The Beriah as Reshut Harabbim: Theology and Halakhah in the Anthropocene

The looming climate crisis challenges traditional notions of the place of the human in the cosmos, as well as mainstream socio-economic and legal reasoning. For the first time in our history, humans are impacting the natural world - and the well-being of human society within it - on a planetary level. Despite the rise of a Jewish religious right wing, espousing neo-liberal economic policies, Jewish tradition - both aggadah and halacha - suggest richly relevant categories of analysis and resources to develop a critical stance regarding the globalized hyper-consumerist economy that has become the dominant organizing principle of contemporary society, and is implicated in the planetary crisis.