Hampshire Mourns the Loss of Former Spiritual Life Advisor and Environmentalist Ellen Bernstein
Rabbi Bernstein, who worked as advisor for identity and praxis at Hampshire from 2016 to 2020, was renowned for her work as a thought leader of the Jewish environmental movement, considering the climate crisis a spiritual crisis. She died on February 27.
Bernstein founded the first Jewish environmental organization, Shomrei Adamah, or Keepers of the Earth. She was inspired by the Hebrew Bible's “veneration of nature,” and made her life's work the delivery of messages of spiritual responsibility for the land.
Wrote the New York Times in her obituary: “She developed curriculums for students and teachers, organized conferences, and wrote scholarly articles and books to spread a gospel that resonated in progressive congregations and on college campuses. Her work gave a new dimension to the words ‘holy land’ and to the synergy between heaven and earth.”
Bernstein's books, all related to these subjects included this year's Toward a Holy Ecology: Reading the Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis (2024), The Promise of the Land (2020), The Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology (2005), A New Year for the Trees (2019), Ecology & the Jewish Spirit (2000), and Let the Earth Teach You Torah (1992).
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