Avatar, the holiday seasons 3D blockbuster movie can only be fully appreciated with the right pair of glasses. This extraordinary film pushes the boundaries of cinematography far beyond anything you will have seen and is a tribute to human ingenuity.

The story is simple and formulaic. The Navi, the inhabitants of the planet Pandora, who live in complete symbiosis with their world and all its life forms are forced to engage in a life in an unequal struggle against earthlings that see the planet only as a resource for a prized mineral and its inhabitants and are prepared to use their technology to possess it at all costs.

Clearly, Avatar is a parable for our times in its juxtaposition of those who place profit before responsibility and those who that the place of man in Creation is less about dominion than stewardship. Incidentally, the Hebrew for ‘prophet’ is ‘navi’.

Judaism’s credentials in the area of ecology are not as altruistic as we would like to believe. Yes, there are quotations that can be drawn from rabbinic literature that urge us to take a responsible attitude to Nature but it is a Nature that is viewed through anthropocentric spectacles; so that what is good for mankind frequently becomes the arbiter of conscience and not what serves to sustain the biosphere and all its inhabitants.

The terrible devastation that followed the Haitian earthquake is a stark reminder of Nature’s capacity for destruction. Yes, Nature dwarves mankind’s ability to wreak havoc… and yes, the jury is still out on scientific proof for the extent of human responsibility for global warning and climate change but the shifting of the earths Tectonic plates is about physics and not benighted self interest and indifference.

Judaism has evolved in its understanding of our place in Creation and the biblical view that we have dominion over it has been replaced by one that would urge us to be responsible guardians. Surely we do not need to have absolute scientific proof of complicity in our environment on a local or a global scale. Decades of denial that there was a connection between lung cancer and smoking meant the needless death of too many and a lack of funding for vital medical research. Only the irredeemably myopic would believe that we are doing a good job in sustaining this planet in the interests of all its life forms.

The events of the past weeks in Haiti have shown humanity’s capacity to act in concert for good. We cannot change the propensity for movements in the earth’s crust but as individuals and nations we can be the balm to give healing and life to those who have survived the cataclysm. We can act nobly after a disaster, what we seem to lack is the insight to recognize that our capacity for good on a global basis can be nullified by our continued contribution to the degradation of our environment by our own indifference.

It is not a matter of becoming starry-eyed tree-huggers but recognizing that our actions, good and bad have consequences and that until governments are prepared to act, it is incumbent upon us as Jewish human beings to take a hard look at our lives and honestly assess the extent to which our own actions contribute to our planet’s ecological illness or it’s well-being and then modify our behaviour accordingly.

The eleventh month of the Jewish calendar, Shevat, has commenced. This is the month that tradition recognized that despite the seeming death of nature, the sap is beginning to quicken within the trees and plants. This is a time when inhabitants of our hemisphere, if they would but lift their eyes, can already look forward to the renewal that Spring promises.

If I remember my Greek mythology correctly, Pandora’s Box was a wedding gift from the gods on the occasion of her marriage to Prometheus. It came with the warning that it should not be opened. When unable to restrain her curiosity Pandora disobeyed, all the evils entered the world save one – Hope. It is interesting that the Greeks saw hope as an evil, fortunately Pandora did not and she did much to nullify the effect of her disobedience by forcing Hope to leave the box.

With continued support for the people of Haiti, humanity may yet demonstrate the power of hope to overcome the effects of natural disasters but we will need more than 3D glasses to find the hope necessary to act in concert to save our planet from the depredations of humanity. What is necessary is the insight to look within ourselves and to recognize that in healing the world, hope is powerless unless it can draw strength from our willingness to be the agents for substantive change for good and not remain indifferent accomplices in our planet’s destruction.