How to Have An Eco-Friendly Passover

By Snap Greene in Snappy Tips for NorthStarMoving.com

It’s almost Passover! You know what that means? Time for lots of  family, yummy food, telling stories, asking questions…yep, it’s Passover Seder time! How do you celebrate Passover? Whatever you do, make sure it’s eco-friendly! Here are some tips and tricks for making your matzo time more green:

Passover Food and Cooking
As always, the best way to go green is to buy Passover food that gets the eco-friendly seal of approval. Make sure your kosher wine, matzo ball soup, potatoes, and other Passover ingredients are from local sources, are organic, and/or come from fair trade vendors. You can probably find all these Passover ingredients at your local farmers’ market.

Also, since Passover means no bread, don’t just throw out all the old bread you’re using. Make breadcrumbs and freeze them for after the holidays, or use your old bread to make bird food for your outdoor friends! Waste not, want not!

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For more Passover ideas, check out our Passover Holiday Spotlight Kit

Help David Duchovny and Shalom The Pig Get to Israel by Sundown

By Abby Sher for Jewniverse

Maybe you first fell for David Duchovny as the DEA Agent in Twin Peaks. Or you tracked his every move in The X-Files as the steamily troubled Agent Fox Mulder.

Either way, it’s hard not to feel smitten all over again when you read his allegorical new book called Holy Cow. It’s a grim but hilarious look at how animals are eaten and revered, depending on your location. Duchovny looks a lot different from his X-File days. But his sly smile and tousled hair are still in place.

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The Visionary Creator of a Vegan-Friendly Jewish Summer Camp

The Jewish Veg Spotlight Shines On ... Isaac Mamaysky

If you think finding a vegan-friendly – or, better yet, a vegan-promoting – synagogue is tough, try looking for a vegan-friendly Jewish summer camp for your compassionate kids.

That would have been really tough to find. Until last summer, that is.

That’s when JVNA member Isaac Mamaysky, along with a team of dedicated staff and volunteers, fulfilled his dream of creating and operating a summer camp for Jewish children and teens.

Mamaysky’s Camp Zeke drew 180 campers aged 7-17 to a beautiful, lakeside site in the Poconos last summer, and even more campers are expected for the camp’s second season in 2015.

The camp provided a predominantly vegetarian menu with numerous vegan options at every meal. And the camp’s activities included a plant-based culinary program.

This is a sure sign that the Jewish Veg Movement is gaining momentum and, just as importantly, becoming mainstream.

Mamaysky was able to create the camp thanks to $1.5 million in grants from four major Jewish foundations – Jim Joseph, AVI CHAI, the Foundation for Jewish Camp, and UJA-Federation of New York.

JVNA sat down with Mamaysky to discuss Judaism, veganism and how they intersect at Camp Zeke.

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Passover at Isabella Freedman

Looking for an environmentally friendly Passover experience?  Join Hazon at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center this year from April 3-12

 All-Inclusive 9-Night Retreat

A place to discover your heart, without losing your mind.
—Jill Robinson, Passover 2014

Once we were slaves in Egypt… and now we are free to celebrate Passover surrounded by the beautiful foothills of the Berkshire Mountains.

Celebrate your freedom by bringing your whole family to an enriching, relaxing, and fun-filled Kosher-for-Passover program in a beautiful country setting.

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EcoFriendly Purim

Enjoy the holiday in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner

From ReformJudaism.org

Purim is a festival of joy and celebration but unfortunately one of a lot of waste, too. There are many ways that we can enjoy our holiday in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner. Leket Israel, Israel's National Food Bank and leading food rescue network, recommends the following tips for a more eco-friendly Purim.

Trash the Baskets: What can you do with so many straw baskets and gift bags? Package your Mishlo-ach Manot in useful, reusable containers such as storage containers, glasses, mugs and pasta drainers for year-round usability.

Wrap it Up: Mishloach manot food items can be wrapped up in a pretty hand towel, apron or other useful fabric item.

Sustainable Stuffing: Instead of padding your package with shredded cellophane or colored paper, use banana chips, sunflower seeds or popcorn (only for recipients older than 3).

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For more information, recipes and great ideas for Purim, check out Jvillage's Purim Holiday Kit. 

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We Need Green Rabbis

By David Krantz on HayimHerring.com

Meals served on Styrofoam plates with plastic utensils. Trays of leftover food simply thrown away. And the lights left on all night. From synagogues to Jewish student centers, these are very common Shabbat experiences. Clearly there is a gap between modern Jewish practice and environmental values. But there’s also a large gap between modern Jewish practice and the environmental tenets of Judaism.

Judaism is an inherently environmental religion, with so much written about it, by myself[1] and many others — particularly rabbis Ellen Bernstein,[2] Fred Scherlinder Dobb,[3] David Sears,[4] David Seidenberg,[5] Lawrence Troster[6] and Arthur Waskow,[7] and profs. Richard Schwartz,[8] Hava Tirosh-Samuelson[9] and Martin Yaffe[10] — that I don’t need to repeat here the extent of environmental values present in Jewish laws, customs and practice. Still, outside of the nascent Jewish-environmental movement, I rarely meet rabbis who are familiar with Jewish-environmental wisdom. Usually, as a leader of a Jewish-environmental nonprofit, Aytzim: Ecological Judaism, I am asked by rabbis what’s Jewish about environmentalism. It is the extent to which Jewish clergy and, in turn, their communities, are unaware of the environmentalism that flows through Judaism that is troubling. And that lack of knowledge, in part, can be traced to the lack of Jewish-environmental education in rabbinical schools.

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Down to Earth: The Vital Lessons Learned in Burying the Dead

Returning our deceased to the soil honors the injunction for a proper burial—and keeps us mindful of the life cycle of which we’re a part

By Regina Sandler-Phillips for Tablet Magazine

“Bury him a burial,” commands the biblical passage at the center of our Jewish funeral imperatives (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)—asserting that even the corpse of an executed criminal is worthy of respect. By traditional extension, all our Jewish dead are given the honor of levayah, which literally means “accompanying” to the grave. Full levayah includes active participation in burial, which carries two protections against desecration: one of the human body (adam), the other of the earth (adamah).

My funeral attire as a rabbi allows for full freedom of movement and is worn with the expectation that I will be actively navigating piles of soil, clay, or mud. An Italian-American friend of one bereaved family told me that I “wielded a shovel like an Italian ditch digger.” (It was a flattering, if irreverent, exaggeration.)

The ancient sage Shimon ben Gamaliel declares, “The learning is not primary, but the doing.” I’ve learned how to offer words and music, to help mourners share memories and recite Kaddish, to organize lines of comforters leading away from the grave.

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