17, it can – and must – be done!
The second reason I’ve chosen that verse is that I’m learning of the arrest of tens of people, including a close Israeli colleague and friend. They’re volunteers, Israeli and international, Jewish and not Jewish, protecting Palestinian farmers harvesting their olives. Here, it’s not just the lack of land preventing people from living together.’ It’s the politics. It’s the injustice. It’s the fear, the hatred and the violence. With it, and exacerbating it is the inescapable fact that parts at least of the state apparatus are involved. This is in contravention of the Torah’s most basic commandments, ‘Don’t steal’ and ‘don’t destroy.’ It’s in contempt of the presence of God in every person, whoever they are. It’s the opposite of the way of Abraham our father, who treats the Sons of Heit with respect when he asks to buy land to bury his wife, and to whom he pays the full price for the requisite field.
These are the reasons why that down-to-earth verse stands out for me this year.
Just as I hope and pray that there is a way for all species, humans included, to thrive on this earth, so I hope and pray that there will be a way for us and our neighbours to live together with respect and in peace in Israel and across the Middle East.
Senior Masorti Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg
