What happens when a rabbi with an expertise in biology reads the holiest and most sensuous book of the Bible? A fresh and arousing reading springs forth! Ellen Bernstein, founder of the first national Jewish environmental organization, offers an inspired ecological reading of the Song of Songs that will (re)kindle the reader’s love affair with the earth. Her writing is as rich as the Song is evocative. Her interpretive insights reflect a deep engagement with the Song’s poetic nuances. Cultivating an eros for creation, Rabbi Bernstein’s interpretation is exactly what today’s ‘earth keepers’ need for continuing the hard work of shalom-justice for the world. Call it ‘Fifty Shades of Green.’” —William P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science and the Ecology of Wonder
“The lushness of Ellen Bernstein’s eco-sensitive commentary on the Song of Songs is worthy of the original, which says a great deal about the ingenuity and power of her work. Bernstein reads the Song of Songs as a love song to and from the earth, and in so doing, uncovers truths in this long-beloved text that are essential, moving, and needed. She describes the ‘archetypal intimacy between humans and nature’ that evolves throughout the Song, as lovers co-mingle with the land and love itself burgeons as spring arrives. Bernstein’s essential message, which she brilliantly derives from the text, is that ‘beauty calls us to love the world.’ This uplifting and enlivening book is an important and timely work—a wondrous gift to all who passionately love the earth, inviting us to find solace in the Bible’s most erotic and egalitarian text.” —Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD, The Jewish Book of Days: A Companion for All Seasons
“Toward a Holy Ecology is a rich and illuminating commentary on the The Song of Songs. Ellen Bernstein brings a unique voice that skillfully weaves scholarly and poetic insight. Her book is accessible for everyone interested in how this iconic text carries a deep ecological wisdom.” —Mary Evelyn Tucker, Co-director, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology
“Rabbi Ellen Bernstein’s masterful commentary reveals the Song’s profound vision of ecological wholeness and revives an embodied and earth-honoring tradition that is vitally needed today. This is an important, timely and beautiful book that deserves your attention.” —Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Judaism without Tribalism
“Reading Ellen Bernstein's Toward a Holy Ecology is to partake in a garden of delights. She refreshes our reading of the Song by enlivening all of our senses. Her penetrating and compelling thought is expressed with eminently accessible and beautiful prose. Just as she highlights the importance of time and timing in the text itself, her commentary appears at just the right time to nurture a deepened ecological and embodied spirituality of which the world stands in urgent need.” —Rabbi Nancy Flam, Co-founder National Center for Jewish Healing, and The Institute for Jewish Spirituality
“[O]ffering keen insight into both Jewish tradition and contemporary issues of environmental justice...the book will be accessible to lay readers and will challenge Jewish scholars with a well-grounded alternative view.” —Kirkus Reviews
2024-01-02
An environmentalist rabbi re-examines the biblical Song of Songs.
Decades ago, Bernstein, the cofounder of a river rafting business in northern California, often spent her evenings around a campfire with friends who shared her affinity for nature poetry. When someone read a passage from the Song of Songs, it marked the first time in the author’s life when the Judaism of her childhood had truly “spoken to [her]” and “opened [her] heart.” While traditional interpretations see the work as an allegory of the love between God and his chosen people, and modern observers see it as an erotic love story between a man and a woman, Bernstein’s book offers an alternative approach, seeing “a love story about the lovers and the land and its creatures.” With this novel thesis, the author makes a compelling case for its focus on nature (and “life’s endless desire to live, flourish and create”), as the Song of Songs is rife with references to lush gardens, mountainous landscapes, and diverse flora and fauna. As a rabbi and self-described “ecotheologian” with an advanced degree in Jewish studies from Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts, the author expertly uses the “words from my own tradition” to offer readers her interpretation of the divine—one “of color, smell, and sound” intertwined with the “torrent of energy and this romance with the earth.” Bernstein similarly draws upon her lifetime of experience in the environmentalist movement: She’s a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley’s Conservation of Natural Resources program, and the founder of Shomrei Adamah (Keepers of the Earth), the first national Jewish environmental organization, as well as the organizer of Philadelphia’s All Species Parade. Overall, this book is a balanced combination of her two loves, offering keen insight into both Jewish tradition and contemporary issues of environmental justice. At fewer than 150 pages in length, the book will be accessible to lay readers and will challenge Jewish scholars with a well-grounded alternative view.
A well-researched and engaging exploration of a classic text through an ecological lens.
