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

By Ellen Bernstein. Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2024. 160 pages. $17.95/paperback or eBook.

“The first step toward ecological repair,” advises Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, “is to love and identify with the natural world. Our lives—and the lives of all those who come after us—depend upon it.”

I knew of Rabbi Bernstein through a much earlier book of hers, Let the Earth Teach You Torah (1992, coauthored with Dan Fink). I read it at the beginning of my journey to a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of all that lives that is suggested in the life sciences. Through nature-based spiritual practices, I have continued to learn—at the deepest heart level—from the four-leggeds, the winged, the slitherers, the rooted, and from everything else that I can imagine to which we are all kin.

In Toward a Holy Ecology, Bernstein takes us to the Hebrew Bible’s Song of Songs, immersing us in the Earth-honoring tradition in which it was written. In the first part of her book, she gives us the background to understand the “wholiness” of the story, beyond the surface-level dialogue of two human lovers.

“The Song sets the natural world before us with intensity and beauty and bids us to savor it with all of our senses,” Bernstein writes, “so that we may turn from the poem to see the natural world with renewed clarity and love.” She explains that the lovers refer to themselves as particular flowers of the land. They also identify with animals. We learn that within their loving sharing, everything is related to nature, to the foundations of all life on Earth.

Bernstein focuses on how to read the poem through several themes. She begins with “Ecological Identity,” which is defined as expanding our identity beyond our human affiliations to include the whole natural world. The next theme is “Cycles of Time,” which explains that our usual assumption that time moves in a linear fashion is false. The world is forever changing cyclically: from spring to summer to fall to winter and back again to spring. We know this from experience but still fall into the assumption that it’s linear. By embracing the cycles within our hearts and minds, we grow closer to “wholiness,” her word for our embeddedness in the natural world.

“Wholiness” is another theme, where Bernstein shares that in English the word wholeness has the same etymological root as the word holiness. She goes on to say that “[t]his commentary suggests that the holiness of the Song lies in its vision of wholeness; the interconnected, inviolable relationships that underly [sic] the health of the whole earth.”

The poem is written in English on the left page and in Hebrew on the right; below it is Bernstein’s commentary. I don’t know the Bible very well and haven’t used it much as a source of solace, but my heart sings with this ancient Scripture and with the rich commentary to help me understand the deeper meaning. This book is for everyone who desires to embrace the idea of our interconnected world and is open to learning from Scripture in a new way.

(Postscript: On January 30 of this year, Third Act Faith hosted a conversation with Rabbi Bernstein, in which she shared her insights about her new book. She died just a few weeks later from a short illness at the age of 70. She knew I was interested in reviewing this book, and I’m pleased that I can share it with the Quaker community.)

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Ruah Swennerfelt lives in rural Vermont, where she and her husband care for the gift of the land where they live. She’s a member of Middlebury (Vt.) Meeting and New England Yearly Meeting and serves on the Earthcare Committees of both groups. She also serves on the Coordinating Committee of Third Act Faith.