Guardeners of Our World: Yishuv ha'Olam (Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin)
Yishuv ha’Olam
The major difference between science and religion is not in the realm of facts. Both yield essential truths of their own kind; both provide invaluable insights into how we must engage in the world. The main difference between the two is that science tends to see the world as amoral and indifferent, while most religions tend to see the world as seeking justice and teeming with purpose.
As humans struggling to navigate this remarkable, unparalleled enterprise of life, we need both science and religion. We need to know the mechanics of how the world works. But we equally need to believe that we are here for a purpose.
The Hebrew Bible, the bedrock of Judaism, continually reminds us of our purpose in life: to live out God’s dream of making this patch of creation a verdant, habitable, just world for all. It is what Jewish tradition calls yishuv ha’olam: the righteous establishment of the world.
The phrase yishuv ha’olam is based on a verse in Isaiah (45:18): “It is God who creates the heavens, who fashions the earth and makes it … God did not create the world to be chaos. God fashioned it to be inhabited.”
The universe, the earth and our very being, are none of them to be seen as accidents of time and matter. The Bible urges us to see life as a deliberate, desired expression of God’s love. Genesis 1 teaches us that God chose life instead of chaos and nothingness. And that God, the Creator of this earth, thereafter charged us, humankind, to care for it. All of it. “The LORD God took the human and placed the human in the garden of Eden, to till it and to tend it.” (Genesis 2:15) For all manner of life.
We were not created for ourselves alone but were endowed with a sacred task from the very start: to care for the well-being and on-going establishment of God’s creation.
A story is told of the Kotzker Rebbe (a Hasidic rabbi who lived in Poland in the 19th century). Once, a student came to visit the famous Kotzker Rebbe to learn from him. The rabbi opened by asking the student the very question he had hoped to ask the rabbi: “Why was humankind created? Why are we here on earth?”
The student, surprised, offered the best answer he could muster: “Each person is created so they may refine their soul.”
“No!” responded the Kotzker Rebbe. “That is not why we are here. That is self-worship. We were created to hold the heavens aloft, to tend to the well-being of God’s Creation.”
The world was created, the Bible tells us, with the capacity of self-renewal built in. Trees, grass, animals all were given the capacity of regeneration from the very first. God established those as the rules of creation. Our task is to keep them going, to be the world’s g[u]ardners – the ones who tend to this earthly garden, bringing it to its greatest fertility and fecundity, while at the same time guarding it from degradation and waste, so that we and all life that is to come after us enjoy the same blessings as at the moment of Creation.
Jewish tradition teaches that each generation is responsible to the next: m’dor l’dor, literally from generation to generation. We are taught that there exists an intergenerational covenant, that we are to leave a blessing after ourselves, a world even more ripe (at the very least not less) than ours so that our children may enjoy living out their lives to the fullest expression of their creativity, health, and righteousness.
And that blessed world that we and they are to inhabit includes all of nature. For while humankind may be the most intellectually and technologically advanced species that emerged from Creation, while we may have a unique relationship with God, we are not the measure of all things. We dare not believe that we are capable of determining who among the earth’s species shall live and who shall die. The great 12th century Jewish sage, Maimonides, wrote: “It should not be believed that all other beings exist for the sake of the existence of humanity. On the contrary, all beings too have been intended for their own sakes, and not for the sake of something else.”
We are rather the tenders, the g[u]ardners of the world, designed from the start to exercise our powers for good and not for loss, for all and not just for ourselves. To be charged with creating a habitable world for billions of humans and other creatures alike calls us to explore the depths of science so we may best utilize the renewable, regenerative capacity of the world, as well as remain humble before the grand variety of beauty and magic that is found in this mystery of Life.
The awesomeness of Life; the cycle of the seasons, of birth, death, decomposition, renewal; the extraordinary vibrancy that this small indescribably amazing planet has brought forth for us to enjoy and witness, perhaps uniquely in the entire vast universe, are precious beyond compare. Reading chapters 38 and 39 of the book of Job overwhelm us with the majesty of creation (in case witnessing life’s daily miracles doesn’t).
Such awareness is enough to urge us out of bed in the mornings, to know that God has placed the well-being of this blessed creation in our hands. We dare not ignore this power, but we dare not abuse it either.
A medieval midrash, a rabbinic commentary on the Bible, calls our attention to God’s creation and our place in it.
“When the Holy One created the first human,” it begins, “God took the human around to all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said: ‘See all the beauty and wonder My works possess. All of this I have created, and place before you. Be mindful that you do not ruin and devastate My world, for if you ruin it there will be no one to repair it after you.”
For centuries, humans have been aware of both the awesomeness of the world and the promise and dangers of our own powers. Judaism teaches us to be bold but humble, curious but respectful, to use our wisdom and intelligence for good, for ourselves and future generations. Yishuv ha’olam, the righteous establishment of the world’s order, is our greatest collective and personal calling. How well we do will forever determine the way we are remembered.
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Nina Beth Cardin is a community rabbi who works at the intersection of faith and sustainability. She makes her home in Baltimore, MD, where she founded and led the Baltimore Orchard Project, a food and land justice organization dedicated to building healthier connections between people, food, place, and each other. Currently, she is founder / director of the Maryland Campaign for Environmental Human Rights, an initiative working toward placing in Maryland’s constitution an amendment that would ensure all Marylanders’ rights to a healthful environment and the pursuit of public health and environmental justice. She is also a coordinator of the Conservative/Masorti Movement’s worldwide Sustainability Roundtable and a member of the faculty at St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute.
This article is part of our Winter 2021 collection, Shmita Now, guest-edited by Yaira Robinson.
