The Greatest Gift
Jen and Ilana chose to spend a majority of their summer vacations in the COEJL office learning the ins and outs of NGO life and developing invaluable material for the Jewish environmental community: Greening Synagogues Resource Guide (coming live soon) and Matanot Yerakot – a Green Gift Guide. Further, they have each committed to share their insights from college campuses with monthly blogs throughout the academic year. If you were to ask me, that was more than gift enough.
My formal task was to provide them with meaningful, interesting projects that would benefit them as they continue in their academic studies and, later, as they pursue gainful employment. My goal, though, was to deepen their connection with their own sense of Judaism, environmentalism and the wonders of both personal and communal action.
Now, before I continue, a side note: as long as I am in New York I have a minimal carbon footprint – I purchase wind-energy at home, walk or use public transportation and buy local produce. But I have family in Israel and California, friends who are getting married across the globe and a curiosity for the natural and cultural world. In short, I travel by plane frequently, making my annual carbon footprint larger than the average American!
Back to Jen and Ilana. On the last day at the office, after we had said our sentimental good-byes, they walked back to my desk, adorned with sheepish grins.
“We have a present for you,” they said. Already, I was surprised and honored
“It hasn’t come yet, but we’d like to tell you what it is.” Of course, I obliged to listen.
“We bought you carbon offsets to offset one of your flights to California.” I am not one to be caught speechless, but I was. I could not have asked for a better, more appropriate gift (even though I am planning on offsetting my emissions at the end of each calendar year, it is always better not to wait). Yet, this gift went beyond the carbon dioxide that will be sequestered out of our atmosphere – this gift represented environmental maturity, global awareness and the Jewish imperative of making mundane acts holy.
I have already used my gift, as I am writing this blog from California. But their gift to us has just begun. Beyond their summer projects, each, in their own way, is committed to improving the ways in which we, as individuals and communities, interact with our environment. In the coming years, we’ll need all the help we can get. For all that, I want to say to Jen and Ilana, “Thank you.”
