The Twelfth Plague

By Rabbi Deb Smith

Our most recent virtual mussar lesson was about Humility/Anavah. In that class, we discussed a variety of Jewish texts that deal with finding a balance in terms of the amount of space, we take up in our relationships with others, and with our surroundings, and ultimately with the Divine. Our discussion broadened  to expand the space we take up in our relationships with others, to exploring how much space we occupy in relation to the universe and our environment.

When God  created the universe, God engaged in the process of tzimtzum or contracting to make room for God’s creations. How do we honor the space that has been made for us as we live in the world today?

I asked our mussar discussion group how they saw them selves living “in humility “ with the environment and others around themselves.

I now have come to refer to climate change as the 12th Plague.

Just days after having that discussion with the mussar group, I watched in dismay and fear as the air quality index in my hometown of Parsippany, New Jersey reached a count of 333 on June 8. The level reached 440 in New York City where my younger daughter lives, and it was in the 300s in Baltimore, where my older daughter makes her home.

Just as  my colleagues in the Jewish world have referred to COVID-19 as the 11th Plague, I now have come to refer to climate change as the 12th Plague: Smoke, fires, water pollution, floods, drought, rising temperatures, melting ice caps. There is a scourge upon our planet, and we can attribute this to not living in humility with our environment.

Have we respected and cared for our natural resources? Have we permitted and enabled them to flourish in ways that keep our environmental balance, or have we exploited these resources beyond appropriate limits and endangered them in ways leading to their demise?

This is the question we must grapple with in these times. It is a time that calls for us to reassess our relationship with the planet and find a more appropriate balance. We need to better learn how to live in humility with our earth.