Ethics for the Coming Storm: Climate Change and Jewish Thought

How can we come to understand our existence on this earth, surrounded by air and light and water, while living in a place we deliberately and carelessly abuse, where resources are becoming scarce, and where the well-being and basic health of our neighbors is threatened? In Ethics for the Coming Storm, Laurie Zoloth argues that our debates about environmental issues have largely been driven by the language of economics and political power, and have become both deeply divisive and symbolic, turning our differing truth claims and moral appeals into signs of identity. This discourse has utterly failed to change the human behavior or political and economic structures necessary to face global warming head on. So Zoloth turns to another language, found in the texts and traditions of Jewish thought--the language of Scripture, the Talmud, and philosophy of Judaism--which, she contends, offers a different kind of argument for such a change. In fact, Zoloth claims, the traditions, histories, and texts of Jewish thought address precisely the sort of existential crisis that we now face, and thus deepen and enrich our public discourse about what to do, and who to be.This book uses a careful attention to rabbinic and philosophical sources in Jewish thought to provide a novel framework through which we can reassess the choices we make that affect our climate, our environment, and our social structures.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Lightning from a Distant Storm Chapter 1. The Coming Storm: An Introduction to our Situation Chapter 2. The Promises of Exile: Diaspora as Ontology Chapter 3. Making a Place: Lisbon and the Narrative of Disaster Chapter 4. Risky Hospitality: Ordinal Ethics and the Duties of Abundance Chapter 5. At the Last Well on Earth: Climate Change as a Feminist Issue Chapter 6. Strangers on the Train: Moral Luck and Problem of Responsibility Chapter 7. Bad Guys: Amalek and the Production of Doubt Chapter 8. You Must Interrupt Your Life Chapter 9. Conclusion

About the Author :
Laurie Zoloth holds the Margaret E. Burton Professor of Religion and Ethics Chair at the University of Chicago. She is the past president of the American Academy of Religion and of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her teaching and research in bioethics and has served on international ethics advisory boards for NASA, the NIH, HHMI, and the CDC. She is the author of nine books and over 200 articles.

Review :
Zoloth is right to note that religious communities' narratives and ethical traditions are critical to weathering the storm and, simultaneously, the locus of most of what is worth salvaging. Zoloth's approach throughout the book is broad, pluralistic, and invitational. She claims validity for all world religions and multiple forms of spirituality in the marketplace of climate thinking and climate policymaking. Indeed, given the depth of our various contestations and divides these days, it may be that these turn out to be the only discourses powerful enough to generate an adequate or requisite response: as she puts it, "it is often by theological warrants that people are moved to a substantial citizenship response".