Rethinking Jewish Approaches to Wastefulness

This paper demonstrates that attitudes toward idolatry and the influence of foreign cultural practices in rabbinic sources play a central role in the conceptualization of the rabbinic prohibition against wastefulness (bal tashḥit). This has been essentially ignored in the contemporary discourse on wastefulness but has the potential to shift the manner in which the prohibition is perceived, especially from a practical point of view, among observant Jewish communities. Prima facie, through the prohibition against wastefulness, Judaism has the tools and values to mitigate wastefulness. Yet this prohibition has had only modest success in accomplishing this. In order to understand how and why religious theory is translated into practice in a particular way it is essential to understand the history of this concept.