With environmental consciousness growing in religious and spiritual groups, it’s only natural that Passover, a spring holiday that begins this year at sunset on April 19, should go green. And this year, Earth Day, a day designed to raise awareness about the Earth and conservation, falls on April 22, during the Passover celebration. Contemporary environmental awareness draws on distinctive elements in Jewish tradition. Many critical episodes in the story of God’s chosen people take place outdoors: Adam and Eve started life in a garden, Moses went to the mountain to talk with God, the Exodus led Jews into the wilderness. Jewish teachers are seizing on this tradition, using the great outdoors to talk about understanding and honoring the environment from a Jewish point of view.
Jewish tradition is also rich on the subject of food, which is central to the Passover ritual. As part of the larger imperative of sustaining the Earth, today’s environmentalists are concerned about the conditions in which food is grown and produced. Sustainability meets kosher in the growth of community-supported agriculture. At the same time, distinctly Jewish community is built on new relationships between producers and consumers of food.
The eight days of Passover – seven in Israel – provide a good opportunity to examine the manifestations of eco-awareness in the Jewish community in your area. Who is working on the ideas of sustainable and healthy Jewish communities, and how? What kinds of relationships exist between Jewish groups and local small farmers or food producers? Are sustainable seders being planned? What about environmental education or outdoor activities? Some innovative outreach and education programs for Jews, especially young adults, have involved outdoor adventure. Are green topics among the subjects of continuing education in temples or community centers? Are synagogues themselves greening? ReligionLink offers a range of interview sources:
Food and sustainability issues
• Hazon is an organization promoting healthy Jewish communities in a variety of ways, including outdoor challenge and food programs. Based in New York, Hazon has developed bike and hike programs, and its food wing promotes community-supported agriculture in 18 communities, up from 10 last year. Other food programs include a curriculum, an annual conference and a blog, The Jew and the Carrot, with ideas, recipes and resources for a sustainable Passover. Nigel Savage founded Hazon in 2000. Judith Belasco is associate director of food programs; Leah Koenig edits the blog. Contact them, 212-644-2332.
• Rabbi Arthur Waskow is the author of Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex and the Rest of Life. He is also director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, which is concerned with eco-Judaism. Read his essay “Passover as if Earth Really Matters” in the April 2008 online edition of The Nation. Contact 215-844-8494, Awaskow@shalomctr.org.
• The Jewish Farm School is a Philadelphia-based effort to create a Jewish way of working land. Contact 215-609-4680.
• Hekhsher Tzedek is a movement within Conservative Judaism to understand the ethical dimension of keeping kosher in the 21st century, and it includes concern for laborers’ working conditions and the environmental impact of food production. Contact project director Rabbi Morris Allen, 1-888-893-3351.
Outdoors and environment
• Jamie Korngold is the Adventure Rabbi and author of the 2008 book God in the Wilderness: Rediscovering the Spirituality of the Great Outdoors With the Adventure Rabbi. She is leading a Passover retreat into the desert outside Moab, Utah. Adventure Rabbi has a New York chapter and is developing as a social network for young Jewish adults. Contact 303-417-6200 ext. 10, rabbik@adventurerabbi.org.
• Mike Comins is the author of A Wild Faith: Jewish Ways Into Wilderness, Wilderness Ways Into Judaism and founder of Torah Trek, an outdoors/wilderness education and experience program. Contact through his publisher, Jewish Lights, in Vermont, 802-457-4000.
• Katy Z. Allen is rabbi of Ma’yan Tikvah, a “congregation without walls” in the Boston area that connects Judaism to nature and social justice. Contact rabbikza@verizon.net.
• Matt Biers-Ariel, Deborah Newbrun and Michal Fox Smart are the authors of Spirit in Nature: Teaching Judaism and Ecology on the Trail. Contact Newbrun through publisher David Behrman at Behrman House in Springfield, N.J., 973-379-7200; contact Biers-Ariel, who is working on a book about a cross-country bike trek, ariel@dcn.davis.ca.us; contact Smart, former director of education for the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, michalsmart@sbcglobal.net
• Ellen Bernstein is founder of Shomrei Adamah, the first national Jewish environmental organization, founded in 1988. She is author of The Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology and numerous articles on Judaism and ecology. She teaches at Hebrew College in Newton, Mass., and consults in the area of religion and ecology. Contact ellen@ellenbernstein.org.
• Canfei Nesharim works with Orthodox Jews on environmental issues. Evonne Marzouk is executive director. Contact in the New York office, 212-284-6745.
• The Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Conn., is home to a number of environmental programs and an organic farm. ADAMAH is an environmental leadership fellowship. Contact Shamu Sadeh about ADAMAH, 860-824-5991 ext. 317; Adam Berman is center executive director, 860-824-5991 ext. 305.
• Teva Learning Center is a Jewish environmental education center based in New York offering education and outdoor experience for children and adults. Contact 212-807-6376.
Other
• The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life has a number of projects, including one on greening synagogues. Contact executive director Rabbi Steve Gutow in the New York office, 212-532-7436.
• Brant Rosen is rabbi of Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation http://jrc-evanston.org/ in Evanston, Ill. The congregation rebuilt its building to make it sustainable and moved back into it in February 2008. Contact Rosen at the temple, 847-328-7678.
• For more sources, see ReligionLink’s source guide to religion and the environment.
