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.
Photo of the ranch in Utopia, Texas, by a family friend, Don Cohen, 1970’s
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/
A “Soul Stroll” with members of my community
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.
This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you. (Exodus 12:2)
That month is Nisan (around April), the ancient Hebrew and Babylonian lunar month of spring, in which Passover falls. If you are familiar with the Jewish calendar, you might be scratching your head, since Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is seven months away in the fall.
But the Hebrew calendar has more than one new year, and it offers at least two shapes of time: linear and cyclical.
The notion that the Jewish people introduced linear time to the world was offered by historian Thomas Cahill a few years back in his bestselling book, The Gifts of the Jews. According to Cahill, human history truly began when God said to Abraham, “Go forth” (Genesis 12). Until then ancient civilizations looked at time and life like a big wheel: never ending, repetitive, with no room for individuality. Judaism gifted the world with the idea that tomorrow can be better than today, that each individual life has a purpose and goal, and that justice will someday be served, even if it be in some distant visionary future.
But there is another view which finds the sanctity of time not in linear progress but rather in sacred cycles. This position is articulated by Rabbi Arthur Waskow in his book Seasons of our Joy. According to Waskow, the shape of Jewish time is not a line at all, but round, like a circle dance. The sacred cycles of the year are tied to nature and the earth, to the phases of the moon and the textures of the seasons. To ensure our future on the planet, we must stop our obsession with mere material, linear “progress,” and return to our ancient appreciation of life’s cyclical rhythms.
I’m a both/and person when it comes to the shape of time: life is cyclical and we can grow and progress. I love an image offered by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld in The Jewish Holidays: A Guide and Commentary, describing the Jewish shape of time as a kind of rising helix, like the spiral ramp at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. We keep returning to the same lessons with the annual seasons and holidays, but each time we do it from a new vantage point that allows us a larger perspective.
Spring Robin
And… here’s another way to view the shape of time: not as a line or even a cycle, but as an eternal present rooted in the landscape and the elements. According to David Abram, in his landmark book, The Spell of the Sensuous, many indigenous peoples sense that time is inseparable from place, with the future lying just beyond the horizon and the past hidden underground and inside of living things. I love to visualize time like that to keep me in the present (see the mini-retreat at the end of this post).
Time is life. In today’s world, with our ever-shortening attention spans pulled in a million different directions by our ubiquitous technology and media, time can often feel fleeting and fragmented. The ancients knew that time was sacred. By connecting with nature, with loved ones, with sacred days and moments, we, too can stretch and mold the shape of time into a sacred vessel of life.
Comment below: How do you sense time? Is it something that changes, and can you shape it?
Take a Mini-Retreat:
Consider author David Abram’s personal time exercise from The Spell of the Sensuous. Find a relatively open (and safe) space outdoors, Relax, breathe, and look around. Close (or soft-focus) your eyes, and imagine the past and future pouring into the present:
“[I] let myself begin to feel the whole bulk of my past—the whole mass of events leading up to this very moment. And I call into awareness as well, my whole future—all those projects and possibilities that lie waiting to be realized. I imagine this past and this future as two vast balloons of time, separated from each other like the bulbs of an hourglass, yet linked together at the single moment where I stand pondering them, And then, very slowly I allow both of these immense bulbs of time to begin leaking their substance into this minute moment between them, into the present.” (p. 202)
Slowly, the present moment will begin to grow and the past and future to dwindle to “mere knots on the edge of this huge expanse,” When you are ready to “let the past and the future dissolve entirely,” you can open your eyes and senses to the boundless vitality of the eternal present. If you wish, imagine the future is somewhere beyond the horizon, while the past is underneath the ground under your feet, and hidden inside of each living thing, including you. Immerse in being right here, right in the now.
Babies love to play peekaboo, as a parent or caregiver hides their face for a moment and then pops out again to the baby’s delight. At six to twelve months, infants are developing “object permanence,” the crucial concept that just because someone or something isn’t visible at the moment, it’s still there and can still be counted on.
Some of the most important things in life are hidden from view: stars in the daytime, a baby in the womb, life under the sea. There are sounds hidden from us in frequencies humans can’t hear, and wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the range of the naked eye. We still can’t read each other’s hidden thoughts, and each person contains dimensions unknown even to themselves. Believers will say that God, too, can’t be seen in conventional ways, but can be perceived in the heart.
I’ve been thinking about things that are hidden, while preparing to celebrate the holiday of Purim , which is a commentary on divine hiddenness in human affairs.
Set in ancient Persia, the Biblical book of Esthertells the story of a young Jewish woman, Queen Esther, saving her people from a genocidal plot by an antisemitic court official. The Purim story conveys a message of Jewish survival and resilience in the face of hatred and prejudice. I know it sounds solemn, but it’s celebrated with a joyful, carnival-type atmosphere of costumes, humor, noisemakers and eating special triangle-shaped pastries called hamantaschen.
Jewish sages long ago noticed that Esther’s name is related to the Hebrew word for “hiddenness.” For one thing, Esther hid her identity when she first married the king. On a deeper level, Hester Panim, hiding the divine face, is a Hebrew expression for times when God seems distant, as in the book of Esther, where God is never mentioned directly. Yet at that very time, God was believed to be hidden behind the scenes, working through the agency and courage of human beings. Wearing masks and costumes on the Purim holiday playfully reinforces this theme of “hiddenness.”
Esther is also symbolized by the moon, because she brought light and gladness to the people. The Moon is a beloved symbol in Jewish tradition, which has a lunar-solar calendar. Celebrating the new moon, Rosh Hodesh, has been revived as a modern Jewish spiritual practice. The moon “hides its face” for part of every month, growing in fullness – and is full in time for Purim.
Queen Esther, like the Moon itself, is associated in Jewish mysticism with the Shechinah, the feminine Divine Presence immanent in the world and in nature. We don’t have to transcend this world to find divinity. She is here right now, “hiding” within in each tree, pond, and creature. When he saw a glorious view in nature, my teacher Reb Zalman, would wink and say, “The Shekhinah is flashing us.” The divine presence in the natural world is revealed in moments of awe, but for the patient and observant it is there all the time, playing holy hide and seek, wearing the kaleidoscopic mask of creation.
New Moon and Venus, March, 2025
Esther was also compared to Venus, seen in this photo with the new moon.
Rabbi Neḥemya concurs and says: Hadassah was her real name. Why then was she called Esther? This was her non-Hebrew name, for owing to her beauty the nations of the world called her after Istahar, Venus. (Talmud: Megillah 13a)
When the news is dark, when the divine presence may seem very hidden in events, I think that a remedy is to seek the face-to-face, to find it in nature and in direct human connections. How do you find presence in times of hiddenness?
Since I started this website, I’ve been doing a lot more of my own photography, so to enhance the Gateway of The Moon, here’s my lunar photo gallery of some of my favorites (click on each photo to enlarge), with a video Reel link at the end.
The Torah portion, Beshallach (Exodus 13:17-17:16), contains one of the most dramatic episodes in the Bible. The Israelites have escaped slavery in Egypt, but as they are fleeing they are caught before a raging sea. And in back of them, the armies of Pharoah are advancing with trained charioteers coming their way.
Our ancestors were in an impossible situation, so bad that some of them just wanted to go back to Egypt and surrender.
As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites caught sight of the Egyptians advancing upon them. Greatly frightened, the Israelites cried out to YHWH And then they said to Moses, “There weren’t enough graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die in the wilderness?”
But Moses said to the people, “Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which YHWH will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again. YHWH will battle for you; you hold your peace!” (Exodus 14:10-14).
Our rabbinic ancestors looked at the Torah as the word of God. For them, every word was there for a purpose. As they analyzed each part of Moses’ response to the panicked nation, they imagined that he was responding to four different groups of Israelites with four different reactions to their situation. In the Midrash they pictured the people of Israel in four factions at the sea:
Group one said: Let us throw ourselves into the sea (maybe in despair or overwhelm).
Group two said: Let us return to Egypt (i.e. wishing for the “good old days” that weren’t really so good!)
Group three said: Let us fight them (some are always ready to fight)
Group four said: Let us cry out against the Egyptians (the talkers—maybe today it would be “crying out” on social media rather than taking action)
OR just maybe those same approaches to the crisis could be viewed in a positive way:
Jumping in the sea = they had faith that God would help
Going back to Egypt = stopping to question how they got where they were
Fighting = fighting for what you believe in
Talkers = speaking up and truth-telling
And (to continue the Midrash) when we look at Moses’ words, all four factions received a direct response from their leader.
To group that said Let us throw ourselves into the sea, Moses told them, “Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which YHWH will work for you today.”
To the group that said “Let us return to Egypt,” he assured them, “for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again.”
To the group that said, “Let us fight them,” Moses told them, “YHWH will battle for you.”
Finally, to the group that said “Let us cry out against them,” Moses told them to “hold your peace!”
So that was then. But right now, if you imagine our current national and world problems like the Raging Sea, – with which group of Israelites do you identify? Do you want to give up, to retreat, to fight, or to speak?
There are times of crises when despair is not an option, when there is no going back, when conflict is not the answer, and when words are inadequate. So what then is the alternative?
Then YHWH said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. And you lift up your rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it, so that the Israelites may march into the sea on dry ground. (Exodus 14:15-16)
According to the Midrash, just as everyone was arguing, and even Moses hesitated, a man named Nachshon ben Aminadav of the tribe of Judah waded into the sea. He walked right in, up to his calves, his knees, his waist, his chest. Only when the water was up to his nostrils, when he was about to go under, did the Red Sea split. God helps those who help themselves and take the first steps. Ever since then, the name Nachshon (that’s a “ch” as in “Bach”) has become synonymous in Jewish tradition with a leader who goes in first, one who dares to take action while others are afraid.
This Midrash is really speaking to me right now.
Today we are facing raging social, political, and environmental problems that can feel like a stormy sea, issues so huge that can make us feel trapped and unable to progress.
Feel the fear but don’t let your fear control you.
Be present and focus your mind see things as they actually are and not as you imagine or project them to be.
Take time to be still, engaging in meditation or other centering practices that calm your mind.
Move forward and take action, action that will now be more effortless and congruous with the divine flow.
Whether a supernatural miracle, a natural phenomenon, or an ancestral story we tell, the Parting of the Red Sea remains an eternal archetype with the status of a sacred Myth. It is the paradigm of Redemption. In words attributed to the Greek statesman Solon, “A Myth is not something that never happened, a Myth is something that happens again and again.” Like our ancestors before, we are often caught between a rock and a hard place, or a Pharaoh and a raging sea, looking for a way forward. The words of the Torah and our interpretations throughout the centuries can offer guidance on how to “be still and get going,” how we can find our inner Nachshon for these tumultuous times.
A quick mini-retreat: Take a moment now to put things down, relax, and take a deep breath. Let the world fade away as you bring to mind a moment that felt particularly awesome, or when some kind of curtain slipped away between you and the bigger picture of Life. What did your senses grasp and what did your emotions feel?
What was your moment? Was it in nature, during a life cycle event, while traveling? Or just out of the blue?
My teacher, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (Reb Zalman), used to teach that we all have those spiritual moments, those flashes of transcendence. But too often they slip away from memory because we don’t have a container for them. By which I think he meant that we don’t have practices or language to keep them alive within us.
Not that you can capture your pristine spiritual state forever. We are all bound to (and must) come down the mountain from our spiritual highs. But we can come down with a postcard to remind us of what we experienced.
After I returned from a particularly powerful spiritual retreat, another of my spiritual teachers, Rabbi Miles Krassen, told me that each spiritual experience can become a deposit into our inner soul “bank account” to draw on later in challenging times, or to prime our pump when we feel creatively dry.
Those spiritual deposit boxes are going to take different forms for different folks, of course. Here’s a menu of ways I like to store up spiritual treasures, and I’d love to hear from you about yours.
Meaningful Objects
Just like pilgrims take a sacred object from a shrine, we can find an object that reminds us of that special time, like a seashell that recalls a sunrise at the shore, a pinecone that brings us back to a spectacular forest hike, a symbolic piece of jewelry, a crystal or a prism that recalls how our soul sparkled. We can carry it with us, or it can go on our desk, bedside table, personal altar, or near our prayer or meditation spot.
Journaling
For many years, journaling has been one of my favorite ways to store up my spiritual gems. I have kept small gratitude journals and dream journals by my bedside, and larger, beautiful Spiritual Journals that were dedicated to recording insights or special moments. To be honest, the gratitude and dream records have switched to digital form – I dictate them into my phone notes at bedtime or wake up. But for those profound experiences that I want to honor, I still like to put pen to paper in a bound journal. Such writing, done reflectively, can become its own spiritual moment.
Art
Another way to keep spiritual moments alive is to express them artistically. If you paint, collage, compose, write poetry, or do needlework, those can be your treasure chests. You don’t have to be a great artist, just to create something that triggers your memories or helps you to tell your story.
For me, photography connects me to my spiritual life and moments of awe in nature. Each time that I look at a photo, it takes me right back to the moment of that direct experience. I love to share my nature photos to invite other people into those moments (Find them here: Inspired Images.) You don’t have to be a serious photographer for this purpose and you can do a lot with a phone camera to put together an album of your most spiritual moments in nature.
Rituals and Deeds
Another way to record your experiences is in the language of ritual, either by creating your own rituals, or by connecting a ritual that you already practice in your own tradition with your personal experiences. For example, I like to say certain Jewish blessings for special moments in nature. This helps me to focus on being present and recognizing that life is a divine gift.
Spiritual Language
As you explore a spiritual tradition, you gain language to hold your own experiences. Not to say language can fully capture ineffable moments, but words and concepts that have been passed down for generations can be honored containers for the sacred. For example, I may describe having an experience of the Shechinah, a sense of the divine immanent within nature. I hope to share more of those from my own tradition as time goes by.
Sharing with others in a supportive environment is also a powerful way to keep our spiritual experiences going and to inspire one another.
Please comment if you use any of these or other ways to hold your own transcendent or spiritual moments in your heart.
Shalom! At Wellsprings of Wisdom, I aspire to help readers connect to the soul by connecting to the beauty of the natural world and Jewish and world wisdom about nature. Just as the earth has her seas, gardens, rivers, and mountains, inside each of us is our sea of the unconscious, our garden of toil and pleasure, our streams of flow, and our peak experiences. Our inner world is a reflection of the planet and of ancient teachings left for us by our ancestors. I’m passionate about sharing my love of nature and wisdom in all kinds of formats. You can now you can also find me on substack as “GPS for Your Inner Landscape.” I’m publishing a short newsletter about once a week, and other short inspirational notes. Subscribe now for free!
As this New Year 5785 takes flight, may we care for our environment, spread love and compassion, and most of all, seek peace. Sending you blessings for a good and sweet new year, fill with excellent health and abundant happiness, and may your heart’s prayers be fulfilled for good.
Snowy Egrets in Flight at Bombay Hook National Wildlife refuge, photo Julie Danan
L’Shanah Tovah, Tikateyvu! May you be inscribed for a good and sweet New Year! We are about to embark on the Jewish New Year 5785, a day also known as the “birthday of the World,” and so a day to contemplate how to honor and steward our natural environment and all its creatures. Elul, the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, is a great time to get outside and connect with nature, letting her be your guide. I share here a class that I taught on this subject back in 2021 (approaching Rosh Hashanah 5782). We discuss sauntering in nature and learning from its creatures and living symbols. There are lots of nature photos and questions to ponder, to inspire your own nature connection in the New Year.
Shalom! My latest blog post was announcing class that I taught on Spirituality at the Seashore. I taught the class twice: for ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal and for Seaside Jewish Community. Here’s a video of the latter, combining nature photography, ancient sources, guided meditaiton, and ideas for action. (posted here August, 2024)
Jewish Outdoor Food, Farming, and Environmental Education), typified by such organizations as Adamah https://adamah.org/ and Wilderness Torah https://wildernesstorah.org/.
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