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

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.