October 6, 2010 By Jessica Haller, CIO for Hazon and Director of the Jewish Climate Change Campaign The vendor is calling, offering his hot roasted peanuts. The time is over 5000 years ago, and the place is central Mesopotamia. Noah’s contemporaries smell the peanuts and their mouths water. As they walk by, each takes a peanut, just one, just to taste. They aren’t really stealing, after all, it’s just a peanut. They continue to walk and as they pass the orchard, the just-ripe fruits also call to them, and they take an apple, just one, not really stealing. At the grain store, a few grains, just a taste. After a few days the peanut vendor is left with hulls, the orchard owner with bare trees. Years of not really stealing a little, a taste, a bite, and the erosion of morals is so great, according to Midrash, that God decides to start over. (more…)
