Ecocriticism, Theology, and the Environment in Haviva Pedaya's The Eye of the Cat

In: Worldviews: global religions, culture and ecology, Band 26, Heft 1-2, S. 5-28

Abstract

Abstract
Haviva Pedaya's book The Eye of the Cat presents an innovative theology of ecology, yet in correspondence with traditional Jewish-Kabbalistic sources. I discuss Pedaya's ecopoetic reading of these sources, as well as her own midrashim in this regard. Pedaya raises questions regarding the place of man in the world; political questions regarding center and periphery; urbanization and nature; construction and destruction. These questions arise via the book's unique poetic expression. Pedaya offers a theology of waste, addressing the place of garbage in the human sphere through the Kabbalistic idiom regarding the collection of qlipoth ("husks" ‮קליפות,‬‎). The Kabbalistic project of collecting the qlipoth, which previously functioned in the context of an esoteric and mostly secretive symbolic system, now takes on a different meaning in light of the real "husks" that demand to be collected and reused.