Welcome to our Blog!

(Darby) This is a real first for us – not to be getting involved in an issue we care about, but to have been motivated by the Anglican Church!

We heard a few months ago that the Anglican Church was encouraging its membership to go on a “Carbon Fast” for Lent. They were asking their congregants to change some aspect of their lives that left a carbon footprint, like taking public transportation instead of driving, shutting down their computers at night, etc.

We thought to ourselves, why not put a Jewish twist on this? Since Passover was right around the corner, and we were making our plans to clean all the chametz out of our house, why not think about cleaning out extra energy usage too?

OK, so then we thought, if we can do it, why not see if others at B’nai Jeshurun might do it too?

So we decided to come up with a list of things that would be relatively easy for people to do to help the environment. At first we thought about just coming up with actions during the week of Passover. But then Rabbi Weiss challenged us to think beyond Passover, all the way through the Counting of the Omer to Shavuos. Wow, that would mean coming up with more than 50 actions! We were a little overwhelmed, but decided to give it a shot.

We sat down at our computers late one night, Jon on the desktop, me on the laptop. It was like dueling banjos. He’d come up with a few ideas, then me a few. And before we knew it, we had not only come up with more than 50 actions, but had also created a list of the Ten Plagues of Global Warming.

We did quite a bit of googling that night to get our ideas and inspiration. The items on the list are not original thoughts, but we tried to put a Jewish spin onto many of the recommended actions that are out there on the web. The list is tied to the calendar, and takes into account Shabbat and holidays with special prayers and ways to celebrate the holidays in a green way. We were inspired by a few great websites out there, including http://www.coejl.org/ (the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life).

We hope you will read the list, and even if you don’t do all of the steps, perhaps you’ll find a few that will inspire you to make a change here or there to help protect the environment.

We, on the other hand, are going to follow all of our own advice (imagine that!). For the next 50-some days, we are going to be keeping a blog of what it’s like to make these simple changes in our life.

We hope you’ll check in with us every now and then to see how it’s going. But make sure you turn your computer off when you’re done!

Chag Sameach,

Darby and Jon