Judaism and Global Survival: 20th Anniversary Edition

Judaism and Global Survival presents basic Jewish teachings on peace, justice, compassion, sharing, love of neighbors, environmental sustainability, and others, and urges that they be applied in order to reduce climate change and other environmental threats and help shift our imperiled planet onto a sustainable path.

This important book discusses the challenges facing humanity and the Jewish teachings related to these challenges, in order to galvanize Jews to help repair the world (tikkun olam), as required by Jewish law. It argues that we don’t need to discover new values and approaches to address current global threats. What is needed is a rediscovery and application of basic Jewish teachings and mandates, such as to pursue peace and justice, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to act as co-workers with God in protecting and preserving the world.

Judaism and Global Survival is meant to be a wake-up call, the strongest that one can make, on the urgency of addressing climate threats and other environmental threats, and the importance of Jews applying Jewish values in addressing these threats. Among the issues discussed in the book are the following: Jews are to guardians of the earth, partners and co-workers with God in working toward tikkun olam, the healing repair and proper transforming of the world; climate change is an existential threat to the world and the only hope to avert a climate catastrophe is through a major shift to plant-based diets, as that would enable reforestation of the vast areas now used for animal agriculture, reducing atmospheric CO2 to a much safer level; vegetarianism, and even mores veganism, is the diet most consistent with Jewish teachings on preserving our health, treating animals with compassion, protecting the environment, conserving natural resources, and helping hungry people.