Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL)

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide: The Jewish Greening Fellowship

Summary: Dr. Mirele Goldsmith explains the background, purpose, and stunning accomplishments of the first cohort group of the Jewish Greening Fellowship, a campaign of the UJA-Federation of New York to green Jewish institutions. The Jewish Greening Fellowship was designed, implemented and directed by [Rachel] Jacoby Rosenfield. A key decision was made to provide funding directly to each agency to defray the expense of the staff time devoted to the fellowship. By supporting th...more...

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide: Making your Synagogue a Green Holy Place

By Rabbi Lawrence Troster Summary: Synagogues are important community spaces, but also important spaces for demonstrating a commitment to environmental values. Rabbi Lawrence Troster, the rabbinic director at J Street, provides detailed instructions on how to green your synagogue. It is often the case that many religious communities have an initial burst of environmental programming that is often followed by a long period of inactivity. While all institutions need time to rest afte...more...

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide - Shavuot: Cheesecake, Temptation and Conservation

 By Rabbi Natan Levy During the 2011 riots here in London, teachers and social workers were said to have been among the looters. British Prime Minister David Cameron called them opportunistic criminals. Perhaps temptation simply got the best of them. Yielding to temptation may be pandemic in our culture. When we argue about mitigating climate change, the discussion is often framed as a question of progress versus conservation — but it may ultimately be revealing th...more...

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide - The Rainbow Connection: Rainbow Day and Creation

By Rabbi David Seidenberg “I have set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and the Earth.”  (Genesis 9:13) Millennia before Kermit the Frog sang about the Rainbow Connection, the very first Rainbow Day marked the connection between God and all animals. The biblical flood began on the 17th of the second month, exactly one lunar year and 10 days — or one complete solar year — before Noah, his family, and all the...more...

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide - Al Gore: The Importance of Jewish Climate Change Advocacy

By Al Gore I’m writing to tell you how excited I am by the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life’s plans for the Jewish Energy Covenant Campaign, how ready I am to help, and how much I encourage all of you who have been a part of COEJL’s mission to do all you can for the success of the most important project you’ve undertaken. It couldn’t come at a more critical moment. As someone who works to follow developments all over the world, I believe th...more...

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide: Energy’s Answer is Blowing in the Wind

By Benjamin Kahane For hundreds of years, humans have used wind to pump water and grind grain, mostly with small windmills. Large, modern wind turbines are used to generate electricity for individual use and to feed into the electric grid. Wind turbines generally have three blades and, because higher altitudes yield higher wind velocities and lower turbulences, the turbines are mounted on tall towers to capture as much energy as possible. As the blades turn, the central shaft spins a g...more...

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide - Renewable Energy Policy in Israel: Past and Present

By Naomi Lipstein and Dr. Alon Tal The ability to harness energy has been essential to life since the start of humanity. This ability, of course, has come in many different forms and has gone through massive transformations over the centuries. In the 18th and 19th centuries, coal fired the steam engine — arguably the most vital technology of the Industrial Revolution. It was the discovery of oil that allowed the revolution to flourish even further in the late 19th and early 20th ...more...

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide: The Power of Advocacy

By Rabbi Steve Gutow Inside and outside the pages of this guide, you will read and continue to read about bad things happening — to our Earth, to our fellow people, to our collective spirit — and, though we may wish it away, bad things likely will continue to happen for a very long time to come. This, of course, is discouraging, leading many among us to give up and forget about addressing these problems. But that would be a mistake. After all, it is our Jewish responsi...more...

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide: Green Your Home

Summary: David Krantz, president and chairperson of the Green Zionist Alliance, shows how easy it is to go green at home. He offers up some interesting tips to help you get started! Compact fluorescent light bulbs use about a quarter of the energy of their traditional incandescent lighting brethren. Compact fluorescents last for years, and although they contain mercury, it’s still less than the amount of mercury released into the atmosphere by producing the extra amount of energy...more...

Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) blogged Jewish Energy Guide - Passover: The Four Signs of Climate Change Action

By Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz “… for the place on which you stand is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5) One: Religion begins with wonder. We stand in awe of the universe around us. We sense the miracle that is existence. Abraham Joshua Heschel called this spiritual feeling “radical amazement.” Such amazement, he taught, is the root of religion and the responsibility that flows from it. We want to preserve that which is precious; safeguard that which we dee...more...