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date: 17 January 2020

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter discusses Jewish environmental ethics. It focuses on what two central biblical stories—the Garden of Eden and the Flood—tell us about Jewish ecological ethics as the Torah itself tells those stories, and as the later rabbis interpreted and expanded them, with special concern for the emerging ethics of Eco-Judaism. In so doing, the chapter illustrates how the Jewish tradition uses midrash, the interpretation of texts and their literary nuances, to discover meanings in sacred texts that make them ever relevant to us in changing times and circumstances. It briefly develops one of the Torah's laws on ecology, and an emerging interest on the part of some Jews to understand God differently to reflect our current ecological understanding of life as one integrated whole, in order to demonstrate how Jewish law and theology are relevant to ecology.

Keywords: Jewish environmental ethics, Garden of Eden, Flood, ecological ethics, Torah, Eco-Judaism, midrash, Jews, Jewish law, Jewish theology

Arthur Waskow

Arthur Waskow, Rabbi, Ph. D., founded (1983) and continues to direct The Shalom Center 〈www.theshalomcenter.org〉. Among his seminal works on Jewish thought and practice have been the Freedom Seder; Godwrestling; Seasons of Our Joy; Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life ; Godwrestling—Round 2: Ancient Wisdom, Future Paths; and as co-author with Rabbi Phyllis Berman, A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Path and Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness across Millennia. He co-authored The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims with Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chisti (Neil Douglas-Klotz). He had primary editorial responsibility for two pioneering anthologies on eco-Judaism: Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought; and (with Ari Elon and Naomi Mara Hyman) Trees, the Earth, and Torah: A Tu B’Shvat Anthology. In 1963 he received a Ph.D. in U.S. history from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and was ordained to the Rabbinate in 1995 by a transdenominational beit din under the authority of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal.

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