The UW-Madison Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies presents a lecture with Dustin Atlas of Queen's University. His lecture is entitled “We’re Going to Need a Bigger Ark: Jewish Thought and the Ecological Apocalypse."

This event is free and open to the public.
Also available online. For more information, including the Zoom link, visit: https://cjs.wisc.edu/event/cytron2024/

Lecture Description:
What does Jewish thought have to say about the ecological catastrophe we are living in? This talk will examine ways Jewish philosophers have responded to this crisis by finding images in traditional texts to guide their thinking. In particular, we will examine the image of Noah’s ark and its strange history and see what we can still learn from it. We will explore the work of Hans Jonas, Mara Benjamin, and Martin Buber, and dip into Genesis Rabbah guided by the following claim: Jewish philosophy best responds to ecological crises when it does not attempt to provide an ecological ethics “out of the sources of Judaism.” Instead, we will explore an element of Jewish thought which attempts to think in terms of enclosures and protect small but important things in the midst of disasters.