Judaism, History, and the Environment - by Dean Phillip Bell (Hardcover)

About the Book

Considers how Jewish history, thought, and texts can help us to understand the environment and address climate change and natural disasters, today and in the future.

Book Synopsis

Engaging creatively with Jewish texts and history, this book explores the interplay between history, Judaism, and the environment through the prism of natural disasters. Historical case studies include earthquakes in Georgian England, floods and fires in 18th-century Germany, plague in 17th-century Italy, and natural disasters experienced by Jews living in the Ottoman Empire.

Rather than seeing religion as a stumbling block or as a cause of environmental degradation, these historical cases are instead brought into conversation with related classical Jewish texts and contemporary Jewish thought. Unlike studies that interpret religious texts through traditional hermeneutical lenses, this book is distinctly interdisciplinary, contributing significantly to the fields of Jewish studies, religious studies, ecology, and environmental humanities.

Chapters explore new ways to think about contemporary environmental concerns, discussing the Anthropocene, causality and temporality, global and local contexts, and proscription. Dean Phillip Bell's timely and important argument demonstrates how a new engagement with Jewish history and thought may help us to grapple with the environmental challenges of today and the future.

Review Quotes

"This is an enormously erudite book, arguing in very compelling and accessible terms that history and religion matter a great deal and ought to be taken seriously by contemporary environmental and ecological thinking. Dean Phillip Bell applies fine historicist thinking to the Jewish sources and demonstrates the enormous possibilities of looking at classical and medieval sources both on their own terms and with an eye to present-day ethical, spiritual, philosophical, and theological problems." --Ariel Evan Mayse, Stanford University, USA

"This fascinating book expands the geographical and temporal scope of Jewish history and asks new questions. Bell shows how Judaism as well as other faith traditions have explained, experienced, and responded to the environment and natural disasters across centuries. His wide-ranging study presents timely lessons for our own response to environmental change." --Robert Jütte, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Germany

"This is a book of tremendous range and synthesis. Dean Bell is excavating key concepts in Jewish tradition that are relevant in the face of contemporary environmental crises. But he's also arguing for innovative thinking at the dawn of the Anthropocene. Can religious tradition, history and modern science combine to foster resilience and inspire practical action? That's the challenge of this book - an important one for us all to address." --Nigel Savage, co-founder of Adamah (formerly Hazon) and the Jewish Climate Trust

About the Author

Dean Phillip Bell (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is President/CEO and Professor of Jewish History at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. He teaches a wide range of courses in Jewish history and Jewish leadership and has delivered programs and workshops and led working groups on the theme of religion and the environment. He is author of dozens of scholarly articles and author or editor of more than a dozen books, including recently as co-author of Interreligious Resilience: Interreligious Leadership for a Pluralistic World with Michael S. Hogue (Bloomsbury, 2022).