To Till and to Tend

Reboot, a New York-based nonprofit network of Jewish professionals, recently launched the 2011 Sabbath Manifesto project, which presented a challenge to commit to a National Day of Unplugging during the first weekend of March. As part of the challenge, people around the world slowed down their normally hectic routines to take advantage of the manifesto’s ten core principles. For one day, participants were encouraged to avoid technology and connect with loved ones—a concept we in the Jewish community are very familiar with. It might be hard to imagine the average American abiding by the ancient laws of The Sabbath, but the National Day of Unplugging gave participants a taste of tradition.

Read the rest of this entry »

        I have just returned from a month long study abroad in Costa Rica.  (Great tidbit: Costa Rica is the size of West Virginia but has 4% of the world’s biodiversity, the same amount as the entire United States). Besides being one of the most memorable experiences, I learned more than I have in the past two and a half years at college. 

 

      One of the classes was Debates in Conservation of Tropical Biodiversity. We read various controversial articles on such topics as ecosystem degradation, resource scarcity, over population, and loss of biodiversity. These articles were from prestigious sources and well known authors such as Lester Brown and Jeffery Sachs, as well as from skeptics like Bjorn Lomborg. One concept that struck my interest was ecologic economics – how do you put a price on biodiversity?

 

      Ecosystems provide $33 trillion/ year in services such as preventing soil erosion, carbon sequestration, providing materials and resources, maintaining water sources, and basically everything else that the entire global population relies on every single day. However, ecosystem services and their degradation are not factored into the cost of our goods and services in the standard economy. We presume that these ecosystem goods and services should be free because they are natural. As long as there is water in our faucet, and paper plates on our tables, most people will never understand the true value and price of these scarce resources. Maybe, if water was more expensive, we would take shorter showers. Maybe if paper wasn’t so cheap, people would use both sides.

 

      I found this great quote from the Organization of Tropical Studies in La Selva, Costa Rica, “Only when the last tree has died & the last river has been poisoned & the last fish has been caught will we realize that WE CANNOT EAT MONEY.”

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. 

Last week I attended the spirited, intense National Havurah Institute in New Hampshire. Not having participated for over a decade I noted with pleasure the many ecologically smart “minhagim”, or customs, which have evolved. FairTrade coffee, as much local produce as possible, minimal disposables and encouragement to bring your own coffee mugs and even name tags. At check out, many items were collected for reuse, such as the key necklaces for our dorm rooms. And there was a book and clothing swap – all kinds of Judaica changed hands and found new homes.
So, I thought, why not do this all year, people offering their surplus Judaica – basically a national Jewish
Freecycle ^(TM)? (I am more aware of this than usual, having just helped a friend with a large Judaica library & resource collection downsize from six bedrooms to a small apartment.) But it strikes me that COEJL should be the umbrella, and invite participation from the whole Jewish community: organizations, schools, congregations, as well as individuals.
It could function both nationally and locally. People/organizations can post items they want to pass along, from an individual spice box, say, to a whole set of old chumashim or prayerbooks. Likewise, you can post what you’re seeking, so others who may have some can offer them up. (This is already done through the Reform and Conservative rabbinical associations, by the way.) Perhaps folks in Long Island are looking for 12 tablecloths for a bar mitzvah Shabbat dinner; maybe someone in their vicinity would have them to loan or pass along. Need 50 kipot? Maybe there are leftovers from a General Assembly, and all they need are new labels…. Maybe surplus Kosher food could be shipped out? On our local Freecycle (of which I am one of the moderators), people have asked for or given away matzah boxes during Passover, offered Hebrew novels from the 1960′s (4 takers on that one!), and a Judaica “starter kit” which I put together, consisting of my early Judaica, eventually replaced by newer, more lavish items. The couple who came for the starter set were delighted, and I’m sure there would be a lot of enthusiaism for acquiring a Judaica collection in such a fashion – free after paying shipping.
Anyone out there with some data base/ computer skills interested in helping us think this through? We’re envisioning a simply graphic look, a la Craig’s list. Ideas for names? Volunteers? Chime in, so we can proceed on this project, which will lower the cost, as well as the waste and duplication, and increase the sustainability, of Jewish life.

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

COEJL’s How Many Jews Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb campaign was referenced in this great post by Simran Sehti about compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). Through this initiative, which began during Hanukkah, 80,000 energy-saving CFLs were purchased, keeping over 29,000 tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere.

The list of concerns when food shopping just keeps lengthening. Once upon a time, I simply bought on the basis of price, kashrut, and perceived quality but over time, my definition of quality has evolved. Price is actually much lower on the list of consideration.
Some of the concerns are:
1) ingredients. If there are too many, or I don’t recognize them as actual food, I don’t buy the product.
2) packaging. Is the packaging recyclable? If not (hello, hummus!), is it at least minimized?
3) extra points if the product is organic.
4) deduction of points if the product is from too far away. In many cases you can’t telll where the product is from, of course, but now we have to pay attention to food miles, how far the product has shipped.
5) extra points if the product has a hashgachah. But since I’m primarily vegetarian, I’ll go with a vegan or reliable vegetarian designation. (Obviously there is a wide range of observance on this issue.)
6) cost. It’s hard, but not impossible, to find extremely expensive vegetarian food.
7) size. It’s more resource efficient to buy a larger size of a product, providing you can use up the contents. (Like a plastic half gallon vs. a quart – they each have one cap, so buy the bigger one. Unless the milk will sour before you finish it.)
is the product Israeli? This used to be a big plus, since I felt like buying Israeli was virtuous. Now I’m coming around to it being a minus, since it’s shipped such a long distance.
Like I said, oy vey. This is hard. My personal compromise is that I buy light weight items from Israel, such as tea. (Which is only packaged in Israel; the tea is imported from Asia, I presume.) And Israeli wine. The studies that came out awhile back about wine showed that wine miles are counterintuitive. East coasters are better off, ecologically, by buying wine from Europe than California. In any event, I don’t buy that much wine, so have permitted myself to indulge in Israeli wines. My favorite was one we found last summer, organic wine from the Galil, named “Barn Owl” in honor of the barn owls which eat so many of the critters that do wine in that the vineyard can eschew pesticides. I wasn’t able to find it on line for this post, so perhaps it was a special edition wine.
How do you work your way through the food purchasing decision tree?

I wore a six-year old two-piece dress with a seafoam scoop-neck top to the weddings of my two older sons. I wore the same dress to my two youngest children’s bnai mitzvah celebrations just a few years earlier. I am hoping for more summer simkhas so I can get additional mileage out of it.

I know it is part of the American cultural ritual to buy something new for fancy events, each special occasion occasioning an expansion of the wardrobe.  I could justify my recycling of the dress by arguing that with all the money we were already spending, why unnecessarily spend more?  Truth be told, though, I liked wearing a previously worn dress.

I liked opening the school books at the beginning of the year and discovering the students from the grades above me whose karma now infused that book, binding me to them and the learning enterprise. I liked it when library books came with cards stamped with due dates that showed how often and how recently a book was taken out. I like buying used books from Amazon’s marketplace, pages smoothed and a little dog-eared by previous readers. Most of our family’s best children’s books are library discards – books once held on the laps of countless parents and children in the most tender moments of discovery. I like buying used wooden furniture studded with round water stains from iced-tea glasses accompanying long summer visits with dear old friends. I like old houses, old handbags, old chinaware.

If I could, I would live in a converted train station – imagining the people, the stories, the hellos and goodbyes, the tears and the pacing, the grumbling and the jokes that people would have told waiting for life’s little adventures to unfold. I would conjure up their voices at night and feel the vitality of life’s tidal forces.

I don’t quite understand the lust for new. New feels incomplete to me, possibilities without the wisdom to guide and temper it.  The Old gifted as New seems to me the best of all worlds.

I recently heard of an e-establishment from whom you rent toys instead of buying them. You go on line, choose age-appropriate toys for your kids from this enterprising entrepreneur, use them for however long you want and then return them and get new toys. Kind of like Netflix for toys.

And there is an outfit that rents handbags for a night.

I was talking with a potter who says that when she is stuck for a gift, she chooses a bowl from her home pottery collection,  washes it off, and Voila, instant gift. I thanked her, for she had liberated my desire to do the same.

Imagine how rich we would be if the stuff we owned was coated with a patina of lives lived fully; if the gifts we gave were crowded with our stories, our memories, our blessings. Imagine if our daily acts were added, layer by layer, onto a tel of tales, a mound of memories captured and held by the stuff of our lives.