The Sabbath in an Era of Climate Change

Here we bring you the article from our director, Jonathan Schorsch, that originally inspired the Green Sabbath Project.

We humans face a set of dire ecological crises, the results of what many now call the Anthropocene Era, the era of human modification of earth’s planetary systems. These crises—global warming, altered weather, species extinction, the threats of various kinds of toxic pollution, the proliferation of garbage, soil erosion, desertification, declining freshwater supplies, and so on—constitute not only an absolutely real imminent threat to the future well-being of humankind, but also, it sometimes seems, a modern manifestation of the various litanies of biblical curses. The multiplicitous nature of the crises demands multiple solutions: political, economic, technological, psychological, ethical, behavioral, and even spiritual. Equally needed is a holistic understanding of how we got to this calamitous situation and how we avoid it in the future. Given their continued widespread influence, biblical religion and its offshoots offer one particularly compelling and promising solution: Shabbat, the Sabbath day of rest. A weekly ritual, both symbolic and with real-world impacts, widespread observance of Shabbat done right could reduce environmental harm by about one-seventh in much of the world and provide a platform for ongoing meditating on our environmental sins and their consequences.

Imagine if most of the world’s monotheists, those who come from traditions that profess to observe a weekly Sabbath, along with anyone else who cared to, chose for one day out of seven to essentially eliminate their own harm to the environment on a consistent basis. This could prove to be the one of the cheapest environmental solutions at humanity’s disposal. In theory, more maximal Shabbat observance could produce a 14.3% (one-seventh) reduction in carbon emissions without additional spending, new technologies, or unintended environmental consequences—one day out of seven where emissions are nearly eliminated. Observing a truly full weekly Shabbat, “doing nothing,” as it were, offers an effective action that one can take now to help heal our environment. Since the heavily environmentally damaging “developed” world is made up mostly of monotheists, the impact of eliminating most emissions once weekly would be particularly important. Judaism and Christianity call the Sabbath an obligation. If we really believe that radical change in our behavior is necessary for environmental reasons—I certainly do—then don’t these reasons make Sabbath, along with all other environmental solutions, an obligation?