Collecting tons of electronic waste, creating environmental fairs, and initiating energy audits, all under the guidance of Jewish values and teachings, are just part of a day’s work for Jewish Greening Fellows.

Supported by UJA-Federation and a project of Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, the fellowship program provides each fellow with 18 months of critical training and ongoing mentoring. Nineteen Greening Fellows started in 2009 and another 19 fellows started training in 2011. Greening fellows act as catalysts for change throughout our network of beneficiary agencies, in their communities, and at several synagogues and day schools.

At Central Queens YM & YWHA, Peggy Kurtz, librarian and Greening Fellow, organized with other community groups an environmental fair for 650 people this past spring. The fair helped raise environmental awareness with displays by green vendors and eco-crafts for children.

Through Kurtz’s efforts, Central Queens Y, a beneficiary agency, also sponsored a day to collect hard-to-recycle items. Three tons of electronic waste, including TV sets and fax machines, were collected and then recycled responsibly through an organization dedicated to that cause. Kurtz also received a $45,000 grant from federal stimulus funding through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to upgrade the Central Queens Y lighting system.

A highlight of her work this summer was a workshop Kurtz organized, How to Green Your House of Worship, and the response of a local synagogue.

"Nothing I’ve done as a fellow has given me more satisfaction than when the synagogue next door let me know they did an energy audit as a result of our workshop," she said.

Connecting through Community Service

Fellows focus on three areas: reducing the environmental impact in an agency’s building; educating people about environmental issues; and working with other groups in the community.

"Jewish teachings and values underpin the passion Greening Fellows bring to their work," notes Rachel Jacoby Rosenfeld, director of the Jewish Greening Fellowship at Isabella Freedman, also a beneficiary agency. "Collectively, fellows in the first cohort in 2009 have seeded nearly 100 new environmental programs and raised $1.3 million in funding toward energy audits, energy efficiency upgrades, and renewable energy."

Kurtz also found an added benefit.

"One of the fun and rewarding parts of community service is reconnecting with people in the neighborhood in a new way," she says, "and connecting with people who share your passion for environmental issues."

Amidst an atmosphere of heightened uncertainty and high anxiety about the Middle East, more than 300 people from UJA-Federation of New York’s Emerging Leaders & Philanthropists (ELP) joined together September 20th to stand with and celebrate Israel.

With the Palestinian Authority preparing to ask for statehood from the United Nations, members of the group and experts in a panel discussion talked about the need to support Israel.

“We are living in a pivotal moment of history, where strong forces beyond Israel’s control are coursing through the Middle East,” said Stacy Rotner, a chair of the event. “We are the next generation of pro-Israel activists. Israel needs friends and advocates.”

Imagine that you’re planning dinner for your family and your biggest concerns are how you can afford your next meal and how you can ensure that it includes nutritious foods for your children. One in six Americans don’t have to imagine this scenario because they grapple with it every day, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In response to the ongoing problem of hunger and malnutrition in New York City, UJA-Federation is running its first annual Care to Share program, a region-wide fresh produce drive in conjunction with Met Council and Hazon, both of which are supported by UJA-Federation — and with the help of AmeriCorps members throughout the five boroughs, Long Island, and Westchester.

From October 3rd to October 18th, volunteers will be able to symbolically fulfill the Jewish custom of gleaning, a custom tied to the harvest season and the Sukkot period, where farmers leave the corners of their fields unharvested so needy members of the community can gather the crops with dignity.

Despite the centrality of food to many Jewish holidays, it’s easy in the modern world to forget how our food arrives on our tables, says Anna Hanau, associate director of Food Programs at Hazon. “Sukkot is a harvest festival,” she explains. Care to Share is a way to “use the holiday to raise awareness of where our food is coming from and where it’s going and do a little Jewish education in the mix.”

Straight From the Farmer’s Mouth

If you ask one farmer, equal access to fresh, healthy food is a crucial issue.

Dan Hayhurst runs a farm with his wife and children out of northwestern Connecticut, and he sells produce to some of Care to Share’s participating Community Supported Agriculture groups (CSA). A CSA is a group of people who collectively buy shares of a farmer’s crops for the coming season, and receive boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables each week as they are harvested. “I think local produce is potentially one of the biggest answers to the food crisis,” Hayhurst says. “Why should local food only be accessible to people who have means?”

Care to Share is building on the success of an earlier program called Pack It Up for Purim, which, thanks to the time and dedication of many volunteers, managed to create more than 3,500 mishloach manot food packages for people in need. “Pack it Up for Purim highlighted the need for healthy food in the community,” says Susan Kohn, executive director of UJA-Federation’s Volunteer and Leadership Development Division. “With Care to Share, we’re helping connect people with healthy food, that’s fresh as well.”

If you are interested in getting involved, you can donate a share from your CSA, or produce from your garden or your grocery shopping. You can also volunteer to help with food collection or simply spread the word to a friend. To learn more, visit www.ujafedny.org/sukkot.

Some stories are too big to be told by one person. Tobi Kahn, a painter and sculptor who watched the Twin Towers fall from his roof in Long Island City, knew that the events of September 11, 2001, were just such a story.

In the weeks following the attacks, The Educational Alliance, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, asked Kahn to hold a workshop for teenagers in the downtown area whose lives had been shaken by the recent events. Together, the teens produced a series of powerful murals that ended up being exhibited on several college campuses.

Ten years later, The Educational Alliance approached Kahn about creating an installation, supported by UJA-Federation, to mark the anniversary of the tragedy. The result, titled “Embodied Light: 9/11 in 2011,” is on display at The Educational Alliance from now through November 23, 2011.

When Kahn first accepted the task, he knew he would have to include voices besides his own. “In the beginning, everyone wanted to tell their stories; now I want to hear other people’s stories,” he says. As we gain distance and perspective “the collective story becomes even more powerful than the individual stories.”

Kahn prepared 220 blocks of painted poplar wood, each representing a floor of the two towers, and distributed them to his friends and colleagues, including a number of UJA-Federation lay leaders and staff members. His only directive was that people fill the block in some way with their feelings and recollections of the events of 9/11. In addition to the blocks, which visitors can rearrange as they see fit, the exhibit contains seven bronze memorial lights which are lit daily, two tower-shaped charity boxes made of memorial plaques, a ghostly cityscape made of wood remnants from Kahn’s art projects of the past decade, and seven shrines containing abstract figures.

One of the people whom Kahn invited to contribute a block was David Sable, CEO of the marketing agency Young & Rubicam and a board member and long-time supporter of UJA-Federation. Sable, who grew up with Kahn in Riverdale, says the experience of participating in the exhibit gave him the chance to “curate in my mind” the three distinct experiences he had of that time.

Remains of the Day

Sable experienced 9/11 as someone working in an office in lower Manhattan, watching the destruction unfold from a few dozen blocks away. He experienced the attack as a volunteer, heading to the field hospital at Pier 60 that ended up tragically underutilized as responders learned that the dead far outnumbered the wounded. And he experienced that day as the friend of a victim: Andrew Zucker, a young lawyer from Nassau County who worked in the second tower and used his training as a volunteer firefighter to rescue seven of his co-workers. Zucker was seen rushing up the stairs to help more people not long before the second tower collapsed. Sable recalls that, “at the [memorial] ceremony, one of the rabbis who spoke said that Andrew went back up the stairs and kept going,” which is one of the images Sable chose to immortalize on his block.

For The Educational Alliance, this exhibit wasn’t merely commissioned as a reminiscence. Many of its staff members still vividly recall the torrent of disoriented, ash-covered New Yorkers that streamed up East Broadway past the doors of the agency. Robin Bernstein, President and CEO of The Educational Alliance, recollects the agency setting up cots in the street, helping those with respiratory trouble, and reuniting children with their parents on that chaotic day, but she also speaks of the power of community and art in a time of crisis.

“When the second plane hit and I realized that this was an attack, the first phone call I made was to UJA-Federation’s security director,” she says. “For me personally, and for the organization, knowing that we were part of this large network was hugely comforting.”

Though Bernstein had often thought of her organization’s social services and educational services as being at the core of its work, the impact of Kahn’s workshops with the teens reaffirmed her belief in the importance of offering creative outlets to the community.

It’s a sentiment that Kahn eloquently echoes in his artist statement for the exhibit. “Grief ruptures meaning. Art can be a small, still voice that begins to mend it,” he writes. “I have always believed that art can be redemptive, a force in healing the world.”

By John S. Ruskay

On 9/11, I was in Jerusalem. UJA-Federation’s leadership led a mission of 120 New Yorkers to stand in solidarity with the people of Israel as they responded to the growing terrorism of the intifada. None of us could have imagined that just hours after we arrived, America and New York City would be attacked. I vividly recall standing in the lobby of the King David Hotel watching the Twin Towers collapse on TV. The image still haunts me. But hours later, trauma counselors who UJA-Federation had funded to comfort Israelis, came to our sides to comfort members of our mission who were coping with overwhelming anxiety and fear.

Unable to return to New York, the next day we visited the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv where 21 young Israelis had been killed just weeks before. Nearby we saw a makeshift memorial erected by the parents of those who had lost their lives. In handwritten script were the words: Lo nafsik lirkod — We won’t stop dancing. From a place of unimaginable grief, mothers and fathers expressed their resolve to keep living as a way of honoring their children. On that dark day, Israeli resilience renewed our spirits yet again.

As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, resilience has been on my mind. How do people find the strength to go on?