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The push is on to make the environment a keenly Jewish issue.
When the students at the Hannah Senesh Community Day School in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn returned to school earlier this month, they drank their water out of bottles that read, "mal'a ha'aretz kin' yanecha," or "the earth is full of your creation."
The school's new building was designed last year with input from students for how to make it more environmentally friendly, and the school composts, serves lunch on washable plates and encourages students to go to local fanner's markets to understand the process of how food gets from the farm to the kitchen table.
"As a Jewish school, we believe that taking care of the environment is a part of our responsibility," said Head of School Nicole Nash, adding that in 2005 the school took top honors in the New York City Department of Sanitation's Golden Apple Awards for their model recycling program and ecocurriculum that integrated Judaic and general studies.
"There's definitely a lot of empowerment in not just talking about it in theory but putting it into practice as well," Nash said.
Hannah Senesh is one of a growing number of Jewish schools throughout the country making a push for environmental education, the idea that the environment is an inherently Jewish issue and that day and supplemental school teachers, camp counselors and the entire Jewish community must convey that to their students.
In addition to schools and newly formed environmental organizations, the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE) made eco-Judaism a centerpiece of its 33rd annual conference last month.
Jeffrey Lasday, executive director of CAJE, said the environment is an emerging issue in the Jewish and mainstream worlds, one he felt needed to be a focus of his organization's annual meeting.
"Here is something that speaks to relevancy; it's the burning issue of the day, so how could it not be a Jewish issue?" he said.
The setting for the CAJE conference was ideal for this theme: the environmentally friendly University of Vermont in Burlington, where verdant hills and azure skies frame the campus, which is green in both color and consciousness. Excited teachers walked between more than 60 sessions focused on the environment,...