Judaism, History, and the Environment: Climate Change and Natural Disasters

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.

Dean Bell 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. He is co-author of Interreligious Resilience: Interreligious Leadership for a Pluralistic World (with Michael S. Hogue) (Bloomsbury) and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Judaism in the 21st Century (with Keren Eva Fraiman).