You often hear the untrusting say that the devil is in the details. Unfortunately such is the case. How many people have lost all that they have saved because of the small print containing all the details of a contract? How many people have paid two and three times the cost of an item over time because no one explained the details to them? How many of you have read the small print on your credit cards, the print that says your interest rate will be raised enormously if you are late by one day over the grace period to pay what you owe? Indeed the devil is in the details.
However, with regard to Holy texts, like the Torah, God's presence is in the details also. People like to explain Western Religion by pointing to the Ten Commandments. In truth the many laws that come in the next chapter more fully explain what Judaism is all about. One of the Ten Commandments tells us not to steal; another tells us not to murder. The commandments that follow explain what that stealing and what that concept of murder are concerned with.
We are commanded to recognize all life as sacred. We are warned against hurting animals, even the animals of neighbors that we dislike. We are commanded to treat all people, even slaves and the disenfranchised, with honor because all were created in the image of God. We are ordered to take care of trees and to recognize that trees are not our enemies. They only afford us blessing. At the end of the Torah portion we read this week we are even asked to let the land lie fallow and rest once every seven years.
Who would understand the kindness that Judaism preaches only from a cursory reading of the Ten Commandments. Our religion would be a religion of cold hard rules. In truth the purpose of the commandments is to make us into warm and feeling people who recognize an obligation to save the world and protect all creatures.
Long before anyone understood words like ecology the Jewish people received a Torah that told them to protect this eco-system we call earth.