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Culled from
The Jewish Sourcebook on the Environment and Ecology
by Ronald H. Issacs
Long before modern society recognized that human progress and development created a host of environmental challenges, Jewish Written and Oral
Tradition had already addressed some of these problems. One of the most interesting Biblical injunctions addresses what we would today call "urban sprawl."
We find in Numbers 35:2-5 and Leviticus 25:34 the following:
Instruct the Israelite people to assign, out of the holdings apportioned to them, towns for the Levites to dwell in. You shall also assign
the Levites pastureland around their towns. The towns shall be theirs to dwell in, and the pasture shall be for the cattle they own and for all of their other beasts.
The town pasture... shall extend a thousand cubits [approximately the length of 8 football fields] outside the town wall all around. You shall measure off 2,000 cubits outside the town on the east side, south side, west side and north side, with the town in the center. That shall be the pasture for their towns.
And lest you think that air pollution is also of "modern origin," read the following description and see if you can guess when it was written.
The quality of urban air compared to the air in the deserts and forests is like thick and turbulent water compared to pure and light water.
This is because in the cities with their tall buildings and narrow roads, the pollution comes from their residents, their waste, cadavers and offal from their cattle, and the stench of their adulterated food makes the entire air malodorous, turbulent, reeking and thick, and the winds become accordingly so, although no one is aware of it.
No, this does not come from a Sierra Club magazine, and Henry David Thoreau did not write it. It was written by Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (the
Rambam) over 1,000 years ago in his text called The Preservation of Youth!
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