"Dominionism" -- an interview with Rabbi Matt Rosenberg
Rabbi Matt Rosenberg and Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon talk Dominionism.
Rabbi Matt Rosenberg, a community rabbi, care professional, geography professor, and more, and AllCreation guest editor Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon discuss Dominionism from a scripturally-based, Jewish perspective.
Click here to listen to the podcast.
Some of Rabbi Matt’s insights, from the interview:
God created the universe and therefore has complete ownership over all creation, and humans are God’s partners in bettering Creation.
Religious traditions are human-focused—they’re not for the whales and the dolphins, but it’s our job, according to my understanding, to maintain the basic balance to this order of Creation.
Yes, the mitzvah (the commandment) to not destroy, comes from Deuteronomy 20, which says you can eat of the fruit trees but you cannot cut them down. Trees are people, too, and we should prevent all unnecessary destruction.
We have this concept of “All the more so” … If you cannot cut down trees in wartime, all the more so should you not cut down trees when it’s not war.
We can absolutely do better. There’s no greater crisis right now, and we should be observing Tu BiShvat everyday; we’re on this path of destruction of humanity. The Earth will survive for billions more years and I think God has put us on this Earth to find this balance, to find a role where we can use the Earth’s resources and not abuse the Earth’s resources. There’ve been humans on Earth for 200,000 years. We’ve only recently disrupted the balance.
We have but a few years to figure out where we’re going to go from here and how we’re going to protect our planet for our children and our children’s children, truly.
My hope comes from that fact that humans are creative and we can come up with solutions, and there are answers to climate change and the problems we see on our planet, and I have faith that my children’s generation and their children’s generation will do better. I see this long arc towards the betterment of the world.
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Rabbi Matt Rosenberg began his tenure as the executive director of the Albert Einstein Residence Center, Sacramento’s senior Jewish housing community, in January 2021. A California native, Matt is a graduate of Elk Grove High School and UC Davis, where he earned his undergraduate degree in geography. Matt spent many years volunteering and working in the field of disaster relief for organizations such as the American Red Cross and Nechama: Jewish Response to Disaster. He is a former CPR and first aid instructor, volunteer firefighter, and emergency medical technician. Following his ordination and earning a masters degree in rabbinic studies from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles in 2013, Rabbi Matt served as the executive director and campus rabbi for Hillel at Texas A&M University in College Station. Matt holds a masters degree in geography from CSU Northridge (2005), spent 18 years operating the ThoughtCo.com website devoted to geography, was the author of two books about geography, and is currently a lecturer in geography at Sacramento State University. This interview is part of our Spring 2022 collection, Dominionism.
