If attitude, in large part, determines behavior, and we wish to change our behavior toward the natural world, then we must attend well to our attitude toward it. 

(The converse is also true: behavior shapes attitude, that is, what we do shapes what we believe. The two are interdependent; chicken and egg. For now, however, I focus on the attitude as the cause.)

It is not much contested that the western, industrial world sees nature as a commodity, something, gratefully, put here to fill our needs and fulfill our desires. When mined, captured, gathered, contained and pressed into the service of humankind, natural resources become satisfiers - products that satisfy our various needs and appetites. We have no particular affection or connection to them beyond the experience of our using them. They are to be bought and sold, interchanged with other commodities that can also satisfy us. And when we are done with them, we throw them away.

But this commodity attitude is taking us to a dead end. Literally. In a world of limited natural resources but infinite appetite and needs, both spiritual and physical, we cannot afford to squandor the stuff of the earth. Nothing should be indiscriminately and profligately used, and used up, and nothing can be thrown away. As I wrote elsewhere, the very concept of waste is unnatural. It is a human conceit that lies outside the domain and processes of the natural world, treif. Nature knows no waste. Everything returns, recycles, re-engages. There is no “away”. There is no “there”. When something is finished and used up, it is just the beginning of a new round.

The dispassionate commodity attitude of procurement, production, consumption and disposal does not jibe with the natural world, and indeed is becoming its undoing.

What then should be a contemporary attitude toward the natural world that both honors the ways of the earth and affords the means and vocabulary of contemporary society?

I would like to suggest we find the answer in the phrase: “sacred currency.” For several reasons:

1) nature is the “currency” with which God and the Jewish people communicate to each other.

2) currency is a concept readily integrated into the contemporary mind

3) the ethics of managing, investing and growing the value and volume of currency is something we understand

Let me explain each one a bit more.

1) Nature is the “currency” with which God and the Jewish people communicate to each other.

There is the pesky question of how the presence of God - immaterial, infinite, discernable only by a sixth sense and not the five with which we are physically endowed -  becomes present to us clod-bound humans. Not only how do we sense God, but how, as it were, can God talk to us, intersect physically with us?

Tanakh in general, and Torah in particular, answer this in a most direct way: through the physical, natural world. Among the many places we see this in Torah is the following one, in which Moses, upon the eve of his death, adjures his precious but feisty people to be faithful to God and the covenant (Deuteronomy 28):

“All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God:

You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.
The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity — in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground — in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you. The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none.”

The blessings, and the communication, between God and the people Israel (and by extension all humanity), are couched in terms of the fertility and productivity of the land, or, in contrast, the failure and impoverishment of the land.

Land, rain, natural resources, become the currency of exchange between God and Israel. God gives us the resources to thrive and we in turn take portions of that abundance to the Temple to give back to God.

To speak of our natural resources as currency instead of commodity, then, re-enchants the physical world for us, evoking the sacred and awesome sense that the physical world held for our ancestors.

2) currency is a concept readily integrated into the contemporary mind

Currency is a shared medium of exchange, a common way for us to meet each others’ needs. It assumes movement, fluidity, change. But unlike commodity, it does not expect to be used up or consumed. Modernity understands that things have costs, and that the shapes and constitution of things may change. But fundamentally, value remains, and must not get degraded (or, dare we say, falsely inflated) else the system fails. As with monetary currency, so with natural currency. Only as we know, natural degradation enjoys no quick bailout. As the midrash in Kohelet tells us: “Upon showing Adam around the garden of Eden, God offers a warning: ‘Be careful to tend well to this earth. For if you destroy it, there will be no one after you to set it right.’”

3) the ethics of managing, investing and growing the value and volume of currency is something we understand

Currency is not to be squandered but neither is it meant to sit idle. Currency is meant to be used, put to work to improve the lot of humankind. To be used well, it needs to be both protected and worked. That is the charge of the human in Genesis 2, the reason given for why humanity was created: l’ovdah u’l'shomrah, to till and to tend the garden (the earth). Natural resources, like any sacred currency, is to be tilled, worked, invested, so that it can create the value and goods that we need and desire. But at the same time, with the same passion and due diligence, it needs to be protected, cherished and preserved so that it not be wasted or destroyed.

Sacred currency is like a trust fund, money in the bank. To grow and not lose value, it must be invested and minded well. But it must also be guarded against looting, loss and unwise investment. Our task regarding the natural world, as regarding any sacred currency, is to live well with the resources on hand, and invest them well so that both we and our children and our children’s children can thrive on its value.