Four-Part Climate Change Campaign

• CFL campaign – members of the Jewish community including rabbis, community leaders, and congregants launched the campaign and took action by installing CFL bulbs during Hanukkah, 2006 as a modern commemoration. COEJL will continue to facilitate this effort by getting bulbs to congregations and institutions through simple order forms and on-line ordering. COEJL also provided a bulb installation ceremony and bulb prayer. [pdf]
• Greening Synagogues – building on COEJL’s existing work in this area, there will be a more intense focus for encouraging energy conservation. Greening Synagogues will be promoted by a power point presentation which COEJL will make available to you with the steps needed to conserve energy. The presentation will introduce the issues of climate change and global warming by highlighting our religious obligation to till and to tend. It will stress how the Jewish community needs to look at this issue through a social justice lens by linking the science behind global warming and climate justice.
• Take Your Senator to Synagogue – a program to interact with political leaders on the issues of energy efficiency and climate change. Hanukkah bulb installations and events will launch a winter and spring focus on this program in which elected officials will receive an invitation to attend either a Shabbat or holiday service or special program on global climate change. Participants in the campaign, may chose to invite an official before, during, or after the installation of the CFL bulbs with the message: Here’s what the Jewish community is doing to help stop global warming. How will you address this critical problem? Also reach out by signing climate change policy postcards. Order them by contacting climatechange@coejl.org.
• Climate Challenge – a worldwide youth initiative to become “carbon neutral.” This means educating young people about conservation and engaging them in carbon-offsetting activities such as planting shrubs and groundcover that act as mini “carbon sinks.” COEJL will adapt the program for Hebrew schools, youth groups, congregations, and other communal institutions such as summer camps.