Environmentalism

Ways to Get Involved at Har HaShem

•  Join Har HaShem's Green Team! This is a space for individuals interested in supporting environmental activities at Har HaShem and in the larger community to come together to share information, increase collaboration and momentum, and enable synergies and new activities to arise. We gather approximately quarterly; this is not a committee and there’s no formal commitment by those who choose to participate. To get involved contact Becky O'Brien at threeobriens@hotmail.com.
• Got your own environmental project that you'd like to launch at Har HaShem? Reach out to the Green Team to be supported in getting started -- threeobriens@hotmail.com.
•  Attend the annual Symposium on Spirituality and the Environment
• Have your teen participate in a climate-oriented B'Mitzvah project developed by JTree  Boulder.

Ways to Deepen Your Commitment

• Attend Hazon's Brit Hazon program (a six-week commitment program to promote behavior change that's better for the Earth).

USA JTree is in partnership with the National Forest Foundation. For every $2 you donate, 2 trees are planted that will help remove 1 Metric ton (Mt) of carbon emission from the atmosphere over the life of those trees. 

The average American carbon footprint is 20 Mt CO2e per year. Offset your impact by planting 40 trees today.

• JTree is an international effort, conceived following a 2019 report by Professor Tom Crowther, that shows [forest] restoration isn’t just one climate change solution, it is overwhelmingly the top one. 
• JTree was launched at Tu B’Shevat 2020 in the UK by Rabbi Wittenberg, and in the US by Hazon and Dr. Ace Levene. Consider having your organization join this growing list of supporters. 

Please consider celebrating an upcoming Mitzvah, a new birth, or a remembrance with a JTree donation this year. 

Together, Boulder JTree has planted over 7,000 trees so far!

Environmental activities happening at Har HaShem that are ongoing and/or starting in the future. 

• Host annual Symposium on Spirituality and the Environment
• Multi-year member/partner of the Tuv Ha’aretz (good of/for the earth) Community-Supported Agriculture program with Red Wagon Organic Farm.
• Ritual Committee is exploring the questions of “How can we make eating holy?” and “What does it mean for the synagogue to be a model in relation to food choices?”
• Recycling program 
• Composting program 
• Exploring option to buy our currently-leased solar panels
• Efforts to increase energy efficiency and to increase benefits of having solar
• Continued promotion of Namaste Solar (HHS’s installer) to congregants and the $500 donation made to HHS if any congregant installs with Namaste.
• Increased coordination between HHS and Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s Jewish sub-group, Religious Action Center’s environmental justice cohort, Hazon, Jewish Earth Alliance, Dayenu, and Jewish Climate Action Network.   
• Robust, coordinated Jewish community tree-planting initiative in partnership with JTree. For more information, contact Natalie Portman Marsh.
• Food for onegs purchased with environmental impact (as well as other issues) in mind.

Environmental activities accomplished at Har HaShem in the past. 

• BTY (Boulder Temple Youth) hosted three environmentally themed programs/conversations in 2019-20, including a screening of Before the Flood and an Earth Day program focusing on plastic pollution and upcycling.
• Taking Action and Learning about Climate Change 5-part program series in 2020.
• Environmentally-themed mishloach manot bags in 2020
• Co-sponsor of several Jewish community-wide Tu B’Shvat events
• Solar panel installation and related educational communications and programs
• Film screening of The Human Element, which follows an environmental photographer on his quest to highlight Americans on the frontlines of climate change, inspiring us to re-evaluate our relationship with the natural world.
• From 2005 - 07 there was an active environmental committee at Har HaShem called “Shomrei Adamah” (guardians/keepers of the earth). Some of the accomplishments of this group included: 
• installation of paper-saving towel and toilet paper dispensers and foam hand soap dispensers all certified 100% environment-friendly; 
• organized and led a stream clean-up project for HHS’s Mitzvah Day; 
• co-sponsored a Tu B’Shvat event; 
• created and coordinated a Minyan for the Environment program (got double our goal of at least a minyan (ten) households committed to taking one or more of ten positive environmental actions); 
• conducted a lighting audit to determine where we could make quick, easy, affordable improvements to lighting efficiency;
• did a City of Boulder energy audit; 
• did a number of educational presentations at HHS and in wider community;
• formerly endorsed City of Boulder amendment 202, the Climate Action Plan Tax, which was on the ballot in Nov 2006; 
• got Rabbi Bronstein as a primary speaker on a national conference call for rabbis on Judaism and the environment (other speakers were David Saperstein, ED of the RAC, and Laurie David, producer of An Inconvenient Truth); 
• participated in COEJL’s Let There Be Renewable Light Chanukah program by switching out a number of lights in the HHS building and saving a few on the bima to switch out during our Chanukah program, actively educating congregation about CFLs and reducing energy usage in lighting; 
• procured and supplied “green” disposable plates, flatware, cups and napkins for Mitzvah Day breakfast; 
• organized irrigation system audit.
• Installation of improved bike racks
• Approximately three years of on-site gardening program (irrigated raised beds are still on the property and are currently dormant)
• Purchase of gently used office furniture (instead of new)
• B’Mitzvah projects around environmental themes
• Participated in an interfaith, environmental training hosted by St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church