Awakening Hearts with A Song
A Conversation with Rabbi Ellen Bernstein on the Song of Songs and 'Holy Ecology'
Longtime environmentalist Rabbi Ellen Bernstein was invited to meet with Third Act Faith members during our Jan. 30 General Meeting to talk about her forthcoming book, “Toward a Holy Ecology: Reading the Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis.” Interviewed by Third Act Faith’s Rev. Dr. Patricia “Trisha” Tull, also an environmentalist and Hebrew Bible scholar, Rabbi Bernstein introduced us to the Bible’s most lyrically sensual testament to love and nature as only an ecotheologian could.
The Song of Songs is seldom heard from pulpits in Christian churches, but in ancient Jewish tradition, it was considered the “Holy of Holies,” the most important book of the biblical canon. Why should people of faith — and environmentalists — read it today?
In her book, and in conversations about it, Rabbi Bernstein tells us that how we communicate the environmental message is as important as the message itself. Studies show that reaching people at the level of feelings—love for the earth and local habitats—is more effective than just providing information. The science alone isn’t enough. We need to speak across political and religious divides to reach people who think differently than we do.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length, and includes some points added later by the author.
Trisha: We humans tend to think about nature and all creation as a backdrop for the real drama, the human drama. It’s only lately that climate change has brought nature’s much larger drama to our attention. So tonight we’re going to discuss with Rabbi Ellen Bernstein her new book on the biblical book, the Song of Songs, whose poetry brings the natural world very much to the foreground.
Last spring Third Act Faith opened one of our meetings with Jewish singer Batya Levine’s wonderful anthem “We Rise.” When Ellen and I started planning for tonight, she suggested we play another of Batya’s songs that celebrated the annual Jewish holiday Tu B’Shvat, which was observed on Jan. 25 and is informally known as the birthday of trees. It was originally a day to pay taxes on fruit trees, but over time people developed customs such as giving fruit gifts to neighbors. Today it’s widely seen as a Jewish Earth Day and is celebrated especially by Jewish environmentalists, Jewish schools and Jewish farmers.
Trisha: I’m delighted and honored to welcome environmental writer and thinker Rabbi Ellen Bernstein to our meeting. In 1988, Rabbi Bernstein founded the first national Jewish environmental organization, Shomrei Adamah, Keepers of the Earth. She has written several books on Judaism and ecology and is an advisor to the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and Faith for our Planet.
We’ll be talking about her newest book, “Toward a Holy Ecology: Reading the Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis,” which will be out in February.
The Song of Songs is traditionally read as a love story between a man and a woman or between God and the people of Israel. Yet it’s also a love story between the people and the creatures of the land. “Toward a Holy Ecology” illuminates the Song of Songs’ deep ecological wisdom, offering solace and a vision for living in these troubled times. Welcome, Ellen. So great to have you here.
Ellen: It’s great to be here. I’m thrilled to be back with my old friends at Third Act Faith.
Trisha: Could you tell us a bit about the song we just heard and the significance of Tu B’Shvat for you?
Ellen: That song is so enlivening and joyful, and I just find it incredibly beautiful and uplifting. When I founded the first Jewish environmental organization, Shomrei Adamah, the very first thing I did was develop a seder, an ordered ritual, for the holiday of Tu B’Shvat, the New Year of the Trees, based on the seder that the Kabbalists, the Jewish mystics, celebrated in Safed in the 1600’s. The idea was to popularize this minor Jewish holiday as a Jewish Earth Day. That was the beginning of Shomrei Adamah: we held this big festival in Philadelphia in one of the boat houses along Boathouse Row. It was co-sponsored by the Philadelphia Parks Department and lots of other organizations, and it was this beautiful arts-and-music-and-text-and-fruit feast. Two hundred people came out to celebrate the trees. The Seder was really grounded in love; it was a celebration of life—and that celebration of life within Torah texts—has permeated all my work.
Trisha: Tell us about the Song of Songs, which you know so well: how it’s been interpreted and what is in it. Can you read a little bit of it for us to get a feel for what the poetry is like?
Ellen: The Song has traditionally been read either as a love song between God and the Israelites or, in Christianity I guess, between God and the church—or as a love story between a man and a woman.
But the allegorical reading—that it’s a love story between God and the people—has really taken up a lot of the psychic space for the last 2,000 years. Many say the reason it was read that way is because it’s so incredibly sensual, that it would have freaked out the early interpreters to read it in a more literal way.
There are two lovers: a male and a female. But the text doesn’t tell you who is speaking—you have to interpret it by the grammar. It’s not always clear what’s going on because the words he and it [in Hebrew] would be the same word. So you can’t always tell if the poet is talking about a human character or the tree or the garden.
In Judaism, the Song of Songs is traditionally read on Passover, and it’s also read in some Sephardic synagogues every Friday night. It’s a very short book: eight chapters. I’ll just read a little bit from Chapter 1, Verses 15 to 17 to give you a sense.
Here’s the male speaking to the female:
You are beautiful, my friend;
You are beautiful,
your eyes are doves. (1.15)
And she back to him:
You are beautiful, my beloved,
fine indeed.
Yes! our leafy bed is fresh and green;
the beams of our house are cedar,
our rafters are junipers. (1.16-17)
One of the things that I’m trying to point out as we go along is how front and center all of the natural imagery is. And notice in this passage—Chapter 2, Verse 7—how the name of God is not mentioned. Instead, when the woman asks the daughters of Jerusalem to take a vow, she adjures them to swear in the name of the gazelles and the deer instead of swearing before God.
Swear to me, daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles and the deer of the field.
Do not awake or arouse love
until it pleases. (2.7)
This refrain occurs repeatedly through the text so it seems significant that the gazelles and deer bear witness to the oath-taking; they stand in for God.
And then there is this from Chapter 2:
The sound of my beloved!
Here! He is coming:
leaping over mountains,
sprinting over hills.
My love is like a gazelle or young stag.
There! He is standing behind our wall:
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice.
Get up, my friend, my beauty,
and come away.
For now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The scarlet blossoms have appeared in the land,
the time of the songbird has come,
the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The green figs form on the fig tree,
the flowering vines give off their fragrance.
Get up my friend, my beauty,
and come away. (2.8-13)
Someone asked in the chat: “Who did the translation?” This is my translation and I tried to translate as closely to the Hebrew as possible.
Trisha: So lovely. But what does this have to do with the environment and our ecological sensibilities? The premise of your book “Toward a Holy Ecology” is that the Song of Songs can be read as a love song between the earth and humans. By reading it this way, we pay attention to the really rich presence of the natural world all through the poetry, as you’ve just illustrated: the garden and all its scents, the seasons, the analogies between the two lovers and the creatures of the earth, especially the gazelles and the fruit trees.
What first gave you the germ of this idea?
Ellen: Many years ago I was in Israel—probably 30 years ago now—and someone handed me a Song of Songs commentary by Yehuda Feliks. He was an Israeli biologist, a zoologist, and his whole career was dedicated to reading the Hebrew Bible from a biological perspective. He was interested in illuminating the natural history aspects of the Bible.
On each page of his Song of Songs translation, he included the allegorical interpretation, the human lovers’ interpretation—and he had this idea that the Song was also a love story between two gazelles. In the passage that I read, the male gazelle was coming to arouse the female to go with him on the spring migration.
And I thought, “Oh my God! Here’s a highly regarded Jewish biologist who was religious, saying very clearly that there is this whole natural history dimension that’s just as important as the other interpretations.” With this, I felt him give me permission to take my own intuition about the Song seriously, and to look at the text in a much more ecological way.
That was very early in my career working in Judaism and ecology.
Trisha: Lovely. I totally get that because the work that I’ve done in Isaiah is very similar. Isaiah is a city boy in Jerusalem, but he’s all about the fields and the vineyards and the grain and everything around that’s of natural worth and beauty.
Could you read a little bit from your book so we can get a feel not only for your translation but also for what you have to say? Then we’ll dive into some of your essays.
Ellen: Sure. There are five essays in this book, followed by a translation of the Song and a line-by-line commentary from an ecological perspective. Here’s a little from an essay on ecological identity. This is the end of that essay:
The Song teaches that ecological identity is an elemental aspect of human nature. Yet in our insular, mechanized, and frenzied technological lives, we are cutting ourselves off from our roots, and our natural ecological sensibility is withering. In contemporary times, “identity” carries an entirely different meaning than it did even a generation ago. Today, many people regard identity as a function of a particular group to which they belong—be it ethnic, racial, religious, political, gender, or sexual. Yet, when we gravitate too much toward a particular identity, we risk losing sight of our universality and our interdependence with all beings. And this is deeply concerning because, now more than ever, all of the earth’s creatures are afflicted by the ecological instability that climate change has wrought. The first step toward ecological repair is to love and identify with the natural world. Our lives—and the lives of all those who come after us—depend upon it.
Trisha: Thank you. Your five essays are “Ecological Identity,” which you’ve just read from, and “Cycles of Time,” “Beauty,” “Justice” and “Wholiness.” They seem to be the heart of what you have found in the Song of Songs. Can we talk about each of these a little bit?
Ellen: Sure. I’ve been working in the field of Bible and ecology for 30 years and I’ve been thinking about the way that other scholars work with the Bible around ecological matters and the kinds of questions that they ask of the text. I’ve felt that many folks have understood “environment” in a kind of human-centered and reductive way. We can open up and expand the ecological conversation by asking different questions of the text and seeing what is in the text that wants to come forward ...
It’s important—if we are going to embrace our role as Earth citizens—to start identifying more with the natural world. In the Song of Songs, the natural world is foregrounded over and over. It may appear to be in the background, but if you just change the way you look at the Song, if you interpret the word he as a gazelle instead of the man, then the whole natural world comes into focus. That’s really remarkable. You don’t find that very much in biblical literature. Usually the human story is foregrounded. Period.
The second essay is “Cycles in Nature.” It’s important if we want to understand the ecology of text, to understand what is going on in time, in the seasons, in the cycles of nature as we read the text. Is the author paying attention to these things? The way we live in time has the potential to be just as ecologically healthy as the way that we live in a place. In the Song, the story follows an arc of time... It starts in late summer (the woman is all sunburned), and then, in the passage that I read, winter has just passed and the rains are over and gone. The early flowers are coming up. The earliest spring birds are returning to the land. And then the Song progresses through the spring. You have the woman going down to the garden. She takes a few different trips down to this garden to see what state the flowers are in. Are they blossoming yet?
And each time, no, they’re not blossoming. ...
It’s only toward the end of the tale in Chapter 7 that the the mandrake, the “love fruit,” is blossoming and filling the air with its scent. There is also a reference to the wheat in that chapter, and the sense that it’s the late spring. The wheat and mandrakes ripen at the same time. In Judaism, this is the time of the holiday of Shavuot. What would that be in Christianity?
Trisha: Pentecost.
Ellen: So it’s late June, the time of the wheat harvest, and the pomegranates and the mandrakes are giving off their smell, and it is Shavuot, the Jewish holiday when God reveals the Torah to the Israelites. And only NOW in the Song do the two lovers reveal themselves totally and give themselves to each other. The couple reveals themselves to each other just as Nature reveals herself through the flowering of the plants and just as God reveals the Torah to the people. So the human story, the divine story and the story of nature all coincide at that moment.
On the other hand, you have many scholars and regular folk who are very interested in ascertaining how many times love is being consummated in the text. You find discussions arguing about the exact number of trysts. So these readers would likely say that my reading is prudish. But I am taking seriously the cycles of nature, which these other readings are not curious about. The ecological beauty of the text is that the lovers’ love cycles in tune with the cycles of nature. If you focus too much on the sexual dimension of the text, it may be hard to see the ecological.
Trisha: Yeah. There’s that refrain that you refer to that happens over and over: “Don’t awaken love.” That happens over and over. Don’t awaken love until it’s ready.
Ellen: Right.
Trisha: And at the same time—what you also pointed out that I hadn’t ever noticed before—there is the way that when she goes seeking him, he’s elusive, and then when he goes seeking her, she’s elusive. And one time they both elude each other, so it takes them a bit to kind of find the same vibe with each other, to both be facing each other at the same time. ...
Ellen: Yeah. I think of each lover being in their own biorhythm and they keep missing each other. Then they finally find a rhythm—together. And then, at the very end, you know, she’s like, “OK. Now go on your way.” They don’t necessarily end up happily ever after, gazing into each other’s eyes.
Trisha: Right.
Ellen: He’s going to go off to the mountains, and she’s going to do her own thing.
Trisha: Let’s talk about that a little bit. She starts out the whole book with an unmediated voice. Nobody says, “and she said,” giving her permission to say something, the way most women are portrayed in the Bible (if they get to say anything at all). But she just starts out, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” She’s a free woman all the way through.
You talk about this in the section on justice, where you talk about equality and the co-being of the man and the woman in the Song.
Ellen: One of the amazing things about the Song is that the woman’s voice is clearly the strongest. She starts the Song, as Trisha just said, and she has the most lines. She ends the Song. She has the strongest voice. She gives us this gorgeous philosophical monologue at the end, this brilliant piece of wisdom.
What’s really interesting is that the father is never invoked, but she invokes her mother over and over. And she refers to her brothers as her mother’s sons. She never says, “my brother.” When she wants to take her beloved home, she talks about bringing him to her mother’s house and to the apple tree where she was conceived and where her mother went through conception. It’s just remarkable, really. What’s also kind of remarkable to me is that this hasn’t been really taken up by feminists as much as you might think—given how strong the woman’s voice is in the Song.
In the Song, justice begins really with the elevation of the woman’s voice, and what’s interesting is her values are values of simplicity. You saw that in the first piece I read: what she wanted with her lover was a simple green nest in the woods. Her life is as simple as possible. She’s contrasted with the daughters of Jerusalem, who prefer a life of luxury and wealth. She’s also contrasted with Solomon, who in both the Bible generally as well as the Song of Songs, is presented as kind of a grandiose, extravagant figure with lots of wealth and servants and excess. There’s a critique of him. Now, a lot of people don’t read Solomon that way. They read him as this grandiose and very positive figure, but I see him being criticized in the Song.
Trisha: Why are we talking about biblical poetry when we are talking about activism? Does it have to do with love for the beauty of the natural world? Does that inspire us? Does the justice that we see in the Song of Songs and in the natural world, does that inspire us? What is it that we want to take away?
Ellen: I feel it’s important to go back and say at least something about the two other essays on beauty and wholeness because I think this will help answer your question...
The word “beauty” is used more in the Song of Songs than anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible. And this speaks to your question, Trisha. The beauty of nature isn’t something that we necessarily encourage people to pay attention to. For many historical and political reasons, we have learned to not take beauty so seriously.
And yet the beauty of the natural world is something that most people across political divides can really relate to, and it seems to me that one of the most important things we need to do is reach across those divides and speak to people who may not be interested in our political orientation. The beauty of the natural world can capture the imagination, and can awaken our hearts and teach us to care.
And the Song helps us understand what beauty actually is: The two characters define each other as beautiful in terms of the many and varied creatures of the natural world. It’s as if they only know what beauty is because they have seen the gazelles on the hillside and the sheep coming up from the washing hole.
So that’s one thing. And then the other thing I feel is really important is that God language is not used at all in the Song of Songs.
That’s what my section on “Wholiness” is about. God language isn’t used in the Song, and yet, in Jewish tradition, Rabbi Akiva, a really important ancient rabbi, called the Song of Songs the “Holy of Holies”—to him, it was the most important book of all of the biblical books.
So, what is that all about? You know, where is God then?
God is in the wholeness, the interconnectivity of nature. That’s where most people actually feel the presence of God. And again, this is a whole question of, like, how do we reach people? How do we engage people as Earth citizens? Many people find the divine in the natural world—whether or not they use God language. It’s a universal experience. So, again, for me, it’s all about reaching audiences that we may not be used to engaging. The Song of Songs can help us have conversations with more conservative Christians or more conservative Jews who don’t necessarily speak the language of climate or environment. I think most people would agree that preserving life on Earth must be a priority.
Trisha: This reminds me of an essay I read several years ago called “Everybody Needs a Climate Thing.” It was about how climate seems so ethereal and invisible, but if you connect with the seasons or with the flowers in your yard, or with bird migration, or preserving natural beauty, or anything else—that’s just the hook. That makes the love for creation real to you. That’s what we need to compel us forward.
Ellen: YES! I also think that one other profound way of reframing our climate communication in religious circles is by employing another word that appears more in the Song than anywhere else (except in discussions of sacrifice in Leviticus): the word reyach, which means “scent.” The scents in the Song are so heavy and pervasive. Usually we don’t pay a lot of attention to the atmosphere, but experiencing all the scents of the Song brings our attention to the very air itself. And the word reyach is connected to the word ruach, which is the spirit.
Trisha: Smell and spirit.
Ellen: Yeah, the words smell and spirit, right? Another reference to God—the spirit of God—ruach Elohim. The Song helps us to see the air and to see God in the air. To me, there’s nothing more profound from a religious climate perspective than to start recognizing God in the air. We see how the climate crisis has arisen out of our forgetfulness of the air—how we have fouled the air, and thereby fouled the spirit of God.
Trisha: Thank you so much, Ellen. It has been so refreshing to talk with you about this book. I’ve enjoyed reading it and I know that everyone here will benefit greatly from it.
A video recording of the General Meeting is available at this link (Passcode: #1f@vvsv).
About the Author & Interviewer
Rabbi Ellen Bernstein is a pioneer in the field of religion and ecology. She founded Shomrei Adamah, Keepers of the Earth, the nation’s first Jewish environmental organization in 1988. A former member of the Third Act Faith leadership team, she is a prolific writer with a speaking and consulting schedule that takes her across the nation. Her forthcoming book, “Toward A Holy Ecology,” is available online and in bookstores this month. Visit her website for information about her books and speaking engagements.
THROUGH HER SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS, ELLEN raises money for Ecopeace Middle East, “a wonderful interfaith/intercultural organization doing work on climate and water protection across the Middle East. There are three directors: Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian. Their work is being modeled in many countries around the world.” In January, the group and two other organizations—Women Wage Peace and Woman of the Sun—were jointly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. For more information, and to donate, please visit www.ecopeaceme.org.
The Rev. Dr. Patricia “Trisha” Tull, a longtime environmentalist, is a retired professor of Hebrew Bible from Louisville Theological Seminary. She is the author of Inhabiting Eden: Christians, the Bible, and the Ecological Crisis and other books on the Bible and theology. Her forthcoming book, Let Justice Roll Down: God’s Call to Care for Neighbors and All Creation, a Presbyterian Women’s Horizons Bible Study on environmental justice, will be available in mid-March. She serves on Third Act Faith’s Coordinating Committee and is its liaison to Third Act’s Democratizing Energy Campaign. She teaches, preaches and leads workshops on earth care and helps congregations seek practical, effective ways to address climate change.
“Going Deep” is one of two newsletters published by Third Act Faith. Our other newsletter, Third Acts of Faith, provides our members and subscribers with the month’s latest “News & Views.” It is usually published on the third Thursday of each month.