These days, it seems everyone is talking about “going green.” Never has such a simple sounding term had so much meaning.  For nonprofit overnight Jewish camps, their staff and lay leaders, this means changing old habits, teaching campers about how and why to make changes, and ensuring a vibrant future for their camps.

Many camps have begun to implement green practices, taking action to decrease their carbon footprint, and impart a positive environmental message to their campers.  Steps have included forgoing paper, plastic, and Styrofoam in favor of using reusable tableware and reducing non-biodegradable waste, using solar power for heating, providing campers and staff with environmentally friendly water bottles, changing light bulbs to reduce carbon emissions, and more!  Several camps have also planted gardens and are teaching their campers about healthy cooking and organics.

Last week, The Washington Post’s On Faith blog published a piece of mine inspired by the Hazon Food Conference. Specifically, I was inspired by the session “What Would Moses Drive?”

Entitled “Can Judaism save the planet?”, this piece presents one perspective that answers the question with a resounding “Yes!” We at least have the tools to do it. Judging from the number of people at the conference, and their passion and dynamic visions, we have the resources as well.

(This post originally appeared on Jewcy.com and is reprinted with permission)

What would Moses drive? This was the title of a session on climate change at the Hazon Food Conference, held December 24 to 27 in Pacific Grove, Calif. Indeed, this is a question for the ages. Or for right now.

The conference came just a few days after the close of the United Nations’ climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference also marked the end of a journey by a very wacky school bus, which cruised across the country on used vegetable oil to raise awareness about the Jewish Climate Change Campaign [read more about that here and here]. So it made sense for Jewish educator and environmental visionary Adam Berman to ask the question.

As it turns out, it didn’t really matter when this conference on a Jewish food movement that emphasizes sustainability took place. Really, Jews should be asking themselves what the quintessential member of the Tribe would do about climate change every day, and modeling solutions themselves. Luckily, Jewish practices translate beautifully into concrete tactics.

The  Climate Change Bus Tour, a joint project of The Teva Learning Center and Hazon,  is now in its final leg of the their cross-country tour!

It has been an incredible journey so far. Hundreds of Jewish students, teachers, and families have engaged with environmental education programs and activities. Many have also signed the Jewish Climate Change pledge committing themselves to sustainable action and advocacy.

Check out the latest video of the bus tour’s Chanukah out west and the latest press in The Jewish Exponent.

The Jew and The Carrot, Hazon’s blog about Jews, food and contemporary life.  The blog has a diverse and inclusive community, where we welcome readers and volunteer writers from across the Jewish denominational spectrum, and from all walks of culinary life.  Our aim is to ensure that The Jew and The Carrot community is a platform for vibrant discussion for anyone interested in food issues.

Late on Friday we received the following letter from Pete Cohon, founder and moderator of VeggieJews, an international, real-world and online, Jewish, vegetarian organization.  He has been a vegan and animal rights activist for 22 years and a vegetarian for 27 years.  A former San Francisco trial lawyer, Pete now lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Below his letter is the response from Hazon.  We encourage a vibrant debate, but please ask commentators to refrain from personal attacks on any views.  We reserve the right to remove  any comments that violate our Community Guidelines.

An open letter to Nigel Savage, Executive Director of Hazon, and the groups members:

The Hazon group claims that it works to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, fight climate change and promote a more sustainable world for all.  I understand that the group even hosts vegetarian meals at which it promotes its programs.

That sounds great.  But I’m concerned that Hazon is not living up to the promise.

“I grew up in a family that emphasized food and used it as an organizing principal for family gatherings – which is probably not unfamiliar to The Jew & The Carrot’s readers,” says anti-food-waste activist Jonathan Bloom.

As a freelance writer for the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, Bloom wrote about food and travel. (“My travel articles were about going somewhere else to eat,” he jokes.) Like many Americans, Bloom became increasingly attuned to environmental issues and, he says, “My interests in food and the environment came together for me in 2005, when I volunteered at D.C. Central Kitchen, an organization that rescues food that would otherwise go to waste, and trains homeless people to be chefs using that food.

If my summer were a cookbook, it would be called What to Expect When You’re Expecting— Expecting Company, That Is, and It’s a Heat Wave.

Yes, welcome to life in the global warming oven.  We are on at least heat wave #3 of the summer here in usually temperate Portland, and I’ve had a potluck to attend or guests to host for all of them.  And while the hot weather makes me want to eat ice cream three meals a day, I know I really shouldn’t.

Especially not when “eating” means “bringing to a potluck where it will sit out in the sun.”

So what has been on the menu?  Lots, and I figured I’d share it in case you can’t stand the heat but still need to be in the kitchen.

Flowering zucchini amidst flooded paths

It’s been cold and rainy at Adamah for quite some time now, and on Thursday we started getting worried about the river. I went down to look at the field around 2 — it was high, higher than I’d ever seen, but still about 2 feet below the banks. Dark, brown, quickly moving water, surging down the channel. Mesmerizing to look at. Difficult to believe that this flowing source of life could turn so destructive. But maybe…it wouldn’t rise any higher?

By evening, though, the water had risen to within 6″ of the banks. Where we usually scramble down four or five feet or so to hop in the river, you could practically step right in. So we assembled a crew, and moved the irrigation pump (which perches on the edge of the river) and the row cover from the fields, because if the field flooded the fabric would clothesline all the plants in its path, and collected stray buckets and plastic chairs that could float away if the river spilled over its banks and across the field.

The Faith Leaders for Environmental Justice. It’s an unwieldy name, but to the point. They are an interdenominational umbrella group of clerics andorganizations working at translating environmental consciousness into social justice. Based out of NY, and working mostly in and around the city, the group is co-chaired by NY Faith and Justice (a largely Christian organization) and We ACT for Environmental Justice, but includes a number of representatives from interfaith groups, including our very own Hazon. They host talks, run initiatives and are dedicated to improving the lives of those in lower income communities in the five boroughs.  They take the wild and crazy position that these communities foot the bill for our collective enviro-sins. See? It’s not just about saving baby seals…

Thanks so much to Richard H. Schwartz Ph.D., for this great guest post.  Richard  is the author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, Judaism and Global Survival, and Mathematics and Global Survival and over 130 articles at JewishVeg.com. He is President of Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) and the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV) and director of the Veg Climate Alliance. He is associate producer of the documentary “A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World.”

Thou shalt not eat meat? Have I gone completely crazy? Am I not aware that the Torah gives people permission to eat meat and goes into some detail in discussing which animals are permitted to be eaten and which are not? And that the Talmud has much material on the laws of kashrut related to the preparation and consumption of meat? And that various types of flesh products have been strongly associated with Sabbath and festival celebrations?

Yes, but I still think that it is necessary, actually essential, to argue this case because our modern meat-centered dietary culture is doing great harm to Jews, Israel and, indeed, the entire world and is inconsistent with several important Jewish values.

When Birkat HaChammah arrived a week ago, a group of people from the Washington area marked the morning in a very D.C. way—by converging on the National Mall. The spot the organizers chose—at the Lincoln Memorial, in sight of the Washington Monument and the reflecting pool—is a place folks from this city and around the nation have gathered for thousands of events spanning our parents’, grandparents, and great-great-grandparents’ lives. The historic spot seemed fitting for a holiday that comes once every 28 years, or once a generation. (And the Washington Post seemed to like the choice of venue and celebration enough to write and video about it).

Back when I was a wee tot enjoying my first veggies, birkat hachammah, the holiday honoring the creation of the sun—literally “the blessing of the sun”—quietly came and went.

On April 8, 28 years later, birkat hachammah will return. This time, I’m hearing all sorts of fanfare from a Jewish community more aware than ever of what the sun provides, and seizing the opportunity to encourage sustainable practices. As shared on this very blog, organizations are mobilizing.

Perhaps the most quirky and inspiring sign of this foment is the Topsy-Turvy bus from the Teva Learning Center.

This head-over-heals double school bus has been scooting between synagogues and schools on used vegetable oil since late February. Its mission? To teach kids about the blessing of the sun, and using our solar gifts wisely.

Red meat in moderation is okay, but you probably shouldn’t chow down on steak every day. That’s what conventional dietary wisdom says. Now, a National Cancer Institute study suggests, the distinction between moderation and daily intake has become a matter of life and death.

In the study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 545,653 people ages 50 to 71 were asked about their eating habits and then tracked over the next 10 years. During that time, a little over 70,000 died.