Judaism, History, and the Environment

Climate Change and Natural Disasters

AvDean Phillip Bell

Häftad, Engelska, 2025

297 kr

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Beskrivning

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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2025-11-13
Mått:156 x 232 x 18 mm
Vikt:400 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:264
Förlag:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN:9781350463219

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Mer om författaren

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).

Recensioner i media

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.

Innehållsförteckning

AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart 1: Historical Cases: Toward a Jewish Environmental History1. Earthquakes: Understanding Nature and Natural Disasters2. Plague as Natural Disaster3. Floods: From Theology to Technology—Understanding, Mitigation, and Prevention4. Learning with Fire5. Comparative Perspectives: Natural Disasters, Jews, and IslamPart 2: Disaster, History, and Religion: Tradition and Innovation6. Beyond History: Disasters and Crises in the Anthropocene7. History, Narratives, and Temporality 8. Religion and the Environment: Some Traditional Assessments and Applications9. Religion: New Conceptions and OpportunitiesPart 3: New Approaches in the Anthropocene10. Complexity, Polarization, and Resilience11. From Conceptual Challenges to Practical ApplicationsBibliographyIndex