Maybe it was at kiddush on Shabbat. Or perhaps it was at a Federation event for work. Or maybe something run by the JCC. Or maybe it was my own Passover seder. Whatever it was, it involved a lot of Styrofoam, paper and plastic.

And it made me think we Jews aren’t every eco-friendly as a group.

Forget about institutional practices and holidays. What about at home? Am I composting? Do I grow my own produce? Shop organic farmer’s markets? Reduce, reuse and recycle?

I can maybe check off the last two, but that’s probably about it for helping to manage my own carbon footprint. If I cannot function that local, then what makes me think that the Jewish institutions around me are going to be anymore so inclined?

And yet all around me are signs that Jews are green. Or at least trying to think green. It may not have trickled down to the utensils we use for communal events, but it could mean that how we treat the environment is itself felt in part of a broader discussion of just what constitutes a Jewish issue.

As this paper goes to press, Nigel Savage, the director of Hazon, will be speaking at a lunch for the Jewish Federation of Rockland County’s Women’s Philanthropy. The topic: “Sustainable Living from a Jewish Perspective,” the gist of which will be looking at how we can reduce our impact on the Earth’s limited resources from a Jewish point of view.
Savage, who founded Hazon in 1999, an organization best known for its eco-minded bicycle rides in the United States and Israel, has watched the Jewish world turn from uninterested to engaged when the subject of sustainable living comes up.  And little efforts, he notes, yields results.

“Oh for sure,” said Savage, who I interviewed by phone from Saul’s Deli, a Jewish restaurant with an organic mindset, in Berkley, Calif. where salami was recently pulled from the menu because the owners, Karen Adelman and Peter Levitt felt that until they can find a version that is from beef that is sustainably and ethically raised, they could not serve it.

“What we are seeing is the Jewish community changing in front of our eyes at a record pace,” Savage said.

Hazon has launched 44 community supported agriculture – or CSA – programs since, as part of this effort. The concept is fairly simple: You buy a share in a farm, help support a local farmer. In exchange, you receive a steady stream of fresh produce. In CSAs the goal is to support local farming, thus reducing the carbon transaction needed to get it to you, while also encouraging and promoting a diet that is fresh, organic and native to the region.
Savage is definitely one for standing behind his principles. At Hazon’s first food conference in 2007, the group shechted, that is slaughtered according to the laws of kashrut, three goats on Friday morning.

And Shabbat dinner that night? You guessed it. Goat was on the menu.

“We are starting a conversation about what it means to keep kosher in the 21st century,” Savage says. “The word ‘kosher’ literally means ‘fit’ and for centuries we’ve been asking that question, what it means to be fit. Asking that question is a larger one in the 21st century.”

More than 7,000 miles away from Saul’s Deli, in Hod HaSharon, Israel, Ido Harpaz and the educators at the Mosenson School are asking a related question. Theirs is not so much about kashrut, but how you take the grandchildren of people who raised oranges in the desert, who primarily live in urban environments, and connect them once again to the land.
Harpaz, who I met when I traveled on JCC Rockland’s recent trip to Israel, teaches environmental studies to high schoolers, in a four-year-old program that seeks to bring agriculture to the city, where 85 percent of Israel’s citizens reside, he said. Harpaz gave us a thorough tour of the Mosenson grounds, where we saw a range of plants from the flowering to the fruitful, all tended by students. Suspended tanks collect rainwater, rooftops become gardens and students can sell the harvest they reap.

“Any person needs to know a bit of math, but I think any person needs to see once how a tomato is grown, where it comes from, how it grows and the basic things that nature needs, and maybe by doing this, not studying it, by doing it, people will give more respect to nature,” said Harpaz, a passionate advocate who looks the part of the hip professor, sporting one long thin braid.

The Mosenson School, which began as a boarding school taking in parentless children escaping from Europe during World War II, has always offered an agriculture program. At that time it was educating a generation of kibbutzniks who as Harpaz puts it, “knew nothing.” But as the need in Israel for those who can drive tractors has diminished, the school has sought to revamp an essential part of its curriculum.

“Now everyone wants to go into computers,” he says. “If we say we are going to teach you farming, they won’t want to do that. So we need to give them something that is more ‘now.’”

 Certainly, Israel, is doing more than offering something ‘more now’ as it looks for ways to transcend its lack of natural resources. In their book, “Start-UP Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle,” Dan Senor and Saul Singer begin with the story of Shai Agassi, who had already sold his start-up software company for $400 million to SAP, the largest software company in the world , and headed two of its subsidiaries, turned his mind to the problem of oil dependency after attending the Forum for Young Leaders conference in 2007.

The idea he came up with, which is being developed, was for electric cars with swappable batteries. The truly novel part of the idea, the part that might actually make it tick, is the plan to also develop a network of battery swap stations. Agassi has raised $200 million in capital for the project. And Israelis, as the book puts it, “understand not only the financial and environmental costs of being dependant on oil but also the security costs of pumping money into the coffers of less-than-savory regimes.”

Styrofoam kiddushes aside, Judaism actually has a longstanding concern with the environment. Jewish law dictates letting the land we till rest every seventh year, and even during war, Jewish law commands that soldiers not destroy fruit-bearing trees. Perhaps when we were more connected to the land, we simply paid more attention to its needs. Most of us, kosher or not, don’t even purchase meat from a butcher where we see it cut and handled. We buy it in a supermarket, prepackaged in plastic. It’s why schechting your own goat to eat at a food conference has a certain sense to it. Participants knew exactly where that meal they were consuming came from.

A recent email from my synagogue asked if I was interested in taking part in a CSA starting this summer. I hadn’t thought seriously about participating. Though I enjoy going to the farmer’s market and buying regional, fresh produce throughout the summer, the idea of getting stuck with a large bag of beets three weeks running wasn’t that appealing to me. I am, after all, American and I like my choices. But maybe I need to look beyond that detail and take what appears to be a very doable, small step toward making my planet greener.

Hazon has a motto that you need to reach people where they are, and not where you want them to be. Savage says that is the key to all change, and it’s only by starting a conversation, not by demanding results, that any will be forthcoming.

After all, I could probably learn to like borscht better than I do. And I promise not to serve it in Styrofoam bowls.

Marla Cohen is editor of the Rockland Jewish Reporter. Email her at mcohen@jewishrockland.org.