{"id":390,"date":"2008-01-24T10:42:49","date_gmt":"2008-01-24T10:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html"},"modified":"2008-01-24T10:42:49","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T10:42:49","slug":"the-demands-of-interdependence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html","title":{"rendered":"The Demands of Interdependence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/is-it-a-mitzvah-to-carbon-offs.html\">Rabbi Grossman\u2019s distinction<\/a> between actions we do because we wish to and those we do because we are commanded to is a vitally important one.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/bb\/white_house\/july-dec01\/cheney_7-18.html\" target=\"_blank\">Vice President Cheney famously asserted<\/a> that conservation was a personal virtue\u2013that is, a nice thing to do if you feel like but that\u2019s really your own business.<br \/>\nWhat&#8217;s so striking about the Torah\u2019s approach to the world is that there is no such thing as &#8220;our own business.&#8221; If you find your neighbor\u2019s donkey wandering, you are required to seek out your neighbor to return it, (Ex. 23:4). If a neighboring town is full of idolaters, you are required to make war on it, (Deut. 13:12-16). If you find a body in a field, you are required to perform certain rites to expiate the sin, (Deut. 21:1-9).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThe point is simply that the ancient Israelites recognized that we don\u2019t act in a vacuum\u2013we are inextricably connected to one another and to God. What any one person does may affect all of us.  Ironically, globalization just proves the point that there is no such thing as a local issue (and if you haven\u2019t already, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/01\/13\/magazine\/13Cellphone-t.html?_r=1&amp;scp=1&amp;sq=cellphones&amp;st=nyt&amp;oref=slogin\" target=\"_blank\">check out this amazing article<\/a> from the NY Times Magazine about what happens to our cell phones when we\u2019re done with them).  Our world and our environment is interconnected, and when deforestation or pollution happens anywhere in the world it affects all of us in the form of rising temperatures, rising ocean levels, and a decline in biodiversity.<br \/>\nThe Torah tells us we can\u2019t simply stick our heads in the sand and pretend that whatever is going on is someone else\u2019s fault, someone else\u2019s problem. Instead, it promulgated laws that placed responsibility for the greater good squarely on all our shoulders. We need to follow suit before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rabbi Grossman\u2019s distinction between actions we do because we wish to and those we do because we are commanded to is a vitally important one. Vice President Cheney famously asserted that conservation was a personal virtue\u2013that is, a nice thing to do if you feel like but that\u2019s really your own business. What&#8217;s so striking&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-holidays"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Demands of Interdependence - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Demands of Interdependence - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rabbi Grossman\u2019s distinction between actions we do because we wish to and those we do because we are commanded to is a vitally important one. Vice President Cheney famously asserted that conservation was a personal virtue\u2013that is, a nice thing to do if you feel like but that\u2019s really your own business. What&#8217;s so striking&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-24T10:42:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Joshua Waxman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Demands of Interdependence - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Demands of Interdependence - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"Rabbi Grossman\u2019s distinction between actions we do because we wish to and those we do because we are commanded to is a vitally important one. Vice President Cheney famously asserted that conservation was a personal virtue\u2013that is, a nice thing to do if you feel like but that\u2019s really your own business. What&#8217;s so striking&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2008-01-24T10:42:49+00:00","author":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html","name":"The Demands of Interdependence - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-01-24T10:42:49+00:00","dateModified":"2008-01-24T10:42:49+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/b2c907457be70b05b78f556cde42041f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/01\/the-demands-of-interdependence.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Demands of Interdependence"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/b2c907457be70b05b78f556cde42041f","name":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6ea\/6eaad0ba16ec89046c9580c3b08d2e4cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6ea\/6eaad0ba16ec89046c9580c3b08d2e4cx96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/jwaxman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}