This Week

The New Activists

More young Jews are strengthening their religious
feeling by becoming environmental activists.

DEBRA ISAACS
Jewish Renaissance Media

D

ragging herself off a plane one Friday
evening after another business trip,
Catherine Greener got a notion to go to
synagogue. It's not a place she frequents,
but she hoped a Shabbat service would calm her
restless soul.
That night at Congregation Shir Tikvah, a
Reform synagogue in Troy, they were celebrating
Shavuot, the harvest festival that commemorates the
giving of the Torah to the Israelites. A speaker from
Santa Cruz, Calif, in town to lead congregants in
all-night drumming and meditation, mentioned the
Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life
(COEJL), an advocacy and educational organization
based in New York.
Greener got a jolt.

Debra Isaacs is a Detroit-area writer.

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"It was a message on a cellular level," she recalled.
"I thought, 'I have to do this now.'"
In short order, she joined not just the coalition
but, more significantly, the growing ranks of young
Jews who say the Torah exhorts them to use their
energies for the care and protection of the environ-
ment. The activists find that doing so helps them
identify even more strongly as Jews. These young.
people, in communities like Boston and Atlanta,
Chicago and Seattle, say they are not looking for a
social life so much as for a meaningful use of their
time. They have not found such an outlet in the
mainstream, organized Jewish world.
Greener, 37, who lives in Royal Oak, is typical of
the movement. Earlier, she had tried out Teva, an
environmental program sponsored by the Jewish
Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. But for
Greener, it "lacked vitality." After connecting with
the Web site for COEJL (pronounced "CO-id"),
she felt this organization offered the immediacy and
resources she was seeking.

Related editorial: page 33

Last fall, Greener joined a few other-folks in An
Arbor to form the Southeast Michigan Coalition o
the Environment. It is one of 12 regional affiliates
COEJL, which is based in New York and associated
in some cities with the public affairs wing of their
local federation. SEMCOEJL ("Sem-CO-jel")
counts among its local sponsors the Jewish
Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit,
which is its fiduciary partner. (See accompanying
story by Shelli Liebman Dorfman for more on
SEMCOEJL's partners.)
Since affiliating, Greener has relocated her spiri-
tual self through the prism of environmental ethics,
which, to her, equate with Jewish beliefs.
"I came back to the tribe," said Greener. "I alwav
had felt a strong connection to nature. My spiritual
connection was nature. What COEJL does is bring
the two together, and I think it has affirmed my

