By Noam Dolgin. When one thinks of the stereotypical Jewish Long Islander, one does not usually think “environmentalist.” But take 34 Jewish educators from Long Island to Israel — from a diverse array of backgrounds, from 20 years old to it’s-not-polite-to-ask — and you get a group of passionate, caring
By David Krantz. Maybe Kermit was wrong — maybe it actually is easy to be green. Or, at the very least, it is pretty easy to start being green. There are many projects that you can do that will not just green your home, but will keep the green in
By Dr. Orr Karassin. COPENHAGEN (Dec. 14, 2009) — In honor of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, the city of Copenhagen had an especially optimistic ambiance. Despite the optimism, it could be said that the conference planners miscalculated in bringing the world's policy makers and the decade's most
By David Krantz. Moses took a wrong turn leading the Israelites out of Egypt, the old joke goes, and instead the Jewish people ended up in the rare spot in the Middle East without oil. As Arthur Herman noted recently in the New York Post, it’s now known that Israel
By Yael Schonzeit "One generation goes, another comes," reads Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), "but the Earth remains the same forever." The sun will rise, the wind will blow and the rivers will continue to flow into the sea, uncontrollable no matter what we do. As the most recent natural phenomenon of Sandy
By Dr. Daniel Orenstein For most of my professional career, I have researched environmental issues in Israel. While issues of water scarcity and loss of open spaces loom large among the country’s problems, the more I study the more I’ve become convinced that many of its environmental problems are rooted
By Dr. Mirele Goldsmith When the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in December 2004, women died, in part, because they could not swim, because they put the needs of their children first, and, most tragically of all, they drowned in their homes because they would not
By Manuela Zoninsein Attending Jewish sleep-away camp for nearly a decade’s worth of summers taught me some invaluable life lessons, such as how to sweep sand out of a craggy floored cabin, how to rap the Birkat HaMazon, and the value of tikkun olam — the Jewish commitment to repairing
“Be careful not to spoil and destroy my world, for if you do so, no one will repair it.” — Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13 After the Beginning — whether we call it a six-day Creation or a Big Bang — every creation embodies destruction and every destruction embodies creation. A sapling
To many this may seem to be a stupid, or rather a redundant question: Should Jews support democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of worship? I am sure that no one will dispute the fact that climate change, alongside the dwindling of the world's resources, constitutes one of the burning
Depending on how much pressure and temperature to which it has been subject, coal is a sedimentary or metamorphic rock comprised mostly of carbon. Coal is a fossil fuel used primarily in the generation of electricity. To turn coal into electricity, the rock is pulverized then combusted in a furnace,
Interested in a FREE trip to Israel with a focus on the environment, this is the trip for you! The application deadline is today — Monday, March 31. Visit our website to for info on the application: http://www.greenzionism.org/greenisrael Select IsraelExperts as the Trip Organizer, June – Green Israel as the
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, those of us who work at the Green Zionist Alliance from New York and New Jersey have been fortunate to have been able to move to safer ground. But in the wake of climate change, there is no other planet to which we can
Canoe through the wilderness of Vermont's Green Mountains with the Green Zionist Alliance! When: Sept. 7 — 9, 2012 Where: The Green Mountains of southern Vermont, just ~3½ hours drive from New York or Boston Join us as we revel in the beauty of early fall in the Green Mountains
Fifteen years ago four Australian athletes died when the bridge they were crossing collapsed over the Yarkon River in Israel. But only one of them died from the fall. The other three were killed by something more unexpected: The river's pollution. Click here to continue reading this article.
The acute deterioration in Israel's environmental condition is only part of the social agenda that brought one million Israelis to demonstrations this past summer. Are we seeing a change in the Israeli political map and the public's ecological awareness? What policies are needed to address the steady damage to Israel's
By Rabbi Lawrence Troster Most scholars believe that chapter 28 of the Book of Job is a later poetic addition into the text. The poem is nonetheless a beautiful hymn to Wisdom (Hokhmah) and a meditation on how to acquire it. The unknown Wisdom teacher who composed this poem is
An Israeli firefighter walks past the remains of a house in Yemin Orde. (AP, via Newsday) By David Krantz NEW YORK (Dec. 6, 2010) — 42 people dead. 250 homes ravaged. 12,300 acres razed. 5 million trees burned. In the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in Israeli history, we
