Green Day For AJC

A Tesla electric sports car parked outside of San Francisco’s JCC, site of an environmental conference. Right, AJC “green” mission participants at Solazyme, a biofuel company in Silicon Valley.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

San Francisco — In its effort to elevate the issue of energy independence, the venerable American Jewish Committee has pushed for policy change in Washington, “greened” its own New York headquarters and even offered cash incentives for its employees to buy hybrid cars.

Now, the group is trying to tap the power of a new generation of young leaders, for whom green issues are central to the expression of their Jewish identity. Earlier this month in this hub of West Coast environmentalism, the AJC’s young leadership umbrella (ACCESS) held its first conference on environmental issues, dubbed “J-REC, the Jewish Response to the Energy Challenge.” The daylong event at the Jewish Community Center here drew more than 200 people, many of them environmental experts from the Jewish community.

As the conference was taking place, simultaneous live Web casts took place in Jerusalem, Kibbutz Ketura in Israel’s Arava Desert, Chicago, Denver and New York drawing another 200 people. Conference organizers set for themselves a lofty — and likely difficult — goal: to unify the Jewish community in combating the global energy crisis.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen in one room a Jewish farmer, Jewish venture capitalists, and everyone coalescing around this one major issue,” said political analyst Ari Wallach, a speaker on one of the conference panels. He organized the “Great Schlep” campaign for Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election.

When budding clean-tech lawyer Jonathan Axelrad moved from New York to San Francisco last year, he immediately began work on the AJC conference and mission, believing that clean energy and U.S. energy independence were issues young people would be charged up about. But he knew he couldn’t do it alone.

In a stroke of luck, recent Stanford University graduate Lyuba Wolf happened to walk into Axelrad’s office in search of a pro-bono attorney for her student greening organization, Energy Crossroads. Instantly, Axelrad realized he had met his environmental other-half.

“That’s when the mission became a movement,” Axelrad told The Jewish Week. “We went back to AJC ACCESS and said that we want to organize a unified movement in the Jewish community to respond to what we’re calling the ‘energy challenge,’ which is transforming an oil- and fossil fuel-based economy to clean and secure energy sources.” In the end, the mission attracted 20 AJC young leaders to San Francisco for the conference, post-conference round tables and site visits to clean-tech business in the Bay Area.  Continue reading…