MIPodcast #42—The rain and the rabbis, with Julia Watts Belser
Channel: Maxwell Institute
Date: 2016-03-29

In the land of Israel, rain falls during a single, crucial, season of the year. Lives depended on successful harvests which depended on healthy rainfall. According to the Hebrew scriptures, weather proved God’s blessing or cursing the people of Israel. 

In this episode, Julia Watts Belser talks about how rain permeates some of the earliest rabbinic texts. Surprisingly, many rabbis challenged Deuteronomy’s depiction of rain as a sign of divine favor versus drought as a sign of divine displeasure. Her new book from Cambridge University Press is called "Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity."

For more information, see bit.ly/mip41belser.

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