U.S. News and World Report reports –

When Orthodox Jews met with top White House adviser David Axelrod and a handful of U.S. senators this month as part of an annual lobbying effort, they talked up climate change legislation as a way to improve security for the United States and Israel. “America’s reliance on imported oil from the Arab Middle East has been a grave concern for a very long time,” says Nathan Diament, public policy director for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. “The Jewish community is interested in energy independence.”

But the Jewish delegation also based its case for a climate change bill, which cleared the House earlier this year, on another premise: the Bible. “We are getting ready to read Genesis and the creation story in our synagogues in a few weeks,” Diament says. “Our responsibility to tend the garden is part of our understanding of the Torah and of our worship.” Indeed, some Jews have begun referring to their green activism as “creation care,” a term coined by environmentally inclined evangelical Christians.

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