Reviews
Natan Margalit, Tikkun
April 19, 2006
Ellen Bernstein's The Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology.
In the 1970s, the idea of a Jewish environmental organization seemed to many an oxymoron. Undaunted, Ellen Bernstein created Shomrei Adamah, (Keepers of the Earth,) and the Jewish environmental movement was born. In The Splendor of Creation, Bernstein again takes it upon herself to push the envelope. Part midrash, part ecological science, part spirituality and part memoir, this is a book that redraws the map of Jewish environmental thinking.
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Sandee Brawarsky, Jewish Week
July 15, 2005
Nature’s Sacred Text | An ecophilosopher ponders ‘the splendor of creation,’ weaving ecology and Judaism.
For Ellen Bernstein, conversations about weather are never small talk. She loves to listen intently as winds grow in strength during a storm and thrash through the trees. Even better, she likes to be in the woods, feeling the energy rising around her and her own spirit soaring.
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Art Carey, Philadelphia Inquirer
June 11, 2005
Inside Out | A synthesis of Bible and nature
A new book by an author with Philadelphia roots seeks to rekindle what a philosopher called "radical amazement."
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Aliyah Baruchin, Forward
May 13, 2005
FACES FORWARD: Environmentalist Traces Judaism's Ecological Roots
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John Keogh, Weavers Way Shuttle
When the history of the destruction of our environment is written, the Book of Genesis will figure prominently, for it has been used to justify not just mastery or good stewardship of Creation, but a rape and pillage that would make the Vikings blush.
With The Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology (The Pilgrim Press, 2005), Co-op member Ellen Bernstein has done a truly remarkable thing. She has entered the garden of Genesis and brought us, not the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (for we are overfull of this fruit), but the fruit of the tree of life -- the fruit offered by study of the Bible itself.
Bernstein's message is fresh, unique, even inspired, but her methods are as theologically tried and true as the ancient Talmudic process to which she has fallen heir, and the truths she draws from this greatest of sources are as theologically as emotionally legitimate, as grounded in personal knowledge and experience as in the text itself.
Yet for all this seriousness of purpose, Ellen is a delightful writer, personal, interesting, at turns passionate and reflective, brilliant and self-effacing. She writes with that best of theological approaches, with her mind, but from her heart, seeking first to understand and only second to express. The Splendor of Creation offers a good read and, more, either a window or a door, depending on which you might have closed, and what lies beyond is well worth the opening.
