Remembering Ellen Bernstein

By Dr. Adriane Leveen
Coordinating Committee member, Third Act Faith

Rabbi Ellen Bernstein  died on February 27. Ellen was a passionate and committed Jew and climate activist. She was also a friend.

Here is Ellen’s vision for her work (and ours) in her own words:

The climate crisis is a spiritual crisis, a crisis in how we think and what we value. For decades, I have been wondering and wandering through the texts of my tradition, endeavoring to illuminate the deep ecological culture at the heart of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible.

She Ellen was very proud of having founded the first national Jewish environmental organization in 1988, Shomrei Adamah, Keepers of the Earth. Two years ago she  played an instrumental role in imagining Third Act Faith and getting it started.

Her beautiful and compelling book, Toward A Holy Ecology: Reading the Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis, literally just came out.  In late January Ellen was interviewed by Rev. Dr. Trisha Tull about her new book at a meeting of Third Act Faith. Find a transcript of the interview in its entirety here.

You can learn more about Ellen’s remarkable career and life in this New York Times obituary. And visit her website, ellenbernstein.org, for more about her work.

We have lost an inspiring, loving, fiercely committed climate colleague and friend. May Ellen’s memory be for a blessing.