Responsibility Instead of Fear (Tu Bishvat 5786)

Almost every Tu Bishvat, I leverage the tree-centered nature of the holiday to warn my patient readers about the ravages we are inflicting on our environment. To tug on our Zionist strings, I remind people that climate change is affecting Israel’s fragile ecosystem in devastating ways. All of that is true. Case in point: as I write these lines, Israel is being battered by both floods and droughts. But this year, I don’t want to convince you that Climate Change is real. You should know that by now. What interests me instead is how we think about existential threats, and what might be a Jewish way to think about them.

In the 21^st century, Climate Change is just one of the many existential risks we face. Leading scientists are predicting an AI-powered techno-apocalypse; political pundits are prophesying the imminent demise of democracy, and our streaming platforms are full of doomsday movies and shows. But the way we talk about them often follows a single pattern: catastrophism, the belief that collapse is not just possible but inevitable.

To be sure, catastrophism isn’t a modern phenomenon. There have been apocalyptic prophecies since the dawn of civilization. The flood literature, shared by many ancient cultures, the Christian “Book of Revelation,” or the millenarians who expected the imminent end of the world are but a few examples. That the predictions of doom don’t prove true doesn’t make them vanish; it simply displaces them. As my favorite writer, Jorge Luis Borges, wrote, “The prophecy of the end is a fear or a hope that never materializes.”

However, there’s something unique about modern catastrophism. Thinkers like Gunther Anders claim that human-made modern threats are qualitatively different, given their potential to annihilate our species and our planet. They also feel that the tools at our disposal, whether moral, imaginative, or institutional, are insufficient to address the threats we face. Above all, they believe that new technologies have a logic and a dynamic of their own that escapes human agency. Just as with Pandora’s Box, there’s no going back once we unleash these new technologies onto the world. For instance, the moment there was nuclear power utilized by humans, a nuclear bomb’s construction and detonation became inevitable.

Catastrophism starts from a real intuition: things can go very wrong, and the transition from capability to catastrophe is often a matter of time, not intention. That is especially true in the case of climate change, where reversing damage beyond a certain threshold may be impossible, and in the case of AI, which may break from human control without us even noticing. Once the future is framed as already lost, politics stops being about choosing among visions and becomes an arms race of fearmongering. Dread replaces judgment; urgency crowds out deliberation.

Instead of mobilizing people, this mindset often paralyzes them: if catastrophe is baked into the system—into technology itself or into history’s direction—then what’s left for human agency besides panic, denunciation, or nihilism? Time itself gets distorted. The future stops being an open horizon and turns into a ticking clock, a countdown that justifies sacrificing the present in the name of survival.

Looming catastrophe is always a gift to authoritarians: it provides the perfect excuse to suspend norms, concentrate power, and demand obedience in the name of saving us from disaster – be that disaster climate change or a catastrophic “invasion” of immigrants. The final irony is that by normalizing fear, emergency politics, and moral shortcuts, catastrophism can help produce the very fragility it claims to warn us about. What begins as a sober alert hardens into a script—one that erodes trust, democratic imagination, and collective responsibility, making the catastrophic prophecy a self-fulfilling one.

Perhaps because of that, Judaism was always very suspicious of catastrophism and apocalyptic thinking. Moreover, the Talmudic rabbis had seen firsthand what apocalyptic fervor had wrought upon the Jewish nation: two failed rebellions against Rome, the exile of the Jews from their homeland, and the destruction of Jerusalem. They even used the term mechavshei ketz (those that “count down towards the end”) as a term of derision. They knew that when people believe “the end is near” – either apocalyptic or utopian – they become dangerously prone to extremism and suspend moral responsibility. The excitement of the end also makes them disregard ordinary ethical obligations. Why invest in institutions, law, patience, or repair if history is about to be wiped clean?

It’s curious that a tradition that knows catastrophe all too well refuses to turn it into destiny. Between denial and surrender, Judaism offers a third way: the ethics of responsibility. Judaism stubbornly refuses to let fear become the organizing principle of history because that breeds tragedy. After all, we know that all Pharaoh had to do to convince the Egyptians to enslave the Israelites was to make them fear them.

It’s not that Judaism dismisses the dangers ahead, but rather proposes facing them with hope instead of fear. That hope is not naïve optimism but the certainty that humans have the agency and the moral resources to act responsibly. From this idea, Maimonides derives an entire view of history that became canonical in Jewish thought: progress is possible not through catastrophic upheaval but through gradual improvement in humanity, inspired by our covenantal responsibilities.

On Tu Bishvat, we are reminded that the future, like trees in the field, is fragile and entrusted to human care. It’s not guaranteed by naïve techno-optimism, nor foreclosed by doom. Time remains open, history continues, and there’s no cosmic reset button that will free us from our responsibility. The care we owe to trees is a metaphor; a reminder of the principles that should organize our relation to Creation – and to each other – restraint, kindness, reverence, and accountability. 

Maimonides would have nothing but contempt for those who deny the dangers of climate change, but he would scorn those who think that catastrophe is inevitable. Instead, he would remind us that Judaism offers something rare in our anxious age: a moral framework that takes existential risk seriously without surrendering agency, that insists on responsibility without apocalyptic despair, and that refuses to sacrifice the dignity of the present to either catastrophic fear or messianic illusion.

This approach will certainly help the trees, but above all, it will help us.

Chag Sameach!

Andrés