Please join us for a webinar conversation with Rabbi Ellen Bernstein.

Passover marks the Jewish people's liberation from slavery in Egypt and the coming of spring. Yet it is also a story about land and the natural world. All our biblical holidays originally commemorated the agrarian and pastoral soil out of which Judaism grew. Our well-being and our freedom ultimately depend on the earth's well-being. If the earth and its systems are compromised, our freedom is compromised. Life itself is compromised. In this session, we’ll be exploring the deep ecological underpinnings of the Passover haggadah, and will be digging into Rabbi Ellen Bernstein's new-ish Passover haggadah, The Promise of the Land. 

Rabbi Ellen Bernstein is an eco-theologian, spiritual leader, writer and creative.  She founded Shomrei Adamah, Keepers of the Earth, the first national Jewish environmental organization in 1988.  

Her books include Let the Earth Teach You Torah, Ecology and the Jewish Spirit, and The Splendor of Creation. Ellen also created the first ecologically-centered Tu B’Sh’vat (Jewish New Year of the Trees) seder in 1988 and popularized Tu B’Sh’vat as a community-wide inter-spiritual ecological arts celebration for all peoples. In 1990 she organized an All Species Parade in Philadelphia in honor of the 20^th anniversary of Earth Day; 1000 people participated in the parade and 30,000 people witnessed it.

Her most recent book, The Promise of the Land, A Passover Haggadah is the first comprehensive, ecological haggadah (guidebook) for Passover (Behrman House, 2020).  In 2020 during the pandemic, Ellen launched the Earth Seder movement, helping to organize several dozen world-wide Earth Seders on Zoom. Ellen also serves on the advisory board of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. To learn more about Ellen please visit her website.