28 results for author: David Krantz

Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, 70, Mother of the Jewish-Environmental Movement

18 Adar 1 5784 / 27 Feb. 2024 It is a rainy day in Rabbi Ellen Bernstein’s hometown of Philadelphia, as even the skies are crying. The Jewish-environmental movement has lost one of its earliest founders — the visionary rabbi moved on from this world earlier today (18 Adar I) on the Hebrew calendar and last night on the Gregorian calendar. She was 70. In 1988, Ellen, at the age of 34, founded Shomrei Adamah, one of the earliest Jewish-environmental organizations. Her work with Shomrei Adamah and her books — most prominently Splendor of Creation, Let the Earth Teach You Torah and her recent Passover haggadah, The Promise of the Land — ...

Earth Etude for Elul 14: This Elul, We Express Gratitude to Israel’s Leading Environmentalist–Dr. Alon Tal

by David Krantz Dr. Alon Tal As Rosh Hashanah approaches, it’s customary for us to take stock — What have we done wrong? What could we be doing better? — but Rosh Hashanah is also a time to look back and consider the many ways we have been blessed. This Elul, as his time in Knesset likely (and unfortunately) comes to a close, we are particularly grateful to Aytzim cofounder and Knesset member Dr. Alon Tal, Israel’s leading environmentalist, for all he has done to improve the wellbeing of Israel’s land, plants, people and non-human animals. Aside from cofounding Aytzim in 2001, Tal also has founded or cofounded a slew of other ...

Earth Etude for Elul 15: Counting to the Next Shmita Year

by David Krantz Among our more under-appreciated traits, we Jews are counters. We count for a prayer quorum, we count the omer, we count the days of the months to know when our holidays are. We might know the days of the week by their names – Sunday, Monday — but in Hebrew they are Yom Rishon, the First Day, and Yom Sheni, the second day. And before borrowing their current names from the Babylonian calendar, the Jewish months were numbered. What we now know as Elul was once the Sixth Month, leading to the Seventh Month that we now call Tishrei. Counting can (ideally) foster planning and patience. It is by counting that we know when to do ...

Using the New Jewcology

Welcome to the new Jewcology!   Using the site is pretty simple. Click on login  — but your password from the old site won't work, so the first time you use the new site, click on "lost password" to set a new password: To create a new blog post, click on "Blogs" and then "Create new post." You can add a featured image:   You can tag your blog post with keywords and phrases to help people find it easier: And when you're finished, just press "Publish"! You also can save your work as a draft and finish later; publish it and edit it later; and edit the publishing date so that it publishes on the ...

Green Your Conference

Conferences offer the opportunity to meet new people, exchange ideas and learn about new developments in your fields. They also tend to be very wasteful of natural resources — but they don’t have to be. The following tips would help to green conferences of all sizes — even ones as large as the World Zionist Congress and the Jewish Federations’ General Assembly. Click here to continue reading this article.

GZA Fights Fracking Deregulation in Israel

The Israeli government’s Ministry of Energy and Water is trying to exempt oil-shale frackers from regulations, which might give oil companies free reign to drill throughout the Elah Valley. But the Green Zionist Alliance has joined with others to lead an effort to stop the exemptions and stop fracking in one of the last few open spaces left between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. NOW IN ENGLISH: The 36-page translation of the KKL-JNF report. The 34-page Hebrew-language KKL-JNF report. Letter from Dr. Orr Karassin of the Green Zionist Alliance to the Ministry of Energy and Water (in Hebrew). More resources on fracking ...

Trees, Bikes and Nature on Yom Ha’atzmaut

NEW YORK (April 26, 2012) — Falafel fests, movie nights, dance parties — Americans celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut in many ways. But what do Israelis do on Independence Day? They head outdoors. Last year so many people jammed into the country’s de-facto national-park system, run by KKL-JNF, that parks were closed because they reached capacity. So, how many people was that, you ask? About one in every five Israelis — more than 1.5 million people — which is also about the same number of trees that have been planted in Israel since 2007 because of the work of the Green Zionist Alliance. That’s right, ...

Breaking Free from the Fossil-Fuel Pharaoh

The photovoltaic solar-panel array at Kibbutz Ketura is the first and currently only of its kind in Israel. (Photo by David Krantz) KIBBUTZ KETURA, Israel — During the first ever Passover we left Egypt and slavery, celebrating our freedom in the wilderness. It’s easy to forget that back then this stretch of the Arava Valley, a half-hour up the road from the hotels of Eilat, wasn’t part of the biblical Promised Land. No, this part of southern Israel was wilderness — our ancestors wandered through here after the Exodus. It was here, in the desert, where we gained our freedom from slavery to ...

Photo Slide Show of Samar Sand Dunes

SAMAR SAND DUNES, Israel — A barbed-wire fence runs along the edge of the dunes here, but it's not to protect them — it's to keep people from accidentally walking across the country's border with Jordan. Not that Samar hasn't needed the protection — the government was poised to raze the dunes and turn them into concrete for hotels and sidewalks. But barbed wire would not have been strong enough to hold back bulldozers. No, the bulldozers were stopped by something far more powerful: You. Thanks to the efforts of the Green Zionist Alliance, our partners in Israel and all of our supporters — ...

Bittersweet Victory: Most of Samar Saved

SAMAR SAND DUNES, Israel (Feb. 5, 2012) — Nestled in the Arava Valley, in between Israel’s Eilat Mountains and the Edomite Mountains of Jordan, a tragedy and a victory sit side by side. Part of Samar — a square-mile patch of sand dunes home to scores of animals, some near extinction — has been stripped of its sand in order to make concrete. But next to the wasteland, a victory: More than two-thirds of Samar has been saved, due to the efforts of the Green Zionist Alliance and its partner organizations in Israel. On a recent day here the Samar sand dunes were tranquil and serene. The scorched earth where the dunes ...

LAST CHANCE TO SAVE SAMAR

UPDATE: Late tonight (1 a.m. Thursday Israel time Dec. 29), the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, Green Course, Arava residents and the public will meet at the Samar sand dunes! Free buses leave from Tel Aviv's Central Train Station at 1 a.m. (early morning Thursday Israel time Dec. 29), next to Sixt Rental Car. Buses are scheduled to return to Tel Aviv tomorrow, Thursday, Dec. 29 at 3 p.m. Israel's Samar sand dunes — and the unique animal species that live there — may be destroyed, unless we act now. (Photo courtesy of Taal Goldman of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studie...

Maccabees Redux: Oil-Fracking Fight in Israel

NEW YORK (Dec. 22, 2011) — We need another Chanukah miracle. On Chanukah we recall the victory of the few over the many and the weak over the powerful. We celebrate the miracle of the oil and of the reassertion of control over our historic homeland, the present-day land of Israel. But, as history repeats itself, this Chanukah, the role of the Greek Assyrians and local Hellenized is being played by telecommunications-giant IDT Corporation, a multinational New York Stock Exchange-listed company that aims to frack for oil across Judea through its subsidiary Genie Energy, which owns Israel Energy Initiatives. Mega-philanthro...

Bikes, Trees and Gardens: Greening Israel Since 2001

NEW YORK (Dec. 16, 2011) — Saving wilderness, fighting fracking, protecting Israel’s 99 percent from the world's 1 percent — what a decade it’s been! This month marks the end of the 10th anniversary of the Green Zionist Alliance. Back before Israel’s Tent Cities and Occupy Wall Street, the Green Zionist Alliance began 2011 by becoming part of a successful effort to change the equation of what percentage of natural-resource profits goes to companies and what percentage goes to the Israeli public, who collectively own the resources. Fighting against some of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, ...

Samar Gets Temporary Reprieve — Let’s Make it Permanent!

Israel's Samar sand dunes — and the unique animal species that live there — may be destroyed, unless we act now. (Photo courtesy of Taal Goldman of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies) NEW YORK (Nov. 14, 2011) — We are being heard: The Samar sand dunes have been granted a temporary reprieve from destruction! Although the bulldozers were scheduled to start mining the dunes weeks ago, work has been indefinitely postponed in the wake of our efforts and the protests conducted by our partner environmental organizations in Israel. Environment Minister Gilad Erdan arranged for the delay in conversa...

Almost Out of Time: Act Now to Save Samar

Israel's Samar sand dunes — and the unique animal species that live there — may be destroyed, unless we act now. (Photo courtesy of Taal Goldman of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies) NEW YORK (Oct. 12, 2011) — The bulldozers and dump trucks are getting ready. Without intervention, they will begin carting away one of Israel’s unique ecosystems, the Samar sand dunes, home to species that live nowhere else on the planet. And soon, at the government’s initiation, the sands of Samar in Israel’s Arava Valley will be turned into concrete. Eilat needs sand for concrete, ...

GZA Leads KKL-JNF Effort Against Fracking in Israel

NEW YORK (Sept. 16, 2011) — Hydraulic fracturing and in-situ retorting for oil in Israel should be banned in Israel pending further research into the environmental effects of the relatively new fossil-fuel extraction techniques, according to a new report issued by Israel’s Keren Kayemet L’Yisrael / Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) at the initiation of the Green Zionist Alliance. The report and its recommendations, which were drafted and approved unanimously by a KKL-JNF committee convened and chaired by Green Zionist Alliance representative Dr. Orr Karassin, constitutes the official policy of KKL-JNF according to the ...

The Israeli Summer: Tent Cities, Bombs, Boycotts and Herzl’s Dream

NEW YORK (Aug. 22, 2011) — If you thought Theodor Herzl’s dream was fulfilled with the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, think again. Thousands are camping out in Israel’s cities, demanding social change. Thousands more around the world, angered by the Palestinians’ situation, seek to boycott Israel. Meanwhile, Egypt, Israel and Gaza volley bombs and rockets in escalating attacks and counterattacks. Which brings us back to Herzl. His dream wasn’t simply the creation of a Jewish democratic state, but the creation of a model state — a place that would protect its environment, a place powered by ...

Lessons for Israel from Ghana

SEFWI WIAWSO, Ghana — About six years ago the Ghanaian government brought a delegation of Jews from the Israeli town of Dimona to Accra, Ghana’s capital, to speak about the importance of local agricultural production and consumption. But even though Ghana has a long way to go on its path to becoming a developed nation — becoming part of the so-called “First World” — there's a lot that Israel can learn from Ghana. For example, here in Sefwi Wiawso, a small town in southwestern Ghana near the country’s border with Ivory Coast, the synagogue — the only one in Ghana — is lit at night by ...

The Story of Us: Growing Community and Inspiring Action

As Jewish environmental leaders, what drives us to do the work we do? Is it a single transformative experience? Or a longer build-up over months or years? Some of us grew up with an attachment to nature. For others of us, meeting someone whose father died from pesticide exposure, or participating in the first Earth Day back in 1970, or, more recently, watching Al Gore in the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” was a call to action. Or for some of us, maybe it was just finally becoming part of a group that also preferred stargazing over “Dancing with the Stars.” At last week’s Jewcology personal-narrative leadership ...

Saving Samar: Together We Can Protect the Last of Israel’s Sahara

Israel's Samar sand dunes — and the unique animal species that live there — may be destroyed. (Photos courtesy of Taal Goldman of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies) NEW YORK (May 26, 2011) — Picture a desert and you'll probably envision rolling hills of sand like those traversed by the nomadic caravans of the Sahara. Yet, even though the majority of Israel is desert, almost none of it is like the Sahara except for a small section near the southern tip of Israel in the Arava Valley: the Samar sand dunes. Originally about five square miles in size, today less than one square mile ...