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Environmental awareness during the past decade has increased among Jews, just as it has with other communities. But some note the difference between awareness and practice.
In eight years, Hazon, a group devoted to building a healthier, more sustainable world, has grown from a venture with one unpaid staff member and no budget to an operation that employs 15 people on an annual budget of more than $2 million. In the process, the group has evolved into one of the Jewish community's most prominent environmental organizations, as befits an agency whose name in Hebrew means vision.
Even newer than Hazon is Canfei Nesharim, an Orthodox group whose name, "Wings of Eagles," reflects the Torah's redemptive language for how the Jews were brought from Egypt to the Promised Land. Founded in 2003, the organization provides Torah-based resources on the environment to synagogues, yeshivas and Jewish day schools, said its founder, Evonne Marzouk.
Although other groups, such as the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life and the Teva Learning Center, are older, all are reporting a surge of interest in the past few years. Much of it, they said, stems from rising concern over global climate change and, more specifically, Al Gore's 2006 documentary on the subject, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Perhaps no activity illustrates that concern more than the "greening" of synagogues and other buildings - the design choices that have made those institutions environmentally friendly and have lessened their carbon footprints.
Indeed, the first of at least two synagogues to apply for certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit group that rates buildings for sustainability, received that status last month. The synagogue, Congregation Beth David of San Luis Obispo, Calif., is part of the Reform movement. The second synagogue, the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill., is expecting to be certified this summer, according to Rabbi Brant Rosen, its spiritual leader. Both congregations applied for the classification, known as LEED designations, following the construction of new, environmentally friendly buildings.
In this area, an Orthodox congregation in Englewood, N.J., Kehilat Kesher, is expecting to begin construction on a new home by the end of the year that it hopes will receive LEED certification. And the American Jewish Committee is "on its way...