I suggest that we interpret this meaningful aspect of Jewish thought and ethics not as Jewish
ecophobia but as a key to a positive ecosophy.
Negative perception of, and discomfort when in contact with, the ecological environment in the natural world has been termed
ecophobia (Sobel, 1999), and researchers have called attention to the transference of simple lack of interest in natural environments to discomfort and fear caused by a lack of experience with nature (Estok, 2015; Gray, 2013; McKnight, 2010; Sobel, 1999).
People with
ecophobia may even hate or be driven crazy by the wilderness.
Estok, Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading
Ecophobia (New York, 2011), 1-17, http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230118744.
"Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and
Ecophobia." ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 16.2 (2009): 203-25.
Estok, Simon (2009), "Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and
Ecophobia," Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 16(2): 203-225.
'Beyond
ecophobia: Reclaiming the heart of nature education'.
While this stand does reveal
ecophobia, such is not their main topic; rather, they exhibit this
ecophobia inadvertently.
David Sobel's writing in Beyond
Ecophobia and on place-based education have helped inform the remainder of my strategies.
"The Woodshed: A Response to 'Ecocriticism and
Ecophobia.'" ISLE 16.4 (2009): 697-708.
Estok is most well known among ecocritics and other literary scholars today for his development of the Concept of "
ecophobia," now a promontory in the expanding and still quite uneven critical terrain of ecocriticism, a subdisciplinary area of literary and cultural studies that underwent explosive growth over the past three decades and continues to expand today.