by Robert I. Evans & Avrum D. Lapin
With the United Nations-sponsored international summit on climate change in Copenhagen capturing worldwide headlines, we questioned how American Jewish organizations and their donors are responding to growing environmental challenges. In heeding the often heard slogan “Think Globally/Act Locally”, are environmental concerns attracting attention in the Jewish community? How do Jewish donors and leaders feel about the greening of our agencies and being and/or becoming good stewards of our planet? Are Jewish donors thinking and responding differently than non-Jewish philanthropists?
Charitable giving to environmental causes by all donors has historically been about two percent of the giving “pie.” Giving USA reported that 2008 donors directed only $6.58 billion out of the $308 billion given that year for animal rights and issues relating to the environment. This reflected a 5.5 percent decline following a surge of charitable support between 1997 and 2007 for environmental causes. With the recent economic difficulties, there is the possibility of similar (or even more major) declines in 2009 and 2010.
Yet despite the slight drop in giving, largely reflecting economic pressures, we still see the environment to be a clear priority in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. With many U.S. non-profits pressing attention on environmental needs, how are we, as a Jewish community and as donors, responding?
There are a number of prominent organizations, such as the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), which have dedicated their missions to protecting the environment with a specific focus on the Jewish community. The Jewish Climate Change Campaign is one exhilarating – but little-known – example of Jewish commitment to making a public issue around being “green” and pledging to improve the environment for future generations. We expect organizations like these and others to rise to prominence as the issue grows beyond the “margins” and becomes more firmly established in the mainstream.
We were pleased to find several dozen U.S.-based Jewish organizations with an environmental agenda, and we are especially glad to note that both the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ) held sessions at their recent biennials which focused on the importance of being “green” within the Jewish community, especially focusing on Jewish houses of worship. The URJ is even providing a live update from Copenhagen, as well as remarks from Rabbi Warren Stone, a summit attendee. We commend the URJ in their efforts to bring greater attention to the importance of this conference and the issues discussed, as well as highlighting how the Jewish community is taking action.
Architects today are drawing plans and developing facilities with guidelines set by the U.S. Green Building Council. More and more buildings designed today are integrating a number of important factors like a facility’s energy and water usage, carbon dioxide emissions, and overall environmental impact. To receive a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification requires significant planning and a short term investment of financial resources yet promises a more efficient facility that will have positive environmental effects over time.
Yet the first LEED-certified U.S. synagogue will break ground in April in Maryland, and few if many other congregations are considering major changes to their systems that impact the environment. The architect for the 200-member Conservative congregation, Kol Shalom, Salo Levinas, of Shinberg Levinas Architects, told us that “the congregation’s leaders were committed from the outset to make their building a truly pacesetting house of worship.” The investment of slightly higher costs for environmental innovations “will undoubtedly be returned over a handful of years,” he said.
Another prominent architect responsible for many synagogue construction and refurbishing efforts, Jay Brown, of Levin Brown Architects, holds the LEED accreditation but notes that few projects “are actively moving forward with capital improvements, perhaps because of the downturn in giving. This is a very shortsighted approach,” he added.
Both agree, however, that while developing “green” buildings may seem transformative today, in a short time it will be commonplace, like the general commitment to making facilities accessible to people with disabilities.
Hillel Campus for Jewish Life has witnessed 40 construction projects on campuses across the U.S. since 1995 and 20 others are on the drawing boards today. While none are LEED-certified, almost all are built with environmental considerations, especially prompted by student users and organizational mandates for long term cost savings.
Our experiences working with hundreds of U.S. Jewish organizations on various types of fundraising campaigns have reflected a dilemma among organizational leaders who intellectually understand and support the effort to effect positive environment changes, yet they are hesitant to embrace and promote environmental issues for their own facilities in a transformative way. Certain organizations lack the appropriate funds to construct LEED-certified facilities and are reluctant to ask donors to underwrite more costly steps to create them. However, some are taking other creative and thoughtful short and long-term approaches, including creating endowment funds that address energy efficiency, natural beautification, and a variety of other environmentally conscious approaches. While most organizations have fostered small-scale activities like limiting the use of and re-cycling paper, we look forward to seeing the large scale facility-focused transformative efforts that will truly make a difference.
As members of the Jewish community, we must all join together and work to ensure a brighter, safer future for generations to come. Join us in this call for action and for a vision that embraces a healthier planet.
Robert I. Evans, Managing Director, and Avrum D. Lapin, Director, are principals of The EHL Consulting Group, of suburban Philadelphia. A member firm of to The Giving Institute, the organization that oversees the preparation and distribution of Giving USA, EHL Consulting works with dozens of non-profits on fundraising, strategic planning, and non-profit business practices.
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Thanks for this posting. As a proud spouse, I need to add one minor amendment to the words regarding Copenhagen: Mirele Goldsmith, who represented a bunch of ngo’s including HAZON, COEJL, and numerous others, was the author, with Rabbi Stone’s assistance, of the Jewish statement of affirmation presented in Copenhagen, signed by 22 major Jewish organizations. Her daily blogs [GreenStridesConsulting.com] were a very personal view of the COP experience.
More to the point, Mirele’s work with a significant number of organizations in the Jewish world [some as clients, in other cases as a board member] has demonstrated that these sensitivities are beginning to become integrated into the normal operations of many.
As an observer, it appears that there are at least three very different starting points for this growing commitment: Some Jewish organizations approach environmental issues as a response to over dependence on Arab controlled oil. Their issue is built on Jewish self interest.
Others approach environmental activism from the perspective of the challenge to human existence itself, that global warming and concomitant destruction of the ecosystem respects no boundaries and borders and the human mandate for all is to change our behaviors.
A smaller number build their activism on the basis of Jewish texts. For them, regardless of the external realities, there is an obligation to preserve and honor the created world.
Whichever the starting point, the authors are correct to suggest that they need to converge in real action and commitment. Many organizations find it easy to make statements of concern and implement small, episodic behaviors. It is less common to see retrofitting of the thousands of existing Jewish facilities or even mandated recycling and composting.
Rarely has an issue arisen which has the potential to transcend internal Jewish politics and ideologies; never before has there been a cause which binds us with all human beings so powerfully. Any of us who look carefully at any of the real and reliable information know that there is little time to waste. I hope that the implicit optimism of Lapin and Levin is only the beginning of an inevitable momentum which positions the Jewish community in the lead of this effort to literally and figuratively repair the world.
Thursday Dec 17, 2009, JERUSALEM POST
Rosner’s Domain: Rabbi Stone explains why environmentalism is “Jewish”
JERUSALEM POST: SHMUEL ROSNER
Rabbi Warren Stone has been a Jewish environmental activist for many years. He represented the North American Jewish organizations at the UN Kyoto Climate talks in 1997. Rabbi Stone was a founding member of COEJL, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, a founding chair of the Central Conference of American Rabbis environmental committee. He co-chairs the National Religious Coalition on Creation care, a broad based interfaith organization focusing on climate issues. He also serves on the Global Advisory Board of Earth Day Network. Rabbi Stone has served Temple Emanuel in the Greater Washington area for 21 years and just returned from the UN Copenhagen representing North American Jewish groups. I sent him a couple of questions:
1. Let’s start with the most simple question: are you an environmentalist who also happens to be a rabbi? or a rabbi believing that being an environmentalist is part of the job description?
I am a Rabbi who finds the Jewish wisdom of the Creation story, the Shabbat, the notion of “baal tashit,” “pikuah nefesh,” and many other ancient Jewish values as the foundation for my activism on climate and environmental issues. Jewish tradition is full of debate about land, water, energy issues and the rights of usage of resources. We have extraordinary wisdom found in centuries of Jewish life from the sabbatical of the land to ownership of a stream.
2. Is there something uniquely “Jewish” about being environmentalist?
I represented North American Jewry at COP5 UN Climate talks in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 and have led delegations for over a decade to the United States Congress, the White House and the World Bank as a Jewish leader. I just returned from the UN COP15 Copenhagen where I joined religious leaders around the world including; Jewish, Christian, Sikh, Moslem, Hindu and Buddhist leaders. Each of us spoke about the role of our world’s religions in teaching that humankind has had an impact with our rising CO2 emissions on this planet.
In a world where matters of faith so often and so tragically divide us, there is no issue that aligns all people of faith more deeply than our shared dependence upon and sacred responsibility to this tiny planet, enfolded within its fragile atmosphere, spinning in the vastness of time and space. I took a Shofar with me to both Kyoto and Copenhagen. It is our prime Jewish symbol of awakening, our call to the Divine, to the people Israel and to the world. It is the symbol of Creation, Revelation and Redemption. In Djerba Island, one of the world’s most ancient Jewish communities, the shofar is sounded each Friday afternoon to announce preparations for Shabbat. I sounded the Shofar at the UN Copenhagen within the UN Bella center as well as on a trip to the world’s largest wind farm with UN delegates on a boat. I also sounded the Shofar, as a moral call for action on responding to climate change.
Climate change which will impact water and food over the next century will have an impact on millions of people on our Earth. Water issues will also have a tremendous impact upon Israel and the entire Middle East during the coming century. We have seen the diminishing of species including the many birds on the Golan and throughout Israel. The Dead Sea will not longer exist within a century. This is Israel’s issue as much as any nation in our world. The Heschel Center is Tel Aviv and Kibbutz Lotan are leaders in this field. I am proud that Israel also is a leader in the development of electric vehicles, desalinization and alternative energies.
3. How do you make “all religious institutions models of environmental possibilities”? Do you have the financial means needed for such expensive commitment? Is this the most urgent task religious institutions have to take on?
I believe that our governments, our universities, schools and religious institutions should take the lead. I serve Temple Emanuel, a synagogue in the Greater Washington, D.C. area. We have had an active Greening committee for over 20 years and added solar panels for our Ner Tamed, a Biblical garden, six energy zones, retrofitted windows, composting, recycling and we use CPL bulbs throughout the building. We also have used recycled bamboo for floors and have saved a great deal of money over the years for our Jewish programming. On Sukkot we go to a farm and teach our kids about sustainability as Jews. Many of our young people have gone on to become Jewish activists in this field. I met a Bat Mitzvah student at the UN Copenhagen who is now a climate researcher in London and talks about her Jewish upbringing. Caring for the environment is one aspect of being a Jew. Let us be reminded that we are all like Adam Min Ha-Adamah, we come from God’s Earth and return to it as well. We can be strong and educated Jews, committed to Jewish tradition and a Jewish lifestyle and still be a Jew engaged in the world in all dimensions. Israel is a Jewish issue, hunger, poverty, climate, health–these are all Jewish issues! As Hillel reminds us, “if I am only for myself, what am I?”
4. Do you feel that you’re approach to the environment is one that is still cutting edge among Jewish clergy and in Jewish institutions – or is it really becoming a major item on the agenda of those concerned about Jewish life? In other words: do you feel that the Jewish world is invested-enough in the greening agenda, or is it too busy with other, less important, goals?
Jews caring about the Earth was cutting edge a decade or two ago but not now. Caring for the environment as a Jew has become mainstream. It is a large and growing engagement throughout the North American Jewish community. Synagogues and Jewish institutions and national leadership are developing active greening campaigns. There are numbers of growing new Jewish organizations like Hazon, Teva, Canfei Nesharim, the Isabella Freedman Jewish retreat center. The Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Orthodox movements in America are well represented. Canfei Nesharim, an orthodox Jewish environmental group is newly engaged on this issue. The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life has been active for many years. I represented 22 North American Jewish organizations at the UN in Copenhagen and they include, B’nai Brith International, Hadassah, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Zionist Youth movement and many others. The URJ, the largest Jewish organization in North America now has a web site devoted to this issue.
5. What goals can be abandoned – or might be abandoned – to make room for this new concentrated effort you’d like to see on this specific issue?
Nothing needs to be abandoned! We are deepening our engagement on environmental issues as Jews. These issues involve food, water, land, energy, climate, survival, wilderness preservation, the protection of creation and species. These are issues which effect our survival as Jews, the future of Israel and our survival as human beings over the coming centuries. At the United Nations I met with representatives of the Kirbati nation. They will be the first of the vulnerable nations to be impacted by climate change. They are preparing gene pool, a relocation policy and are concerned about the very survival of their 100,000 people, their language and historic culture. We Jews know about such things. We have much to share on this issue of spiritual and cultural survival when we are threatened!
6. What practical measures will be taken by your own community that will be compatible with your stated “greening” agenda?
Jewish identity is growing stronger and deeper with our involvement with the mitzvoth of the earth. Our synagogues, Jewish schools and yeshivot will be stronger and more engaged with the world at large which is our home. Our connection to Israel remains strong and deep. We will also be concerned about Israel’s environmental future. Fortunately, historic Jewish organizations like the JNF have reforested many parts of Israel and this will need to continue. The Earth is God’s Earth and its Fulness.! Remember that beautiful midrash in Kohelel Rabbah:
“The Holy One showed Adam the beauty and splendor of Eden, See, how magnificent are My works! If you destroy them, there is no one after you.”
http://www.templeemanuelmd.org
To read more about my experiences at the UN Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen, please see my blog at http://www.greenstridesconsulting.com – click on Green Strides Goes to Copenhagen.