What ecofeminism can learn from Judaism and rabbinic literature

Many of us tend to think of the environmental and climate polycrises as a distinctly modern nightmare. We trace its roots to the industrial revolution, capitalism’s obsession with exponential growth, or the recent acceleration of disposable culture. In response, brilliant modern frameworks like ecofeminism have emerged, rightly arguing that the exploitation of the Earth is linked to the patriarchal oppression of women and other marginalized bodies. Nature, in this view, has been treated as a feminine passive resource to be drilled, conquered, and owned.

But if we are going to fix a broken world, we need to ask ourselves a provocative question: What if the world was born broken, and what if an entire civilization has spent 3,000 years building the toolkit to repair it?

This is the intersection where modern queer ecofeminism can learn from ancient Judaism. The realization here (what I will explore in this post) is that the Jews' entire theological framework is built on the assumption that continuous healing is the primary purpose of being human.

Tikkun Olam: The broken world axiom

The concept that has captivated modern social justice movements is Tikkun Olam, often translated simply as repairing the world. But to appreciate its true nature, we have to understand its origin myth within Lurianic Kabbalah.

The mystic Isaac Luria described creation as a cosmic catastrophe. God needed to contract God’s own essence to make space for the universe. To fill this new world, God poured divine light into sacred vessels. But the vessels, unable to contain the intensity of the divine flow, shattered. The divine sparks fell into the mundane world, became trapped within material shards, and darkness entered reality.

As academic scholarly analysis suggests, Tikkun Olam, interpreted ecologically, offers insight into just sustainability. This serves as a model and guide for a more sustainable future by emphasizing the interdependence among God (not necessarily a monotheistic one), human needs, and the claims of nature. Early rabbinic discussions of mipnei tikkun ha-olam (for the sake of the betterment of society) were initially focused on maintaining social order, but have evolved through Kabbalistic thought into a cosmic responsibility where humans are active partners with the concept of the divine in gathering the trapped sparks and restoring wholeness to the cosmos.

For a modern reader, this may be relatable: We feel the brokenness. We see it in polarized communities and a deteriorating planet. Judaism offers an axiom: You are not imagining the fracture. It is real, it is ancient, and it is your - and our- job to fix it.

Ecofeminism and the indwelling shekhinah

Here is where the connection becomes potent. Because many religions, especially Islam or Christianity, absorbed and enforced a whole set of hierarchical dualisms: heaven and earth, good and bad, men and women, mind and body, emotion and thought, humans and nature, nature and culture. One of the dualisms is matter and spirit. Ecofeminism argues against a transcendent logic, the idea that spirit is up there and matter is down here to be used.

Judaism counters with the concept of the Shekhinah. While gender in Judaism is complex, the Shekhinah is traditionally understood as the indwelling, feminine presence of the Divine that lives within the created world, not distant from it. In Jewish mystical literature, the Shekhinah emerges as a distinctly feminine quality of divinity, often compared to a mother, sister, or daughter. Kabbalistic cosmology views her as associated with the lowest of the divine emanations (sefirot), serving as the intermediary closest to the material world. The potential to create a phenomenology of holiness engendered respect for the value of other creatures and things, unifying phenomena with their source.

When we pollute a river or destroy a forest, from a Jewish ecofeminist perspective, we are doing more than just breaking a law (if there are laws against that in that jurisdiction in the first place!): we are exiling the Shekhinah. We are wounding this Divine Feminine present in matter. While I have my own conflicting views on the term 'divine feminine', the gender binary here is not what's under the spotlight, but once simple idea:

Repairing the world is not a matter of corporate policy or green washing, but a spiritual desecration that demands a spiritual response.

Shabbat as a tool of degrowth

If ecofeminism seeks to dismantle the patriarchal mastery model of nature, Judaism provides the ultimate practical tool: Shabbat (the Sabbath).

Shabbat is not just a day off to catch up on sleep. I remember my first Shabbat, where I was privileged to experience it with a global jewish community a few years ago: In my experience, it's a weekly ritual designed for rest, balance, and degrowth. In other words, a weekly cessation of mastery. On Shabbat, Jewish law prohibits melacha, which are activities that work or transform the environment. Historically, this meant no lighting fires, no harvesting, no building. Jewish people gave themselves, others, the planet, and the non-human a break once a week, and they still do today. 

There is an ecological web of interrelationships within the Sabbath, consisting of the concept of God, humans, the rest of physical creation (land and all living beings and matter), and time. I see the Shabbat and the associated Shmita (Sabbatical year) depicting God's identity as one who gives rest or lets be. I interpret this as a perspective of political/ecological power that could be enormously important for addressing climate change by challenging the political-theological framework that defines existence through continuous action and production.

Shabbat is the original, continuous strike against the extraction economy. It is a day to practice being a partner with creation rather than its manager. Ecofeminism can find in Shabbat a built-in, repeatable ritual for disrupting the logic of exponential production and consumption.

A duty to the future: Continuous healing

The final lesson ecofeminism can absorb is the persistence of the duty that is, at this point, crucial for our species' survival (and all other species too). What many government heads and political leaders are failing to do is planting trees in whose shade they shall never sit: Their inability to think for future generations is greed-induced, and they can learn a thing or two from jewish ecofeminism.

Modern activism suffers from burnout, the feeling that the problem is too big and our time is too short.

Ancient Judaism provides the antidote to this fatigue through mitzvot (commandments). One key commandment is Bal Tashchit (which is the prohibition against senseless destruction) or waste. Crucially, this law applies even in times of war. This sets clear, absolute limits on how humans may interact with the non-human world, emphasizing that we are temporary care takers, or stewards, tasked to till and protect the Earth, not control it. While some scholars trace the prohibition primarily to earlier concepts linked with self-harm, contemporary scholarly analysis has increasingly recognized Bal Tashchit as a strong and much needed environmental ethic prohibiting wastefulness and destruction of resources, asserting that to harm the environment is inherently to harm oneself.

The work of healing is not contingent on winning the battle tomorrow. It is a perpetual mandate. As the aphorism from Perkei Avot teaches: "It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it."

The Jews always knew the world was broken. But they also always knew that the very brokenness is what gives human action its ultimate significance. Intersectional ecofeminism can find in Judaism not a historical footnote, but a powerful, resilient ally in the continuous work of gathering the sparks and mending the sacred whole.