Environment

Jewish education as if the planet mattered

Eilon Schwartz

pp. 389-406

in: Helena Miller, Lisa Grant, Alex Pomson (eds), International handbook of Jewish education, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

The starting point for this chapter is the assumption that Jewish education is not parochial subject matter but is part of a much larger set of questions about culture, spirit and values. Conceived in these terms, Jewish education is deeply relevant to understanding and wrestling with the contemporary environmental crisis. I argue that Jewish education can provide a 'second language" as part of a multicultural education aimed at exploding the dominance of a particular cultural voice that has been damaging to our relationship with the environment. It can allow our students and our culture to learn and participate in other ways of acting in the world. As in any grassroots educational movement, there is not yet an intellectual rigor to the theory and practice of Jewish environmental education seen in this way, but the themes of this movement – which I categorise in the second part of the chapter – can provide the starting point of any reflective academic research in the coming years.