Towards a Better Climate Change Mythology Series: a Deeper Reading of Talmud Ta’anit

Due to popular demand, Rabbi Sinclair and Hazon are offering this new eight-part series for a deeper exploration of the Jewish theological responses to climate change found in Talmud Ta’anit. This is a follow-up from a four-part series offered during Sukkot.

The guiding ideas of the course are:

• The depth and scope of the climate crisis calls us to respond not only with government policy, political activism and technology change, but also with deeper wisdom.
• Within Jewish tradition, Talmud Ta’anit is a remarkably rich and largely untapped vein of wisdom on responding to a climatic crisis.
  • In Ta’anit, as in our contemporary reality, a climate crisis ramifies into many other areas. Some of these areas are: our interconnectedness with the natural world; faith and prayer; food and distribution of critical natural resources; how human economies metabolize these resources into well-being by creating exploitation, wealth, poverty, and greed; the role of exceptional individuals in the face of crisis; and the potential for national destruction, rebirth and hope.
• Literary approaches to the Talmud, including those pioneered by Rav Kook, Levinas and Rav Shagar, can help us access this text’s profound thinking

The aims of the course are:

• Learn Talmud together.
• Deepen our knowledge of Jewish wisdom as a resource for responding to climatic crisis.
• Empower rabbis, Jewish educators, and professionals to share these ideas and sources with their communities so as to offer them renewed hope.

Selected texts and other resources will be emailed prior to each session and will also available in this Google folder.