Jewish Environmental Thought Is Not Ready for the Climate Crisis. But Our Tradition Is.

Climate change and its punishing effects are here and getting worse, yet Jewish thinking and advocacy on climate change are still stuck in prevention mode.

David Zvi Kalman

June 9, 2022

June 9, 2022

David Zvi Kalman

Dr. David Zvi Kalman is a research fellow in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Kogod Research Center. He is a scholar, writer, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology, religion, and art. In addition to his work at the Shalom Hartman Institute, he has held research and consulting roles at Sinai and Synapses and the Sapir Institute. He is the owner of Print-O-Craft Press, an independent publishing house that has released books including Jessica Deutsch’s

Judaism and the Natural World, Environmentalism, Torah

“Smoke from California’s fires is regularly bad enough to tint the sun on the other side of the country. Pakistan and India just experienced a devastating heat wave. In the Middle East, temperatures have risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius, more than twice the global average.

Climate change, and its punishing effects, are here, and getting worse, yet Jewish thinking and advocacy on climate change are still stuck in prevention mode. The Jewish organizations that have blossomed to meet the political moment, not to mention the rabbis, activists and rank-and-file Jews who are engaged on this issue, are largely focused on one bottom line: Judaism demands that we care for the planet before it is too late.”

Read the full op-ed in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent