It's the Maxwell Institute podcast.

I'm Blair Hodges.

In the land of Israel, rainfalls during a single crucial season of the year, beginning in October or November and continuing through the spring.

Early rabbinic texts show a deep concern with the seasons.

Lives depended on successful harvests, which depended on healthy rainfall.

So the weather proved God's blessing or cursing to the people of Israel.

In this episode, we'll learn more about this delicate situation through some of the most important Jewish texts.

I'm joined by Julia Watts Belser. She's an assistant professor of Jewish studies at Georgetown University.

She's published articles in places like the Journal of the American Academy of Religion,

the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.

Her new book from Cambridge University Press is called Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity.

Questions and comments about this and other episodes can be sent to MIP Podcast at

BYU.edu.

Julia Watts, Belser, thanks for coming on the Maxwell Institute podcast today.

Delighted to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Maybe talk a little bit first about yourself, your educational background.

Sure. I did my doctoral work at UC Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union with a focus on Jewish studies,

particularly Judaism in late antiquity, interested in the study of Jewish culture, and particularly

through the prism of the Babylonian Talmud, one of the greatest books on the Jewish bookshelf.

So interested in questions of gender, sexuality, disability, ecology, kind of relationship between body and land in late antique

Jewish culture.

Did you anticipate that sort of academic trajectory for a long time, or how did you come

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