by Paula Amann

News Editor

At least one area rabbi is seeing green this year. For his sabbatical, Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb has traded in his usual duties at Bethesda's Adat Shalom Congregation to serve as rabbinic fellow with the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.

The Reconstructionist rabbi already has dived headlong into his temporary part-time post.

"A lot of my job is calling, e-mailing, goading and organizing rabbis and congregations to make environmental awareness more central to their program," says Dobb, 33.

Hiring a rabbi is a first for COEJL, whose 30 constituent groups include all streams of Judaism and an array of communal organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, the National Council of Jewish Women and the Jewish National Fund.

The network belongs to a larger interfaith umbrella group known as National Religious Partnership for the Environment, which comprises organizations representing the Catholic church, Protestant denominations and many evangelicals.

Active with COEJL since its inception a decade ago, Dobb served on the national board for the past five or six years. He also was among some 22 clergy and lay people arrested at the Department of Energy in April 2001 to peacefully protest proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, under the auspices of Religious Witness for the Earth.

Dobb spearheaded the use of energy-conserving methods in his congregation's 2-year-old quarters. Adat Shalom went on to win an Energy Star citation for its earth-friendly design from the Environmental Protection Agency last year.

And this month, the District rabbi will be pedaling in New York state with the Hazon Jewish Environmental Bike Ride to raise money for green causes.

During the next 12 months, Dobb is hoping he can convince less activist peers to make COEJL's work their own. He offers practical as well as religious reasons.

Noting that ecological problems affect Jews and non-Jews alike, he argues that "all our sacred work around spirituality, Israel, social services and identity formation could be undone or overshadowed by looming environmental threats."

As a tiny minority, Jews have long sought allies among other religious and ethnic groups. In this vein, Dobb suggests, "common ground" on the environment can help cement relationships.

"We get their support on issues dear to us, like Israel or oppressed world Jewry, partly by being good allies on civil rights, economic justice and importantly, environmental protection," says the rabbi.

Pragmatic concerns aside, Dobb believes "enlightened stewardship of creation" and "humility in the face of the world's grandeur" lies at the heart of Jewish thought.

Turning to the Torah, he notes the idea of "inequity or goodness passed to the third, fourth or thousandth generation" found among the 13 divine attributes noted in Exodus 34.

"We need to begin to think on time scales that the divine plan has laid out for us," Dobb says. "If we do, we will still feed our families but also make sure there's room for the rest of God's glorious creation."

He also finds deep significance in the lines from Deuteronomy 30:19: "Choose life, so you and your children may live."

Decisions about air, water and land, Dobb contends, make ripples across the generations.

"The choices we make today have a profound effect on the blessings or curses that we offer to those who come after us," he says.

He fears that those affected will include "our grandchildren, who will grow up in a denuded, warmed-over and far less beautiful world because of this generation's short-sighted focus on the bottom line."

By way of broadening that focus, Dobb will be using the year ahead to prepare a resource book on the environment for rabbis and other Jewish leaders.

He also hopes to draw on Adat Shalom's experience to assemble some tips for congregations on energy conservation. The social hall there uses a passive solar design to warm it in winter and keep it cool in the summer months, cutting energy consumption -- plus heating and cooling bills.

As to building materials, his synagogue made a point of avoiding vinyl, a commonly used plastic that Dobb flags as a carcinogen in its production and disposal. In its place, wood certified as not derived from endangered tropical forests, cork, recycled carpet and limestone-based composite tile were used in the building's construction.

Bringing green concerns into synagogues and temples not only reflects Jewish values, he believes, but has the potential to draw some disaffected Jews back into community.

"Many younger Jews and some across the generations deeply 'get' the importance of environmental action," says Dobb.

When mainstream Jewish groups show they care about these concerns, he adds, they "provide an entree for thousands of bright, activist Jews to return to communal affiliation."