How Many Jews: does it take to change a light bulb?During a time when global environmental catastrophes loom large, clear, and real, it's natural to question the impact of our individual actions. Considering that China is opening a new coal-based power plant every week, does my switching to an energy efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) really matter?

The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) challenged the American Jewish community to start fighting climate change with that simple act. During our How Many Jews Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb? campaign, Jews across America heeded the call and switched out their energy inefficient incandescent bulbs for CFLs. Thanks to the response in homes, offices, schools, and synagogues, over 80,000 CFLs were purchased, keeping approximately 29,000 tons of CO2 out of our atmosphere.

Simply put: Yes, your independent acts of environmental conservation matter. Below is a list of 10 actions with a range of required effort that will help you and the Jewish community reduce our collective impact on global warming.

1. Change 5 light bulbs to energy efficient and cost effective compact CFLs ( if all American Jews did this it would be the same as taking 1.76 million cars off the road for a year)
   
2. Switch out a meat meal for a vegetarian one (global livestock is responsible for 18% of CO2 emissions and 37% of methane emissions - a greenhouse gas that is twenty times more potent than CO2)
   
3. Eat local (in the US, conventional food travels an average of 1,500 miles to reach our markets)
   
4. Find new meaning in old traditions: walk or bike to synagogue (only 6% of all trips made in the US are by bike or foot)
   
5. Recycle ½ of your household waste (saves 2,400 pounds of CO2 a year)
   
6. Install a programmable thermostat and drop it 2 degrees in the winter and raise it 2 degrees in the summer (saves 2,000 pounds of CO2 a year)
   
7. Eliminate “phantom loads” by unplugging unused electronics, shutting off power strips, or buying smart ones that will shut it off for you (if all phantom loads in US homes were stopped, we could shut down 17 power plants)
   
8. Fully inflate your tires and improve mpg efficiency (Saves 347 lbs of CO2 a year)
   
9. Plant a tree – in your own backyard or Israel (if all Jews in America did this it, 6 million tons of CO2 absorbed over its life)
   
10. Due to the fact that CO2 is a global gas, when you’ve taken all the actions you can, buy carbon credits to offset the rest.

To purchase appliances that enable tips 6, 7 and 8 click here.

Though it may be scary, it’s also empowering. We - in our houses with our family, offices with our colleagues, and community with our friends - can be part of the solution.

Yes, you can have you seder catered, but that’s no fun at all. If you don’t feel up to making a brisket and matzah ball soup for 30, at least try making your own charoset—it’s fun, easy, really yummy, and there are tons of different kinds of recipes to try. And remember, charoset is supposed to look like mortar, so the results can be plenty ugly as long as they taste sweet.

charoset: looks nasty, but you know you love itTraditional Ashkenazi Charoset

• 5 pound bag of apples (I like red delicious, but if you want your charoset tart, use granny smith), peeled and cored.
• About half a bottle of sweet red wine (Manischewitz works great)
• 1/3 to ½ cup of cinnamon
• one big bag of walnuts (about a pound)

Grind the apples and walnuts until they’ve formed a weird beige kind of runny paste. Add cinnamon and wine and keep trying until you get the consistency and taste you’re looking for. Ideally, you’d do the grinding with a meat grinder, but a food processor will work as well. Makes enough for two seders of twenty people each.

Looking for a gourmet take? Try Wolfgang Puck’s recipe.

Traditional Sephardi Charoset

Sephardi charoset usually contains dates, and is a little chunkier than its Ashkenazi cousin.

• 4 oz dates
• 4 oz figs
• 4 oz apricots
• 4 oz raisins
• 1 apple (Macintosh, preferably), peeled and cored
• 1 cup walnuts or almonds, ground
• 1 tablespoon honey
• Manischewitz
• cinnamon

In a food processor, grind the dried fruits until they’re chunky and add the apple, which should moisten everything a little. Mix in the ground nuts and the honey, and add some manischevitz until you have the consistency you want (sticky and chunky is the norm, but go with your gut) Then you can either add cinnamon to taste, or roll the charoset into balls about the size of a walnut and refrigerate. A few hours before serving, roll the balls in the cinnamon so they’re completely coated. Serve at room temperature. Makes enough for about 30.

For a gourmet take, try the recipe at Epicurious.

There’s a couple of great collections of Charoset recipes online if you’re looking to be more adventurous. The Canadian Jewish News covers the classics alongside recipes for Coconut and Lemon Charoset, Maple Charoset, Seven Fruit Charoset, and Turkish Charoset. Jewishfamily.com has charoset recipes from Morocco, Afghanistan, and India. Finally, Kosher4passover.com covers every exotic Charoset you could possibly imagine, including Provencal and Georgian.

The Sabbath: A palace in timeLiving in Iowa, Dublin and Nashville, I have had plenty of explanatory conversations about Shabbat. When people want to have plans on Friday night, or wonder why I don’t go to football games on Saturday morning, or just want to know why I won’t turn on the bathroom light on occasion, I end up having to explain Shabbat beyond the standard, “It’s a day of rest.”

In situations like this, one can always turn to Jew FAQ, which provides easy-to-understand explanations of all kinds of Jewish traditions and laws on levels from the basic to the more advanced. If you feel comfortable sending someone to the Jew FAQ explanation, it’s excellent.

But here’s what I usually say:

On Shabbat, we refrain from doing anything that’s creative. Because we’re honoring the creation of the world, and the rest that followed it, we ourselves rest, and stop from our generally creative habits. We don’t write. We don’t draw. We don’t cook, or play music. We also don’t do some things that wouldn’t necessarily seem creative, but that are on a technical level. For instance, driving a car is creative in that sparks are created in the engine. Turning on a light creates a circuit.

But Shabbat isn’t about refraining from creating so much as it is about resting and taking some time to be rejuvenated. Talk to people who have kept Shabbat for a while and they don’t complain about all the things they can’t do: watch TV, cook dinner, go online, listen to or play music. They’ll likely talk about how refreshing and relaxing the day is: how they get to take a nap, spend time with family and friends, play board games and eat a good meal with fun and interesting people. Shabbat seems restrictive on first analysis, but most people who observe Shabbat don’t see it that way.

For further reading on the rockin’ qualities of Shabbat, check out the amazing (and quite short) book by Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath. It’s a quick read, but really intense, and a wonderful introduction to Heschel’s work.

Shabbat Dinner: jew can do it!My favorite part of any week is Shabbat dinner. Good food, good friends, and usually a somewhat inappropriate conversation always means a good time. Hosting a Shabbat dinner can seem like a formidable task, especially if you’re not big on entertaining in general, but it doesn’t have to be a stressful experience. Here’s a handy little schedule for planning your next Shabbat dinner.

Sunday-Tuesday: Invite guests. Eight is the ideal number for one raucous conversation, and ideally you want to keep the ratio of guys to girls fairly even, but there’s no hard and fast rules here. Remember to ask your guests if they have any food allergies.

Tuesday: Plan menu. You know your own limitations in the kitchen, but a nice baseline standard is challah, a soup or appetizer, a main course, a vegetable, a starch and a dessert.

Wednesday: Make a shopping list based on the menu you’ve planned.

Thursday: Shop. Don’t forget Shabbat candles and a bottle of wine. On Thursday night prepare at least two of the items on your menu so that Friday isn’t so crazy. If you buy challah and make a soup that can just be thrown in the crock pot and/or buy dessert, you’re not looking at much cooking at all.

Friday: Finish cooking. Make sure you’ve got candlesticks and a challah cover. You also probably want a siddur to consult for Kiddush, hand washing and motzi. And possibly those little booklets (bentchers) with grace after the meal in them. If you plan wisely, you can cook for as little as an hour and a half on Friday and still have a plenty elaborate meal for your friends. If people bring a dish, you’re down even more work.

Here's a checklist of essential items to make sure you have ahead of time:
Challah and Challah Cover
Candles and Candlesticks
Wine and Kiddush Cup
Siddur and bentchers

It’s really not that hard, and a good Shabbat dinner can pretty much carry you through until next week, especially if the leftovers are good.

Previously: How to Host Havdalah 

A Traditional Havdalah Set: wine, spice box, and braided candleMost secular Jews are at least vaguely familiar with the various blessings and observances of Shabbat, but unless you attended a Jewish camp or went on an Israel trip, you might not have experienced Havdalah. The mini-ceremony performed at the close of Shabbat (when you can count three stars in the sky on Saturday night), Havdalah means "separation" in Hebrew, and the ritual signifies separating the holy from the mundane. It's a simple and beautiful ceremony, and a pleasant way to start a Saturday night. Here's some handy info on Havdalah, along with the items you'll need to host your own private service.

• Imbibe: First, you need something to drink. You can’t use water, but pretty much anything else will do. Ideally, get some kosher wine, but tea or coke or juice will work in a bind. Pour your beverage into a cup all the way to the rim. Some people pour enough so that the liquid overflows a little, to symbolize overflowing love and whatnot.

• Inhale: You also need some fragrant spices, such as cloves. I just use the ground cinnamon from my spice drawer, but you can use a spice sachet, potpourri, or make your own aromatic blend. When you sing the blessing over the spices, pass them around so everyone can breathe them in.

• Illuminate: Finally, you need a candle with more than one wick. If you don't have a traditional Havdalah candle, you can just hold two regular candles together, or you can buy one of the many fancy, braided options on the market. They last for ages since you only have them lit a few minutes every week. Everyone should hold out their hands to see the candlelight shed on them during the blessing over the fire. At the end of the ceremony, the candle is put out in the wine.

You can listen to a partial track of Debbie Friedman's Birchot Havdalah here. Havdalah prayers, transliterations, and translations can be found here.

Finally, there's one long blessing at the end:

Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe
Who separates between sacred and secular
between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations
between the seventh day and the six days of labor
Blessed are You, Lord, who separates between sacred and secular. (Amen)

Get Creative: make your own spice boxFor tips on how to conduct the ritual itself, see Jew FAQ’s helpful page, My Jewish Learning, or Hillel’s explanation.

Finally, there are some weird but cool customs having to do with Havdalah. For example, if you’re an unmarried girl, you’re supposed to hold the candle at the height of the husband you’d like. Also, when you put the candle out in the wine at the end (after drinking from it), you can dip your fingers in (symbolizing holiness) and touch them to your temples (for intellectual strength), your heart (for love), and your pockets (for financial success).

Since Rosh Hashana is almost upon us I thought I’d give y’all a bunch of links to websites that explain how to forgive others, and how to ask others for forgiveness. It’s not the most fun task ever, but think how free you’ll feel afterwards…
Pwetty pwease?
eHow
How to Ask for Forigveness
Simple, fast, clean

Lessons in Lifemanship
Forgiveness
It’s basically a self help book that’s been published online. Kind of cheesey, but has some good ideas.
"One of the most gracious responses to an apology I have ever heard resulted from an accident in a fast-food restaurant when one of our daughters spilled a big glop on the floor. She apologized profusely to the young man who came to clean it up, but he smiled and said, "Don't apologize. If you didn't spill, I wouldn't have a job."

Ask the Rabbi
How to Forgive Yourself
Why is it that so many people have trouble admitting when they're wrong?
One possible reason is that without an absolute standard of right and wrong, there's may be no compelling reason to admit wrongdoing.

 

God Articles
Must Ask Forgiveness
“The eraser of forgiveness is the only thing that can wipe away our sins.”

Plus an article on holding grudges. Which is apparently bad, though I’m not totally convinced.
Don't Hold a Grudge
“Grudges stay with you, kind of like chewing gum on the bottom of your shoe.”

Since I’m nearing the end of my summer at Yeshivat Hadar, there have been the requisite discussions among students about what would be most appropriate as gifts for our teachers.  And as usual, the debates have been heated and somewhat personal.  Besides negotiations as to how much everyone will give, we have to decide if and how much we want to donate back to the yeshiva.  And of course, everyone has an idea of what would be fantastic, and what would be a horrendous faux pas. 
Tis A Gift To Be Simple: and simplicity is a good guideline for gifts, too.
I am something of a gift maven.  I am the kind of person who buys something months in advance of someone’s birthday simply because I think it’s a very appropriate gift for that person, and I’m afraid it will be gone when I come back for it.  I write long personal cards full of superlatives, and I wrap things with pretty paper, and tie them up with sparkly bows.  That said, I don’t find gift giving to be easy.  In fact, sociologically, giving someone a present is a sign of aggression and I find myself acutely aware of this when I’m searching for the perfect birthday present.  I want to find something that my friend will like, and that will make it clear I was searching for exactly the right thing.  I’m also aware of this whenever I enter any Jewish institution, since they tend to be plastered with the names of donors, who kindly or generously gave this elevator, this classroom, this desk, this siddur, etc.  Jews, in fact, seem to be the progenitors of the aggressive gift, and while it seems to have gotten us in with some helpful types in the Bible, giving things away hasn’t exactly done wonders for contemporary Jews. 

Still, I think it’s important to show gratitude to our teachers and friends, and as a result I’ve come up with three golden rules of Jewish gift giving.  These should work for almost any Jewish occasion that would require a gift.

The Three Golden Rules of Jewish Gift Giving

1. Unless the person in question has died, giving money to a charity in someone’s name should at the very least be supplemented by a beautiful card.  Ideally, charitable donations will come with an additional small gift/keepsake for the giftee.  Because unless Aunt Sylvia can walk around with the Sylvia Glass Classroom, she has nothing to put on her coffee table so that her friends will sneak a peak and be jealous of how wonderful her great nieces and nephews are.  Plus, the classroom will soon be studded with old gum and wadded up pages from textbooks, but she’ll keep the card in her hope chest forever.

2. There’s a reason they call us the people of the book.  I highly recommend books for any and every occasion. If you can’t come up with an idea on your own find a medium sized independent bookstore (you can search for one close to your home at Booksense) and ask an employee.  At indie bookstores (a category that includes Judaica bookstores) the employees are far more likely to be well read and able to guide you towards an appropriate and classy choice. 

3. Buy them an unusual ritual object.  Everyone gets candlesticks and a Kiddush cup for their bar or bat mitzvah, but the best way to ensure your gift doesn’t end up in the bag of returns is to give something different, but still useful.  Consider an etrog case, a matzah cover, or a challah knife.  Other oft overlooked ritual items: an omer counter, a blech/hot plate, or a noisemaker for Purim.