Spiritual Ecology and the Kabbalistic Soul
Musing on the connection between Nature and Spirit, and Reflections on Teaching Ecology in a Jewish Summer Camp
Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. [A person] lives in the spirit when [they are] able to respond to [their] You. [They are] able to do that when [they] enter into this relation with [their] whole being. It is solely by virtue of [our] power to relate that [we are] able to live in the spirit.
- Martin Buber, in I and Thou, 1937
Ecological reality is suffused with a ghostly, quivering energy that cannot be contained as “spirit” or “soul” or “idea” or “concept” without violence.
– Timothy Morton, in Humankind, 2017
This article is composed of various musings and teachings I first put together while leading the Nature programming at a Jewish camp last summer. While working as Rosh Teva (the ‘head’ of ‘nature’), I led programs for kids of all ages, aimed at helping them foster a connection with the more-than-human world. My main responsibility was running overnight programs, where campers would hike up to our hilltop campsite, enjoy both their camp community and the wider natural community, and take time to think about the ways Jewish words for soul and spirit bring us into contact with the wider world of Nature. Through this ascent, I presented the Kabbalistic framework of the five “levels” of the soul. Join me as I recount this journey.
Over the past year, I have been reflecting deeply on what the word “spirit” means to me. I never was a super religious person growing up, and until recently, I never felt any reality in the words “spirit”, or “God”. These words, alongside supernatural stories of miracles and prophecy never seemed wholly true. Perhaps because words and stories can only communicate so much.
Immediately after completing my final quarter as a university student, I took on the responsibility of teaching about Nature at a Jewish summer camp. I had not even filed my master’s thesis — composed of 40-something pages describing a study I performed assessing the spatial patterns between plants and their root-community partners and soil-microbial neighbors — when I was asked to write up my plan for the overnight program.
I had seen plenty of overnight programs at this camp. I knew I would have to figure out a plan where the complex logistics of moving campers’ belongings, setting up tents, and feeding the whole group would be intimately stitched to a greater lesson on belonging to a community. I grew up attending this summer camp, and I knew how miserable this program could be if done wrong. What had drawn me to this job was my profound love for this Land1 and its wider community. The trail every camper would travel on was the very same one that I had walked on when I first visited the overnight site for a cookout at 10 years old. I now had to drive a truck up this narrow dirt road several times a day to lug camper’s bags, food, and whatever (or whoever) else needed to be brought up. The campsite was on the very same hilltop where I had slept for a single night, every summer from age 11 to 17. That summer, I would sleep there nearly every other night.
Since my time as a camper, this land had changed dramatically. I still remember sitting in a math class, Fall of 2017, when I heard the news that a wildfire had swept through the camp: nothing was left unaffected. Throughout my summer as Rosh Teva, each time I led hikes, I would point out the seared bark and charred skeletons of the Oak and Douglas Fir trees that stud the valley bottom and line the hillsides. These trees once made this landscape feel so enchanted. There I was, no longer a child; looking onto a land and remembering what once had been. I felt a haunting feeling each time I remembered the verdant forest that I once knew. There, still alive.
The old trail to the overnight site took us through a forest, but with fallen branches and burnt trees, this path was too dangerous for us to use.
The trail I walked took me past the remains of a small kibbutz (a small agricultural commune); a few fruit trees and an untended garden still stood, though nothing else remained beyond a few trees, an old pond, and the foundation of the old farmhouse.
To get to the overnight site, we used to walk through “the enchanted forest”. Above the kibbutz, a small valley carries water through a large forest, filling the small pond which I once wandered around in search of ripe blackberries. Since the fire, this “enchanted” trail has been inaccessible, with fallen trees, downed branches and a tangled bramble of thorns and poison oak making the trail too dangerous for anyone — including camp staff — to access. Only as the trail turns around the kibbutz and begins to ascend up toward the overnight site can you see the old “enchanted forest”. As a camper, I did not realize how this landscape — and the tangled patchwork of communities living atop it — fit together. But from on this ascending trail, there are a few spots where you can see how all these plant communities fit together on the landscape: a closed-canopy forest made up of Douglass Firs and Madrones live in the valley between two hills; here a small creek descends into a pond, and the valley opens up as the creek meanders through the oak savannah below; the valley’s hillsides are covered in shrubs and grasses, while the floodplain below is studded with oaks and dappled with shrubs and wildflowers. A long stretch of planted fruit trees descends into invasive plants and annual grass. There is no missing the impact we have had on the land here.
After getting the lay of the land, I started drafting my plan for the overnight. The basic jist was this: on our hike up, we would think about the various ways — through our senses and our spirits, as living, breathing, thinking, discerning, and loving people — that we come to connect with nature. Through thinking about our place in the holy community, of which we are a part, we would reckon with the relationship between spirit and the natural world. On their overnight, each camper, in their community, would explore what it means to have a spiritual connection to Nature. To do this, we would be discussing the Kabbalistic “tiers” of the soul/spirit.
Spirit through Kabbalah
I had previously played with a few Kabbalistic frameworks – although mainly as an independent scholar. I was introduced to the 5 “levels” of the soul by a video on the topic by Rabbi Samuel Jacobson (who does have a deep knowledge of Jewish tradition, but seems to lack something in the “ethics” department). As I was rewalking this path — a trail I had walked and ran dozens of times before, but not since I had begun my studies in ecology — I realized that I wanted to connect the different “levels” of the soul to our relationship with the natural world. I am no expert, and consulted no other Kabbalists when I put together this schema. However, I have taught it to many campers, and thus it is out in the world. I will now go through four words for spirit/soul I taught as Rosh Teva in the summer of 2023.
Nefesh — The Physical Soul
At this summer camp, Nefesh staff look out for camper physical health and emotional well-being. Nefesh translates to ‘soul’, and coincides with the physical life of the individual body-mind. To take care of the nefesh is to take care of physical well-being: drinking water, eating healthy food, getting good sleep, etc. To study nefesh is to study the interconnected sciences of physics, chemistry, biology and ecology – recognizing how particles and molecules come together to make proteins, cells, organs and organisms. We are composed of innumerable processes, our bodies have numerous needs. Nefesh arises through the interconnected wholeness of all.
Knowledge of nefesh can allow us to understand what must be done to remain physically healthy.
By understanding the nefesh that exists within us and all around us, we can better understand how we can ensure our collective wellbeing – our physical, communal, and environmental health.
Ruach — The Emotional Spirit
When campers are asked to show off their ruach, they are being asked to show their fiery spirit! Ruach comes from the Hebrew word for breath, or wind, but it is commonly translated as ‘spirit’. It is the emotional energy which moves us to act, to love, and to coexist in community. It is the spirit that connects us to the world – in breathing in the exhalations of the plants, we are reminded in each breath of our connection and interdependence with the wider world. Ruach is all around us. Whether in the intensity of a fiery roar or the serenity of a babbling brook, ruach moves us to act: driving us to appreciate our interconnectedness and care for what’s beyond us.
To take care of our ruach is to be mindful of how our environment is affecting ourselves, and how we are affecting others. Understanding ruach can allow us to better cultivate caring relationships, and can inspire a deeper understanding of how we can best support those around us.
While much of the study of ruach exists beyond modern science, it lingers at the edges of transpersonal social and environmental psychology – haunting all questions that explore how we are affected by others and our environment. Studying ruach can help us understand how our attention, interest, and broader awareness orients our desires and impacts our wellbeing. Just by being observant and mindful of how our social and physical environment affects us, and how we affect others in turn, we begin to study the nature of ruach. In ruach, we know how we participate in the creation of the World.
Neshama — The Intellectual Soul
Whereas ruach is the breath exchanged in the processes of life, Neshama is the soul which G-d breathed into us – it is the holy spark within each of us. While ruach shapes our emotions, neshama shapes our thoughts – it coincides with our capacity to understand the world, and to perceive our place in dynamic relation to the whole of our living context. Neshama is translated as ‘soul’, but unlike nefesh, it refers to the conscious awareness and responsibility we know in our mind. While our nefesh lingers on after death, our neshama is extinguished when our life is no more. Neshama is our soul that shines light on the nature of things in the world, and actively seeks to discern truth from falsehood, good from bad, mitzvah (obligation) from sin. It is through our neshama that G-d reveals the world to us, and it is through neshama that we can grasp our place in the greater cosmos.
To take care of your neshama is to understand yourself, your common patterns of thought, and to consciously assess your assumptions about who people are and how the world works. Through self-reflection — of our thoughts and assumptions, our behaviors and impacts, our responsibilities and our wider place in the world — we can better understand how we can take care of ourselves and our community.
The study of neshama is the study of consciousness and the nature of cognition, language, and our capacity to discern truth and act ethically. In confronting the reality of our neshama, we are forced to reflect on the concepts, identities, and existence of others and the World – it is thus central to the study of philosophy.
Through our neshama, we are pulled into an intellectual relationship with a community of others. Together in dialogue, we can collectively reckon with our respective places in our shared community and ecosystem. It is through this “level” of the soul that we can creatively engage with others – it guides us to participate in agro-ecologies and to create symbolic representations of the truth that lies within. Neshama allows us to pass on our knowledge and teachings and attain greater communal fulfillment in the world.
Understanding the nature of Neshama alone is insufficient for Tikkun Olam (fixing the world) – yet together, integrated within a broader ecological consciousness, it becomes our greatest strength and best hope for building a brighter future. Neshama is the foundation upon which we must collectively construct our knowledge of reality: only in honest dialogue can we build intellectual community together.. But, only when we open ourselves up to difference and welcome diversity and dissent into our community can we begin to truly struggle with our various places here in our shared home.
Chaiah — The Living Spirit
I did not teach this “level” of the soul to many campers. I didn’t need to: its presence was implicit in the whole program. Embedded within the premise of this program was the notion that life and the natural world are perpetually entangled in spirit. By realizing that life necessarily intertwines nefesh, ruach, and neshama together in all of our relationships, we might naturally come to the notion of the Living Spirit: Chaiah.
After reaching the overnight site, I had the campers ground themselves at the site. One of the key values taught at this summer camp is Kehilla Kadosha, meaning ‘holy community’. When the campers arrived at the site, they gathered in a circle and I went over some safety guidelines. I then asked them what it meant for them to build a holy community here on this land. They established their own rules as they struggled to articulate how ethical behavior could help them make a holy community together.
The campers would then set up their tents, and (for some groups) help prepare the meal. Each camper would later get a chance to shape their own pita bread, which we cooked on a grill over an open flame. Here, on this oaken hilltop, I tried to get the campers to realize that the communities they build at summer camp are akin to the wider natural community – and in fact, they are part of the extensive natural community. As the sun fell low over the horizon, campers would often head to look out over the valley – looking at the edge of camp and towards a valley full of trees and vineyards; homes, roads and power lines. Their efforts to call out to their friends could be heard for miles, and the impact of this experience could last a lifetime. Whether in their relationships, their memories, or their actions, to be in community is to be ever entangled with our wider place in the World.
As the sun set and the stars stretch out overhead, we would come together as a camp community for my favorite ritual: Siyum. Siyum means closure, and is a celebration of another day completed. We gather in a big circle, our arms around one another, and we sing as one to the chords of a guitar. Together, punctuated by smiles and shtick, whispers and giggles, we sing two prayers: the Shema and Hashkiveinu. Together, we declare G-d’s oneness, and ask G-d to protect our dwelling place until we wake tomorrow; creation renewed.
As the campfire burns low and campers head to sleep; as constant chatter slowly gives way to near silence, I like to imagine that the campers, students in my outdoor classroom for this one night, realized the spiritual significance of their place in the natural world. The unity of all.
Yechida?
If I didn’t share anything about Chaiah (the fourth “level”) to most of my campers, what makes you think I will say anything here about Yechida (a level “higher”)? I’ll just leave you with this: What is the relationship between Chaiah and the “lower” three words for soul/spirit? What might this unity mean for the nature of Yechida?
Thank you for reading Jewish Ecology. This blog aims to build a participatory dialogue in which important ideas at the intersection of Judaism and ecology can help us root ourselves in the World. This blog is not just for Jews; I aim for these articles to be accessible and impactful for anyone that is interested in building up an understanding of the role that spirituality, philosophy, and/or ethics play in bringing about a more peaceful, ecological, and sustainable future for all People and the World. If you can think of someone who might enjoy these articles, please consider sharing this blog!
Footnote borrowed from Max Liboiron’s Pollution is Colonialism: “I follow the lead of Styres and Zinga (Indigenous and settler, respectively), who “capitalize Land when we are referring to it as a proper name indicating a primary relationship rather than when used in a more general sense. For us, land (the more general term) refers to landscapes as a fixed geographical and physical space that includes earth, rocks, and waterways; whereas, ‘Land’ (the proper name) extends beyond a material fixed space. Land is a spiritually infused place grounded in interconnected and interdependent relationships, cultural positioning, and is highly contextualized” (300–301). Likewise, when I capitalize Land I am referring to the unique entity that is the combined living spirit of plants, animals, air, water, humans, histories, and events recognized by many Indigenous communities.”