“Judaism, History, and the Environment: Climate Change and Natural Disasters” by Dr. Dean P. Bell
History matters. It has important things to teach us about how humans have understood, experienced, and responded to the environment and natural disasters in the past. Many of these conceptions and strategies still have value today.
DR. DEAN P. BELL
Description
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.
Biography
Dr. Dean P. Bell is the ninth President and CEO of Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, where he also holds a faculty appointment as Professor of History. He has served on the faculty of institutions including DePaul University, Northwestern University, Hebrew Theological College, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of California, Berkeley.
(Dr. Dean Bell’s) wide-ranging study presents timely lessons for our own response to environmental change.
ARIEL EVAN MAYSE, Stanford University, USA
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.
ROBERT JÜTTE, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Germany
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
Selection of Speaking Engagements on “Judaism, History, and the Environment: Climate Change and Natural Disasters”
- “Launch & Learn: Judaism, History and the Environment: Climate Change and Natural Disasters,” Spertus Institute (Chicago, IL, USA, January 2026)
- “Judaism, History, and the Environment,” Shalom Austin (Austin, TX, USA, January 2026)
- “Current Challenges & Trauma to the Jewish People,” Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs (Zoom, January 2026)
- “Judaism, History, and the Environment: Climate Change and Natural Disasters,” Early Modern Climate Cultures Colloquium, University of Münster (Zoom, January 2026)
- “What Can History Contribute to Discussions about Environmental Crises in the Anthropocene? The Case of Pre-Modern Judaism,” Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (Leipzig, Germany, November 2025)
- “Jews, Politics, and Natural Disasters,” Sixteenth Century Society Conference (Portland, OR, USA, October 2025)
Other Dean Bell Books:
The Routledge Handbook of Judaism in the 21st Century
Edited by Karen Eva Fraiman and Dean Phillip Bell The Routledge Handbook of Judaism in the 21st Century is a cutting-edge volume that addresses central questions and issues animating Judaism, Jewish identity, and Jewish society in a global, integrated, and forward-looking way.
Interreligious Resilience: Interreligious Leadership for a Pluralistic World
By Dean Phillip Bell & Michael S. Hogue This book introduces the theory of interreligious resilience as a means to developing deeper and more effective interreligious engagement and resilience.
Plague in the Early Modern World: A Documentary History
Edited by Dean Phillip Bell Plague in the Early Modern World, now in a second edition, presents a broad range of primary source materials from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, China, India, and North America that explore the nature and impact of plague and disease in the early modern world.
