Anavah: Humility - What do we really need?
NFTY Addresses Overconsumption

It’s Friday! Home from school, I dally into the kitchen. The aroma of meatloaf entices me to the oven window and I gaze in, remembering my earliest memories with red meat: hot dogs with my cousins in NYC, steaks at a fancy restaurant after my theatre début in Annie. As the cheese on the meatloaf bubbles, I remember how I liked red meat; as a fourth generation Nebraskan, I was genetically accustomed to the taste.

Then, in September 2008, I discovered this sentence in the New York Times: “According to a U.N. report, animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas than all transportation sources combined”. Wait. Stop. Hold on. Eating a hot dog hurts the environment? More than flying from Omaha to Kalamazoo? How bizarre! I reduced my meat intake immediately and took upon myself to let my friends know about this environmental dilemma.

In that light, about a year and a half later, I got together with a group of NFTY friends and wrote an Action Theme proposal. The NFTY Action Theme is a document elected annually that suggests a topic for programming and social action projects throughout NFTY. Our theme, Anavah Humility- What do we really need? NFTY Addresses Overconsumption, was elected by your regional board members in February 2010 at Veida, NFTY’s mid-year meeting.

Now, as NFTYites, we can start questioning. Why do we eat meat? Use Styrofoam? Leave our appliances plugged in? Drive the 5 minute walk to the supermarket? How could our synagogues and TYGs go green? But we can’t just ask these questions. As a youth movement, we must amend our daily routines before the Earth deteriorates for our children. Kapeesh?

Rock on environmental stewards and email me if you have questions,
Molly Goldberg NFTY SAVP
nftysavp@urj.org

Molly Goldberg is the NFTY Social Action Vice President (SAVP). Molly hails from Omaha, Nebraska in NFTY's Missouri Valley Region.