Rabbi Marc D. Angel
January 10, 2024
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About the book:
Zazu Dreams is a tale about the adventures of a Sephardic boy and his imaginary friend, a malamute husky, as they traverse the globe on a humpback whale across time and space, experiencing the marvels and mayhem of the relationship between humans and their environments (human ecologies). Crossing temporal dimensions and international borders, past, present, and future overlap through phantasmagorical encounters with historical figures like Jacques Cousteau, Spinoza, Rachel Carson, and ibn Sina. For cross-generational audiences, Zazu Dreams includes lush illustrations and detailed endnotes (“The 21st Century Arcades Project”). Together, the narrative, images, and Arcades unravel the intersections between the sciences and humanities—global ecological extinction and cultural extinction of ethnic minorities. Zazu Dreams explores migration and transformation from waste to useful by-product—including toxic sludge to critical compost, desertification to oasis, cusp of extinction to restoration, body-phobia to biophilia. Symbiotic relationships from the natural world coincide with the histories of diasporic peoples from Iberia, North Africa, and the Middle East. The authors integrate two seemingly unrelated topics: Jewish and Arabic philosophies with consumer-convenience petro-culture. This cautionary fable incites transgenerational audiences to question the vast implications of the vital yet precarious concept of “sustainability.”
The book is available on Amazon
Cara Judea with Zazu
About the author:
Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff is a scholar/activist/artist/mother whose work engages feminist embodied theory, and has been the subject of several documentaries for international public television and film. In addition to critically-acclaimed Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era (Eifrig Publishing, 2017), her books include: Viscous Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene (PennState UniversityPress, 2014) and Climate Justice Now: Transforming the Anthropocene into The Ecozoic Era (Routledge, 2020 pending). She has published dozens of interdisciplinary essays in eco-literacy, environmental justice, epigenetics, philosophy, performance-studies, art, gender, sexuality, and ethnic studies’ journals/anthologies. Her pedagogical practices, work as program director of Jews of the Earth, parenting, and commitment to solidarity economics and lived social-ecological ethics are intimately bound.
For more info, please visit Cara’s website
Micaela Amateu (Amato)
About the illustrator:
Micaela Amateau Amato is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator who has exhibited her work across the globe. She is included in the collections of Albert and Vera List, Rockefeller Collection of the Chase Manhattan Bank, Museum of Art & Design, Denver Art Museum, Bard Museum Collection, Rose Art Museum Brandeis, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. She is the recipient of several National Endowment for the Arts and Pollock Krasner Awards. Amato is curator and editor of Couples Discourse and Uncanny Congruencies, and Professor Emerita of Art and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University. She lives in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania.
For more info, please visit Micaela’s website
Rhodes Jewish Historical Foundation
