The Ark and Other Bubbles: Jewish Philosophy and Surviving the Disaster

Abstract

The story of Noah is the story of a near-total biocide. And yet, in popular imagination, it appears as more of a floating petting zoo, a charming menagerie that follows the far more serious Edenic storylines of Genesis 1–5. In this paper, the ark, and midrash it inspired, acts as a guide for a set of speculations and arguments about the role Jewish philosophy might play during the present ecological disaster. These speculations are guided by the following claim: Jewish philosophy best responds to ecological crises when it does not attempt to provide an ecological ethics “out of the sources of Judaism”—making expansive normative and metaphysical claims—but instead explores enclosures and spaces; when it thinks about our relation to disasters, rather than trying to prevent or solve them. In other words, there is an element of Jewish thought which attempts to think enclosures and protect small but important things in the midst of disasters, and it is this I wish to highlight. My goal is to demonstrate that this kind of thinking presents viable possibilities for ecological thought. Specifically, I will argue that Mara Benjamin’s work gives us an indication of where such philosophy can go and how it might get there.