Engaging Minds, Enriching Lives

NOTE: In observance of Passover, this course will begin on Tuesday, April 14 and end on June 9.

From biblical times until the present day, Jewish theologians, worshipers, heretics, politicians, dissidents, and ethicists have vigorously debated the relationship between Jewish values and the natural world. Indeed, they have frequently interrogated just what “nature” consists of in the first place. At certain junctures, Jewish authors have argued that “God and Nature” are irreconcilable opposites; at other times they have insisted that the two are one and the same. This course will undertake a thematic exploration of how Jews have thought about the religious import of the natural environment, the animal kingdom, and the miraculous or “unnatural” elements of the Jewish tradition that might seem incompatible with the natural world. We will pay particular attention to the interreligious settings in which Jewish texts and ideas were produced.