What about the environment?

In their wildest dreams, kings and other famous figures in history couldn't imagine life in a word as sophisticated as our own. With the slightest effort we can get everything we want: Food and drink? Just reach out and put it in your shopping cart.

An important conversation? No problem, within seconds we can hear another continent. A desire to document life? A small push of the button and there we have the moment that just passed in our camera.

Indeed, we make an effort every day in order to enjoy what this world offers us, but we certainly deserve what we achieved. We work hard, make an effort to maintain our homes, constantly worry about the wellbeing of our loved ones, and are trying as much as possible to uphold all the mitzvahs.

However, beyond this basic accounting, it's worthwhile for us to stop our daily routine on occasion, take a look at Creation, and ask ourselves how much this fine world really costs us.

We shouldn't make do with presenting invoices of timely water and tax payments, because we're talking about something that goes beyond our relationship with the laws of this country; we're talking about our relations with God's world.

Indeed, we are able to activate complex things with a slight effort, but is that the only energy being invested? As we know, electricity is not flowing through our hands. In order to create a small spark at our home, huge infrastructure work is needed, including the placement of immense poles that carry cables replete with electrons.

How powerful is the radiation emanating from electricity poles positioned near a residential home? How grave is the risk posed by the thick smoke rising from power stations in cities? How many people pay for it with their lives every year? And what contribution does this make to destroying the climate with polluted air?

Once in a while, we hear an outcry coming from the religious community regarding the desecration of the Shabbat by corporations, including calls to "punish" the disobedient company.

Yet the question we must ask is why aren't we crying out in the face of other injustices that ruin our world? Why are we silent in the face of an emerging environmental holocaust?

World is unwell

It's hard to claim that we "didn't hear or see a thing," as the drama is taking place right before our eyes. The climate is warming, rainfall is dropping off, the air is being polluted, and cancer is running wild.

Water reservoirs are being closed one after the other because of pollution, the sea is carrying sewage within its waves, and the number of animals is going down.

These terrible things are taking place for the first time in our time, and are a clear result of human actions.

Creation is unwell and we're not coming to its aid, simply because we're enjoying our world. We're satisfied and are making do with expressing our gratitude for all the good – according to our belief, prayer is always accepted.

However, it appears the air is so polluted that it makes prayers lose their way in the fogs up above and return to us answered. We've deteriorated and became a sick society disconnected from nature and close to its own interests only.

It turns out that Jewish law, which is sensitive to injustice and distress and chooses a moral way of life, is also left behind a little.

Why do we go easy on companies that pollute the air but are infuriated with others only because they desecrated the Shabbat for a moment? Why do we make sure to express our anger at companies that import non-kosher meat, but fail to declare war on those who pour toxins into rivers?

We must wake up, before the world of Jewish law has no world to be exercised in.

Zvika Nevo is a photographer, screenplay writer, and farmer. He resides in the Galilee community of Eshchar