Date: TBD

Biblical stories of climate change: Abraham, Moses and Ruth

Biblical stories can be understood as Jewish history, as sources of Jewish law, and as ideals of proper Jewish behavior. They also contain details of the natural history of the Middle East, including weather cycles that can be confirmed by geological, botanical and archeological evidence, and Jewish responses to climate change: flight (Abraham), fight (Moses), or adapt (Ruth).

About the Speaker

Josh was raised and educated in the US (his grandfather was a chapter president of Jewish Farmers of America, and studied the mishnayot of Seder Zeraim with Josh’s father every morning before going to teach in a red-painted one-room school with a bell on the top), did postdoctoral work in New Zealand, and has been doing agricultural research in Israel at the Volcani Center of the Ministry of Agriculture since 1986, including using his four children as underage field hands. Since 1989 he has been the scientist in charge of developing modern methods for fulfilling the ancient agricultural mitzvot, most (but not all) of which apply only in the Land of Israel. All of Josh’s research is applicable to general agricultural practice (eg, regulating flowering of fruit trees (orla); inducing drought resistance in grain crops (shmitta); using willows for animal forage, etrogim for extracting diabetes medicine, and myrtle/hadas as a source of insecticides (what to do with excess Four Species)). Among Josh’s interests is linking scientific evidence of the cyclical nature of weather with Biblical descriptions of wanderings in search of food by our ancestors, as well as with specific stories of plagues and other phenomena. He looks forward to employing his grandchildren as field hands, too.