Rabbi David Seidenberg "The Quest for Cosmic Blessing: Kabbalah and the Ecological Imperative"

The covenant of the Torah is already described inside the Torah as an effort to bring blessing to all humanity. But Jewish mysticism expanded this covenant to include the quest to bring blessing to all creatures and to the whole cosmos. Ultimately, this quest is meant to restore a shattered universe to a wholeness more encompassing than the mythical wholeness of Eden. This way of understanding the Biblical covenant transforms how we understand everything about the Bible, including its stories, laws, and rituals. And it empowers us to align ourselves and our religious traditions with the needs of the Earth and the more-than-human world. 

Rabbi David Mevorach Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org and the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World. He has written and lectured extensively on ecology, human rights, and animal rights in Jewish and Biblical thought and practice. His work includes advanced research on Maimonides, on tikkun olam (the Jewish imperative to perfect the world), and on the question of indigenousness, including in his article, “The Third Promise" (tikkun.org/the-third-promise/). David is also a composer and dancer, and the scion of a Palestinian Jerusalemite Jewish family whose Gidau (great grandpa) emigrated from Palestine to the US in 1910.