Eden

Ever since our biblical ancestors left paradise so hastily and ignominiously thousands of years ago, we have searched for ways to get back. After all, who would not want to live in a canopy-covered garden misted by cool springs, filled with endless harvest, where worries are unknown and all needs readily fulfilled? This week, the Torah portion offers us a way toward a satisfying surrogate, if not a return, to Eden.

"The Lord is bringing you to a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing forth from plain and hill; a land of wheat and barley, vines and figs and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; a land where you can eat without limitation; a land where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper; a land where you can eat, and be sated and bless the Lord your God for the good land God has given you." (Deuteronomy 8:7-10)

This soaring, sensuous celebration of nature and its finest gifts is spoken by Moses as he and the Jewish people stand just outside the borders of the land of Israel. The Jewish people are being urged one last time to prepare themselves to be worthy of entering the land and inheriting its precious, singular, nurturing gifts.

Moses' vision sings of the land's undulating hills, with springs pouring out the sides of mountains, greenery sporting plump, luscious fruit ripe for the picking, fields of sown grain ready for harvesting - a land whose table has been set by God to overflowing before this blessed people.

But this goodness and fertility does not just happen. It must be earned. If the land is appreciated, honored, and treated well, we are told, it will thrive, and so will its inhabitants. If it is treated otherwise, abused, it will shut itself up against us, and the inhabitants will perish.

The danger of abusing and losing the fertility and gifts of the land are spelled out in this cautionary text. Sadly, we are all too familiar with its reality in our lives today:

"Take care, lest you forget the Lord your God... when you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God... Remember is God who gives you the power to get wealth... for if you forget God, you will certainly perish..." [Deuteronomy 8:11-20]

In our greed and in our affluence, we mine and dig, consume, indulge and spew waste indiscriminately, as if the world's natural resources are both ours by right, and infinite. The truth is, they are neither ours, nor are they infinite.

Moses presents the land of Israel as a land of redemption - where we undo the "thorns and thistles" we caused in Eden by a symbolic act of indiscretion toward the goods of the earth. In Israel, the Torah tells us, if we merit it, that is, if we treat the land and each other well, we will live not by the "sweat of our brow" but by the grace of God.

In truth, these lessons of the Torah extend beyond the land of Israel to the length and breadth of the entire planet. We can live well only when we treat the land and each other well.

It is merely by historical good fortune that we are the first generation "privileged" to efficiently gorge upon the mother lode of earth's riches. We are the first generation with the world-wide capacity to raid the storehouse of earth's resources that were so carefully built up over millions of years.

But we must pull back from this indulgence. Just because we can do something does not mean that we ought to do it. That is a lesson in restraint that is often so very difficult to abide.

It took us 50 years to build our disposable society. It will likely take us 50 years to undo it. Hopefully, all this talk paves the way to getting us there.