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November 7, 2008
Blue, white ... and green, too
To ensure Jewish continuity, we need a safe world in which to live.
MIRA SUCHAROV
Every morning when I drop off my daughter at preschool, I am greeted by pictures of smiling faces – on billboards dotting the Ottawa Jewish community campus – that are accompanied by the tag line "I want a Jewish future."
The annual United Jewish Appeal campaign manages to successfully engender a spirit of collective action by sending the message that if we want to make use of the scores of Jewish agencies dotting our local landscape (and even enjoy the knowledge that they exist), not to mention wanting Israel to thrive financially, we should each make an effort to contribute. The federation Choices event for women – now held annually in the fall in Ottawa and Vancouver, among other places – powerfully reinforces this message through savvy word-of-mouth marketing and a high-production-values video shown of North American women of various ages making the case for supporting the campaign.
Yet, as a Jewish friend remarked dryly to me about those billboards, "How can we expect a future for our children if we do not attempt to ensure that they will have a healthy planet on which to live?" I wonder when and how we can encourage this spirit of communal giving – where the incentive is almost equally there to "free ride" – for the goal of protecting the earth.
Certainly, the ethical and material importance of devoting attention to environmental sustainability is obvious to most. But, as social scientists have long observed, the free rider potential is enormous. That is, how do we encourage individuals to contribute the necessary short-term costs to achieve a collective, long-term gain that everyone would enjoy anyway through the efforts of others?
Socially minded Jewish activists have begun to work towards overcoming this collective action problem. Groups such as Teva, Hazon, and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life take the Judaic concepts of tikkun olam (repair of the world) and tuv ha'aretz (for the good of the land) to engage in environmental advocacy and activism from a Jewish perspective. And as the Canadian Jewish News reported last June, Montreal's federation Combined Jewish Appeal buildings have recently made major strides towards "greening" their premises, with the aim of extending these eco-friendly practices to their entire Jewish community campus.
What are some practices that we could try to introduce and improve in our own community? We could attempt to eliminate, or at least reduce, the use of Styrofoam at our synagogues, schools and day cares, as well as at Jewish communal events. If disposable dishes are necessary, there are now more ecologically friendly products on the market, including biodegradable plates and utensils.
Agency offices could ensure that their supplies are as "green" as possible (with the help of companies such as www.frogfile.com, a B.C.-based company headed by once-Vancouverite Gil Yaron) and that they are moving toward more electronic correspondence. Recycling should be made mandatory. Agency buildings could begin to use biodegradable cleaning supplies (there are many on the market, including those from Seventh Generation) and federations should consider switching to green energy. Kosher food-service facilities could start composting and, indeed, my daughter's preschool – at the Jewish community centre in Ottawa – now has a worm composting program for food and paper scraps, with the added bonus of teaching the children about botany and biology.
At the more participatory level, we could consider inaugurating an annual, community-wide Tu b'Shevat seder, where we attempt to spiritually connect with the natural world through the once-dormant but increasingly practised ritual. An accompanying Tu b'Shevat colloquium could help us take stock of our communal "greening" efforts and point to areas where we could strive to do more.
There is a powerful spiritual component to being aware of nature and our evolving relationship to it, something I noticed when I spent a week on Hornby Island, B.C., this past summer. As I encountered several fellow Jews out and about, I found myself thinking about how to form an occasional summer minyan among the islanders, something that is admittedly farther from my mind when I am in the city. It is no doubt a function of Canada's harsh climate, but our organized spirituality more often takes place in large heated or air-conditioned buildings, far removed from the idea of an ecological imperative. And, with Jewish communal activities in general, it becomes easier – though of course not impossible – to mentally divorce the idea of subcommunal affiliation from global affiliation, including our responsibility to the earth. Yet it is only with a far-reaching vision that we can ensure a place for future generations to be Jewish – or anything at all, for that matter.
Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University.
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