Tanhum Yoreh
Associate Professor, School of the Environment
Tanhum Yoreh is an associate professor in the School of the Environment. His research focuses on the greening of religion, faith-based environmentalism, faith-based environmental ethics, religious legal approaches to environmental protection, religious approaches to environmental decision-making, and Jewish environmentalism.
Professor Yoreh’s research is at the cutting edge of the opportunities and challenges to communicate environmental issues with the vast number of environmentally disengaged members of faith communities. Some of the key questions driving his research include: what are faith communities doing to engage the environmental crisis, why are they doing it, and how can faith-based language support and encourage this engagement? By finding common ground, he aims to contribute to a bigger tent environmentalism and societal depolarization.
Yoreh divides his research in religion and environment into two main and often overlapping categories of theory and practice. In the area of theory, he explores faith traditions for core ethics and values that informed and continues to inform practitioners on how to interact with the natural environment. He explores these concepts through textual, historical, framing, and thematic analyses. By studying the conceptualization of ideas, Yoreh theorizes which ideas have a historical basis and thus have a greater appeal to highly traditional communities, and which are modern constructs more suited for communicating to liberal communities.
In Professor Yoreh’s practical research, he studies active faith communities to determine the values that motivate environmental action and the barriers that prevent it. In turn, he takes the self-declared values and barriers and subjects them to textual and historical analysis. By understanding the messaging and values that speak to diverse audiences, Yoreh adapts communication language, strategies, and tactics so that the framing of the issues resonates with different faith communities.
Prior to joining U of T, he was an affiliated lecturer at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity, and a lecturer at Leo Baeck College in London. In 2020, his book Waste Not: A Jewish Environmental Ethic was awarded the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for best book in the category of Jewish Thought and Culture.
Yoreh holds a BA from McGill University, an MA from Hebrew University, and a PhD from York University.