Green Talk™ » Green Bar Mitzvah

A Greener Bar Mitzvah with Yours Truly on PBS Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly

Green Talk — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:17:31 +0000

Featured above is “the Greener Bar Mitzvah” clip that will be featured on PBS’s Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly show this weekend featuring me along with Rabbi Lawrence Troster, Director, Fellowship Program at Greenfaith Interfaith Partners for the Environment. It is only three minutes.

What’s the big deal about a green bar mitzvah? Let’s face it. Bar mitzvahs tend to be as lavish and as costly as weddings. Even nonjewish children want to have a bat or bar mitzvah since the party is so much fun. Being 13 and having 200 of your closest friends party with you. Who wouldn’t want this? Talk about huge carbon footprint.

But seriously, being bar or bat mitzvahed is hard work and a very important day in the life of a young man or woman. Jacob attended Hebrew school since he was in kindergarten. He studied intensively for a year with the Rabbi and Cantor to read a portion of the Torah and to learn to lead the service. To give you a point of reference how hard this is, normally the Hebrew language has vowel markers under the letter so you can pronounce the letters. In the Torah there are no markers so basically you are memorizing your portion. This is no easy feat. On top of this, the child leads the service Friday and Saturday. Talk about being nervous.

But why green the bar mitzvah besides the obvious reasons of reducing our carbon footprint? Judaism is very connected to the environment.

The Coalition on the Environment and Judaism states:

“Many mitzvot (commandments) found in the Bible and laws found in the Talmud instruct us to protect what the Jewish tradition views as “God’s creation”– the totality of the physical world in which we live. Bal tashchit (do not waste) teaches us to conserve resources. Shiluach ha-keyn (chasing away the mother bird) teaches us to safeguard all species. Shmita (sabbatical year) teaches us that economic justice and ecological sustainability are intimately related. And Shabbat reminds us that we are but one strand in the web of creation. When we consider the state of the environment today in light of these mitzvot and values, it is clear that we have an urgent Jewish mission to establish a more healthy and sustainable relationship between human beings and the rest of God’s creation.”

The video only highlights some of what I did. The website has some of my ideas on how to green your bar mitzvah or any affair for that matter. Is a book in the works? I am working on a manuscript to present to a publisher. For those of you who have written books, I don’t know how you do it. I need book coaching.

I want to thank PBS and especially Noelle Serper, associate producer at Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly who interviewed me for this piece. Her crew took 9 hours of footage and condensed it to 3 minutes to inspire others to green their affairs. She was wonderful to work with. Most importantly, I want to thank my family who puts up with my pushing the green envelope in life. Our family life could easily be a reality show of how much tugging and pulling goes on in our household over being green. (Remember my post about the candy box showing up in the trash and my first reaction why wasn’t that recycled rather than being upset it was candy?)

If you can, please go to the PBS site and leave a message as well as rate it. (Click on the fifth star to rate it. I made the mistake of clicking on any star and that was what it was rated.) I just want Noelle to know what a great job she did.

In addition, to check when the entire program is aired, see here.

As always, please support your local PBS station since their programing is outstanding.

Let me hear your thoughts about greening our parties? What have you done?

Similar Posts:

Greenfield Paper’s Grow A Notes: Why Trash? Just Plant.

Green Talk — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:49:47 +0000

When my son was being bar mitzvahed, I was determined to green the event as much as possible. One of my goals was no paper, whether it was recycled content or not. The invitation was a web page created on Myevent.com. Inexpensive, creative and definitely a big hit.

When it came to the thank you notes I was stumped. Was it proper to send out email thank you notes? I knew I could create a beautiful thank you note on the website Ping which could be emailed to his guests. So, I twittered all of my twitter followers and asked them. Even the die-hard greenies said no to the email thank you unless it was close personal friends. I even wrote about it on Green Talk hoping the consensus would say yes. Everyone basically told me to do the right thing. Handwritten.

Back to the drawing board. At the Go Green Expo, I met the owners of Greenfield Paper, which create seeded invitations and paper. As my loyal readers know, I can get a little garden obsessed and this concept was right down my alley. According to the Company, all the paper is made in San Diego, California and they use recycled post consumer pulp and cotton to make the paper. Then they add earth pigments not dye for color.

The card stock was a little pricey for me at $3.50 a card. We had 125 thank you notes to write. To my relief, they also carry just plain paper which they gladly cut into postcards for me. This cut the price down to less $2 per thank you note. The envelopes had to be recycled unfortuneately.

I was beyond excited about my new find. People could plant their thank you notes! That year, they would have wildflowers to remind them of the amazing time they had at my son’s bar mitzvah. All you have to do is wet the paper and plant. Genius, I thought.

So, I thought. Being the ever obsessive detailed person that I am, I looked to see what type of wild flower seeds were in the paper. One contained mostly annuals. Some may or may not have been deer resistant. Looking back, I have no idea why all of these things mattered since the chief goal was not to recycle or trash.

The Company did carry paper with Catnip seeds, which is a perennial in my area. I love Catnip. (See picture above. I grew this one from seed and look at it now!) When it is in bloom it has white flowers. It is easy to grow and deer do not like it. (Cats do!) See here about cats and catnip. I was set! So, I thought…

What about the people who lived in apartments or who could care less about gardening? I know non-gardening types exist (hard to believe) but could not imagine who would not care. I had to plan for this contingency since minimum recycling was my goal.

In the body of the thank you note, we added a sentence that if they did not want to plant the thank you note to give it back to us. Some people mailed them back. Not one of my best ideas, I decided. Adding to the carbon footprint by having people mail them back? Some times I definitely over analyze situations…

What did my son think of the cards? He found them hard to write on because the seeds slightly protrude. He suffered through.

Did it grow? My aunt and uncle in Florida tried to plant it in a pot and told me it did not grow. Hmm. I thought, perhaps it was the pot? I tried this, and planted it in the ground. We have had an overabundance of rain so I was sure that it would sprout. Two weeks later, nada. Not one peep.

I called the Company and they told me that like any new seed you have to make sure that you water it often. Perhaps mine dried out or that pesky neighborhood cat ate my seeds. No wonder she has been hanging out at my house lately…They advised me to put it in a pot like you would new veggie seeds to monitor their progress.

I absolutely love the idea but I am not sure you should buy it to have wildflowers. It definitely disintegrated since I checked the site where I planted it. If you love the idea for invitations, the Company offers this as well. See their bar/bat mitzvah and other invitations and announcements. The Company even makes custom paper made out of forget me nots and vegetables!

In addition, to their seeded offerings, the Company carries exotic paper made out of non-conventional sources such as recycled blue jeans, junk mail, and the skins of garlic bulbs just to name a few, hemp paper, recycled wrapping paper and holiday cards. My favorite product besides the grow your own notes is the “do it yourself” business cards for your computer made out of hemp. If you love their products as much as I do, see here for a list of retailers. I ordered directly from the Company.

Readers,

have you used these types of seeded papers?
Did I do something wrong?
Could it be the seed were too old? Too much light exposure to grow?
Would you have thumbed your nose to proper protocol and emailed a thank you instead?

Planting minds would like to know!

Similar Posts:

Is it Eco-Proper to Send an Email Thank-You?

Green Talk — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:14:34 +0000

Life is full of dilemmas where you struggle to do the right thing. I am sure all of you have been in this situation where if you do one thing or the other, there is a consequence to your choice. Kind of like a no-win situation.

Here is mine at the moment. My son is being bar mitzvahed in a couple of weeks. I am trying to green this event as much as possible. In doing so, I had to look at my carbon footprint. My first hurdle was the invitations. I considered the amount of paper that would be used to create a one of a kind invitation that would end up in the trash. Then there were the response, directions, and separate party cards. Just getting started. Then I thought about all the fuel used to truck those invitations across the country and then some to truck the responses back to me (which of course never make it back to me by the due date.)

Given these factors, I could not bring myself to do the paper route. I decided to create an invitation website that was fun and creative to keep me out of the dog house for not sending out formal invitations. I even became a celeb since people were remarking how cool they thought the website was. (See my article here about the website.)

Whew! I crossed that invitation bridge with very little repercussions from older relatives and friends. So, now my son is receiving gifts from those guests who can not attend. Here comes the dilemma again.

When you receive gifts, what are you suppose to do? Yes, I see Emily Post’s hand waving in the background to answer the question. I’ll call on her since she is definitely the maven on manners. She says,

“All gifts should be acknowledged with a note, unless the goodies were opened in front of the giver—then you have the chance to thank them in person. An important exception: many of an older generation expect a hand-written note. Providing them with one is an appropriate gesture of respect and consideration.”¹

But, Emily, what about my carbon footprint? What about the trees, chemicals, and fuel used to say “thank you.” How do I reconcile being a Mother Earth lover and doing the right thing? Is emailing a thank-you on a designed card via a website like Pingg proper? Wouldn’t it be tasteful, cute, and fun?

Or rather, is emailing thank-you’s just too cold and impersonal even if done in the name of my fearless leader, Ed Begley, Jr.?

Some people would say the heck with it. Do what you think is right in your heart.

Although my mother is no longer here with me, she taught me that manners are very important. She even went so far as to tell me that if I could not attend a function, I should always send a gift. Doing the right thing was very important to her. And you always sent a thank-you note for a gift. In my mother’s world, class and manners were the same. She even had a copy of Emily Post’s book. I kept her book to remind me of what she taught me.

So who else could I ask?

I posed the question with my Twitter followers hoping they would give me some guidance. (Twitter is like the new instant messaging for adults. My feed of my posts are on Twitter so people can follow what I write about along with any inane comment I want to make including if I am going to the bathroom.) Unfortunately, no answers from the followers.

I even did some “googling” to see if others have asked this question and found the following:

On Ask Yahoo, a reader posed the following question:

“When is it appropriate to send a thank-you note via email rather than mail?”

The staff replied in short:

“The most formal of thank-you notes is probably the wedding-gift thank you. These notes are traditionally handwritten on formal stationary cards. This personalized “thank you” is absolutely required of brides and grooms because it shows appreciation and sincerity. Emails (and phone calls, for that matter) will seem far too hasty, and they show none of the thought and care that goes into a handwritten note.”

What does Ophra think? (Yes we are tight. So, I posed the question to her. She referred me to her website.) On Ophra.com, in the Relationship section, the etiquette columnists weighed in on thank you note etiquette.

“Kim Izzo, etiquette columnist, says, “It’s making the effort. People really appreciate getting mail that’s not a bill, for one thing, and just taking that extra bit of time to write a thank you note really means everything….

Harriette Cole, syndicated columnist: It also depends on whom you’re sending it to. If you have a person who lives on the Internet, you can get a thank you card that that is animated and dances and does all kinds of fabulous things. If that person would love to get an e-mail thank you, that’s the person you send it to. Your momma doesn’t want that. She wants appreciation and handwritten notes!”²

Now, someone is kind of on my side. What about the green part, ladies and gentlemen? Should my son save the world like spider man by sending out cute emailed thank-you’s or go the paper and pen route with Emily sitting beside him saying, “dear, make sure you address it properly?”

Paper or Email?

PS. I hope you got my joke with the photo by Susan Williams. Get it? Hand written thank-you’s? I know my sister is laughing.

Resources:

¹“Etiquette Everyday ~ Communications. Being Thankful: A Thank-You Note Q&A.”Emily Post Institute (accessed August 7, 2008.)

²“Thank you Note Etiquette” Ophra.com, Relationships (assessed August 7, 2008).

Similar Posts:

MyEvent.com, Paperless Invitations to Green Your Event

Green Talk — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:16:39 +0000

I am in the throws of planning a Bar Mitzvah and have made a commitment to make this one as green as possible. For those who do not know a lot about a bar mitzvah, the amount of detail involved is similar to a wedding. It is a ritual in Judaism when a boy reaches the age of 13 (and a girl, the age of 12), that he has come of age to observe the commandments of the Torah. Today the ritual has been expanded to include a religious service led by the child and a party or reception afterwards. For a 101 on bar mitzvahs, read here.

Each bar mitzvah (this being my third), I try to do something different. The first son’s theme was puzzle pieces reflecting the various pieces of his life. I cut out 200 plus puzzle pieces, strung them on a white ribbon as a necklace. Each puzzle piece identified how the guest was part of my son’s life whether the guest was family or friends from his soccer team or nursery school.

The second son had a DVD invitation which featured a montage of his life. Since his bar mitzvah project was both the Nike Recycle-a Shoe program that I discussed in this article and recycling electronic media through GreenDisk ( see my GreenDisk article), we decided to enclose a self-addresses envelope to return the DVDs for recycling. I did receive many of the DVDs back. In reflection, my carbon creative footprint was huge. Not only did I create a product that could have ultimately ended up in the trash, I requested that they re-mail the DVDs back to me! What was I thinking?

This go around I have been looking at my own carbon footprint in preparing for this party. The most obvious change that I could make was to go paperless with my invitations. Not only would it save me money, but it would lessen my footprint from taking down a few trees in the name of invitations that either are thrown out or recycled. No more DVDs for me. (Although, I have to admit, it was a pretty clever invitation.)

I started to research what was available online that would accomplish my needs for the bar mitzvah. I am fortunate that I have a lot of cousins; however, many are from out of town. They all fly in for the weekend, and we literally go from one meal to the other. So, yes there is a lot of partying the whole weekend. Quality time with your relatives.

I needed a program that would allow me to give everyone notice of all the weekend events. I could have used a Wordpress blog template but I wanted something a little more private and finally found three sources to use: Myevent.com, E-vite, and Pingg. Both Pingg and E-vite are free. Other e-vite type alternatives are listed on Evite Alternatives, which includes among many MyPunchbowl, Renkoo, and Socializr.

Since I have five different events planned, Pingg and E-vite do not work for me. With these two services, I would have to send out a separate invitation for each event. On the other hand, I could create an easy website with Myevent.com of all of my events, upload photos and a video montage of his life. It would make my life and my guests lives easier as well. Read on about all the great features that Myevent.com contains to make this special website for my son.

MyEvent.com

This website provides templates for weddings, bar mitzvahs, or any event from reunions to corporate events. I chose one of the templates and altered its colors for my taste. In a matter of hours I was able to customize my website with all of the various basic features. I am no techie, so if I can do it so can you.

You can have a flash intro and your choice of music to play as your guest browse through the website. Your welcome page can include pictures, text, and video uploads from YouTube or Google. My son’s page contained another montage of his life which I uploaded through google video along with a welcome letter.

In addition to the welcome letter, you can include a poll. Many people think my son looks like one of my other children or me, so I included a poll as to whom he resembles the most. I included the “milkman” to be funny but it is actually receiving the most votes. You can also include a quiz about your child’s interest which is fun for his classmates. He chose 4 different items about himself.

There is even a page for you to upload pictures of your family and friends. Uploading was very easy. All I had to do was to click the particular picture on my computer and click the word “submit”. The picture instanly appeared on my site.

My favorite section was the details of event sections. I entered all the different events on this page, attached a map for directions, as well as a picture of the venue. My guests could easily scan all the event of the weekend. Forget about printing those direction cards!

The site also contains the option of RSVP-ing by email to the broadcast you send out or to the website only. A link to the website is included in your broadcast of the invitation. I chose the website RSVP but I still receive notifications through my email so I can track visitors through another type of software (excel). All my events are listed on the RSVP so if you are an out of town guest or family, you would rsvp to those events specifically for you.

The website tracks your guests’ RSVPs for each event. I am using excel so I can have an instant number of guests attending each event without hand counting the guests.

There is even a message board so people can leave messages. Unfortunately, they can not upload their own pictures with their messages.

Similar to any other website, there is a contact page. Your guests can easily contact you with questions. If the website does not have a template for a page you want for your site, then you can create your own additional pages. Don’t like a template page like polls, then remove it from your website.

The second part of the website is the planning part where you can upload an excel guest list by emailing the company or entering in the names by hand. Make sure you follow the format that they suggest. I can view at anytime, a report as to who has RSVPed as well as edit RSVPs. Some of my guests RSVPed twice to the same events.

Invitations can be sent out by each event or a broadcast can be sent out for all of the parties. I chose the broadcast method because I thought it was too cumbersome to send out invitations for each event. The only problem I had with this is that the email did not include all the names of the family members that I invited. It was just a single email to the email recipient. If every family member had their own email then this would not be a problem. I had to send out another broadcast to those guests whose whole family was invited.

If these features are not enough, you can upgrade to the premium features which include a blog, a feed for the blog, budget tool, and increased number of photos to upload, a message board, and other features. In addition, you can create your own header and send it to the company who will upload it for you. Still not satisfied with the website designs, the company can create one for you for an additional charge.

Not sure that this concept is for you? No problem, There is a free 7 day trial so you can play around with the site to see if it meets your expectations. Check out some of the websites created on the site.

What has my experience been so far? Terrific. The customer service has been wonderful to deal with. I can email or call them with any questions. My guests love the site. Some think I created it all by myself ( yeah, in my sleep.)

The basic monthly price is $9.95 and the upgraded website is $14.95 a month. So, have an upcoming party, reunion, business event, baby shower, wedding or bar mitzvah? Consider using MyEvent.com. Convenience wrapped up in one paperless green site sure to tread lighter on Mother Earth, the orginal party girl.

So, what is your favorite way to make and/or send invitations that are kinder to the Earth?

Photo by permission of Fiona Wilkerson

Similar Posts: