Rabbi Natan Margalit will be speaking about his book, coming out very soon, The Pearl and the Flame: A Journey into Jewish Wisdom, Ecological Thinking and Healing in a Fragmented World(forthcoming 2022 from Albion-Andalus Books). The Pearl and the Flame brings a new integration of ecological thinking and core Jewish concepts. This new integration puts Judaism at the forefront of our struggles against current crises such as climate change, the culture of addiction, and social fragmentation. For centuries, Western civilization has controlled and manipulated the world by breaking things down into smallest parts. This approach has led to many amazing achievements of the modern world, but it has now brought us to the brink of environmental destruction and social fragmentation. In response, people have started turning to more holistic modern approaches such as ecology and systems thinking. Yet, these modern approaches can’t, by themselves, heal us. Judaism, along with other Indigenous and traditional cultures, has preserved the seeds of ways of thinking that existed before we learned to dissect the world: understanding through seeing patterns and relationships. The Pearl and the Flame offers a timely integration of old and new, helping us to move from isolation to connection.

Bio: Natan was raised in Honolulu. He lived for twelve years in Israel where he received rabbinic ordination (1990). His Ph.D. in Talmud is from U.C. Berkeley (2001). Natan has taught at Bard College, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. He is currently Chair of the Rabbinic Texts department in the Aleph Ordination Program and he directs the AOP’s Earth-Based Judaism Program. Natan is Founder of Organic Torah which is a program of Aleph.

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