To Till and to Tend

Jews United for Justice had their first fundraising dinner last weekend in DC – hear it was quite successful.  Their takeaways were actual copies of their wonderful new publication, Green & Just Celebrations.  Hat tip to JUFJ.  This publication, while DC area specific, is applicable to most any locale and will be indispensable for synagogue bar/bat mitzvah planning, for couples making wedding choices, and for vendors seeking ways to offer more sustainable options to eco-savvy clients. Featured above is one of their suggestions, a tsedakah basket centerpiece.
Yasher kochachem to authors Rebecca Shaloff and Joelle Novey, along with Darya Mattes and Jacob Feinspan.
Here’s the announcement from their website:
Green & Just Celebrations

Reusing sacred objects in performing another mitzvah is a longstanding Jewish tradition.  The main ritualized reuse which comes to mind is the etrog and lulav, since they are “one-use” ceremonial objects.  (Other ritual items either are wholly consumed, like ceremonial foods, or permanently reusable.)  Classic reuses for the etrog are creating a pomander studded with cloves or preparing etrog jam or liqueur.
The lulav dries over the winter and the custom is to use it as part of Passover preparation.  It makes a nifty little broom for sweeping up chametz.  Here are some other traditional customs:

1. R. Yehudah ben Kalonymus (Ashkenaz, twelfth century) used to save the aravot (willows) from the lulav in order to burn the hametz, basing himself on the above passage, and this custom was recorded in all of the classic custom books of Ashkenaz.⁵ In modern times, Iraqi Jews used the aravot from Hoshana Rabbah.⁶
2. In Yemen, on the other hand, it was the custom to use the lulav, hadassim and aravot as fuel for the oven when baking matzah shemurah.⁷ Finally, the Jews of Syria, Morocco and Baghdad used the lulav both for burning the hametz and for baking matzah.⁸

This year, since martinis are all the rage, let’s enjoy post-Sukkot ETROGINIs.  Leah Koenig over at Jewcy has just the ticket – complete instructions. She’s dubbed her creation a Sukkatini, but etrogini is more fun to say.  L’chaim!

A few weeks ago I wrote about recirculating coins – all those minerals sitting in tsedakah boxes necessitates the manufacture of more coins.  Likewise with books, the presumption that we should read books once and let them sit on our shelves forever should be revisited in the age of internet bookselling.  Once I learned how easy it is to sell books on Amazon, I have made it a habit.  It is easy to distinguish between a book you want and need in your library, and a volume which has served its purpose and can find a new life.  Like the time I picked up a bestseller at Costco and shipped it out for the same price a few weeks later to a lady in Nebraska with similar reading tastes. The remarkable part is that people pay you for these books! 
Here is my tried-and-true method for book pricing and selling. 

1. Input the ISBN number and the book will pop up. 
2. Check out the price for “used and new books for sale”.  Many vendors other than Amazon itself sell new books on Amazon.  What you need to know is the LOWEST price, so you can lowball it.  That way your book is most likely to sell.  At this point you can decide if it’s worth the hassle.  If the resale value of the book is only a few dollars, you may not want to bother.
3. If you go ahead, click on “Sell Yours Here” and follow all the prompts.  Remember to ignore what they tell you the book is worth, if you want to actually SELL it. 
4. When your book sells, you’ll receive an email.  You then need to go into your Amazon Book Seller account and bring up the info. 

While COEJL’s mission is primarily North American, it’s exciting to note all the buzz and activity in Israel around sustainable, renewable energy.  Israel is positioning itself as a high-tech center for all things solar, water conserving, energy efficient, and post-petroleum.  As I like to say, Israel’s main natural resources are sun and engineer/entrepreneurs.
News about Shai Agassi’s electric car initiative has been heard ’round the world, most recently reported on by Thomas Friedman.  Micro-irrigation is an Israeli invention grown into an industry, exported around the world.  Indeed, with the run-up in food prices, microirrigation is one of the technologies referenced to improve developing countries’ food yields, and increasing food yields means increasing incomes for the world’s hardworking subsistence farmers and their families.  Microloans are extended for drip irrigation. 
One of the most interesting projects I’ve learned about is through the Arava Institute, known to many COEJL supporters through its relationship with Hazon.  The Arava is located at Kibbutz Ketura and trains young environmental professionals from many different countries – their education involves not only the technical aspects of ecology and planning, but coexistence, since many of them hail from countries with cold or non-existent relations with Israel.  I learned much about its marvelous work when I cheered my husband David on the 2007 Hazon/Arava bike ride in Israel.  Two Arava alumni, Illana Meallum and Mazen Zuabi, are working together on designing a biodigester which will create biofuel out of “biomass” which, in the case of Israeli Bedouin villages, equals raw sewage.  Because Bedouins live in unincorporated villages, they have no formal plumbing infrastructure – so this technology, replicable once it’s refined, will be a win-win: cleaning up sewage and creating a renewable source of fuel.
The list goes on and on, but the basic point is inspiring: Israel is indeed providing sustainably powered Light unto the Nations!

photo from Israelli.org

I‘ve coined a new term, another Jewish acronym, GKE”T = “Glatt Kosher Eco-Treif”. It popped out of me in a conversation with friends Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman, just back from a remarkable journey to Madrid attending an Interfaith Conference hosted by no less than the King of Saudi Arabia.  There were quite a few Jewish leaders included and we discussed, among deeper issues, how the conference – pulled together on very short notice – handled all the participants’ varied food issues.  Phyllis mentioned that many of the Jewish participants, along with Hindus, ate local, vegetarian fare.  Some of the Jewish participants were provided with “airline meals in 4 layers of plastic wrap”.  I knew just what they meant, and that’s when my new term was invented.  I did find the term Eco-Treif on a fabulous blog, though – SustainableJudaism.
It seems paradoxical to me that food created out of heavily traveled ingredients, wrapped, and then shipped again, generating carbon emissions with each transport, and then packaged in one-use petroleum-based plastic, is nevertheless perfectly kosher, and that fresh local vegetarian food is not.  Not to mention that these catered meals include meat,  possibly sourced from a fairly infamous meat-packing plant known not just for illegal alien labor but also for water pollution issues,  at least in the past.  There generally isn’t any indication of where these kosher airline-type meals’ ingredients come from, just the info about where the caterer is.
I feel very conflicted about take-out food in general.  Not unique to kosher take-out, of course – any take-away meal generates a huge amount of disposables.  Until kosher (and other purveyors) provide compostable plastics, I avoid buying their products, much as I would like to. To me they’re GKE”T if, after a wonderful meal, I need to throw out a whole bag of heavy plastic containers.  Of course they could be washed and reused, but how many chicken rotisserie containers can a family use?
Tonight a friend stopped by a new local Indian take-out here, called Tiffin.  She brought her own containers, and they cheerfully filled them with their wonderful entrees.  The restaurant, needless to say, is not kosher.  Here it’s the opposite problem – Glatt Treif Eco-Kosher.  Even if I would eat their vegetarian food, I couldn’t do so in my own containers.
I am eager to hear how others address these competing values.  This is not theoretical! This is getting meals on the table….