The medieval kabbalistic texts I am interested in devoted considerable attention to the inanimate, flora and fauna, as well as expressing an entanglement between these and humanity. These ideas, rather different from the better-known trends of medieval kabbalah has brought me to read these texts through the prism of ideas from the Environmental Humanities and bringing the two into dialogue.
For example, a recent paper of mine addresses a unique kabbalistic tradition concerning the ontology of the inanimate. This paper also addresses contemporary questions and challenges such as humanity’s relationship with the plastic bottle.
In a current study, I focus on trees and how kabbalists wrote about trees – symbolic ones and real ones – what this might tell us about medieval kabbalah, and how this might be relevant for current ideas such as ‘Plant Thinking’.
As part of this interest, I am a member of ACRE, Applied Collaboratory for Religion and
Ecology. (add link - https://www.acrecollab.org/)