Hello and welcome to another episode of Covenant and Conversation with me, Rabbi Sachs.

In each new episode, we'll explore a Jewish idea from the Hebrew Bible based on the terror reading of the week.

The ecological imperative, Shoftim. In the course of setting out the laws of war,

the Torah adds a seemingly minor detail that became the basis of a much wider field of human responsibility

and is of major consequence today.

The passage concerns a military campaign that involves laying siege to a city.

When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it,

don't destroy its trees by putting

an axe to them because you can eat their fruit. Don't cut them down. Other trees people that you

should besiege them. However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use

them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.

War is the terror implies destructive. That's why Judaism's highest value is peace. Still though,

there's a difference between necessary and needless destruction. Trees are a source of wood for

siege works, but there are some trees, those who bear fruit, that are are a source of wood for siege works, but there are some trees, those who

bear fruit, that are also a source of food, therefore don't destroy them. Don't needlessly

deprive yourself and others of a productive resource. Don't engage in a scorched earth tactic

in the course of war. The sages, though, saw in this command something more

than a detail in the laws of war. They saw it as a binyan av, a specific example of a more general

principle, and they called it the rule of Baltashchit, the prohibition against needless destruction

of any kind.

Maimonides summarizes it by saying not only does this apply to trees,

but also whoever breaks vessels or tears garments or destroys a building or blocks a wellspring of water or destructively wastes food transgresses Baltashchit.

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