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

by Ellen Bernstein, Bill McKibben (foreword)

The Song of Songs is among the most accessible of all biblical books. It is also the most deeply ecological text of the canon, yet few people are aware of the Song’s ecological message. The intention of Toward a Holy Reading the Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis is to illuminate that message. 

Today there is such urgency around our many earth crises—so much brokenness—that we need a vision of wholeness and an ecological language that can help inspire, soothe and reinvigorate us, and bring us together regardless of our various affiliations and ideologies. The Song offers both ecological language and a vision. It sets the natural world before us with intensity and beauty, bidding us to savor it with all of our senses so that we may return to the world with the renewed clarity, love and energy necessary to work toward a healthy future for the earth and all her inhabitants. 

The Song is a particularly powerful book since it never utters the name of the divine,  yet is a deeply spiritual work that may reach people who are interested in matters of the sacred, but prefer to steer clear of God language and conventional religious ideas. In both the Jewish and Christian worlds, where many people are disengaging from religion altogether, the Song—with its universal themes of love, justice and the integrity of nature—may help open the door to the possibilities which religion has to offer.

Toward a Holy Reading the Song of Songs in an Age of Climate Crisis seeks to engage a wide readership including all people who love the earth and its inhabitants, outdoor enthusiasts, spiritual seekers, poets, feminists, and students of the humanities, religion and ecology. 

Genres: Judaism

146 pages, Kindle Edition

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.