Posted on 12/04/2007 9:11:23 AM PST by wardaddy
In a campaign that has spread like wildfire across the Internet, a group of Israeli environmentalists is encouraging Jews around the world to light at least one less candle this Hanukka to help the environment.
The founders of the Green Hanukkia campaign found that every candle that burns completely produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide. If an estimated one million Israeli households light for eight days, they said, it would do significant damage to the atmosphere.
"The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won't need another miracle," said Liad Ortar, the campaign's cofounder, who runs the Arkada environmental consulting firm and the Ynet Web site's environmental forum. "Global warming is a milestone in human evolution that requires us to rethink how we live our lives, and one of the main paradigms of that is religion and how it fits into the current situation."
Cofounder Tom Wegner, who heads the public relations firm Update Marketing Media, spread the campaign via mass e-mails and through social interaction Web sites like Facebook and Hook.co.il. He said no money had been invested in the campaign, but it had already raised awareness around the world and made people realize that they have to consider the environment this Hanukka.
Wegner said he did not consider the campaign anti-religious. The unlit candle could be the shamash, which is not required for the mitzva, he said. But he said he would encourage people who do not keep mitzvot not to light a hanukkia at all for environmental and educational reasons.
"We have many environmental traditions in Judaism like Tu Bishvat and Succot, but there are also traditions like Lag Ba'omer and Hanukka that made sense when they were instituted but are more problematic now in the days of global warming," Wegner said.
"There are many people who just light candles for the tradition and for their children," he said. "To tell a child on the eighth day that we are not lighting the last candle as a sacrifice for the environment is an act that is not only educational but also will prevent the release of a huge amount of carbon dioxide that would hurt the environment."
Shas MK Nissim Ze'ev said he was not convinced by the environmentalists' argument. He warned that the campaign would take away from the light of Torah that each and every candle symbolizes.
"The environmentalists should think about how much pollution is caused by one solitary diesel truck on the road," Ze'ev said. "They should be fighting the trucks instead of Judaism. This is so trivial, so anti-Jewish and so anti-religious that even the worst anti-Semites couldn't think of it. Just like the Helenists, they are trying to extinguish the flames of the Jewish soul."
United Torah Judaism MK Avraham Ravitz called the environmentalists "crazy people who are playing with the minds of innocent Jewish people." He said the campaign would only convince people who do not light candles anyway.
"They should encourage people to light one less cigarette instead," Ravitz said.
Rabbi Benny Lau of Jerusalem's Ramban Congregation, who is himself an environmental activist, praised the good intentions of the people behind the campaign. But he said the environmentalists should be trying to reach out to observant Jews instead of running campaigns that turn them away.
"People in the green movement who have an agenda have unfortunately made it anti-religious," Lau said. "This makes religious people think incorrectly that anything environmentalist is against them. The damage ends up being a thousand times the benefit. Tikkun olam [fixing the world] must be done by adding more light and not by adding more darkness."
Now that’s funny!
That is literally insane.
As usual - it’s the Joooos fault - this time for destroying the planet.
Why do liberal Jews hate themselves so much?
If 5,000 years of candle burning hasn’t killed us all by now, then a few hundred more couldn’t hurt.
“Global warming is a milestone in human evolution that requires us to rethink how we live our lives, and one of the main paradigms of that is religion and how it fits into the current situation.”
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wow they managed to get “global warming”, “evolution” and “rethinking religion” all in one sentence. I’m surprised they didn’t find a way to stick animal rights and higher taxes in there.
I know! “Don’t give chanuka gelt to ‘your’ kids (they really belong in a kibbutz). Give it to the government so they can use it to save the whales.”
For the love of God! Carbon isn’t the PROBLEM! Good LORD! CO2 goes in the atmostphere and the OCEAN absorbs it! Why don’t people get the SIMPLE laws of Partial Pressures??? Damn its so 5th GRADE even! (grumblegrumble)
that’s for the ‘cause’ so that’s ok. The whole point of pushing global warming is to get people to accept a socialist regime.
Madness!
Environmentalism is increasingly antireligious and antihuman. I, myself, I blushingly admit, briefly joined the Sierra Club and some other conservation groups back in the early eighties. I discontinued after about a year of reading their journals convinced me that their agendas included not just the preservation of the natural world but the wholesale endorsement of a social and political agenda which had little or nothing to do with the natural world at all.
I need to throw an extra large log on the fire this evening and ponder this matter further.
Amusing that during the eight days, a total of 44 candles are burned, but exhalation from each one of the people gathered around the menorah puts the equivalent of 533 candles of CO2 into the air over those same eight days.
well reducing the number of Jews is their next step
Interesting.
Meshugge.
Why don’t they just ask Al Gore to make a few less plane flights, so Jews can have their holiday? It’s like buying a carbon credit off Al Gore.
As for religion, how about people like John Travolta who fly regularly to Clearwater on their private jets for Scientology?
Cynthia McKinney was right. It is The Joooooooooooes fault!
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