Get to know: Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life
How many Jews does it take to change a light bulb? And install a CFL? The answer may lie with the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.
Started in 1993 through the efforts of Al Gore and Carl Sagan, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life takes a “distinctively Jewish” approach to the human relationship towards our environment. A member of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, along with the US Council of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches of Christ and the Evangelical Environmental Network, COEJL adds a progressive Jewish voice to the American religious voice for ecology.
In the last month, COEJL and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism announced a new campaign “to ask every synagogue in America to invite national, state, and/or local elected officials to speak at their synagogues, addressing what we can do together to halt global climate change. This program is designed to encourage synagogues to create ongoing partnerships with public officials to address the challenges of global climate change. The initiative, known as ‘Conservation Conversations: Invite Your Elected Official to Synagogue,’ is part of an ongoing effort to focus the Jewish community on ways we can improve the Earth for future generations.”
According to COEJL board member and DC-area Rabbi Warren G. Stone: “I’ve come to see my environmental work as a core expression of my religious faith and central to my goals as a spiritual and community leader. Many — from a variety of faith traditions — share this view. We work together on climate-change, forest, and wilderness issues.”
Along with advocating on those issues, COEJL offers some interesting ways that folks can take action to stop global warming:
+Buy CFL bulbs
+I changed a light bulb…what are you doing to help stop global warming? postcards.
+Conservation Conversations: Invite Your Elected Official to Synagogue
+Hold a Low-Watt Shabbot
+Screen An Inconvenient Truth
+Take a scientist to synagogue
Learn more here.