The Challenge of Sustainability: A New Covenant for Humanity

*Hanoch Ben Pazi*

### **Abstract**

Never has humanity experienced so palpably and unambiguously a feeling of collective fate. The common experience of facing danger and suffering disrupts our faith in life and evokes questions of meaning and existence. Humanity facing the challenge of sustainability: global warming, climate change, new viruses, pandemics, and the new technology – Artificial Intelligence. From East to West, people find themselves in fear and exposed to the questions of their fate and real suffering. Nature demands that humankind join hands in the battle against ecological problems. The awareness of the collective fate that has been forced upon us, has the potential to mark a new kind of partnership for humanity as a whole. Jewish tradition tried to teach human beings that their mission in life is to turn fate into destiny, to turn a passive existence into an active one – to move from being an object dictated to by powers greater than he or she, to a subject who determines his or her own path and meaning in the world. The readiness of humanity to enter into the covenant of fate—the willpower of individuals to take responsibility for the community, to join together in times of distress, out of a sense of obligation and responsibility—is worthy of honor and recognition.

**Keywords:** sustainability, global warming, theodicy, pandemics, Soloveitchik, covenant, fate and destiney
