Toward a Holy Ecology: Reading the Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis

by Ellen Bernstein, Bill McKibben (Foreword)

“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."  —Rabbi Nancy Flam, Co-founder National Center for Jewish Healing, and The Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Song of Songs is known as the erotic part of the Bible, but Ellen Bernstein shows how it is also an ancient source of deep ecological wisdom. Toward a Holy Ecology is a new translation of this Hebrew text, illuminating the place of humans in the natural world and inviting you to develop a holy, ecological language for life. This book sets the natural world before you with intensity and beauty, inviting you to savor it with all your senses. Then you are able to return to the world with a renewed clarity, love, and energy necessary for creating a healthier future for the earth and all her inhabitants. Toward a Holy Ecology is for all who love the earth and its inhabitants—including outdoor enthusiasts, spiritual seekers, fellow poets, feminists, and students of the humanities, religion, and ecology. It will change how you see, how you speak, and how you live.

Genres: Judaism

160 pages, Paperback

Published February 20, 2024

Reviews

[Jeffrey Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a gentile Christian I’m not in a place to judge Rabbi Bernstein’s Jewish scholarship, but this book’s Goodreads score is alarmingly low for its value to religious discourse on nature and our role in it.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Song of Songs” is one of the most difficult biblical books to understand and interpret. Its poetry is so vague that readers not only debate who is speaking at any given time, but what those words actually mean. Over the centuries, the book has been ripe for varying and opposing interpretations. One does not have to completely agree with any particular approach in order to appreciate new and different ways of looking at the text. One recent interpretation – “Toward a Holy Ecology: Reading The Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis” by Rabbi Ellen Bernstein (Monkfish Book Publishing Company) – views the work through the lense of nature and ecology.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...

[Jan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very little to do with the "climate crisis". More a motivation of why someone might want to attempt reading the Song Of Songs. Anti-technology. To some extent anti-science.