Judaism is rooted in two core beliefs: that God is the sole Creator of the universe and that God's will was revealed to Israel in the form of law, the Torah, as part of an eternal covenant. The dialectical relationship between the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of revelation, between nature and Torah, between what is and what ought to be, frames Jewish attitudes toward the natural world, reflecting changes over time.

Biblical cosmology envisioned an earth encompassed by a sphere of water, over which God's wind (ruah) hovers. Although the details of the creative act remain open to interpretation and debate, the act itself was broadly understood as one of establishing boundaries, separating heavens from earth, dry land from water, animate from inanimate things, human beings from other animals. Boundary formation at creation would serve as the rationale for the distinction between...