TOWARD A HOLY ECOLOGY

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.