My pre-Sukkos column about the furious, quasi-religious zeal of some environmental alarmists apparently generated some… well, furious, quasi-religious zeal.

In an editorial, the New Jersey Jewish Standard’s managing editor mocked my contention that the Creator is ultimately in charge of the universe He created; and the editor of the New Jersey Jewish News invoked the celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins to berate me for my skepticism about scientific predictions.  (What’s with Jersey?  Has climate change done a number on its journalists’ equanimity?)

In my column, just to recall, I described my unease with the rage I heard at a large climate change rally, noted that the climate has changed in the past and, yes, contended that, in the end, the Creator is in charge, and our own charge is, above all, to heed His Torah.

I did not, though, call into question the reality of climate change, or in any way disparage measures aimed at trying to curb it. I readily stated that “we do well to explore alternate energy sources and pollute less.”  But my sin, alas, was too great to bear.

In addition to the two papers’ public proclamations of my heresy, several Jewish individuals wrote me privately.  One cited a  Midrash in Koheles Rabba (7:13), to buttress his faith in the threat global warming poses to the world and in our mandate to address it. The source, I discovered, is invoked by a host of Jewish environmentalist groups, and reads:

“When HaKodosh Boruch Hu created Adam Harishon, he took him and showed him all the trees of Gan Eden.  And He said to him ‘Look at My works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are.  All that I created I created for you.  Be consciously careful not to act destructively and destroy My world.  Because if you do act destructively, there is no one to set things straight after you’.”

The  Midrash is held aloft by those groups as a paean to “Tikkun Olam,” as their members like to characterize social or environmental activism.  Hashem, in other words, is commanding Adam to do no harm to the earth – and his descendants, presumably, to oppose strip-mining, fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline.

One website trumpeting the  Midrash includes “Suggested Discussion Questions” like: “What does this text teach us about the earth?” “What is our responsibility to the environment?” “What is G-d’s responsibility to the environment?”

The  Midrash, however, is in reality not concerned with any such real or imagined insults to the earth.  The destruction of the world that Hashem is charging Adam to avoid is that which can result from his sins – the clear meaning of the phrase “act destructively,” as the  Midrash’s continuation makes clear.  It is famously invoked by the Ramchal to that precise effect in the first perek of Mesillas Yesharim.

Destroying resources for no good reason is forbidden by the Torah.  But there are elements of the ultra-environmentalist agenda that go far beyond avoiding unnecessary wastage.  And the attempt to put a “classical Jewish” veneer on the entire enterprise of “green politics” by misappropriating Torah texts to support the belief that human beings are physically destroying the world Hashem has created for us is deeply objectionable.

Judaism is a faith system.  To some, so is environmentalism.  But they are not the same faith.

Yes, I believe that the climate is changing.  I believe, too, that there will be negative effects of the same (although likely some positive ones too).  I believe that it’s plausible, if not certain, that human activity contributes to global warming, and plausible as well, though far from certain, that human beings can arrest or reverse the changing climate.

But I do believe – and this belief is b’emunah shleimah – that, pace Dawkins and company, Hashem is in charge. And that, in the end, humanity’s moral and ethical actions, not its climate conferences and multi-national treaties, fine efforts though they may be, will ultimately determine our fate.

That is, as it happens, a rather timely thought, considering that just this past Shabbos, Jews the world over heard a public reading about a cataclysmic climate change.  It happened in Noach’s time. And it was caused, of course, not by strip-mining but by sin, something no stranger to our own day.

How deeply ironic that a fundamental Jewish truth – that human beings affect the world most powerfully by their moral and ethical climates, their mitzvos and, challilah, their aveiros – is utter anathema to some periodicals that proudly include the word “Jewish” in their names.

© 2014 Hamodia