The Jewish climate change bus: Fresh from a cross-country jaunt on used vegetable oil.What would Moses drive? This was the title of a session on climate change at the Hazon Food Conference, held December 24 to 27 in Pacific Grove, Calif. Indeed, this is a question for the ages. Or for right now.

The conference came just a few days after the close of the United Nations' climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference also marked the end of a journey by a very wacky school bus, which cruised across the country on used vegetable oil to raise awareness about the Jewish Climate Change Campaign. So it made sense for Jewish educator and environmental visionary Adam Berman to ask the question.

As it turns out, it didn't really matter when this conference on a Jewish food movement that emphasizes sustainability took place. Really, Jews should be asking themselves what the quintessential member of the Tribe would do about climate change every day, and modeling solutions themselves. Luckily, Jewish practices translate beautifully into concrete tactics.

Or so says Berman.

He also says every Jew should be able to stand on one foot and tell your uncle at your Passover Seder what's what with climate change-and why he should put down his gefilte fish and take action.

This presented a twist on that old story about Rebbe Hillel summing up the Torah in that flamingo-like stance. Intrigued with this idea, I decided to sit down with Berman and find out more about his views on the Jewish response to climate change.

You've been active with sustainability issues for many years. What has made you so passionate about the issue of climate change?
Adam Berman: Discussing a Jewish response to climate change
We can eat organic, and reduce the amount of pollution that goes into rivers, but if climate change continues, it would make life inhospitable to the majority of the life on the planet. If we don't focus on climate change, then success in all other issues will become irrelevant.

How does the "What Would Moses Drive?" session fit into a Jewish food conference?

It's clear that what we eat has climate implications. The tagline of the worst thing someone in the developing world can do is drive an SUV to the steakhouse.

What WOULD Moses drive?

A camel. Although they might not have had those in Egypt at the time, but we don't have to get into that.

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Last night I went to hear Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farms in Virginia, speak at a benefit for the Hollywood Farmer's Market, one of my favorite farmer's markets here in Portland. Salatin is featured in Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and more recently in the film Food, Inc. (BTW, if you haven't seen the film, go, this minute, and take everyone you know, even if you have to drag them kicking and screaming).

Salatin is a self-described "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-farmer," which gives you some idea of his philosophies and approaches to, well, just about everything. His talk was about food safety, specifically how governmental approaches to it are not only not making our food safer, but are also marginalizing and criminalizing small farmers who raise animals on a non-industrial scale. I didn't go to Salatin's lecture expecting to learn anything new; I've read several of his books, including Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, and I also know a bit about this subject from other sources and from my work in the food sustainability world. I went to experience Salatin himself. And he was definitely worth the price of admission.

Salatin is, among other things, an entertaining writer, with a love of language that pays homage to his Southern roots. In person he is even more so. I felt like I was in a tent camp revival meeting gettin' some old time religion. Salatin exhorted, he roared, his energy couldn't be contained on the small stage, he overwhelmed the levels on the rather feeble amplification system he was using. It was a pleasure to hear him trace back the history of our attitudes towards food safety, going back to Pasteur and germ theory (Salatin's redux on Pasteur's approach is that germs are out to get us, so we have to destroy them before they destroy us). Instead of trying to regulate deadly bacteria out of existence, Salatin pointed out, we should be creating environments where salmonella, E-coli, campylobacter, listeria, etc. can't thrive. In other words, outlaw feedlots and other concentrated animal raising operations that feed animals things they were never supposed to eat and that make them sick (corn, in the case of cows), force animals to live hip deep in their own feces, with no access to the outside (in the case of factory poultry) and no ability to move about freely. If the USDA outlawed these kinds of operations, the proliferation and spread of these dangerous germs would be drastically reduced and our food would be measurably safer. That, along with the myriad ways government bureaucracy sets up obstacles for small farmers who want to raise animals sustainably and in a manner designed for their maximum health (not to mention ours), was the gist of Salatin's talk.

I didn't agree with everything Salatin said. He's a true libertarian as far as his contempt for anything governmental is concerned, and he believes the free market and capitalism are a sufficient corrective to industrial food abuses (He cited Upton Sinclair's The Jungle as an example; after it was published in 1906, sales of meat products dropped by 50%). I'm way too much of a socialist to ever buy into that point of view, and my contempt for capitalism is almost as deep as Salatin's is for government. But it was great to sit in a room with over 250 like-minded folks (many of them young farmers) and share a sense of purpose, to renew our individual and collective commitments to raising,  buying, eating and advocating for good (and I mean that in every sense of the word) food. And it was balm to my spirit to hear Salatin describe that commitment as "noble and righteous." Amen to that.

 

This post originally appeared on The Jew & The Carrot and is reprinted with permission.

Look out at the plot of land and you will see an empty field, surrounded by thick forest on three sides, and tennis and basketball courts on the fourth. But when Simcha Schwartz, associate director of The Jewish Farm School, gazes out that way, his vision floods with goat sheds and shade structures, rows of purple cabbages, green peas, fiery tomatoes, and yellow flowering broccoli; with hoop houses and green houses and busy bodies bent over plants, walking through rows of seedlings, walking with hoes, some wiping their brows, smiling, staring up at the sky.

"The first step of planning a farm is observation," Schwartz says. So for now he and his colleagues are watching the grassy field, noting how water flows through it when it rains, the shade and sun patterns throughout the day, when the wild deer and gopher seem most active.  

Schwartz, 31, along with his good friend Nati Passow, 29, co-founded the Jewish Farm School (JFS) in 2005, along with a group of other colleagues from the Teva Learning Center and Adamah. The group aimed to reconnect Jews with the land, food production, and an environmentally sustainable way of life. Although they have neither a permanent farm nor school just yet, JFS has reached a wide variety of people through their diverse programming and courses. They visits schools and teach gardening and farming skills, they teach workshops on urban sustainability, they have partnered with the Teva Learning Center on Teva's Annual Seminar on Environmental Education, they have offered keynote speeches and classes and workshops at Hazon's Food Conference, they run their own Alternative Break trips on farms throughout the country, and they have also launched a consulting business called Cooperative Design, which  works with synagogues and other Jewish institutions to create systems that foster cultural, ecological and social sustainability.

Showing off the game planBut this summer most of JFS's attention has been focused on establishing what they hope will be their first permanent farm at Eden Village Camp. The camp is a project of Yoni Stadlin, 30, a former colleague of Schwartz and Passow at the Teva Learning Center, and his wife, Vivian Lehrer, 29. The couple has received a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation to start a camp on land owned by the Jewish Federation. This farm venture is a synthesis of three main players: The Jewish Federation is funding the installation of the farm, and is interested in seeing it as a year-round project that will bring Jews of all affiliations to the land to solidify a sense of Jewish identity and involvement. Camp Eden Village is happy to host this JFS farm in order to provide educational garden activities for their campers and staff, and to grow food for the dining hall. Eden Village Camp has also asked JFS to run related programs around the site, like maintaining "snack gardens" with cherry tomatoes and berries outside the bunks, and planting fruit-bearing trees around the fields. JFS's dreams for this land include running year-long projects like alternative breaks, workshops, and retreats, providing the Jewish community with progressive cutting edge farming techniques and models of natural building and living. JFS also hopes to use the farm as a training grounds for rising Jewish educators who want to learn about farming, Judaism, and the rich intersection between the two.

This collaboration is exciting for Schwartz, who for a long time has been dreaming of a life style centered around community, sustainability, Judaism, and nature. The past five years have seen him working on a farm in Georgia, working for Teva, Hazon, American Jewish World Service, and in Israel. In all of these experiences he felt a deep connection with his Jewish roots, and a longing to combine the things he loves - farming, Judaism, education, and community - in a long-term living situation. Schwartz has recently moved to the Eden Village Site full-time.

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Perhaps Al Gore, while preparing for his speech this week at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, England, laid down on the lawn of his multimillion dollar Nashville mansion, gazed at the cloud formations above, and thought that one of them looked remarkably like Hitler.

Because in Oxford, Gore said that, when it comes to global warming, politicians should follow the lead of Winston Churchill, ‘who aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two’.

This is not the first time that Gore has evoked the spirit of Churchill and the threat of Hitler to describe world leaders’ apparent apathy in the face of climate change. In his acceptance speech for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, he said: ‘[D]espite a growing number of honourable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”’

As for his Oxford speech, it is not surprising that Gore’s insistence that world leaders DO SOMETHING about global warming and fight CO2 emissions as if they were bombs falling out of Luftwaffe aircraft became the headline grabber. ‘We have everything we need except political will’, said Gore, ‘but’ - as he has quipped many times before - ‘political will is a renewable resource’. (Gore sure knows how to recycle jokes. Another of his favourites is to introduce himself as follows: ‘Hi, my name is Al Gore. I was the next president of the United States.’)

In his Oxford speech, Gore also talked of the importance of entrepreneurs showing leadership in the fight against global warming and the steps that can be taken to ensure global energy efficiency. He told of how some countries have started constructing zero-carbon buildings, and warned of the dangers of deforestation, industrial emissions, soil carbon and more.

Still, nothing beats a not-so-subtle hint at the N-word to ram home an alarmist message about impending global climate chaos. In fact, though some environmentalists have argued that Gore’s shrillness in Oxford might have been counterproductive, the Nazi comparison is the green movement’s trump card.

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It’s pretty easy to eat local food in New York City.  Scattered throughout the five boroughs are farmers markets and CSAs are plentiful.  Since I moved to Brooklyn I’ve joined the Park Slope Co-op that displays a map of its farms and suppliers on its website.  There are also plenty of restaurants that feature local and season foods on its menu (I recently went to Nick and Toni’s Café, which I highly recommend).

And for those desiring to gather and produce their own local fare, we have illicit urban agrarian societies in New York that go foraging or keep bees.  But as it turns out, not all local foods are created equally.

Monday’s Daily News ran an article on toxicity of local fish – and despite the danger, how many low-income people are turning to fishing as a source of food.  This raised all sorts of conflicting thoughts for me.

1. OMG! we have polluted our local waters so badly that we shouldn’t eat what they produce.

2. We have a society where we have hungry people eating toxic food.  What can we be doing about that?

3.  Another question comes to mind, similar to the one raised the other day by Liz Schwartz, but is “eating locally” elitist?

I’m curious about others thoughts and concerns.  Please leave a comment!

Cross-posted from The Jew and the Carrot 

Not all infrastructure has been created equal. Some parts are yesterday, and should be relegated to the famous dust bins of history rather than cemented into our future. Their light is blinking red—stop investing in them, as much as is politically possible. The best examples are those elements of our infrastructure that serve cars and encourage the use of fossil fuels. Contrast them with green industries, led by providers of public transportation and of sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

To sharply separate the elements of red and green infrastructure is not some academic exercise, although I grant you that professors thrive on making such distinctions. At issue is nothing less than the Christmas list that Obama is preparing for us in the form of a massive stimulus package. He plans to introduce a major “infrastructure” program of which he spoke in a radio address on December 6: “I have asked my economic team to develop an economic recovery plan for both Wall Street and Main Street that will help save or create at least two and a half million jobs, while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil, and saving billions of dollars.” However, there is no clear indication which kinds or elements of infrastructure will be favored versus left out. Observers report generally that “It’s now clear that Obama intends to stimulate the economy through large direct government spending on infrastructure projects as well as through business and individual tax cuts.” However, they do not report on any distinctions between various elements of the infrastructure, whether you call them red and green or otherwise realize that they greatly differ from one another in terms of the place they ought to have in our future.

You may say, “Wait a moment, I heard Obama repeatedly stating that he will make green jobs, support green industries, and work for energy independence.” True enough, but these welcome moves are not part of the infrastructure package, but additional measures to which we are told about 10% of the funds, or $50 billion, will be dedicated. Good idea; however, this does not mean that we should refrain from asking to what the majority of the funds will be dedicated. News suggests at least initially much of the funds will go to red infrastructure, which may be unavoidable, but one could add

green conditions. “Public works” may indeed be needed, but let’s make those green ones, too. For instance, just granting money to states and localities will not do; strings should be attached ensuring that funds will be dedicated to green infrastructure and not to favorite projects that serve the automobile.

The list is not difficult to draw: Busses and passenger vans should be on the green list, not cars. Hence no funds for highways, roads, and bridges unless they first set aside bicycle lanes and diamond lanes for public transportation. Funds for light rails are green. The same is true for new sources of energy, domestically generated, and for fixing our antiquated electrical grid. Not so for loans to nowhere for auto makers.

A report in The Jerusalem Posts suggests that President-elect Obama is quite favorably-inclined towards the electric car program being developed in Israel as a joint venture with Renault-Nissan:

The incoming Obama administration is "closely monitoring" the innovative electric car project being developed by Israel's Better Place company, "and may be adopting it," Idan Ofer, chairman of Better Place, has told The Jerusalem Post.

However, to power the grid required for such a system in the US, now, and into the foreseeable future, we would have to rely upon energy derived from both coal and nuclear plants. That Obama and his designated energy secretary, Mr. Chu, are not favorably inclined toward coal may be an understatement, because, sadly, both are adherents of Climate Scientology. Moreover, Obama has been lukewarm at best about nuclear power and the construction of new nuclear power plants. So how on earth will the US power the grid required for a massive re-tooling of our cars making electric vehicles the predominant mode of car transportation?

I suggest President-elect Obama start by educating himself about the sham science-the "Scientology" of CO2 as a climate changing "pollutant" which is the keystone of the anthropogenic climate change nonsense. He might wish to peruse data such as those presented below (and a mountain of other data which contradict the  flimsy CO2-based anthropogenic warming hypothesis). Is there a chance Mr. Obama and his staff could be convinced by such data?

At any rate, hope springs eternal. Here are some data for Mr. Obama and Mr. Chu to ponder compiled by Climatology Prof. Tim Ball:

Most people don't know that thousands of direct measures of atmospheric CO2 were made beginning in 1812. Scientists took the readings with calibrated instruments and precise measurements as the work of Ernst-Georg Beck has thoroughly documented. Guy Stewart Callendar was an earlier visitor to these records. He rejected most of the records including 69% of the 19th century records and only selected certain records that established the pre-industrial level as 280 ppm. Here is a plot of the records with those Callendar selections circled.

It is clear how only low readings were chosen. Also notice how the slope and trend is changed compared to the entire record.

As Jaworowski notes,

"The notion of low pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric level, based on such poor knowledge, became a widely accepted Holy Grail of climate warming models. The modelers ignored the evidence from direct measurements of CO2 in atmospheric air indicating that in 19th century its average concentration was 335 ppmv."

Beck recently confirmed Jaworowski's research. A September 2008 article in Energy and Environment examined the readings in great detail and validated the 19th century findings. In a devastating conclusion Beck writes,

Modern greenhouse hypothesis is based on the work of G.S. Callendar and C.D. Keeling, following S. Arrhenius, as latterly popularized by the IPCC. Review of available literature raise the question if these authors have systematically discarded a large number of valid technical papers and older atmospheric CO2 determinations because they did not fit their hypothesis? Obviously they use only a few carefully selected values from the older literature, invariably choosing results that are consistent with the hypothesis of an induced rise of CO2 in air caused by the burning of fossil fuel.

So the pre-industrial level is at least 50 ppm higher than the level put into the computer models that produce all future climate predictions. The models also incorrectly assume uniform atmospheric global distribution and virtually no variability of CO2 from year to year.

 

Beck found, "Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm." Here is a plot from Beck comparing 19th century readings with ice core and Mauna Loa data.

Compare the variability of the atmospheric measures with the smooth line of the ice core record. Eliminating extreme readings and then applying a long term smoothing average achieved this. When smoothing is done on the scale of the ice core record a great deal of information is lost. Elimination of high readings prior to the smoothing makes the loss even greater. Also note that as with all known records the temperature changes before the CO2, in this record by approximately 5 years.

Elimination of data is also done with the Mauna Loa and other atmospheric readings, which can vary up to 600 ppm in the course of a day. Beck explains how Charles Keeling established the Mauna Loa readings by using the lowest readings of the afternoon. He ignored natural sources, a practice that continues. Beck presumes Keeling decided to avoid these low level natural sources by establishing the station at 4000 meters (m) up the volcano. As Beck notes "Mauna Loa does not represent the typical atmospheric CO2 on different global locations but is typical only for this volcano at a maritime location in about 4000 m altitude at that latitude." (Beck, 2008, "50 Years of Continuous Measurement of CO2 on Mauna Loa" Energy and Environment, Vol 19, No.7.)

Keeling's son continues to operate the Mauna Loa facility and as Beck notes, "owns the global monopoly of calibration of all CO2 measurements." Since the young Keeling is a co-author of the IPCC reports they accept the version that Mauna Loa is representative of global readings and that they reflect an increase since pre-industrial levels.

Jewish identity and ecological identity may seem like strange bed-fellows. Yet our identity is our sense of our self: who we are: what grounds us in our selves and the world. Knowing who we are implies knowing who we are relative to others. How we are different, and, just as importantly, how we are similar.

At times, some of us Jews are so fearful about preserving our people and our tradition that we think the way to do so is to hunker down and focus on our uniqueness as Jews, our difference, the things that set us apart-our laws, our texts, our Jewish institutions, our communal life. But the dark side of concentrating too much attention on our difference, our uniqueness, is the narrowing of our worldview and ourselves. We can develop a limited view of life and its possibilities, and unwittingly push away our young people and adults who are hungry to explore the wider world.

In their landmark book The Jew Within, in which they report on their intensive interviews of moderately affiliated American Jews between the ages of thirty and fifty, Steven Cohen and Arnie Eisen noted that the respondents exhibited a distaste for religious language that emphasized the differences between Jews and non-Jews and an attraction to language that was more universal.

The ways in which we are similar to other people-all of whom are made in the image of God-- is the flip side of what we usually think of as Jewish identity. But this dimension-our universality--seems to get short shrift in Jewish life and Jewish education.

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We are at an historic crossroads.  Any environmental expert will tell you that if we do not reverse the trend of our carbon emissions within 15 years, we risk doing irreparable damage to our planet.   Given that it will take 10 years for any substantive change to come to fruition, the man who occupies the oval office for the next two terms is in the unique position to leave behind an undeniable environmental legacy.  Fifty years from now this coming administration will be viewed either as environmental heroes, or catastrophic failures.  From a global environmental perspective, November 2nd 2008 may be remembered as the most important day in the history of the planet.

When I first conceived this article, it was my intention to put aside my liberal bias and write an objective analysis of the two presidential candidates’ environmental platforms.  That was until I had the unfortunate displeasure of reading McCain’s Lexington Project.

It is important to understand that there is no surefire solution to the energy crisis.  Like any stock portfolio, the key to success is diversification.  Both campaigns have a grasp on this concept, with neither betting the future on any one specific technology or policy and both proposing an immediate price onMe with Jason Grumet at the Cleantech Forum in Washington DC.: Mr. Grumet provided insight into how policies can aid in the transition to a green economy. carbon emissions.  Given the uncertainty of the industry, it is difficult to suggest that either candidate will provide the indisputable solution to the energy crisis.

That being said, the Obama team has gone the furthest in illustrating the inextricable connection between the environment and the economy.  The comprehensive 11 page proposal coming out of the Obama camp provides calculated actions the government can take to alleviate our dependence on foreign oil without pillaging our countries natural resources, all while creating five million new “green collar” jobs.  McCain, on the other hand, seems like he asked some kid in the halls of an elementary school for help with his proposal.  I suggest you read it next time you are in an elevator, stopped at a red light, or waiting for your Facebook page to refresh.  

Included in the flimsy two and a half page proposal is the implication that one solution to our transportation energy crisis is offering “A $300 million prize to improve battery technology for full commercial development of plug-in hybrid and fully electric automobiles.”  This type of suggestion comes from a man who either A) hasn’t thought critically about a viable solution to the energy crisis or B) wants to sound like he’s making an effort without jeopardizing his relationship with Big Oil.  This proposal is like telling a poor, inner city youth that if he goes to college and gets his degree he’ll be guaranteed a $30,000 a year job when he graduates, but neglecting to provide him with scholarships, loans, or any other financial support for his education.

Offering a $300 million dollar “prize” brazenly ignores the most difficult challenge to the renewable energy movement: capital investment.  There is little doubt that the transition to a green economy cannot happen without an open dialogue between policymakers, laborers, and the private sector.  The Cleantech Group recently brought together 500 of the most influential cleantech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists at the Cleantech Forum in Washington DC.  Jason Grumet, Obama’s lead energy and environmental advisor was on hand for a riveting panel discussion.  His presence was as much to provide industry trendsetters with an overview of Obama’s policy strategies as it was to gain feedback from the men and women who will be shaping the industry in the private sector.  

What was missing from this panel was any representation from the McCain camp (despite a personal invitation), an abscence as glaring as the one in the lower Manhattan skyline.  Somehow the only person from the republican camp who could find the time to attend the preeminent North American cleantech conference, which was in Washington DC, was Hank Habicht, energy representative to the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations.  Mr. Habicht likened his experience in that role to “a javelin team captain who had been elected to receive.”

The problem, or at least one of them, is infrastructural, and that road begins in Washington and ends in Detroit.  Many people forget that the success of the American automobile industry could not have been made possible without the infrastructural foundation built by the American government.  Without roads, nobody would buy cars.  Similarly, without direct government investment in a clean energy economy, supported by policy that alleviates some of the challenges stemming from the capitally intensive nature of the technology, we are stuck in a “chicken or the egg” scenario.

Me with every member of the McCain Energy Team: who decided to attend the preeminent North American Cleantech conference while it was in their backyard. They provided insight into the value McCain puts on the environment.John McCain points out that American automakers have committed to shift their product lines to 50% Flex Fuel vehicles by 2012. His plan “calls on automakers to make a more rapid and complete switch to FFVs.”  There is no mention of what policies he will enact to do this, what types of financial support the government will give to assist with the necessary capital investment, who will train these workers to manufacture these new technologies, or most importantly, where these new cars will be filling their tanks.  McCain does offer some back end incentives in the form of a $5,000 credit to automakers for each zero emission car sold, but without significant investment in R&D or definitive distribution channels for alternative fuel, I don’t see many of these credits being issued.  Furthermore, the jump from current emissions to zero emissions is quite optimistic, and one wonders if he is aware that FFV fuels, while they do drastically cut emissions, are not in fact carbon neutral.

Obama proposes a “strategic investment of $150 billion over 10 years to accelerate the commercialization of plug‐in hybrids, promote development of commercial scale renewable energy, encourage energy efficiency, invest in low emissions coal plants, advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure… [and invest in] America's highly‐skilled manufacturing workforce and manufacturing centers to ensure that American workers have the skills and tools they need to pioneer the green technologies that will be in high demand throughout the world.”  

Beyond financial and political investment in infrastructure, the next administration must focus on policy that drives demand.  American car manufacturers have made amazing leaps in technology over the past fifty years, but almost all of that innovation has been in the realm of maximizing engine power; had these breakthroughs been made in the realm of maximizing efficiency, chances are we’d all be driving 150 MPG vehicles.  

No one can blame Ford or GM for focusing on projects like the Mustang or the Corvette decades before the word green implied anything other than a color.  R&D budgetary expenditures and output objectives from the 50’s through the 80’s were based on consumer preferences.  People wanted big, powerful cars, and Detroit was happy to help.  In the last few years the skyrocketing price of oil has created a new, indisputable era of automobile demand, but there is still room for policy to help drive consumer preferences.  

Obama is offering a $7,000 tax credit to consumers for the purchase of advanced technology vehicles, as well as a credit to subsidize clean engine conversions.  His plan also establishes a guaranteed initial revenue stream to American automakers by enacting a one year plan to convert the entire White House fleet to plug in hybrids, and half of all government vehicles to plug-in hybrid or 100% electric by 2012.  I’ve sent McCain my Economics 101 notes on supply and demand.  I’ll let you know if I hear anything.  

While this article has focused on infrastructure and auto transportation solutions, the complexity of environmental policy is so vast that it cannot conceivably be summed up within the confines of this column.  We need decisive action across the board on energy efficiency, smart grids, sustainable communities, green building, utility energy mix incentives, wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, geosolar, cogeneration, waste management, waste energy, carbon pricing, clean coal, natural gas, maximizing efficiency from conventional energy, domestic drilling, foreign oil policy, biofuels, flex fuels, electric cars, green collar training, greenhouse gas emissions, cap and trade, water management, energy speculation, short term energy pricing relief, and more.  I encourage you to read both plans, and make an educated decision for yourselves.  

McCain – Palin: The Lexington Project

Obama – Biden: New Energy For America

Jason Grumet, lead energy and environmental advisor to Barack Obama, knows that the shift to a green economy cannot be done alone.  “The American people need to communicate the value of job creation.  Obama has said that he can create 5 million jobs, but 5 million is a crazy big number.  Write a letter to the editor, or to local policymakers, explaining how we can create 14 jobs.”  

For years a loud minority has been scraping and clawing to build out the cleantech education strategy at Babson College.  In the past three years that loud minority has grown to a deafening majority, and within the last year alone the school has added an Environmental Entrepreneurship class, a Green Consulting program, and created a Cleantech Entrepreneur in Residence position on the Board of Overseers.  These successes in cleantech management education need to partnered with commitments by trade schools, community colleges, and even private sector manufacturing organizations to develop the skilled green collar labor force that will be the foundation of our new economy.

Obama’s roots are in community organizing; with him and his 500 person energy staff working from the top down, and everyone else working up from the bottom, hopefully we can meet somewhere in the middle, at the crossroads of economy and ecology.

The Jew & the Carrot is holding a contest to see who can create the greenest Rosh Hashanah dinner menu.  Prizes for the winner include some great Jewish cook books.  Think you've got the green chops?  Prove it:

Pomegranate Heart

The Assignment: Get creative as you green your Rosh Hashanah dinner table!

The Requirements: A description of your sustainable  ideas, tips and techniques, accompanying photo(s), and any/all recipes you make.  Don’t forget to include information about who you are!

The Details: Email your submissions by October 3, 2008 to editor [@] jcarrot.org

First prize winner will receive a copy of Aromas of Aleppo - a stunning, hardcover cookbook of Syrian Jewish cuisine by Poopa Dweck.
Second prize winner will receive a copy of The Weekend Baker - a collection of delicious, stress-free baked good recipes.
The top three submissions will be featured (with much fanfare) on The Jew & The Carrot.

More details at The Jew & The Carrot.

The phrase “Think globally, Act locally” has long been the rallying cry of youth for social change. Recently I’ve wondered whether its actual meaning has been lost in the shuffle, becoming as clichéd as a Vin Diesel movie. How many of those who proudly don this slogan on their bumper are merely “Thinking globally, Thinking about acting locally?”

If you’ll lend me your eyes for a few minutes every other week, I’ll do what I can to help you bring about substantive change, on any scale you have the time or energy to commit to. Now, I don’t claim to be all knowing on all things environmental. Part of the beauty of the cleantech industry is that it is so new, and is changing so rapidly, that no such resource exists. Right now I’m reading Voluntary Carbon Markets, a book which not 12 months ago was considered the authoritative document on the subject, but is now simply considered out of date and out of print. In its stead is an industry blossoming in the face of a dwindling economy, populated by brilliant businessmen and women who jump at the opportunity to share their knowledge with even the most direct competition… because when you look just below the bottom line, you’ll find that we all have the same shareholder.
_______________

When I arrived at Babson College last fall to begin my MBA I had a few cleantech business opportunities that I was exploring, but like nearly everyone else in the space, I was an industry rookie. I met Clinton White, the then Co-President of the Babson Energy and Environmental Club, who shared with me his vision of erecting a wind turbine smack dab in the middle of the athletic fields. Knowing full well that there exists no bureaucracy like that of an educational institution, I was pretty sure that he was delusional at best, but was happy to sign on for a challenge, and see what I could learn from the project.

To be honest, on any given day throughout the last year, I probably would have estimated our chance of success at around 17%, right up through the moment those blades started spinning this past Earth Day, when I was quite certain it was some sort of heat induced optical illusion. I mean seriously, how could three pesky MBA students convince the understandably skeptical administration at a Business oriented school to erect a 35 foot structure which, due to marginal wind conditions, may not even pay for itself over the 25 year life of the project?
_______________

For generations, colleges and universities have been hotbeds for social change, representing the most feasible opportunity for young people to act locally. As an undergrad I didn’t realize the power of student organizations until my senior year, and even then I didn’t see much value beyond the surfing and culinary clubs. Six years later, I find myself with the opportunity to pass on what I know to those who care to hear, just as Clinton and so many others have done for me. And what I know is this:

• The electricity in your dorm or office isn’t really free, so turn off your lights, computers, and video game consoles when you're done using them.
  
• Buy a coffee mug and a Nalgene, and then bet the “over” on the number of coffee cups and plastic bottles you don’t throw in a landfill this year.
  
• Buy a cloth shopping bag and never have to answer “paper or plastic” again.
  
• Pop an empty two liter bottle into the toilet tank and save half a gallon of water with every flush; it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to suggest that once this planet finishes fighting over oil, the next great war will be over water.
  
• Insulate your windows, close your curtains at night and open them during the day (vice versa in the summer). Bundle up a bit if it’s not too cold.
  
• Quit kicking cigarette butts in the street (or just quit cigarettes).
  
• Wash your clothes in cold water, dry them on a clothesline if it’s nice out.
  
• Carpool, or better yet, get yourself a nice bike (this summer I’m on pace to pedal more miles than I drive).
  
• Take the bus, train, or your god given feet.
  
• Sell your SUV, spit on a Hummer. Then, make use of the resources around you.

The Babson Energy and Environmental Club is the largest, most active student group on campus. We operate as a business, with a mission statement and an executive board chock full of talented MBA’s looking to really make a difference. Last year we raised over $25,000, held environmental business information sessions, venture capital forums, and put on the largest student run cleantech conference in the Northeast. While the wind turbine was easily our most visible and recognizable success, those 5,500 kWh of clean energy produced each year represent only a small piece of an ongoing environmental overhaul.

In reality, the Babson Wind Turbine is not the environmental solution for this particular university. Unfavorable wind conditions yield an installation operating at a 20% capacity (put in perspective, the best wind conditions usually yield about 55% capacity), and overly strict zoning laws in Wellesley, MA restricted us to a 35 foot tower. But as Batman would undoubtedly agree, as a symbol, the Turbine could be so much more. We contended that if the turbine’s presence could inspire the average student to reduce his or her consumption by a meager 1%, the actual net present value of the project would be well over $850,000. And with that, we were rolling.

In the end, even the three pesky students who sat in that conference room last December, pitching a business opportunity hinging on ancillary benefits, could not have predicted the widespread impact of our work. When the Sunday Boston Globe exposed the value and potential of our project, the publicity sent shockwaves through the campus. The groundbreaking ceremony brought a State Representative and a State Senator, who in turn brought a Senatorial Certificate of Environmental Achievement. More publicity, more opportunities, and more traction for the dozens of other sustainability projects we’ll be pushing across desks this fall. And to date, it’s been a career driver for three opportunistic MBA students.

So if you’re sitting in your dorm room in any of the thousand schools out there with much better wind and/or solar resources than that of Wellesley, wondering how to enact substantive change, head down to the facilities management office. Those folks will be your biggest allies, and will undoubtedly be stoked on the opportunity to reduce their energy bills. Explain to them that while the average homeowner evaluates such investments on a 5 to 15 year payback period, universities need to be planning for the next century. Look into LEED certification, power purchase agreements, or even renewable energy credits. Write a proposal, and run it by everyone who will listen, especially professors. Touch base with Net Impact. Truly harness the power of the people.

Campus level opportunities exist whether you’re a current student, recent graduate, faculty member or longtime alum. It won’t always be easy, it won’t always be fun, and it will definitely take up more of your time than you anticipate. It will however, be a rewarding, inspiring experience; one that will allow you to find real world application for the skills you’re learning (or learned) in class.

So go on… buy a coffee mug, build a turbine.

Making the desert bloom: Kibbutz Ein Hamfratz When the early settlers in Palestine vowed to "make the desert bloom," it wasn't the fight against global warming that inspired them, but the idea that the Jewish people could be physically and spiritually redeemed through farming the land. These days, though, the Israeli kibbutz movement is re-branding the famous collective communities as eco-villages in order to attract a new generation to live a rural life in Israel.

Considering the kibbutzim’s international image as bohemian communes, and considering today’s romantic ideas about country living, it might not seem all that strange that the kibbutz movement is embracing recycling, energy efficiency, organic farming or any other elements of sustainable living. Yet turning kibbutzim into eco-farms is a clear sign that the kibbutz movement is willing to part with its original ideals.

The kibbutzim have gone through several changes over the years. They started off as the vanguard of Zionist colonization of Palestinian land in the Yishuv and early state periods. From the 1970s on they tried to find a role as business enterprises, and now they are becoming eco-villages, advocating and implementing environmental policies and opening up to rural tourism.

The kibbutzim were integral to the Labour Zionist enterprise of creating a Jewish working class in Palestine as a way of ‘normalizing’ the Jewish people. The aim was for the Jewish state to have rural kibbutzim and moshavim (cooperative agricultural communities) and an urban Jewish proletariat, forming a nation with, as the slogan went, "Jewish land, Jewish labor and Jewish produce."

The absence of an environmentalist ethos in the original kibbutz movement was not accidental. Nor was it due to simple ignorance of the importance of sustainable development, of minimizing our carbon footprint or any other of the contemporary green movement’s mantras. The very notion of treading lightly on the earth was anathema to the early settlers, who strove to imprint the Zionist footprint as effectively as possible. They planted trees, drained swamps, and lifted rocks to help the Israeli state take root, so that the people who settled there could reap the benefits.

This guy is no Al Gore: An early Zionist poster From this point of view, the early Zionists can be said to have been more humane than today’s environmentalists. For green-leaning campaigners, man must bow to nature rather than shape it according to his desires; effectively, we should forego our own needs in the name of protecting the planet.

Today, the idea that humans should do with nature as they please is perhaps even more unpopular than Zionism, which might explain why the kibbutz movement has decided to leave both ideas out of its new advertising campaign. To be launched later this summer, the campaign targets a young, hip, eco-aware generation. It downplays the old ideas in favor of environmental ethics, replaces conventional agriculture with organic farming, and foregos old kibbutz poster boys like David Ben-Gurion for international stars like the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (of Ali G and Borat fame) and US actress Sigourney Weaver, both former kibbutz volunteers.

This is the kibbutz movement’s first advertising campaign in a decade. Why is it going for a makeover now? Considering the general decline in the kibbutz population, which is also steadily ageing, it is not surprising that the kibbutzim feel the need for a new lease on life. The very first kibbutz, Deganya, was founded by a group of Jewish pioneers from Russia in 1909. By the end of 1948, Israel’s year of independence, there were 54,200 people (six percent of the population) living in 177 kibbutzim. The kibbutz population increased until the late 1980s, when the communes hit a collective low point after an economic crisis and after their image as socialist communities fell out of favour. By 2001, just 1.7 per cent of the total population in Israel were living on kibbutzim.

Younger Israelis understandably seem to prefer traveling or living in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv over picking avocados, wearing bucket hats and singing patriotic songs in the fields. The kibbutz establishment has given up trying to appeal to them through old ideals, avoiding mention of the Z-word entirely as if they themselves are ashamed of their ‘dirty past’. Perhaps they now view Zionism itself as unsustainable.

Former kibbutznik: Sasha Baron Cohen In fact, the kibbutz movement’s eco-friendly re-branding exercise is a clear snapshot of the hollowing out of Zionism, which can also be seen in other key institutions like the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The army has historically been a crucial and prestigious institution in Israel, defending the country against "the Arab threat." In the past it has done so remarkably successfully, but after the so-called Second Lebanon War in July 2006 it became clear that it takes more than sloganeering and military might to win a war, even if it is against a ragtag guerrilla force. In past wars and invasion the IDF didn't have access to the advanced weaponry it has now, but it did have far more advanced levels of commitment, zealotry and patriotism. Today, by contrast, well over one quarter of army-aged men avoid enlistment, while 43.7 percent of eligible women did not enlist in 2007. Last month, the IDF rolled out a series of initiatives to boost motivation for military service.

Internationally, Israel is commonly seen as an arrogant and ideology-driven state. It appears, however, that not even Zionism’s flagship institutions are able to stand up for their old ideals. This is less the result of revolutionary societal changes than growing political disillusionment and identity crises, and the Israeli elites’ attempts to re-invent themselves appear directionless, visionless and uninspiring. The very formation of the ruling centre-right party Kadima (Forward) in 2006, for instance, seems to have been a way of giving Israeli politics direction simply by naming a political party rather than by having a genuine sense of purpose.

There is little reason to feel nostalgic about the early days of the exclusivist kibbutzim, which were designed to colonize hostile Palestinian land. But neither is there anything inspiring about the current re-branding exercise, which cashes in on a regressive, Western environmentalist fad in order merely to keep the kibbutzim running. Those who seek out alternative lifestyles on eco-farms are usually disaffected with mainstream society and so it seems that, today, the kibbutz movement is helping cynicism about modern life bloom.

• Matzah and Nudity: a winning combination?In one last round of Passover-related news, a 27-year-old yeshiva student in Israel went into a supermarket and got totally undressed, save for a sock on his cock. He was protesting the recent Israeli ruling that allows chametz to be sold during Pesach in places that are not public—including supermarkets and pizza places. The nude student was arrested by Israeli police for suspicion of performing an indecent act in public.
  

• In Jerusalem, Israel's national water company, Mekorot, has shut off the pipeline that brings water from the Kinneret because of crumbs of bread that fisherman on the lake drop into the water. During Passover the water in Jerusalem comes from local reservoirs and wells.

• Tonight in Tel Aviv a number of Conservative, Reform, and independent congregations will be gathering at the beachfront for a cross-denominational prayer to commemorate the splitting of the Red Sea, and to ask for the speedy release of the three captive Israeli soldiers Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

In non-Pesadik news:

• A New Year’s card that Anne Frank sent in 1937 has been found in an antique shop in Amsterdam.
  

• Jdate was nominated for a social networking Webby.

• A Florida human rights board ruled in favor of a woman who wanted to put a mezuzah on the doorframe of her condo. Laurie Richter was told by her condo association that if she didn’t take her mezuzah down she could face a $1000 fine, but the Broward County human rights board found that the Port Condominium could not make that demand. The condo association could face up to $11,000 in fines.

• Proving once again that dorky Jews can be sexy, a Brandeis University group called Students for Environmental Action (SEA) has put out a calendar called BARE: Brandeisians Advocating Real Environmentalism, which features 25 student models posing nude with strategically placed fruits, bicycles and computer chords. The calendar costs $10 and helps raise money for the group’s annual organic and locally grown food banquet. Maybe they should hang out with that yeshiva student in Israel…

• The Conservative movement’s halachic policy committee will be voting in May on a rabbinic legal opinion having to do with providing workers with a fair wage. Debate has already begun to get heated, with some rabbis saying that paying fair wages puts Conservative Jews at an economic disadvantage, and others saying that it’s an issue of social justice and cannot be compromised.

• This week saw two stories of rabbis involved in sexual abuse scandals. Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, who was accused of sexually molesting a number of young boys at Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Flatbush, pled guilty to three lesser charges of child endangerment and got three years of probation. It’s not clear why Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes was willing to drop so many charges in the high profile case.

• The chief rabbi of Kiryat Bialik in Israel is finally under house arrest after he was arrested more than a month ago on charges of sexual abuse and committing indecent acts with female Religious Council workers. The charges go back at least 18 years. 

Cultivate the Patience to See Burning Bushes

"Moses said, "I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn`t the bush burn up? When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush: Moses! Moses!" Exodus 3:3-4

Almost all of us know the story of the burning bush. Moses is out tending his father-in-law`s flock, when he notices an amazing site - a bush that burns but is not consumed. He stops to look at it, and God appears to him from the flame. This is the first time that Moses meets God "face to face." God taps Moses as the man to free the Israelites, and receive the Ten Commandments, and from there on, it`s all history.

But what if the story had gone differently? What if it went something a little bit more like this: Moses is tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He drives the flock into the wilderness, and comes to Horeb, the mountain of God. He had always found that place relaxing, although he never thought much about why, and since Moses had a lot on his mind this particular morning, he decided Horeb was, as always, a good place to sort though his thoughts.

Moses thought through the day ahead. As soon as he had tended to the flock, he needed to rush back to the tent, change into his dress robes, and catch a caravan into the city, because he had a packed day of meetings ahead of him. He was trying to figure out how he could get all his work done in time to get to the gym that night, and still get home before his son Gershom went to sleep, when his eye caught a marvelous sight! There was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not being consumed by the fire. Moses said, "I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn`t the bush burn up?"

Just then his cell phone vibrated. He grabbed the phone out of his robe pocket. It was a text message from his friend Nathan, who always seemed to know what was going on a few days before anyone else.

Moses read, "Wool futures 2 go up. Don`t sell 2day. Call L8r. N8."

By the time Moses had read the message, he was well past the bush and had already forgotten about the odd flames. With the phone still in hand, he called his wife, Zipporah, just to check in.

Five minutes later, when he got off the phone, he remembered the miraculous burning bush, but it was already well behind him. He thought of going back but realized then he wouldn`t have time to stop for a cup of coffee, so he called the fire department, which sent a crew to put out the fire.

Thus for a short time Moses became a local hero for saving the wilderness from burning down. Meanwhile, God tried the burning bush routine a few more times, but eventually, God realized that no one had time to notice the subtle miracle and scribbled a quick note: "Note to Self: Command these people to take a day off every week so they have time to notice my miracles!" Then God switched to email. But unfortunately, everyone thought God`s messages were spam, and deleted them. So ends the story of the Israelites. The Bible never gets past the Burning Bush scene of Exodus 3:3, well before the freeing of the Israelites from slavery, the parting of the Red Sea and the awe inspiring moment on Sinai, culminating with the giving of the Ten Commandments.

The rabbis teach us that the striking part of Moses` behavior in the Burning Bush story, in its original form, is that he takes the time to notice that the bush is burning but not being consumed. It takes patience to notice that something is on fire but not burning up, because you have to actually sit with it for awhile to observe the changes, or lack thereof.

The Bible says, "When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush," (Exodus 3:4) stressing that it is not until God sees that Moses turns aside that God actually speaks, as if this was the actual test. Will Moses notice? Will he take the time to stop and observe this peculiar site?

Today, our lives are so frenetic that, like Moses in the "what if" version, we rarely have time to catch our breath, let alone be alert for spiritual portals or miracles. One of the reasons many of us love the desert is that when we are surrounded by the vast vistas, the sparse vegetation, and the bold colored rocks, we do have time to stop and notice. Out "there" we are able to remove ourselves from everything that normally demands our attention - email, cell phones, voice mail, laundry, to-do lists, breaking news, not such breaking news, carpools, schedules, what should I make for dinner and on and on. Perhaps the spirituality many of us experience outdoors is created by the simple fact that we are less distracted, so we are able to be deeply attentive to what is around us as well as what is inside us.

Throughout the Bible, theophany (God appearing to humans) does not just occur in the wilderness, but it usually does. Perhaps God did try to show Himself in the towns or cities but there was so much tumult - people coming and going, merchants hawking their wares, kids playing running games, friends shouting greetings - that no one noticed Him.

One message of the Burning Bush story is that spiritual awareness involves slowing down and waking up to the world around us. I am not suggesting that if we slow down and take time to look, listen, and notice that we will actually meet God face to face, because according to Jewish tradition since the end of the Prophetic Age, God no longer makes direct contact with humanity.

But I believe we still have opportunities to meet the Divine (whatever you believe that to be), because in the wilderness, we connect with That Which is Greater Than Ourselves (one of my favorite names for God), and we are embraced by a sense of belonging, of oneness, and of peace.

I know that it`s not always possible (or even desirable) to relocate to the middle of the desert for a month. For people who live in the city, the closest you might get to the wilderness is an urban park. But even there you can cultivate the patience to see burning bushes and open yourself to spiritual opportunity. One of my favorite "tools" for slowing down, taking notice, and being fully present, is a short, sensory meditation that can be done anywhere. Let me share with you how it worked on an Adventure Rabbi hike I was leading on the trails above Boulder, Colorado.

A group of 40 people had gathered for one of our monthly Sabbath hikes. My task, in two hours, was to give the group a chance to separate from their work weeks, to slow down and catch up with themselves. Ultimately the goal was for them to taste "Sabbath rest."

There was a palpable buzz as we hiked up the trail - the excitement of people who were meeting for the first time and were not sure of what to expect. The steep red rocks ahead of us, jutting skyward above Boulder, had a luminous rosy glow to them, unique to the early morning hours. The small wildflowers of early spring poked courageously from the still cold ground, and here and there pockets of snow still clung to the rocks. Early morning in Colorado is a glorious time for those who are awake!

As we hiked, I invited the group to try to consciously slow down their minds and shift into their "Sabbath souls," to allow themselves to experience the calmness and grace that surrounded us. As I listened to the talk on the trail though, I realized that not only was the shift not happening but my group could not even notice much of what they were seeing around them. Their work weeks were too entrenching, still demanding thought and attention, and their conversations with others on the trail were too compelling.

I stopped the group at a large rock outcrop, to try to readjust. As they sat down to rest, I read them the Burning Bush story. They immediately pointed out how hard it is to be like Moses today, to be fully present, to be here and now. Then we discussed how difficult it can be, even here in the outdoors, surrounded by nature, to stop our brain wheels from turning.

Then I introduced one of my favorite mind focusing exercises, and the group agreed to try it. Each person would focus quietly on either listening, or seeing, for ten minutes, after which we would share what we had noticed.

Ten minutes went by, uncomfortably at first and then, all of a sudden, too quickly. When the time was almost over, I slid my backpacker guitar out of my backpack. Quietly, I began to play Oseh Shalom, a Jewish prayer for peace. Those who had wandered off to sit elsewhere made their way back to the rock, so that we were all sitting in a circle, and gradually the group joined me in song. Forty voices singing together, the ancient Hebrew words linking us together.

"So what did you notice?" I asked my now very chilled-out group.

"I noticed," said Greg, "how loud it was. I mean at first when we stopped talking it was really quiet, but after a while I noticed all these sounds I didn`t hear before, and it was really loud."

Kate said, "I hadn`t heard a single bird while we hiked. But when I was quiet I heard chickadees, robins, and cardinals and lots of bird sounds I didn`t even recognize."

"I didn`t realize how close we were to the road," said Steve. "It seemed so far away, but it was much louder than I thought it was."

The people who focused on the sense of sight during their ten minutes joined in.

Mark said, "At first I was disappointed that I had sat on the rock, instead of in the meadow where all the flowers are. But after a while I noticed that there are several different lichens growing here, and the greens are all different, and quite beautiful."

"I was really taken by the textures. I was sitting under a ponderosa pine, and the bark falls off in these really cool patterns," said Anita.

David added, "I sat in the meadow and I was amazed at how many different types of grasses there are. I thought it would be just one kind of grass but really there are quite a few."

Amazingly, we all seemed to share the experience of, "At first I thought one thing, but after I sat for a while I noticed something else." In order to be like Moses and truly notice what is directly in front of us, we had learned that we needed to sit quietly for a while, to observe, and to become fully present.

As we continued up the trail, a feeling of tranquility permeated the group. Conversations shifted, and some people chose to hike silently. At last, most of us were fully present in the experience.

When we reached the top of our hike, we gathered in a circle and joined together in traditional Sabbath prayers. Then we sat in silence for a long time, after the last exhalation of sound had drifted over the foothills. As I looked around the group, I saw that everyone`s faces appeared less strained, and their shoulders had finally relaxed.

And as we hiked down the trail, I heard snippets of conversations: "What a difference it makes when you really slow down and notice what is around you!"

"That was the first time I`ve ever said a prayer and felt anything."

"I didn`t know that Judaism could be so powerful."

"Too bad the congregation can`t have their sanctuary up here! It would be so easy to pray!"

I privately gave thanks for this amazing trail, for rocks and flowers, for grasses and birds, for this experience that allowed these 40 people to open their eyes, ears and souls to the wonder of creation. Their journey toward cultivating the patience to see burning bushes had begun.

I have repeated this simple yet powerful exercise countless times, seated and walking, outside and indoors. Although I love doing the exercise while hiking, it works indoors as well. I recently tried it with a group inside a sanctuary with wondrous results. What do you notice after gazing at your hand or listening to your own heartbeat for five minutes?

Heightened awareness is the first step toward engaging the spiritual possibility that continually surrounds us. It is accessible to us whether we live in Manhattan or Montana. Cultivate the patience to see burning bushes. You will be amazed at the wonders you discover. When we marvel at the world around us, we prepare to meet the miracles that await us, around most every corner.

From the book God in the Wilderness: Rediscovering the Spirituality of the Great Outdoors with the Adventure Rabbi by Rabbi Jamie Korngold, published by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

Related: Q&A with Rabbi Jamie Korngold, Author of God in the Wilderness

Okay, First Things First: stop shooting at us.The threat of man-made climate change looms larger than any other problem facing the planet, so it's no wonder that the discussion about global warming has turned into a kind of choreographed screaming that drowns out the facts.

Science unequivocally tells us that climate change is real and caused by man, but predictions of destruction on an epic scale don’t stack up.

Consider the plight of the polar bear – a pin-up ‘victim’ of global warming. Some campaigners claim polar bears are dying because of warmer temperatures, but the facts don’t support the hysteria.

Since the 1960s, polar bear numbers have actually grown five-fold. Polar bears will eventually be affected by climate change, but many creatures and plants in the Arctic will do better as temperatures rise. That doesn’t make up for waning populations of polar bears, but we need to hear both sides of the story.

Scare stories are based on faulty assumptions about just one declining bear population. For the sake of argument, let's accept those faulty assumptions at face value. That means we are losing 15 bears a year to climate change. This means that – at most – 15 bears could be saved this year if we could stop global warming right now. Of course, we can’t. The Kyoto Protocol will cost $180 billion dollars, yet will not affect temperatures by very much: it would probably save .06 of one bear each year.

There are smarter alternatives. Hunters shoot between 300 and 500 polar bears each year. We can revoke hunting rights and clamp down on poachers. Surely it makes more sense to save 300-500 polar bears at virtually no cost than it does to spend hundreds of billions of dollars saving just one.

Of course, we don’t just care about polar bears, but also about the human toll of climate change. It seems logical to expect more heat waves and therefore more deaths. But though this fact gets much less billing, rising temperatures will also reduce the number of cold spells. And the cold is a much bigger killer than the heat. According to the first complete peer-reviewed survey of climate change's health effects, global warming will actually save lives. It's estimated that by 2050, global warming will cause almost 400,000 more heat-related deaths each year. But at the same time, 1.8 million fewer people will die from cold.

The Kyoto Protocol, at great expense, is not a sensible way to stop people from dying in future heat waves. At a much lower cost, urban designers and politicians could lower temperatures more effectively by planting trees, adding water features, and reducing the amount of asphalt in at-risk cities. Estimates show that this could reduce the peak temperatures in cities by more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Global warming will claim lives in another way: by increasing the number of people at risk of catching malaria by about 3 percent over this century. According to scientific models, implementing the Kyoto Protocol for the rest of this century would reduce the malaria risk by just 0.2 percent.

On the other hand, we could spend $3 billion annually -- 2 percent of the protocol's cost -- on mosquito nets and medication and cut malaria incidence almost in half within a decade. For every dollar we spend saving one person through policies like the Kyoto Protocol, we could save 36,000 through direct intervention.

The world shouldn’t ignore climate change. Rather than throwing trillions of dollars at a treaty that will achieve little, I advocate a dramatic increase in spending on research into low-carbon energy. If every nation took part, this would be much more efficient than Kyoto, yet cost almost ten times less.

We should remember when we respond to the threat of climate change that other huge challenges face the planet:

• 4 million people will die from malnutrition this year
• 3 million from HIV/AIDS
• 2.5 million from indoor and outdoor air pollution
• 2 million from lack of micronutrients (iron, zinc and vitamin A)
• And almost 2 million from lack of clean drinking water.

Climate change policies are not the most effective way of dealing with these issues.

My latest project, Copenhagen Consensus 2008, will look at the world’s biggest challenges and ask some of the world’s top minds to identify the best solutions to them. Four Nobel laureates and four other top economists will weigh up how much good could be achieved by different approaches to world problems, and will identify the most effective ways to make a difference.

There’s more information at Copenhagen Consensus.

Cutting carbon emissions through Kyoto has become the instantaneous answer to any problem, but we could achieve more through simpler policies.

For one thing, we should stop shooting polar bears.

Bjørn Lomborg is the organizer of the Copenhagen Consensus 2008, adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, and author of Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Here Comes the Sun: harnessing solar power in the desert3-year-old Mohammed Abu-Kaf was was diagnosed at birth with sleep apnea, a life-threatening chronic illness. A resident of the 'recognised' village of Um Bathin, his father Hassan explained that Mohammed requires a special Seapack mask to keep his airways clear when he sleeps. Sounds simple enough, except that his mask must be plugged in to a regular power supply--a necessity made difficult by the fact that many Bedouin villages aren't connected to the national grid.

Filling the void left by a government seemingly unable and unwilling to address the sometimes dire situation that many of the Bedouin population find themselves in, Bustan--an NGO comprised of Jewish and Arab eco-builders, architects, academics, and farmers promoting social and environmental justice in Israel and Palestine--has initiated a project that utilizes solar energy for sick Bedouin children in the Negev. The organization has teamed up with solar designers and manufacturers at Interdan to bring solar-powered electricity to Bedouin villages that aren't connected to the national grid, and which would obtain electricity only by using expensive diesel or gas-powered generators at each family house.

The Abu-Kaf family home is now powered by a large solar panel, which Hassan turns around twice a day to catch the sun's rays.

"Thank you to Bustan for this," says Hassan. "Now my son is a happy and healthy child. He can sleep well at night, and so me and my family can now, too."

Um Bathin, a village of 3,500 residents who can trace their ancestral, semi-nomadic roots across many generations in this area, is one of seven Bedouin communities in the Negev that has been 'recognised' by the government in the past 3 years, but is still awaiting basic services such as electricity and water.

Founded in 1999 by American-Israeli Devorah Brous, and now headed by Bedouin activist Ra'ed Al-Mickawi, Bustan has a mandate to bring sustainable energy solutions to communities, focusing on a fair allocation for all of such resources. Previous projects have included work on a medical clinic made from straw bales in the 'un-recognised' Bedouin village of Wadi Al-Nam, south of the city of Be'erSheva.

Bustan also offers tours of the Negev area, bringing participants directly into the Bedouin villagers' homes and meeting places, and to meetings with the manager of the Ramat Hovav--Israel’s controversial chemical plant and industrial complex-- amongst other local players.

With Bustan's intervention and the involvement of Interdan, more sustainable and environmental solutions are on the horizon for Israel's marginalised communities.

Earth Day is a Jewish holiday. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but from the quantity of books that have been written on the intersecting subjects of Judaism and the environment, you'd think that Earth Day—coming up on April 22—appears on the Jewish calendar between Passover and Yom HaShoah. There are a lot of paths leading from Judaism to environmentalism and vice versa, and the following ten books offer gateways and guidance. Hopefully they're printed on recycled paper, too.

	God in the Wilderness: Rediscovering the Spirituality of the Great Outdoors, by Rabbi Jamie Korngold: "Balancing an in-depth knowledge of scripture with a wry sense of humor and a compassion for nature, Korngold reminds us of the nooks and crannies of the natural world and says that we must seek them out, soak them in and care for them. The variety of personal stories, tales of travel with various Adventure Rabbi groups and contemporary alternative biblical outcomes—what if Moses had been too busy texting to notice the burning bush?—make for a book that is easily digestible but at the same time worth savoring. Purposely sized to fit easily into a backpack or pocket, the call to return to the wild—or at least your local city park—is ever present."
	A Wild Faith: Jewish Ways into Wilderness, Wilderness Ways into Judaism, by Rabbi Mike Comins: "As the subtitle indicates, Comins asserts that the relationship between Torah and nature is a two-way trail: wilderness is the best place to work out a personal, unscripted, fresh relationship with divinity, and Judaism offers a vocabulary and practice to translate the experience of wilderness into a life of purpose and meaning. For those who love nature and know little about Judaism, and those who love Judaism but know little about wilderness, Comins's message is clear: one need not choose between the two to find potential, promise and fulfillment."
	The Way into Judaism and the Environment, by Dr. Jeremy Benstein: "For everyone who wants to understand how Jews view the natural world and the responsibilities of environmental stewardship, this book provides the way into an essential aspect of Judaism and allows you to interact directly with the sacred texts of the Jewish tradition. At a time of growing concern about environmental issues, Jeremy Benstein, PhD--a founder and associate director of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership--explores the relationship Jews have with the natural world and the ways in which Judaism contributes to contemporary social-environmental issues. He also shows us the extent to which Judaism is part of the problem and how it can be part of the solution."
	Ecology and the Jewish Spirit: Where Nature and the Sacred Meet, by Ellen Bernstein: "In today's modern culture, we've become separated from the spiritual possibilities of the natural world. "Modern" religion often overlooks nature, focusing instead on history and human drama. This book offers an alternative...a different, eye-and-soul-opening way of viewing religion: a perspective grounded in nature, and rich in insights for people of all faiths. Here, innovators in Judaism and ecology lead us on an exploration of the concepts of sacred space, sacred time, and community."
	Trees, Earth, and Torah, edited by Ari Elon, Naomi Mara Hyman, Arthur Waskow: "This exhaustive and exhausting collection of essays, biblical passages, poems, songs and recipes scrutinizes Tu B'Shvat, a minor Jewish festival that occurs on the 15th day (tu Equals number 15 in Hebrew) of Shvat, the fifth month of the Jewish year (it usually falls between mid-January and mid-February). Known as the New Year of the Tree, Jewish Arbor Day or Tree-Planting Day, Tu B'Shvat began as a tax day for calculating which fruit would be included in the tithe brought to the Temple. More recently, Tu B'Shvat has become a day for planting trees in Israel and for celebrating ecological concerns."
	Spirit in Nature: Teaching Judaism and Ecology on the Trail, by Matt Biers-Ariel, Deborah Newbrun, Michal Fox Smart: "This pioneering guide book awakens hikers of all ages to the miracles of God's creations along the trail. Each discovery revealed through the book's 27 engaging activities becomes an adventure of the senses and the spirit as hikers recite blessings over natural phenomena, "build a tree" with their bodies, and recreate the rainbow of colors that adorn fields and trees and stones. A special index highlights the connection between key Jewish values and the wonder of nature. Spirit in Nature will guide camp directors, counselors, teachers, religious leaders, parents, and youth group leaders in nourishing the spiritual lives of hikers exploring the natural world."
	Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology, by Ellen Bernstein: "Many people see the environmental crisis as a spiritual one, but author Ellen Bernstein sees the Book of Genesis as a guide to living peaceably with the Earth. The creation story, according to Bernstein, invites a deep appreciation of nature and may be the perfect muse for a world that is hungry for an integrated ecological vision. This message, however, is a hidden one. Thus the importance of The Splendor of Creation. Written from a Jewish perspective, this book is both accessible and compelling to a broad audience, as it explores Genesis 1, verse by verse, reflecting on the language that contributes to a holistic ecological vision."
	Judaism and Environmental Ethics: A Reader, edited by Martin D. Yaffe: "Brought together in one volume for the first time, the most important scholars in the field touch on diverse disciplines including deep ecology, political philosophy, and biblical hermeneutics. This ambitious book illustrates - precisely because of its interdisciplinary focus - how longstanding disagreements and controversies may spark further interchange among ecologists, Jews, and philosophers. Both accessible and thoroughly scholarly, this dialogue will benefit anyone interested in ethical and religious considerations of contemporary ecology."
	Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word, by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and twenty others: "This volume intends to contribute to the nascent discourse on Judaism and ecology by clarifying diverse conceptions of nature in Jewish thought and by using the insights of Judaism to formulate a constructive Jewish theology of nature. The twenty-one contributors consider the Bible and rabbinic literature, examine the relationship between the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of revelation in the context of natural law, and wrestle with questions of nature and morality. They look at nature in the Jewish mystical tradition, and they face the challenges to Jewish environmental activism caused by the tension between the secular nature of the environmental discourse and Jewish religious commitments."
	Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel, by Alon Tal: Virtually undeveloped one hundred years ago, Israel, the promised "land of milk and honey," is in ecological disarray. In this gripping book, Alon Tal provides - for the first time ever - a history of environmentalism in Israel, interviewing hundreds of experts and activists who have made it their mission to keep the country's remarkable development sustainable amid a century of political and cultural turmoil. The modern Zionist vision began as a quest to redeem a land that bore the cumulative effects of two thousand years of foreign domination and neglect. Since then, Israel has suffered from its success. A tenfold increase in population and standard of living has polluted the air. The deserts have bloomed but groundwater has become contaminated. Urban sprawl threatens to pave over much of the country's breathtaking landscape. Yet there is hope. Tal's account considers the ecological and tactical lessons that emerge from dozens of cases of environmental mishaps, from habitat loss to river reclamation. Pollution in a Promised Land argues that the priorities and strategies of Israeli environmental advocates must address issues beyond traditional green agendas."

How Much: is enough? I go to my closet every morning, push around a lot of hangers and choose what to wear. If a favorite pair of pants is in the wash, no matter: I have another. If this black sweater doesn’t match my pants, or the occasion, or the weather, or my mood, no matter: I have another.

Yet I don’t think of myself as having too much. Good people (the kind I imagine myself to be) don’t have too much. We don’t eat too much or drink too much or spend too much or own too much or use too much.

But there it is: A closetful of plenty. I know I am not alone. America is bursting with too-muchness. So much so that we have to build special buildings just to hold the too-much stuff that won’t fit into our increasingly too-big homes.

So I am left to wonder: How did my closet get this way? If I have a lot now, then a while ago, along the road from Some to Plenty, I must have had Just Enough. When was that? Why didn’t I notice? Why didn’t I stop?

Every time we turn on the TV, surf the web, or read a magazine, the challenge stares us in the face: How much more do we need? In light of this assault, it is hard to know how to measure enough. It sounds like it could be a third grade word problem: If I have Plenty of clothes in my closet, how many would I have to give away to get back to Enough? Yet, the solution lies not in numbers, but in the spirit. It demands that I reconnect with the notion of “full,” and that I cultivate a modest but satisfying measure of Fullness.

If we could turn down our appetite thermostats—if we could become fuller sooner—we would have a head-start on solving environmental degradation. Imagine how much less damaging our lifelong footprints would be if our E-quotient, “Enough quotient,” was modestly set, and if we always stopped when it was full?

It's true that fixing the environment requires energetic research and development to bring us new technologies at an affordable price. But is also requires a renewed awareness of the blessings of sova, satisfaction, satedness, Enoughness (a word that Alice Trillin used). If we "needed" less stuff, if we wanted less stuff, there would be more resources to share and more goods to go around, which would buy more time to discover technological fixes.

Most of all, people would be happier, for we are driven to accumulate too much by a persistent, marketplace-cultivated sense of dissatisfaction in what we still don’t have, and thus what we have not yet become.

The path to Enoughness is satisfaction and pleasure in what we already possess, and who we are. In such a spiritual state, everyone—including the natural world—would win.

Related: 10 Books on the Intersection of Judaism and the Environment

The British government is building a nuclear power infrastructure, and environmental ideologues are whining. There are several reasonable objections against the plan, but some are echoes of the anti-nuclear hysteria that has obstructed the building of nuclear plants in the US, as well as the UK, for decades.

Might America follow Britain's example? It's a technology that produces reliable energy, serves as a tremendous boon to the economy, and doesn't exacerbate global warming. But many environmentalists feel that technology should neither make a profit nor emerge from military research -- which is never beneficial. Of course, Soviet mismanagement caused a disaster, but compare this with the entire nation of France.

Either you believe that we should employ all feasible strategies for combating global warming, or else you're just posturing for attention.

You know what I care about? Torah. Know what else? The environment. Also: the economy.


It's Not Easy: being Green For All There’s an awesome new organization that works to bring environmentalism not just to rich people who can afford hybrid SUVs, but also to low-income families, and neighborhoods. Not only that, but Green For All is committed to creating more “green collar” jobs, too. Here’s their mission statement:

Green for All has a simple but ambitious mission: to help build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

By advocating for a national commitment to job training, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy--especially for people from disadvantaged communities--we fight both poverty and pollution at the same time. We are committed to securing one billion dollars by 2012 to create “green pathways out of poverty” for 250,000 people in the United States, by greatly expanding federal government and private sector commitments to “green collar” jobs.

This is an organization that helps get people jobs so they can pull themselves out of poverty, and at the same time tries to figure out ways we can respond better to the world we live in, and make sure we create a sustainable environment for our kids. Both Rambam and Choni the Circlemaker would be so proud!

Sign up to be a Green For All Supporter to make sure you help out with this program. You don’t even have to give money (unless you have a billion bucks lying around that you want to get rid of) just get on their email list and start taking small steps toward a world that’s Green For All!

Eight days of renewable energy: Greening the menorahThough we don't often think of it this way, Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of renewable energy—the renewable energy of the Maccabees, who pursued with much vigor their fight against the Assyrian-Greeks, and the renewable energy of some unusual olive oil, which kept the Temple's eternal flame alight for eight days instead of one.

This Hanukkah—as American power plants continue to emit roughly 10 percent of the world's annual global warming pollution, and as UN negotiators discuss whether they will solve the problem of climate change—we can celebrate the renewable energy of old by switching over to a new form of renewable energy called Green Power. Green Power is pollution-free electricity produced by wind turbines, low-impact hydroelectric systems, solar arrays and other renewable sources. Switching to Green Power cuts the average American household's greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent.

Of course, solar panels and small wind turbines are great ways to get in on the renewable energy action. But you don't need any special hardware to join the modern Maccabees. In many areas of the country you can get green power directly from local electric suppliers . The juice will still come through the same transmission lines and will still be serviced by your local electric company.

Green Power: Because God isn't making any more of that olive oil One of the best ways to find out how to buy Green Power is to visit the website of Center for Resource Solutions, an organization that certifies renewable energy. Click on "Buy Green-E Certified," and read the "Ways to Buy" so you understand the terms. Then enter your city and state into the search criteria. You will then see a list of suppliers who can talk you through the process of making the switch. They can also explain the effect that switching will have on your electric bill. (In most places, green power costs slightly more than the fossil-fuel-generated power that's cooking the planet.)

Another way to find a green power supplier is to Google "Renewable Energy," along with your city, county or state and check out what you find.

The rabbis of the Talmud debated which was the actual Hanukkah miracle: the seemingly impossible military victory? Or, that long-lasting organic olive oil? Who knows. But today, we can power our homes and businesses using nothing but thin air and pure light, with no superhuman effort necessary. That's pretty miraculous. By pursuing with great vigor the struggle against global warming, and embracing our own sources of renewable power, we appropriately honor the story of Hanukkah.

*****

Want more environmental tips for Hanukkah? Read Solving the Climate Crisis One Menorah at a Time, Arthur Waskow and Jeff Sultar's eight-day plan for the holiday.

            As I discussed in my last post, there is a new movement afoot aiming to re-understand biblical agricultural laws and find their application for modern day Jews living outside the land of Israel.  Some of these laws like peah (leaving the corners of your field for the poor), shichechah (leaving sheathes forgotten during the harvest for poor) and leket (leaving dropped harvest for the poor) only make sense when one has poor neighbors who can glean from one’s harvest.  Others like shmittah (every seven years renouncing all debts and letting the land lie fallow) and yovel (redistributing land to all people every forty nine years) only apply in the land of Israel.  Modern North American Jews who live in a different social reality have a choice: they can either write off these laws as meaningless, or they can interpret them to mean something different from the original law.   

            Peah is one law agricultural law that has begun to be reclaimed by some Jewish groups in America.  Jewish farmers at Adamah leave one corner of their field ceremonially un-harvested and give a portion of their harvest to a local food pantry.  Others have taken the law and applied it to their salary, taking a portion of their income each month and donating it to fight hunger.  People have similarly understood the laws of leket, shichechah, and ma’aser, donating portions of their wages to relevant charitable causes.   One of my friends has found a very interesting way to connect with the laws concerning peah.    He has decided to grow out his peyos (chassidic looking side curls on the corners of his head) as a reminder that his thoughts should be directed to G!d’s service, just as the corners of one’s field are devoted to the poor.   All of these interpretations are interesting ways to find relevance in seemingly meaningless laws.

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I just read an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune about how the religious right is suddenly becoming interested in animal welfare. Apparently it used to be something they wouldn’t touch because it was too liberal and touchy-feely (also maybe because the religious right has a certain fondness for guns, which are often used for purposes that I would struggle to call animal welfare) but now respect for animals is en vogue, and is even showing up at far right places like Liberty University:

Among the Liberty faculty -- and conservative evangelicals in general -- the animal-rights movement is often disdained as a secular, liberal cause.

Environmentalism: No longer particularly controversial

But activists have been working with increasing intensity to shed that image. They're lecturing in Quaker meetinghouses and Episcopal churches, setting up websites that post Scripture alongside recipes for vegan soup -- and using biblical language to promote political initiatives, such as laws mandating bigger cages for pregnant pigs.

On Wednesday, clergy from 20 faith traditions -- including Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic -- will sign a statement declaring a moral duty to treat animals with respect. At a ceremony in Washington, they will call on all people of faith to stop wearing fur, reduce meat consumption, and buy only from farms with humane practices. The Best Friends Animal Society, which brought the group together, plans to recruit volunteers to bring that message into at least 2,000 congregations nationwide.

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Another organization that I was surprised to see jumping on the trend bandwagon (even if it is for a good cause) is the Jewish National Fund, which recently launched a website encouraging you to offset your carbon emissions by planting trees in Israel through JNF. They even have one of those nifty calculators that will tell you how much crap you put into the air and how many trees to buy to offset it.

Now, at Jewcy we’ve had some issues with JNF in the past. I’ve written about how their planting practices have been problematic (um, hi, we need more than one kind of tree) and Eli let us know that JNF was auctioning off some gross Playboy stuff (debauchery is fine if it’s done for trees in Israel, I guess). Still, I think JNF’s GoNeutral page is a step in the right direction. Check it out!

We talk a lot about tzedakah, naturally, and usually give links of places where you can donate. But, of course, we shouldn't overlook the many other, and just as important, ways to give that aren't necessarily just a matter of writing a check. Sometimes, giving can mean rolling up your sleeves and helping, being present, lending a hand, collecting and donating items, or just living simpler, more conscious lives.

Riders!: On your mark, get set... Enter Hazon (Hebrew for "vision"), an organization started in 1999 with this vision:

"Our vision is to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community-- as a step towards a healthier and more sustainable world for all. Our vision is of a renewed Jewish community: one that is rooted in Jewish tradition, engaged with the world around us, radically inclusive, passionate and creative... and that recognizes that there are shivim panim l'torah - seventy ways to understand the Torah... and ultimately to live Hazon's theme-quote: Torah is a commentary on the world and the world is a commentary on the Torah..."

How are they living this wonderful, but very ambitious ideal? Through programs such as different food/health programs to educate members of our community to make smarter, healthier food choices and to consider the benefits of local and organic food as well as bike rides to raise money for various project-causes such as Cycling for Peace and environmental bike rides in various cities. You sigh up, do a little fundraising and voila. Challenging yourself, improving your fitness, educating yourself and helping to heal the world with these events, some even with a zero-carbon footprint. Check out their "People of The Bike" the Jewish environmental bike ride in NY, the Arava/Hazon bike ride in Israel, and the many other ways on their website for you to do something very positive on two wheels.

Digging deeper into their website, you'll also notice their volunteer page, listing specific types of volunteers they could use a hand from. But, like any nonprofit, they can use our dollars, too.

 

 

 

Is a vegan diet better for the environment than a vegetarian diet? Today, Slate asks that question. Either way, though, giving up meat is apparently good for the Earth: "going vegetarian has the same effect on carbon dioxide emissions as switching from a Chevrolet Suburban to a Toyota Camry."

Personally, I don't really give a crap which one is better for the environment. I'm a vegetarian for bleeding-heart ethical reasons, and the same ethical concerns force me to acknowledge that recent human history would have been safer, kinder, and gentler had the modern environmental movement never existed. It doesn’t take a carnivore to see that environmentalist hysteria takes on a consistent pattern: affluent Westerners decide that some long-enjoyed privilege of modern life is evil, and set about depriving the people of developing countries of that privilege.

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GMOs: totally not kosherI've been grappling with the problem of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) for a long time now, and as my awareness of them has increased, their presence in my diet has decreased. This is partly due to health concerns, partly due to environmental factors, and partly a matter of social responsibility. The fact is, I don't trust companies like Monsanto with my body, with the land that my food is grown on, nor to have respect for (the few remaining) farmers who are still acting as stewards of the earth. No authoritative consensus has been reached on whether or not GMO foods are kosher, and I've been looking to the Torah for insight into the debate. What I've found thus far, is that so many of the practices inherent in agribusiness contradict the laws of the Torah and the Talmud, it's almost impossible to conceive of GMOs being kosher.

Starting from the beginning, here's a passage from Genesis, 1.29:

God said, "See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food."

GMO crops have historically been developed not to bear viable seed. In other words, each batch of GMO seeds will yield only one crop, and the seeds from that crop, the "second generation seeds" lose their vigor, forcing farmers to buy new seed each year. Companies like Monsanto have been developing Terminator seed technology.

Terminator refers to plants that are genetically engineered to render sterile seeds at harvest – a technology that aims to maximize seed industry profits by preventing farmers from re-planting harvested seed.

If that doesn't fly in the face of Torah, I don't know what does. Next, there's the problem of cross-pollination. Both the Torah and the Talmud comment on concern for one's neighbor. First, there's the good old quote from Leviticus 19.18:

Love your fellow as yourself

The Mishna takes it further, offering commentary on damages to neighbors.

Surprisingly, we are cautioned against causing the loss of benefit to another, even if he has no legal claim to it. The principle "that one should not drain the water of his well when others need it" is found in the Talmud. A Jew is even commanded to prevent damage threatening his neighbor from an outside force.

The Talmudic sages expanded these laws to also prohibit psychological disturbances, such as possible exposure to a neighbor's observation, noise, and so on. Anyone suffering from such annoyances may appeal to the courts to force his neighbor to remove them. This may include the removal of the cause of the noise, even if the noise is only indirectly due to it and even if its removal will cause the owner financial hardship. Based on these rules, the following guiding principle was drafted: "One may not save his own property from damage at the expense of his fellow's damage." This principle could serve as a foundation in modern legislation for pollution control.

Cross-pollination of GM seeds has come to be called "genetic" or "biotech" pollution. It can be caused, for example, when wind transports a GMO seed into a non-GMO field. The horror stories of farmers finding that their crops have been cross-pollinated with GMOs are rampant. Not only do organic crops lose their premium value, but to add insult to injury, many of these farmers often wind up getting sued by the very biotech companies whose seed polluted their fields in the first place. Take Percy Schmeiser, who was sued by Monsanto when his fields were contaminated by their GMO "Roundup Ready canola." Then there was the whole Starlink debacle, in which a biotech corn not approved for human consumption made its way onto grocery store shelves.

These two issues alone--GMO crops that don't bear viable seeds, and damages to neighbors (near and far)--seem like reasons good enough to label GMOs as Not Kosher, but they're just the beginning. I'll follow this post up soon with more examples of why I don't think there's anything kosher about GMOs.

Yes yes, we all agree that it's disgraceful the way mankind has encroached on the territory of the great beasts, destroying more and more of their natural environment and herding them into the tiny reserves where they jostle for space with so many other dispossessed creatures. But disgraceful as it may be, come on, a battle royal between lions and buffalo and crocodiles? That just rocks.

There are precisely two parts of Passover that I like. One is making my family’s charoset, which I do with an old meat grinder, as per my grandfather’s custom. This is What Charoset Should Look Like: Meat grinders NOT optionalThe other is the prayer for dew, tefilat tal that we say on the first day of Passover. I missed tefilat tal because I wasn’t in walking distance of a synagogue on the first day of Passover, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it today since it’s pouring in Nashville.

Twice every year Jews praise God for providing us with water and rain. On the last day of Sukkot, during the Musaf Amidah, we open the ark, and the person leading services dons his or her kitel and sings tefilat geshem, a special prayer that recalls all of the forefathers, plus Moses, Aaron, and the tribes of Israel. Each is connected to water. Abraham’s gardens were saved from fire and from water, Isaac’s blood was almost spilled at the sacrifice like water, Jacob struggled with a creature of fire and of water, Moses hit the rock and out came water, Aaron purified himself and the other priests with water, and the twelve tribes were lead through walls of water to freedom. At the end of each stanza of the poem we beseech God to grant us water (i.e. rain) in the coming months. It’s a really beautiful prayer, and one that I think about every time I hear that the Kinneret is at record low, which is pretty much always.

For the next four months or so we add a line in the beginning of the Amidah asking God to cause the wind to blow and rain to fall. These four months are the rainy season in Israel, and if you’ve ever been in Jerusalem for a thunderstorm you know just how intense they can be. God is not kidding with that wind stuff, either.
I Dew: Love Dew
Then, on the first day of Passover, during the musaf Amidah we open the ark again, the person leading services again dons a kitel, and we say tefilat tal, the prayer for dew. But where tefilat geshem focuses on the spiritual and theological history of water, tefilat tal is much more practical. We need dew in order for our agricultural work to be productive. Urban life, too, is dependent on dew, we remind God, and we connect the role of dew in maintaining livelihoods in Israel to the return of Jews from the Diaspora. Though similarly structured, and composed by the same guy who wrote tefilat Geshem, Rabbi Eleazar Ha-Kallir, who lived in 7th Century Palestine, it’s interesting that the prayers for rain and for dew are pretty different.

It always struck me as weird that we don’t go ahead and ask God for rain even after the rainy season has pretty much ended. I mean, we could get lucky, right? And it’s not like we don’t still need rain after Pesach, it’s just less likely that we’ll get it because the wet season is almost over.

I once asked a rabbi about this, and what he reminded me of the famous lines from Kohelet: 3:1-2

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;

As Jews we have to recognize that there is a time for a rain, and a time for dew. We don’t get things randomly. Ours is a religion about respecting borders, and among the borders we have to respect are those of the seasons and the rains. We also have to learn to ask only for what we need without being greedy or wasteful.

These are all messages that resonate with me post-Passover. As I helped friends pack up their Passover dishes and uncover their counters and toss out uneaten macaroons it occurred to me that one of the most challenging lessons of Passover is to buy and make only what we really need. There’s a tendency to freak out and buy every K for P product one can find, especially in places like Nashville, where there aren’t many to choose from. But every year, when we’re left with extra food what we should be thinking about is how to ask for and buy only what we really need without going overboard.

You know how environmental activists are always goin on about sustainable ecosystems? This year, make a pact to make your kitchen a sustainable environment. It should be able to provide for you and your family, but think about cutting back on the extras. It’ll put more cash in your pocket, and maybe even a few extra drops of dew on the hills of Galilee.