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.