In Parshat Eikev, Deut 11:10-12, the Torah compares the land of Egypt to the land of Canaan. There are two distinctions made. The first is that Egypt is sustained by a river-fed agriculture, whereas the land of Canaan is "a land of hills and valleys -- she drinks rain from the heavens". The second is that the eyes of God are upon the land of Canaan continually. Each of these distinctions bears close reading; each is needed to explain the significance of the other.
Egypt is described as the place where you would draw water from the river “with your foot" / hishkita b'raglekha "like a green garden" / k'gan hayarok. There is a great difference of opinion on how to interpret this verse. Does it mean, you worked harder in Egypt because you had to bring water to your field "on foot"? Or does it mean the work was easier, because you could bring water to your field whenever you needed by using a simple foot-pedal technology that raised water from the Nile to send it far across the floodplain?
The correct p'shat (plain meaning) is that in Egypt things were easier, because you had control over water. But that is exactly why Canaan is better, because not having control means having a closer relationship with God.
This interpretation is made certain by what follows, the second paragraph of the Shma. Deut 11:17 explains exactly what it means for God to be watching over the land: if the Israelites don't follow the commands, within in one season, they will be "lost from off the ground which YHVH swore to your ancestors". We know those commands include most prominently not committing idolatry, seeing oneself as strangers rather than owners of the land (this is the Shmita, whose foundation is Shabbat), and doing justice by protecting the stranger and the vulnerable.
That is why verse 12, YHVH's eyes are on the land "continually, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year." So, the literal intent of these verses is that Canaan is better because you can suffer famine more easily. But the New JPS (1962) changed verse 10 to read "the grain you sowed had to be watered by your own labors, like a vegetable garden". Perhaps the translators were uncomfortable with the physicality and obscurity of watering "with one's foot", but the new JPS translation made the plain meaning of the verse—that Egypt was easier because you had control over water—inaccessible to anyone who does not know Hebrew.
The new JPS is the translation found in Etz Chayyim (Conservative), in the Women's Torah Commentary, and in the Plaut (Reform) Chumash. (The old JPS does not make this mistake, but the Hertz commentary does make the same mistake in its interpretation.) Of course, it's not really fair to just call out JPS. Rashi himself explains that in Egypt, "you would lose sleep to labor, and have to bring water from the low places to water the higher places" but in Canaan, "you could sleep soundly in bed because the Holy One would water the low and high together".
But that is the difference between an ecological view of the Torah, which focuses on the bedrock foundation of the Torah coming to life within an ecosystem, and an ideological view of the Torah that learns beautiful lessons but may not always concern itself with how the text arose.
The bottom line is that our ancestors had a beautiful vision of a land where they were so close to God that they would know almost immediately if they were doing well or not. Egypt, and other river-fed agricultures, like Mesopotamia, were the opposite, going along blithely until they had a proverbial seven years of famine or ten plagues, or in the case of Sumer in Mesopotamia, a complete collapse of agriculture, because their way of farming made the soil salty over hundreds of years.
Our ancestors dreamed of a civilization where agriculture was an act of service to the soil, rather than slavery to the gods (as Mesopotamia understood it), and an ecosystem in which the soil could always be renewed. They imagined a future that was the very opposite of the Anthropocene we live in now, where agriculture became one giant step on the path to the sixth mass extinction. But as our tradition teaches, it's not too late to change this reality. The present disaster does not define the future. What defines the future will be our capacity to make ecological t'shuvah. May we be strengthened to do so!
Rabbi David Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org and the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World. His teaching most often focuses on human rights, animal rights, and ecology. David is also an avid dancer, and a composer of Jewish liturgical music and classical instrumental music.
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