{"id":3250,"date":"2017-10-24T17:09:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T23:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=3250"},"modified":"2017-10-24T19:19:18","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T01:19:18","slug":"torah-ecology-lech-lecha-gen-121-1727","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=3250","title":{"rendered":"Torah Ecology: Lech Lecha (Gen. 12:1 – 17:27)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lech Lecha<\/em> tells the story of Abram becoming Abraham. That story includes many tantalizing \u201chistorical\u201d and \u201cbiographical\u201d details, details that show us how the Torah wants us to understand the character of Abraham and the meaning of his transition.<\/p>\n

Until now, the Torah story has been about\u00a0the relationships among human beings and between human beings, their environment, other animals and Transcendence. Animals are featured in the early Torah story along with the first human beings. The serpent has as dramatic an impact on the progress of history as the first humans. Animals suffer the consequences of Adam and Eve eating from the tree along with humanity. In the Flood story, animals transgress as human beings do, and again animals suffer the consequences along with human beings.<\/p>\n

What we learned in the story that precedes Lech Lecha<\/i> is that non-human animals, like humans, connect with G-d through the breath of life, breathed into them by G-d. Non-human animals, like humans, are also substance, basar<\/i>, which without the breath of G-d is merely dead meat, a carcass. And non-human animals are moral beings held accountable for their infractions. Human beings are not passive in their relationship to G-d and their world \u2014 and neither are non-human animals, who also have moral capacity and make decisions that have consequences.<\/p>\n

In the story that unfolds in the Garden,\u00a0the relationship between humans and animals is harmonious, and both are vegan, as G-d instructed. The fact that all creatures are vegan is central to the narrative:<\/p>\n

\u201cG-d said, \u201cSee, 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. And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath of life, [I give] all the green plants for food.\u201d ~\u00a0Gen. 1:29-30<\/i><\/p>\n

Outside the Garden, everything changes, all relationships, not only the one between human beings and G-d. The human relationship with the environment changes, with a less generous earth yielding its fruits more grudgingly to hard labor. And the human relationship with other animals changes. The snake and the woman are enemies. Hierarchical relationships prevail, even in the intimacy between husband and wife. Animal husbandry is in play with the Cain and Abel story (which assumes meat-eating), and accompanying it, animal sacrifice. Even human-to-human relationships change with the first homicide, a fratricide.<\/p>\n

The Flood story confirms what the Cain and Abel story assumes: both animals and humans are implicated in unlawful bloodshed. Some animals, like humans, kill for food \u2014 and predator animals, like some human beings, sometimes kill human beings. The earth is filled with violence and lawlessness, and all flesh (kol basar)<\/i> on earth, human and non-human animals and birds, are implicated and suffer consequences in the flood. Animal sacrifice is an integral part of the human relationship to G-d, with \u201cpure\u201d and \u201cimpure\u201d animals entering the ark.<\/p>\n

Post-Garden, blood is involved in all relationships. There is an economy of blood in the post-Garden world, the blood of sacrifice paying for unlawful blood spilled…in the ancient history of the world and in the present moment.<\/p>\n

The changed relationships and the blood economy are confirmed in the diet post-Flood. Humans may kill non-human animals for food but cannot eat the blood with it; neither humans nor animals can kill human beings without consequence:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fear and the dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky\u2014everything with which the earth is astir\u2014and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hand. Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these. You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it. But for your own life-blood I will require a reckoning: I will require it of every beast; of man, too, will I require a reckoning for human life, of every man for that of his fellow man.\u201d ~ Gen. 9:2-5<\/i><\/p>\n

Suddenly in Lech Lecha<\/i>, the non-human animals\u2019 and birds\u2019 story is muted. No longer is their story and relationship to creation developing \u2014 it is fixed. References to animals are fleeting and not part of the evolving narrative.<\/p>\n