One less menorah candle for Hanukkah to save the world

Environmentalists are encouraging Jews and people who just like the menorah to light one less candle this Hanukkah. Not to be outdone Hamas is promising to light up one Jew this for each day of Hanukkah this holiday season.

The founders of the Green Hanukkia campaign found that every candle that burns completely produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide. If an estimated one million Israeli households light for eight days, they said, it would do significant damage to the atmosphere.

“The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won’t need another miracle,” said Liad Ortar, the campaign’s cofounder, who runs the Arkada environmental consulting firm and the Ynet Web site’s environmental forum. “Global warming is a milestone in human evolution that requires us to rethink how we live our lives, and one of the main paradigms of that is religion and how it fits into the current situation.”

Cofounder Tom Wegner, who heads the public relations firm Update Marketing Media, spread the campaign via mass e-mails and through social interaction Web sites like Facebook and Hook.co.il. He said no money had been invested in the campaign, but it had already raised awareness around the world and made people realize that they have to consider the environment this Hanukka.

“There are many people who just light candles for the tradition and for their children,” he said. “To tell a child on the eighth day that we are not lighting the last candle as a sacrifice for the environment is an act that is not only educational but also will prevent the release of a huge amount of carbon dioxide that would hurt the environment.”

Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev said he was not convinced by the environmentalists’ argument. He warned that the campaign would take away from the light of Torah that each and every candle symbolizes.

“The environmentalists should think about how much pollution is caused by one solitary diesel truck on the road,” Ze’ev said. “They should be fighting the trucks instead of Judaism. This is so trivial, so anti-Jewish and so anti-religious that even the worst anti-Semites couldn’t think of it. Just like the Helenists, they are trying to extinguish the flames of the Jewish soul.”

United Torah Judaism MK Avraham Ravitz called the environmentalists “crazy people who are playing with the minds of innocent Jewish people.” He said the campaign would only convince people who do not light candles anyway.

News Article

One Less Candle Program

One Less Jew Program from Hamas and radical Muslims around the world

One Less Bulb

At the zone we tried to do our part by taking one bulb out of each string of lights with mixed results…