Kabbalah and Ecology: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World

摘要

This book opens with a stark message: "unless we can find a balance with the more-than-human world that can sustain the lives of the multitude of species, we will be awakening to a present that has no future" (5). Written by an ordained Conservative rabbi, Judaica scholar, ecotheologian, and environmental activist, the book employs historical-critical method to construct a Judaic ecotheology intended to heal the environmentally damaged world. Written for scholars of Jewish studies, religious studies, religion and ecology, religion and science, and ecofeminism, the study seeks to transform how we understand the relationship between God, humanity, and nature, or "the more-than-human world." Seidenberg traces the changing meanings of the biblical trope that humans are created in the "the image of God" (tselem Elohim) (Gen. 1:27). Rather than justifying human exceptionalism and dominion over nature, Seidenberg shows that in the Jewish tradition the "image of God" pertains not only to humans but to all created beings (especially animals) and to Creation as a whole. With great erudition, the book marshals numerous rabbinic, philosophic, kabbalistic, and Hasidic texts to construct an expansive, biocentric interpretation of the "image of God" as the response to our ecological and spiritual crisis.