My Personal Journey as a “Nature Rabbi” – Rabbi Julie Danan

As a rabbi, I find inspiration in nature as well as ancient texts. I believe that the earth is our sanctuary, our precious garden of Eden in the vastness of space. In my work, I use nature photography, Soul Strolls, and more to inspire love of our planet so that we care for it for future generations. Some people started to call me “the nature rabbi,” and I embraced it. As a rabbi, I take my community outdoors for contemplative “Soul Strolls” on some Shabbats. At some congregations I have led nature walks and country retreats for family and students. My congregations have enthusiastically welcomed these experiences.

My soul was awakened to nature in the Texas Hill Country. When I was twelve years old, my parents bought the “ranch,” a small county place near Utopia, Texas, 90 miles from our home in San Antonio. We started going up there on weekends during the mild Texas winter, when nature presented a palette of browns and greys. Once we had been away a couple of weeks and didn’t realize that the seasons were changing. We arrived late Friday night, and on Saturday morning, I got up before the rest of the family and made my way down to the river.

As I stepped outside our backyard and descended the wood and stone steps to the river bank, I felt like I was entering the movies and stories that captivated my childhood imagination: Dorothy landing in Oz, or the children passing through CS Lewis’ magic wardrobe; but they had stepped into winter and I was stepping into spring. Everything that had been brown and subdued over the past months was suddenly, vividly, green and alive! Giant cypress trees pushing skyward, purple-flowered vines tumbling down the limestone cliffs, the cool now green Sabinal River flowing tantalizingly below. Doves cooed, hawks soared, bees buzzed and flowers bloomed.

When I got to the banks of the river, I was in awe. I felt the boundaries between me and the world dissolve, and time stood still as my awareness seemed to melt into a sense of oneness with my surroundings. When I emerged from my reverie, like a swimmer surfacing from a deep dive, I searched for something to say that was worthy of the moment. The only thing that I could think of was one of the few prayers that I had learned in my sporadic Religious School attendance: Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheynu, Adonai Echad. At that moment of unitive awareness, I instinctively offered back the Jewish declaration of cosmic unity.

It would be a long time before I had such a powerful mystical experience again, but that moment in the Hill Country sent me on my spiritual quest that has lasted a lifetime and eventually led me to become a rabbi.

In the meantime, though, I continued to find a spiritual connection outdoors, and like so many it happened at summer camp. Around the same time as my experience in the Hill Country, I attended a Jewish “Y” camp in the Poconos where my parents had worked in their youth. Although the camp wasn’t heavy on Jewish content, the vibrant experience of Shabbat at camp shaped me forever. At home, all I knew about Shabbat was that my mom put a Kleenex on her head, waved her hands three times around some candles and sang a blessing. At camp, I realized that Shabbat was a 25-hour holistic experience: changing from our grungy weekday clothes into Shabbat white and dancing down to the lakeside amphitheater as the sun set to sing and dance and welcome the Shabbat queen. I made up my mind to experience that again.

Between the ranch and camp, I was well on my own winding path to a calling of service in the Jewish world, and nature would always be a part of that. When I finally entered the ALEPH Rabbinic program decades later at age 36, many important moments in my training would take place at outdoor gatherings, particularly at Elat Chayyim retreat center in the Catskills (now incorporated into Isabella Freedman), with its woods and organic garden.

Judaism is a religion tied to land, first to the Holy Land, and to the planet itself: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Our holidays are connected to the seasons in agricultural Israel, our ritual objects are full of nature motifs, and once a year we spend most of a week in a leafy hut! As I’m learning right now in an online class with Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed, the Zohar, that great book of Jewish mysticism, emphasizes that Torah and encounter with the divine happen best as one strolls outdoors. Indeed, for the mystics, nature is the outer garment of the Shechinah, the divine presence herself.

With the rise of environmental consciousness, nature and spirituality are coming together once again. My congregation has a Green Team leading our environmental mitzvah projects, and our religious school families participate in such events as Tikkun HaYam’s Reverse Tashlich (an international beach clean up day prior to Rosh Hashanah). https://www.repairthesea.org/

Today, the ALEPH Rabbinic program in which I studied offers studies in “Earth-Based Judaism,” and across Jewish denominations there is a burgeoning movement of JOFFEE (Jewish Outdoor Food, Farming, and Environmental Education), typified by such organizations as Adamah https://adamah.org/  and Wilderness Torah https://wildernesstorah.org/.

As an adult, I’ve been fortunate to live in proximity to beautiful natural places that nourished my soul, including four years in Israel when I was in college long ago, and starting a family. Back in the states, I continued to connect to the Texas Hill Country, before life took me to Northern California, the Hudson River Valley of New York, and now to the beauty of Coastal Delaware (with a stop and ongoing connections in the Philly area). Thanks to these wanderings, my family and I have gotten to experience some of the most diverse and spectacular scenery that our country has to offer.

When I finished my rabbinic studies in 2000 and graduate school in 2009, I turned to a new project, making a website about Jewish symbols in nature. Since I’d been shaped by summer camp and retreat centers, I aspired to create this “virtual retreat center” where you can ponder the meaning of these symbols in Jewish tradition and your own life. This site incorporates Jewish texts, personal experiences, nature photography, video clips, soundtracks, and meditations. As social media became popular, I added related accounts on Facebook and Instagram, too. Recently, I started a Substack blog, “GPS for Your Inner Landscape.”

One thing led to another and soon I was getting serious about the art of nature photography. Eventually I started a second website devoted to that: inspiredimages.zenfoliosite.com. But I didn’t really grasp how much this holy hobby meant for me until others pointed it out for me. In an exercise at a group meeting during a rabbinic fellowship, we were asked to describe some mundane object that we used each day, and our relationship to it. I chose my camera. Others in my circle noticed my enthusiasm:

“Do you realize how you light up when you talk about your camera?”

“You become more animated.”

“This is your unique gift as a rabbi! Embrace it and share it,” they said.

Nature photography has become a tool in my rabbinic work. Not only do nature photos adorn some of the synagogue walls, but during High Holiday services, nature photos are shared on large overhead screens at various points during the service. I use prints of my photos to make cards and small gifts that I use in pastoral care and education. I’ve been experimenting with other ways to use photography in my work, such as making photo calling cards for chaplains and printing a book with photos representing the “six days” of creation.

I truly believe that the earth is our greatest Mishkan, our holy sanctuary and divine dwelling place. More and more, I find my own deepest spiritual practices in Nature, strolling and engaging in nature photography. I love to share my experience of the outdoors with congregants, colleagues, and others, which I hope will inspire all of us to connect with our community, our heritage, and our planet.

Featured image by Julie H. Danan at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center. Posted May, 2025. Different versions of this appear in Delaware Jewish Living and (in two posts) on my Substack: GPS for Your Inner Landscape.