When God created the first human being, God led Adam around the Garden of Eden and said, "Behold my works! See how beautiful they are, how excellent! All that I have created, for your sake did I create it. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy my world; for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you."

This midrash, or rabbinic parable, serves as a paradigm for Jewish ecology: we human beings are not simply of the earth, we are responsible to and for it. And if we do not take our responsibility seriously, there will indeed be no one who will take care of the earth for us. We are stewards, as the second creation story in the first book of Genesis teaches us. God created the first human being, and then placed Adam in the Garden of Eden with a mandate: l'ovdah u-l'shomra--to work it and take care of it.

In the 1970's, "when it became clear that the environmental crisis was real," Matt Biers-Ariel, a Jewish educator, environmental activist, author of two books on Jewish approaches to nature, and stay-at-home dad, "jumped in and never jumped out" of environmental activism and consciousness. Today the father of two children--aged two and six--recycles in his Davis home and has spearheaded a waste audit at the Marin Jewish Community Center where he served as Director of Education.

"Our home system is very easy," he explains. "similar to systems across America. Now that curbside pickup is available in most cities, all you have to do is separate recyclables into the categories they pick up. We have in the garage a bin for plastics #1 and #2. We have a bin for glass, and one for metal. We have two paper baskets in strategic places in the house. They are emptied the night before the collectors come and put curbside. Paper used on only one side becomes scratch paper and first-draft paper. Cardboard has its own place. We compost also. We have a compost bucket with activated charcoal that goes under the sink. We look at everything before throwing it away. At least 75 percent of our discarded items end up being reused or recycled." In the Biers-Ariel home, recycling is simply "what is done."

Jon Levisohn, a Ph.D. student in philosophy of education at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and father of a 26-month-old daughter, echoes this. "Recycling is just what is expected, rather than something extraordinary," he says. "Come to think of it, that's an approach in and of itself."

In Rabbi Stuart Kelman's congregation, Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, California, the initiative for recycling came from its sixth grade class. The congregation had just moved to its new building, and the sixth graders were outraged when they learned that a recycling program had not yet been implemented. The students petitioned the board of directors and put a recycling program in place.

Kelman is quick to note that recycling and other environmental concerns are part of the political milieu in the city of Berkeley, but emphasizes that recycling is more than an American liberal concern. "I see it as a preservation of God's gift, and it is God's mitzvah to watch and take care of the planet," he says.

An "environmentally conscious" rabbi, Rabbi Warren Stone of Temple Emanuel in Kensington, Maryland inspired De Fishler Herman of Takoma Park at an Earth Day celebration over ten years ago. "Prior to that, I had not been aware of the connections between Judaism and ecology," the long-time environmental activist explained. "It was quite a revelation that there was a connection all along and it helped me to feel more unified in who I was."

Armed with this revelation, Herman founded an environmental committee, The Green Shalom Committee, which put together a policy of environmental recommendations "we felt we wanted the synagogue to uphold," she said. "It wasn't all that hard. It was a matter of making a couple of phone calls to a waste management company and they provided us with a special dumpster. Then it was a matter of talking with the staff to get them to put the separate containers out to collect things."

Herman believes in the Jewish imperative to recycle in bal tashchit, the biblical law that forbids unnecessary destruction. The book of Deuteronomy commands that even in a time of war, fruit trees may not be destroyed for human life depends on them. This principle was codified in the Mishneh Torah, a code of Jewish law written by Maimonides in the 12th century.

The section called "Laws of Kings" states, "Not only one who cuts down food trees, but also one who [purposely and impulsively] smashes household goods, tears clothes, demolishes a building, stops up a spring, violates the commandment, 'You must not destroy' ". In another section of the Mishneh Torah, which deals with the laws of mourning, Maimonides admonishes, "One should be trained not to be destructive."

It is precisely this kind of training that Long Beach Hillel Director Erika Hillinger hopes to give her two children. "Before my children throw anything away, they ask, 'Is this recyclable?' They know: paper, glass..."she says. "Sometimes they'll pick things up and bring things home [to recycle]."

While Hillinger does not educate her children about recycling and the connection to Judaism in formal ways, she hopes through her daily words and actions to train her children in ecological consciousness and habits.

"We were watching a TV show recently about making tinsel and the woman on TV said one of the good things about the tinsel was that it could not be re-used." I asked the kids, "Do you think that's good?"

"Our Temple has a 'Mitzvah Day' once a year," she said. "I chaired the clean-up for the nature center...To me, taking care of where you are is part of being Jewish. When [my children] are older and we can talk about Genesis in terms of being stewards of the world, then environmentalism can be seen in an even larger Jewish context."

Yet some environmental activists fear that by emphasizing recycling, Jewish families and institutions may be lulled into a false complacency. "There is a growing sense in the environmental world that recycling is only a small piece of environmental responsibility. Many of us fear that individuals and organizations feel they have filled their environmental responsibility by focusing almost exclusively on recycling," says Stephen Sylvan, an activist in Shomrei Adamah, a Jewish Environmental Organization.

"If you recycle but continue to produce the same level of waste and use the same amount of energy in your home and office," the policy analyst in Ann Arbor, Michigan warns, "I believe you have failed the environment."