The Jewish tradition has a strong communal orientation, one that has limited individual rights by placing them within the context of and subordinating them to communal responsibilities. For the good of the community, even "private property" could be taken, under the principle of hefker bet din hefker, literally, "what the court declares ownerless is ownerless," the Mishnaic version of "eminent domain." More generally, a community could both coerce its residents to take positive actions for the good of the community and prohibit them from actions held to be deleterious to the community. This prohibition went so far, for example, as to enable residents of a courtyard or sealed alley generally to prohibit any profession (excluding the teaching of Torah) from being performed in that area if it threatened, because of noise or noxious odors, to reduce the quality of life for the residents. (Daniel Swartz, “Jews, Jewish Texts, and Nature: A Brief History.”)

This halakhik (Jewish legal principle) requires us to take continuing responsibility for damage caused by that which we put into the public domain. Each of us leaves much in the public domain every day — including trash, car emissions, sewage. Our tradition requires us to make sure that those things we discard do not cause pollution that harms people, other species, or the environment. (Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, “Caring for the Cycle of Life.”)

Precautionary Principle

The Bible instructs us to cautiously and prudently err in favor of protecting human life and health — a value that supersedes any but devotion to God. . . . There are many threats to human life that are neither certain nor immanent. . . . The Bible provides some instruction for such a case. Deuteronomy 22:8 tells us that, “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet [a fence] for your roof, so that you do not bring blood-guilt on your house if anyone should fall from it. Rabbi Moses Maimonides, perhaps the greatest Jewish sage, taught that we must take action to protect others from any object of potential danger, by which it is likely that a person could be fatally injured, including building a fence on an unprotected roof. In the Mishneh Torah, his great commentary on the Bible, he wrote that a person (not just the owner) must remove a possible danger that could cause fatal harm to another, even, in the case of the parapet, when the danger is not imminent or certain. (Testimony to Congress by Mark X. Jacobs on behalf of COEJL, Feb. 10, 2000.)