Hanukkah: Oil for Light or Oil for Profit?

The likelihood is growing that US oil and gasoline prices are going to be very painful this winter. (For the most recent information, see p. 1, NYTimes, 9/11/00.)

This memo is aimed at suggesting that Jewish activists, rabbis & teachers begin planning NOW to address these issues at Hanukkah. High oil/gasoline prices will raise serious social-justice questions, especially for:

(a) those who heat their homes with oil (but natural-gas prices are also climbing in synch);

(b) those who depend on autos for transportation and business; and

(c) those who will be affected as businesses have to pay higher fuel costs and either raise prices or clamp down on workers to protect their profits.

They will also raise serious environmental-policy questions, in more subtle ways:

(a) Some environmentalists may, taking a short-range view, be happy if high gasoline prices lead to reduced use of autos. But those prices are beefing up the Big Oil companies, not helping to build mass transit or bikeways.

From the longer-range perspective of more economic & political power for those Big Oil companies, those high prices are going to hurt the earth, not heal it.

(b) Yet the high prices may at least make it possible to raise questions about the dependence of this society on oil & gasoline.

So Hanukkah time (first candle: evening of Thursday, Dec. 21; Sunday, the third day of Hanukkah, is Dec. 24) may be a perfect time for Jewish environmental and social-justice activists to raise major questions about the Global Gobble of Big Oil and other global corporations.

Hanukkah not only comes at the right time; it celebrates: (a) the rhythms of the sun/moon/earth as they dance with each other (while addiction to gasoline overuse damages the rhythms of the earth);

(b) creating new light at the darkest moment of the year, new hope in the midst of despair (as against succumbing to the apathy of "what can we accomplish anyway?");

Continued on page 2: »