Parshat Ki Tavo 5767: Blessings, Curses and the Seeds of Evolution

This week, we read of the blessings and curses. Among the blessings we read:

3. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.

4. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your cattle, the produce of your cows, and the flocks of your sheep.

5. Blessed shall be your basket and your store.

6. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. [Deut 28 3-6]

Among the curses:

16. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field.

17. Cursed shall be your basket and your store.

18. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your land, the produce of your cows, and the flocks of your sheep.

19. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.

20. The Lord shall send upon you cursing, confusion, and failure, in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed, and until you perish quickly; because of the wickedness of your doings, by which you have forsaken me.[Deut 28:16-20]

Deuteronomy provides a dilemma for many people due to its quid pro quo theology. Yet, coming back from vacation in the Galapagos Islands, I’ve been reflecting on a lot of what I learned on those Islands, as did someone who once visited them in 1835: Charles Darwin. Darwin notes his experiences in the Galapagos were one of the major influences in formulating the theory of evolution. However, history records he didn’t act it at the time, actually eating one of the critical samples (the tortoises). While many fundamentalist theologians spend a lot of time and energy refuting evolution as a godless theory, I see something else, something that has a lot to do with blessings and curses God gave us in Deuteronomy.

Like Hawaii, the Galapagos Islands are formed over a geologic hotspot, a thin point in the Earths crust where Magma can easily reach the surface in the form of volcanoes. The Islands form as these volcanoes reach the surface of the water. Unlike Hawaii, the Galapagos is a mere 600 miles from the coast of South America, where the Oceanic plate dives under the continental plate. Even 600 miles out, islands in the Archipelago sink as they move southwest on the plate towards the mianland. Young Islands like Fernandina are tall, active volcanoes. Old Islands like Baltra are flat. Add to this most of the Pacific currents, both warm and cold, converging on this small set of islands. The Cold Humboldt in particular, brings food for the sea life, and for the species that feed on that sea life. The warm Panama current brings rainstorms. Yet the predominant cold current keeps these islands which span the equator rather temperate all year round. The volcanoes and former volcanoes create weather in the form of mists and clouds day in and out, providing rainforests on their higher elevations.

What this creates is a world where short distances change environments greatly. I quipped on the boat more than once if you don’t like the weather in the Galapagos, wait five minutes or take five steps. Darwin never thought about this. What he did see was through the Mocking bird species he studied, different environments meant the mocking birds used different beaks for different tasks in the differing environments. Darwin came up with his idea that the fittest species survive, and others die out. But there is a question which unfortunately has been answered badly from the time Darwin published till today ― what does it mean to be “fit?”

My experiences in the Galapagos and the knowledge of Biologists and environmental scientists since the time of Darwin have one rather circular answer, with a big implication. “Fit” means those who are able to utilize something in their environment and survive. As Steven Jay Gould one wrote “Survival of the fittest” is really a tautology. But the implication here is for every niche exploited by a species, other niche forms, to be exploited by another species. Sometimes mutation does the trick, sometimes even learned behavior. Mockingbirds on the rather desert Island of Espanola for example have learned within the last few decades to harass anyone (including bouncing on your head) with a water bottle in order to get a drop of the precious liquid. What all this mutation and learning creates is an intricate interdependency of every species on the Island to each other.

Of course when that order is shattered, the system collapses. Pirates wanting to have a easy source of meat let go goats on these islands. The goats reproduced rapidly and ate all of the vegetation. In turn native species like the Giant tortoises and Land iguanas starved, on some Islands becoming extinct, on most becoming very endangered. Today, programs are in place for eliminating the invading goats. On some of the smaller Islands like Floreana, such programs were successful and Galapagos life is returning. On some like Santa Cruz, the work continues.

Like the goat of Azazel related to the temple practice of Yom Kippur, the goats represent our sins for interfering with an ecosystem. Yet the problem with interdependency is that once you interfere, you cannot just stop and go away. If we did abandon control and elimination efforts, the feral goats, rats, cats and dogs we introduced to the island would eventually kill everything, as evidenced on several of the smaller islands. Many have called for the elimination of Tourism in the Galapagos in an effort to save the Islands. But those same tourists, who are highly regulated and restricted in their activities, are a major source of funds for repairing or slowing the damage of what we already have done with introduced species.

The Galapagos, most significantly, is a microcosm of the entire planet, and the problems of environmental protection are incredibly evident in such a fragile environment. This is not a simple system but a complex one where every species depends on other species. One problem leads to catastrophe.

The Galapagos can thus stand for a metaphor about our relation not just to the environment but to each other. We are interdependent on our environment and on our culture. When we interfere with either in a destructive way, it causes a chain of destruction, a curse. We need to be careful, but it is not easy. When we fail to keep the balance and the interdependences are not satisfied, thing fall apart, in the curses. When we do keep the balance we get abundance, and the blessings. It is not quid pro quo as much as we are part of a very intricate system.

I keep thinking of two lines from Genesis,

1:28. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

2:15. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.

In one we are to subdue, in the other to guard. One wants to believe we are outside the web of life, separate from it, and thus exploitation of the natural world and indeed of each others is warranted. The other makes us the guardian of the web of life, our mission to protect it. Blessings and curses are not our reward or punishment, but the implications or our effect on the web of life. So which is it?

Both Moses and David said a phrase which it very telling: The Earth is the Lord’s. (Exodus 9:29, Psalm 24:1) It is not ours, we are mere servants here. Moses was actually telling off Pharaoh at the time, implying Pharaoh owned diddly squat. Thinking of the dormant volcano I climbed and the wild life I saw brought on this kind of humility. It is not easy, to say the least. Do you kill all the goats to save the Tortoises? It is not an easy question, no question in this interdependency is.

Blessings and curses are not about doing good and getting good. They are about being part of system, environmental, social and spiritual, and working within that system for the greatest benefit to all. It is a balance, and a very difficult one, with no simple solutions. But as the High Holidays approach, one we all should think about.