Environmentalism

How we engage with Environmentalism at JRC.

Over the years, we have had two big overarching projects.

The first is our annual celebration of Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish New Year for the Trees, which has become the environmental holiday in the Jewish calendar.  We hold an annual Tu B’Shvat Seder.  This is a fun, family-centered holiday celebration highlighting the Jewish value of love for nature.  After a Seder involving different fruits and grape juices, each with their own significance in the liturgy of the Seder, the children separate and have their own age-appropriate program while the remaining adults participate in a program with a “green” theme.  In the early years, it was educating congregants about the reality of climate change.  Over the years, as the climate crisis became more obvious, we offered various strategies for changing our own lifestyles to include personal as well as communal efforts at adaptation and mitigation.  These programs and others we did throughout the year with the school and at other events laid the groundwork for our second major project.

Years ago, the congregation had reached a crossroad and decided that in order to grow and meet our physical and spiritual needs we needed to either move out of, or massively renovate our existing building, or completely build a new synagogue building. Our second biggest project was to convince the congregational leaders that whatever was decided, it needed to meet high environmental standards and that it was a Jewish religious value to do so. After much work by dozens of members on all aspects of this huge effort, we realized that building a new green building captured the imagination of the congregation as a whole and we were able to raise the needed funds to make it actually happen!  Our synagogue was the first house of Worship in the world to achieve the distinction of being awarded the highest “Platinum Level” by the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)! 

In addition:

• We encouraged congregants to consider making their homes more energy efficient by insulating and sealing and add solar panels on their homes.
• We instituted office policies of using 100% recycled paper, double sided printing, recycling and using electronic communications instead of paper newsletters
• We encouraged members to think twice about using so much paper and adopting similar policies at home and where they work.
• All of our events are nearly waste-free, as we compost not only our food scraps but the compostable plates and plastic-ware.
• Our green spaces around the building are filled with native prairie plants which have completely replaced any turf grass.
• Our building is fully ADA accessible as well as accessible by walking, riding bikes or taking a bus.
• Many members have bought hybrid or electric vehicles, which can park in the JRC lot’s priority spots for their vehicles. Carpools get a priority space as well.

After 15 years of living in our building many of the practices that were novel in 2008 when we moved in are now so routine that we don’t even think of them as out of the ordinary and “green.”  We still offer tours of our beautiful building and encourage people to not only be aware of their own energy and materials use, but to also encourage others, friends, relatives and our government to be bold in confronting climate change and those polluting companies who got us in this predicament in the first place.