Re-entry

I've been in Portland for the past week or so. Just got back last night. I have a lot to tell, I suppose, but probably won't get to much of it. It's late, we haven't slept much the past few nights, and I'm driving to see a friend in upstate New York tomorrow morning. I'd love to post some photos too, but my batteries are dead and I can't find the battery recharger. Yet, if I don't tell any of it now, I never will.

Oh, the woes of readjusting.

One very bright light...

I told most of my friends in Portland that I'm past the year of hating New Jersey and am now ready to change things. That's something I've talked about a lot in here. So during several of my sleepless nights (sleepless because ND was teething (I think) and then I got to worrying about things even after I fell asleep) I worried a lot about getting paper recycling going in the school. Today I was able to contact the right parent to help this really get going. She's even having a meeting tomorrow with the principal, so hooray for that!

While in Portland, my dad showed me this article from The Forward about Greening synagogues. Three quotes I want to share:

1. “We’re not just doing this because it’s a good thing for the world,” said Rabbi Joel Baker, executive director of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s Pacific Southwest region. “We’re doing it because it’s incumbent on us as Jews to do it.”

2. Wallach attributed the Jewish community’s heavy involvement to both its high level of organization and the willingness on the part of three of its denominations — the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements — to band together around the issue.

3. While the West Coast may seem to be more fertile terrain for environmentally conscious institutions, the East Coast has its fair share of synagogues that are breaking new ground on green building. The national COEJL organization launched a Green Synagogues program in New Jersey, which includes, among others, Congregation Sharey Tefilo-Israel, a Reform synagogue in South Orange, N.J., and Kesher, an Orthodox congregation in Englewood, N.J.

To me this begs one obvious question:

Why is my little shul the ONLY Orthodox shul mentioned in the article?

It's a little exciting to be the one, and embarassing that it's the only one. I don't think this is a lack on the part of the media to report wonderful green-ness in the Orthodox world although I do think we often are sometimes irrelevant in the larger Jewish community. I think it's slowness on the part of Orthodox institutions to pick up on social responsibility and I think it's because we isolate ourselves and want to be different than the non-Orthodox branches of Judaism. That's my guess anyway.

We've got our work cut out for us. I'm happy to have a cause.