Drive a hybrid? Shuls may have a space for you
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Rabbi David Levy posts a Green Space sign in the parking lot of Temple Shalom in Succasunna.
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Green spaces
Synagogues that have signed on to AJC’s Green Spaces parking program include:
Adath Shalom, Morris Plains
Beth El Synagogue, East Windsor
Congregation B’nai Israel, Millburn
Temple B’nai Abraham, Livingston
Temple B’nai Jeshurun, Short Hills
Temple Har Shalom, Warren
Temple Shalom, Succasunna
Summit Jewish Community Center
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June 29, 2011
The American Jewish Committee is asking houses of worship to reserve one or more spaces in their parking lots for fuel-efficient vehicles.
The Green Spaces initiative seeks to promote hybrid, flexfuel, electric, or any other cars that log 30 or more miles per gallon of gasoline.
“We want to reward people who drive cars that use less gas. We want to continue to keep this issue on everybody’s mind,” said Allyson Gall, director of the AJC’s New Jersey Area.
The program, launched last year at the AJC chapter in Cleveland, dispenses Green Space signs for parking lots and places explanatory brochures in building lobbies.
The initiative, said Gall, “educates people about the issue of our dependence on foreign oil, which affects national security, Israel, human rights, and the environment. Someone might come to a church event or a synagogue event and see that not just the handicapped get a good parking spot.”
Gall talked about the program when she appeared along with several hundred other activists at the Environmental Lobby Day rally in Trenton on June 20.
AJC intern Anna Kamen, a Short Hills resident about to become a freshman at Princeton University, was charged with the task of contacting synagogues across the state to enlist in the program.
Seven synagogues have already signed on (see list) and AJC hopes to enlist many more, along with churches, mosques, and Hindu temples, before enlisting owners of businesses and parking lots.
“We want to make sure that in New Jersey there are a lot of recharge stations, and the [Christie] administration likes this notion,” said Gall. “They are trying to figure out how to do it along the Turnpike and the Parkway to get people over the hump so they will buy these cars and not run out of power somewhere.”
NJ Gov. Chris Christie is decidedly less enthusiastic about two other initiatives supported by AJC.
As members of a coalition of 28 different environmental, trade union, and faith groups, AJC is pressing for a state energy master plan that increases electricity production, controls global warming, encourages conservation, and develops more clean technologies.
AJC also supports the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state agreement to reduce industrial carbon dioxide by 10 percent before 2018.
Christie opposes both ideas.
In May, he withdrew from the RGGI after calling it “a gimmick” that will drive up energy costs. Earlier this month he announced that his administration would scale back its goal for reducing energy costs as outlined in a revised master plan.
AJC leaders “don’t believe the governor should change the energy master plan and make the goals of it less ambitious,” Gall said. “It should stay strong. He is trying to pull out of the RGGI and he shouldn’t do it.”
Gall said she plans to meet with other environmentalists to strategize on how to overcome the governor’s objections to the master plan.
Comments
patti
June 29, 2011
Is the New Jersey News funded by or affiliated with the Hard Left AJC? Just wondering as it seems as though the point of view week after week is quite monolithic.
Does the New Jersey Jewish community get a chance to hear the other side? If not, why not? As you can see here, there are different points of view within the Democrat Party.
http://wwwtwosetsofbooks.blogspot.com/2011/04/exclusive-hillary-backers-obama-muslim.html.
I understand that Conservative Jews like myself don’t seem welcome in your paper. but it would be nice if once in awhile your paper didn’t read like a series of press releases for the Hard Left Jewish organizations.
Morris
June 29, 2011
So you would penalize the young family with 3 or more children or the soccer mom that carpools her children and their friends to after school activities requiring a larger vehicle?You would give parking preferences to the yuppy couple with 2 incomes at the expense of the family where there is one working parent supporting the family while mom takes care of the extracurricular activities of her family. Another short sighted liberal attempt to push an agenda at the expense of intelligence and logic.
Phil
July 06, 2011
“We want to reward people who drive cars that use less gas. We want to continue to keep this issue on everybody’s mind,” said Allyson Gall,”
If rewards and reminders are key, how about adding a parking space in front of the synagogue that is too small for a car? That way, people will try to walk to services on Sabbath. (The reward might be of an Otherworldly variety.)
EricTheRedVM
September 27, 2011
I must agree with the commenters above. This seems to be yet another far left Democrat issue pushed on Jewish congregants. Synagogues who have these parking spaces have made a value judgment on behalf of the entire congregation. That is undemocratic and exclusionary.
First of all, as demonstrated by Morris (June 29, 2011), this policy is completely unfair: Hybrid cars and the like are only within reach of people whose lifestyle it is to afford and to use them. A carpooling parent in an SUV or minivan, who can actually *benefit* from a close parking space, is not going to be able to.
Also, the campaign specifies reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Well, I deliberately buy gas only from stations that only or mostly sell American oil, like Sunoco and Hess. So can I park there? Even if my car gets less than 30 mpg, it’s still not foreign oil.
this policy sets an odd precedent. Why is having a green car singled out as worthy of special parking spots? There are dozens of other, more Jewish, actions/decisions worthy of such a reward: Why aren’t congregants who keep kosher similarly rewarded, or who donate a significant amount of tzedakah, etc. ...
Two years ago I withdrew my membership from a Reform congregation who tried to push left-wing policy preferences as Judaism. This is just another example.
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