Shevat 15

Although this verse refers specifically to the prohibition of destroying a fruit-bearing tree, the Talmud has extended this principle to prohibit all wanton destruction.

A rabbi and a student were strolling in the street. The student tore a leaf from a tree. “Think about what you have just done,” the rabbi said, “There is an ascending scale of matter that parallels each being’s function. God wants the inanimate to serve the vegetative, which should in turn serve the animate, which should in turn serve the rational. Our efforts should be directed toward the elevation of matter, and not to its degradation.

“When we cut a tree to fashion from it things that people will use constructively, the tree is elevated by being of service to humanity. But by tearing a living leaf from a tree for no purpose whatsoever, you have degraded the leaf from the vegetative to the inanimate, and you have reversed the ascending order of matter.”

If we guided our actions on this scale of elevation to a more sublime state, how different our lives might be! We might also then realize that there is one additional ascent, and that is from the rational to the spiritual. How wonderful our lives would be if everything were directed upward, culminating in the ultimate goal of spirituality!