A Jewish Ethical Account of the Abyss of Responsibility in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This article addresses the “abyss of responsibility” in the Anthropocene, where accountability for climate change is routinely outsourced to institutions. By analyzing a global consumer society that reduces both humans and nature to mere commodities, this study develops a Jewish ethical framework for individual and collective ecological agency. Methodologically, it expands the tort liabilities of Seder Nezikin (Mishnayot)—originally addressing unintentional, successive, and shared damages—into a blueprint for systemic environmental accountability. To animate this legal structure, the paper puts rabbinic sources into conversation with modern Jewish thinkers. It utilizes Emmanuel Levinas’s concept of infinite responsibility, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s covenantal politics, and Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik’s account of a co-responsibility between the human and earth to shift accountability from the state to the individual, calling for moral agency and active citizenship. Crucially, the study argues that environmental and human spheres are deeply intertwined; as long as human suffering is ignored for economic profit, nature will remain exploited. By integrating the legal principles of Nezikin, the inescapable responsibility of Levinas, Sacks’ politics of hope, and earth’s sensitivity towards sinfulness as formulated by Soloveitchik, this paper provides actionable theological resources to democratize responsibility and mend a world in distress.