Burning the Midnight Oil, For Eight Holy Days
by Karin Kloosterman, Jerusalem, Israel on 12. 3.07
This week marks the beginning of Hanukkah, celebrated by lighting candles for eight days and consuming copious amounts of oily treats.
Between the jelly doughnuts encrusted in icing sugar to the potato latkes, we can imagine that Israelis produce enough spent vegetable oil this time of the year to power bio-diesel engines for the entire nation until next Hanukkah.
On that note, thanks to a tip from our friends at World Changing (thanks David) we revisit a post on the Terrapass blog from last year: “What does Hanukkah have to do with global warming?”
To sum up, it seems that Hanukkah sends an environmental message: how could a one-day supply of oil last eight days and nights? “It represents an early example of energy conservation with relevance to our current environmental challenges,” writes Adam Stern who is also the exec director of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL). Stern recommends that people switch over to CFLs this holiday season.
In the same email tip, David recommends the latke recipes of Rachel Barenblat, the wife of another World Changing writer. While we think Rachel’s Asian latkes with soy dipping sauce sound tempting and definitely modern, we would probably choose a hot and crispy jelly doughnut (sufganiyot) over a latke any day.
Browsing through our archives, TreeHugger clearly has not forsaken its Jewish readers. For a good green start this Hanukkah try:
1. TreeHugger’s Hanukkah gift guide, which offers ideas from natural beeswax Hanukkah candles to recycled glass menorahs.
2. Listen to Simran Sethi talk about greening your Festival of Lights.
3. Read an in-depth TreeHugger post on COEJL: “How Many Jews Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb.”
Here in Philadelphia, the Jewish Exponent ran a piece on COEJL. It didn't quite cast a shining light on them, but I thought it was worth a mention.
Fire up the ol' yule bio-diesel generator.