Torah in a Time of Plague: Historical and Contemporary Jewish Responses - Paperback

by Erin Leib Smokler (Editor)

Winner of the 2021 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD for Modern Jewish Thought and Experience.

The Jewish tradition has held and healed the Jewish people for centuries. As we live through "unprecedented" times, there is wisdom in locating ourselves in precedent, in stories of plague-biblical, contemporary, and in between-in an effort to meaningfully find our way through. Torah in a Time of Plague is meant to provide guidance and offer provocations for the conversations we need to orient ourselves anew.

This collection brings together academic and rabbinic voices from within the Covid-19 epidemic to wrestle in real time with its resonances and implications. Drawing on theology, philosophy, literature, history, liturgy, and legal theory, essays both rigorous and raw explore the many layers of this tumultuous period. Torah in a Time of Plague thus reflects on and contributes to Torah in our time.