This paper will explore the potential of Jewish religious language in examining economic ideology and behavior. Many in the "religion and environment" field engage in some version of eco-theology: re-evaluating the relationship between humans, God and Creation/nature. Yet current scholarship shows that economic realities, such as perpetual growth, consumerism and socio-economic inequalities, are no less crucial in our struggle for sustainability.
Jewish tradition, especially Biblical and rabbinic literatures, does not see an unbridgeable chasm between God and Mammon. It suggests a religiously-informed critique of our current economic culture, precisely from the angle of long-term environmental sustainability and collective well-being. This includes alternatives to the tenets of neo-liberalism such as the centrality of capital, private property and the profit motive, the belief in the freedom, wisdom and amorality of the market, the support of continual growth as essential to progress, the necessity of inequality and the limited role of the collective to further the common good.
For instance, one of the engines of both economic growth and environmental devastation is the consumer culture of late capitalism. Jewish sources have a deep-seated critique of materialism and immediate gratification, from the 10th commandment through sumptuary laws, attitudes to greed and contentment, poverty and wealth. Moreover, ancient Jewish society had built-in mechanisms of redistribution - from safety nets for impoverished and disenfranchised populations to the radical social reconstruction of the sabbatical and jubilee years. Indeed, the entire economic system rests on a vastly different conception of property, as divine abundance to be shared, rather than an individual right to be protected from encroachment.