From the very beginning we’ve been determined to use geothermal energy to heat and cool our new building. Unfortunately, what’s standard practice in Europe is still in its infancy here in the United States. Over the past two years I’ve travelled from New Hampshire to Oklahoma City in search of geothermal know-how. A breakthrough finally came last week, when we signed on Mike Zimmerman, an experienced geothermal engineer from Sudbury, Massachusetts, and John Williams, a seasoned heating and cooling contractor, to do the job. Their ingenious design will use two 1,500-foot wells to “borrow” energy from the earth to heat and cool the Kaplen addition and our existing building as well. It will cost us an extra $100,000 to include our existing space – a sum we now need to raise. But the payback period is just six years at current prices, and we can look forward to annual average energy savings of 55%! Yiddish is looking greener all the time.