At JGF’s Leading Green conference, held February 10th in collaboration with the Wiener Educational Center of UJA-Federation of New York, we celebrated the New York Jewish community’s response to climate change and gave practical tools to Jewish communal leaders interested in starting the greening process. The conference was a resounding success, with over 100 people in attendance from a broad range of institutions and greening backgrounds. Times of Israel covered the event.

UJA-Federation of New York CEO Eric Goldstein, faith and climate scholar Karenna Gore, and solar entrepreneur Yosef Abramowitz praised the greening work undertaken by the Jewish community and encouraged the audience to continue their greening efforts. Wendy Seligson (14th Street Y), Aliyah Vinikoor (Jewish Theological Seminary), and Rabbi Jason Nevarez (Temple Shaaray Tefila) described how greening has both transformed their institutions and changed their own lives for the better.

Many other JGF fellows shared their expertise during small table conversations about specific greening topics (e.g., composting, solar power, and greening with kids) and breakout sessions on facilities, environmental education, and greening/disaster preparedness for vulnerable populations. Participant feedback has been quite positive, and many attendees have expressed interest in starting to green their institutions or in being part of a future JGF cohort.

On Passover, we tell the story of the Jews’ journey from slavery to freedom. But we don’t tell this story alone – we do so with our families and our communities, seated around a Seder table. Beginning in ancient Israel, families would congregate on the hills of Jerusalem on the first night of Passover to eat the passover offering and tell the story of the Exodus together. Today, Passover observance remains quite high: 70% of Jews still attend a Seder each year, according to the 2014 Pew Study of American Jews.

Earth Day, which always falls in the same month as Passover, is a similarly communal holiday with similar opportunities for the whole family. The first Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970, engaged a massive number of communities across America. An estimated 20 million Americans protested, volunteered, and participated in teach-ins, in what was considered to be the largest public demonstration in US history.

Greening offers Jewish institutions a way to engage their entire community: youth and elders, staff and laypeople, Jews and non-Jews alike. Passover and Earth Day offer wonderful, specific opportunities to reengage your whole community around greening.

Kids get their hands dirty at an Earth Day fair at Y of Washington Heights & Inwood.

Environmental fairs, or “eco-fairs,” have proved popular Earth Day activities at JGF institutions and are a great way to attract the whole family for an outing.

• Central Queens Y organized a series of successful Earth Day fairs which attracted residents from throughout Queens. At various booths, participants learned about vegan cooking or greening their home, signed up for energy audits, and recycled electrical equipment, among many other activities.

• At Staten Island JCC’s Earth Day fair, participants could pick up trees courtesy of Million Trees NYC.

• At Y of Washington Heights & Inwood’s Earth Day fair, children and adults could recycle books and clothes, munch on a healthy snack, make art from recycled material, or watch a play of Shel Silverstein’s “Giving Tree.”

But there are many opportunities to engage your entire community this Passover-Earth Day season beyond holding eco-fairs:

• Hold a family-friendly Shmita Seder like the JCC of Staten Island, which is celebrating the Shmita year using a seder format. (Contact JR Rich for further details).

• Earth Day falls in the early weeks of the growing season and offers an excellent opportunity for a communal gardening project. At JTS, students planted crops in the seminary’s rooftop garden. Chefs in the dining hall also turned off the ovens for the day, served nutritious raw foods, and dimmed the lights to save energy.

• Pleasant spring weather offers a great opportunity to hold a cleanup day on your property or at a nearby park or beach, like this cleanup at Plumb Beach, hosted by NYC H2O.

• Organize a “stop ‘n swap” event that allows people to swap clothing, toys, or other items they no longer need. Grow NYC runs these events throughout the City and can help you organize one.

• Hold a “preach-in” on climate change, part of a national preach-in effort by Interfaith Power & Light, which offers materials for sermons about the climate crisis.

• GreenFaith can connect you to climate scientists who are prepared to explain the science behind our changing climate during the Earth Day season.

• Consider ways to include your entire community in waste reduction efforts: 14th Street Y has a compost drop-off for nearby residents and also teaches about it in its summer camp. At Kane Street Synagogue, Hebrew school students trained adult members how to separate waste at their new sustainable kiddushes.  

Composting at the 14th Street Y

Institutions can also engage the broader community -- beyond their own membership – by focusing on local environmental issues. Last spring, Temple Israel Center of White Plains hosted a symposium on hydraulic fracking that was very successful thanks to widespread buy-in from other Westchester community organizations.

When it comes to engaging your community around greening, the only limit is your imagination!