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At Temple Emanuel, the Torah isn't just a tree of life, it's the whole forest.
On the bima, branches fan from the ark, where Torah scrolls are kept, and stretch toward the sanctuary. They sink into the floor like the aerial roots of a banyan tree. This woodland sanctuary, carved from planks of tulip poplars, reflects the temple's ethos, which is an amalgam of Judaism and environmentalism.
"It connects the aron [the ark) to Eden, to creation," says Rabbi Warren Stone, the temple's rabbi since 1988.
Stone is a lifelong environmental activist, and he has grafted his passion onto Emanuel, which sits on five acres in picturesque Kensington. A walk of the grounds leads past a composting bin, five organic gardens created by the temple's children and a salt-box shaped greenhouse with a child-size bench at its door.
The walk ends at a wooden pavilion named for a synagogue president, Mark D. Mann, who died in a car crash. The pavilion is used for worship services, lifecycle events and as an outdoor classroom.
The twinning of Judaism and the natural world starts with the temple's youngest members. Student projects line the hallway of the early childhood center. One, inspired by the rings of a tree and the circularity of the Jewish year, was made from a bicycle tire with colored yarn wound around its spokes.
"It's Jewish values...