A Major Documentary on Current Environmental Threats and How Jewish Teachings Can Be Applied in Responding to These Threats.
These are the times for which Tu B\’Shevat was created. The rabbis who envisioned this holiday were prophetic: They knew we would need to be reminded on a regular basis about howimportant trees are to our lives. And trees have never been more important to our survival than they are today.
Quick, name one thing that 99 percent of all American Jews agree on. Impossible, right? We are the People who pride ourselves on our contentiousness, who revel in our stiff-neckedness, who love to remind the world that where there are two Jews, you\’ll find three opinions.\n\nBut it\’s not always so.
Last summer, Bonnie and Marc Gottlieb calculated their carbon footprint, measuring the impact on the earth\’s environment of such activities as driving their car, turning on their furnace and tossing out their trash. They discovered that they emitted about 56,000 pounds of carbon dioxide annually into the atmosphere.
On a ferociously cold evening in November 1978, Rabbi Everett Gendler climbed atop the icy roof of Temple Emanuel in Lowell, Mass., and installed solar panels to fuel the synagogue\’s ner tamid (eternal light).
\”We plugged it almost directly into the sun,\” said Gendler, who rejoiced that the ner tamid was no longer dependent on the finite and politically questionable energy resources of the Middle East.
One of the country\’s fastest-growing environmental groups, the interfaith community, has been gearing up to fight President George W. Bush\’s new energy policies.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.