Jewlicious Festival is the largest Jewish student and young adult weekend in the country. Now in it’s fifth year, Jewlicious Festival aims to be more than just environmentally aware, but actually takes steps to be “green” and educate participants about being green even after the festival is over. Jewlicious Festival, which non-coincidentally takes place within two weeks of Tu B’Shevat, uses a hands-on approach during the festival to inform its participants about how to heal the Earth year-round. In 2008, students and staff at Jewlicious began meeting to create a guiding set of principals that would involve not only what kinds of programs we did, and the educational green content, but which would impact how we organized and produced the Festival.

Many conferences and festivals today opt for buying carbon credits, and other virtual solutions, but do not make any concessions to use a Greenthink strategy. Our students, alumni, and staff demanded a truly innovative approach and drafted the first version of the Greenkeit Manifesto for Jewlicious Festival 4.0 (2008).

We are updating Greenkeit for our 5th Annual Festival. From the smallest things – that we have been doing all along – to larger steps that we’re implementing this year for the first time, Jewlicious Festival 5.0 will expand our consciousness to show us that there are better ways, and take us one step closer to fulfilling our Jewish obligations to be Shomrei Adamah (to be guardians of the Earth).

This year Jewlicious Festival is taking a two-stage approach to being green. First, throughout the planning process we have worked within a Greenthink paradigm to ensure that Greenkeit is integrated into the very fabric of the Festival. Secondly, we are providing opportunities at the Festival for participants to take Greenkeit into their own hands.

A note about the word GREENKEIT: In Yiddish, Judaism is called Yiddishkeit. Jews are called on to be Shomrei Adamah, guardians of the earth. So, the word GREENKEIT represents our Jewish environmentalism or our environmental Judaism.

We are posting on our website what we’ve done and what you can do to make your Jewlicious Festival experience more green.

BE A PART OF THE JEWLICIOUS GREEN TEAM! Contact the head of our Greenkeit Program, Ezra Flom, today! ezraflom [at] gmail [dot] com

* The above logo for Greenkeit is made using an Eco-Font that uses 20% less ink when printed.

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Rabbi Yonah

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