In this week’s episode we continue our Ten Plagues series with the plague of hail. We look at the unprecedented nature of this weather event, noting how the language used in the Torah—that such hail had never occurred since Egypt became a nation—parallels modern climate news stories where extreme weather records are constantly being broken. We explore the critical role of trust during climate disasters, contrasting those who trusted the warning and took shelter with those who relied on Pharaoh’s official "line" and ignored the life-saving advice. This raises questions about how we receive information about climate disasters today, the necessity of cultivating trust in institutions, and the difficulty of imagining a reality that challenges our long-held worldviews. Follow along with the source sheet here: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/667758

In this week’s episode we continue our Ten Plagues series with the plagues of Livestock Disease and Boils. We think about how these plagues are similar to climate related “plagues” in the present (smoke from forest fires) and in the recent past (dust pneumonia in the Dust Bowl) and the theorized link between a rise in epidemics and a warming climate. We also talk about the governmental mechanisms responding to the escalation of the plagues that feel like modern times, including investigation without action and the weakening ability of propaganda to make the plagues seem less severe. We conclude with the hope that we are responding better to our current situation than Pharaoh did. Follow along here: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/667757

In this week’s episode we continue our Ten Plagues series with the plagues of lice and “arov”. We first address the ambiguity of the plague of arov, most commonly being understood as a plague of wild animals but translated by Rashi as a plague of swarms of insects. We see in arov the first time that the land of Goshen (the dwelling place of the children of Israel) was exempted from the plague. We look at these two plagues from two angles which make them similar to Climate change: climate denial even when experts affirm that it is happening, and geographical differences in how humanity feels the brunt of climate change effects. Follow along here: http://www.sefaria.org/sheets/642212