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A local Reform congregation has electrified its brunch tables. Under the banner, "Let There Be Light," Kensington's Temple Emanuel recently began offering its members energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs, alongside bagels and fixings on Sunday mornings during Hebrew school.

"I try not to be alarmist when it comes to climate change, but starting from a Jewish vantage point," to try to find ways "to act in our homes and synagogues and moving out in the world," said Emanuel's Rabbi Warren Stone, suggesting the guiding question, "How can I reduce my own [environmental] footprint in a daily way?"

The recent release of the documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, by Jewish director Davis Guggenheim, has heightened public discussion, in and out of the Jewish community, of the threat posed by global warming. The 90-minute feature weaves its presentation around a slide presentation on the topic by former vice president and Democratic presidential contender Al Gore.

Some scientists and think tanks, such as the District-based Competitive Enterprise Institute ‹ which receives major funding from such fossil fuel interests as Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute ‹ have voiced skepticism about global warming. Among most climatologists, such as those represented in the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, however, a consensus has emerged that human activity has been raising the earth's temperature during the past century, with effects on glaciers, shorelines, coral reefs, tropical storms and wildlife accelerating during the past few decades.

As the new film is making its case with area audiences, several local Jewish congregations have developed and are expanding energy conservation programs, while others seem not to have global warming on their radar.

Across the region, representatives from 15 synagogues are working with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a Takoma Park advocacy group, to plan a Baltimore Jewish Environmental Conference in November, says CCAN's organizing director Josh Tulkin.

Rabbi Daniel Swartz, coordinator of Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light, is seeking, meanwhile, to expand the number of Jewish congregations among his network of 36 religious groups who have committed to reduce their energy consumption. The group arranges discounts for compact fluorescents and other green technology for its members.

Eight local synagogues have joined GWIPL: Adas Israel Congregation, Tifereth Israel Congregation and Temple Micah, all in the District, Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, Temple Emanuel, Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase and Tikvat Israel in Rockville. The District-based Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism has also signed up with the green group.

Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk of Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston says he plans to view An Inconvenient Truth and sees it as grist for future sermons.

"The fact this is getting so much attention and press is less about Al Gore" than that "people are wanting to learn more about this" problem, suggested Nosanchuk, whose Reform synagogue has brought green themes into its religious school curriculum, with the aid of materials from the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.

At the heart of Judaism, he says, sit two seemingly conflicting approaches to nature ‹ "being given responsibility over the earth and being given dominion" ‹ set forth in the first book of the Torah.

"And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,' " reads Genesis 1:26 (Jewish Publication Society translation). " 'They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.' "

This passage suggesting mastery of creation is succeeded by the more nurturing model of Genesis 2:15 (JPS): "The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it."

In Arlington, Rabbi Lia Bass recently worked with a young congregant on a bat mitzvah speech about global warming, but concedes that her Conservative synagogue, Congregation Etz Hayim, has yet to institute green practices, beyond recycling.

And Rabbi Barry Freundel doesn't view global warming as a fit topic for a Shabbat sermon, despite the presence of an active Green Group at his District synagogue, Kesher Israel Congregation.

"The Green Group talks about it; I don't," explained Freundel, an Orthodox rabbi. "It's not the pulpit thing on a Saturday morning."

At Rockville's Magen David Sephardic Congregation, Rabbi Joshua Maroof hasn't made a point of flagging climate change in his sermons and classes. He doesn't have to, it seems.

"We have many people here who are very environmentally conscious and care about these issues," bringing them to the attention of his synagogue board, said Maroof.

Executive director Moshe Teichman confirms that this Orthodox congregation uses compact fluorescents, and has been cleaning and tuning up heating and cooling systems along with other strategies to reduce energy consumption.

And across the District, one clergy member makes a point of using his bike as transport when visiting congregants in the hospital.

"I try and set that example," said Rabbi Ethan Seidel of Tifereth Israel Congregation, whose Conservative synagogue has a bike rack in the works to make two-wheeling an easier choice for members who live too far to walk easily. "I encourage people to bike to shul."

Seidel sees a theological parallel between Jewish blessings before meals and the tradition's take on the human bond to creation.

"The reason we say a bracha [blessing] before food is that it's not ours; it's sacred property," Seidel said. "I feel that we should extend that from eating to driving a car. Americans have a sense of 'it's coming to me.' I'm trying to get people to feel, it's not an entitlement ‹ the environment belongs to God."

Biking to services may come harder at many suburban congregations with far-flung memberships. Among these is Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, which designed its building in the eastern reaches of Bethesda with earth-friendly materials.

The synagogue has sought to compensate for its location, far from most mass transit, by its creation of 12 "villages" within the congregation, says Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb.

"It's not only easier to attend a shiva minyan or potluck if it's within your own neighborhood, it also encourages car-pooling to Adat Shalom from outlying areas," said Dobb, who notes that members come from such disparate compass points as Gaithersburg, Takoma Park and Northern Virginia.

As for the personal implications of energy use, it can become daunting for rabbis to broach this with congregants when many of them pull into the synagogue lot in a sports utility vehicle. Dobb frames the problem in terms of three hats that rabbis wear: pastor, priest and prophet.

"The prophetic role is never easy; it involves telling people the messy, inconvenient truths that we perceive through the prism of spirituality," Dobb said. "You have to balance the other roles of priest or pastor to the very people who may be rolling into the parking lot in a gas guzzler."

Yet Gary Skulnik, executive director of the Silver Spring nonprofit Clean Energy Partnership, which works with small businesses to reduce energy consumption and is teaming up with GWIPL to supply wind power to congregations, wants Jewish institutions to do more on climate change and to nudge their members to redouble their own efforts.

"There's certainly a lot more that synagogues can do in walking the walk," argued Skulnik, a member of the Orthodox Kemp Mill Synagogue, also in Silver Spring.

He cites such steps as "buying renewable energy, reducing energy consumption, recycling and strongly discouraging congregants from buying gas-guzzling SUVs."