To Life: Jews Exploring Nature

To Life explores the Jewish relationship with nature by illuminating significant Jewish thinkers who increased in important ways our understanding of various aspects of natural history. In eight compelling chapter-long biographies, naturalist Joel Greenberg demonstrates the diversity of both Jewish identity and the natural sciences.

Greenberg's rich biographical sketches spotlight great Jewish scientists who not only made major contributions to the study of the natural world but also led rich and colorful lives: botanist and spy Aaron Aaronsohn, zoologist Libbie Henrietta Hyman, infamous ornithologist Nathan Leopold, mammalogist Philip Hershkovitz, arachnologist Herbert Levi, herpetologist Hymen Marx, public health entomologist Andrew Spielman, and ecologist Joan Ehrenfeld. These individuals manifested different aspects of Jewish identity--some observant, some secular--but all were affected in one way or another by their being Jewish.

By exploring the relationship between Jews and nature through the lives of these figures, Greenberg shares new and underrecognized aspects of Jewish and environmental history and opens new portals into the fields they studied.

JOEL GREENBERG has spent most of his life in the Chicago region and has been interested in natural history since childhood. He spent his career in environmental protection working for governmental and private entities. He has written numerous articles and has authored or coauthored four books, including A Natural History of the Chicago Region and A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction.

JUDITH WINSTON became entranced by oceans at an early age and has focused on them throughout her career. She spent twelve years at the American Museum of Natural History, and twenty-two years at the Virginia Museum of Natural History where she worked on marine invertebrates. Judith has authored or coauthored eighty-seven scientific publications, nineteen reviews and popular articles, and two books, including Describing Species: Taxonomic Procedures for Biologists.