342 results for tag: Community Leaders


Community is the Missing Piece

In July 2010, I began a local “Sustainability Circle” in my Jewish community in Silver Spring, MD. Unlike any other local initiative I’ve organized, the purpose of this circle was to gather Jews who already care about the environment and give them tools for personal and communal environmental actions. Most of my previous activities were about community education for Jews who weren’t yet convinced about the environment, but after years of this kind of programming in Silver Spring, the light bulb went on. There are already people who have learned and become interested. What can I do to provide for them? The members of the Kayamut Sustain...

Exciting Tu b’Shevat Raffle – Win a Great Prize!

Exciting Tu b’Shevat Raffle - Win a Great Prize! Jewcology and Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center are pleased to announce an exciting new raffle opportunity. You can win an all-inclusive free pass to the Isabella Freedman Tree b’Earthday Tu b’Shevat Retreat (a $200 value!). It’s easy to enter! Just post your favorite reason for celebrating trees in the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center community on Jewcology (www.jewcology.org). Raffle Rules: Entries must be posted in the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center community on Jewcology between January 5 - 17. You must have a profile ...

Jewish Environment: Education, Action and Activism 30 Somethings

Chaverim, I'm reaching out to all of you who are engaged successfully with Jews in their late 20's and early 30's. Please share what is enticing to this group in terms of Jewish environmental learning, action and activism? What works? What doesn't work? Thanks so much! Pam

Year of Jewish Learning on the Environment

Core teachings on 18 topics linking Torah and the environment were released between Tu b'Shevat 5772 and Tu b'Shevat 5773 as part of Jewcology's Year of Jewish Learning on the Environment, in partnership with Canfei Nesharim and a host of other organizations who shared materials across the Jewish community. The materials were shared at least 145 times on the web, in at least 99 social media postings, and reached over 51,000 people during the course of the year, as part of a Year of Jewish Learning on the Environment. The materials comprise the most comprehensive set of learning materials on Torah and the environment ever created, and are intended ...

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...

Networks and the Jewish Environmental Movement

On November 8-10, I traveled to Boulder, CO for a unique post-GA event: the NetWORKS Gathering, organized by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation. According to the organizers, the event brought together "a group of exceptional innovators, activists and network curators pushing the boundaries of the most vibrant organizations, projects and communities comprising Jewish life today." It was an honor to participate and to represent a network that I'm quite fond of - the global Jewish environmental community as gathered together on Jewcology. In addition to being -- as you might guess -- an excellent opportunity to network ...

My arrest at theTar Sands Protest

This was one adventurous day. There was the earthquake. Where were you when it occurred? I was just outside the Park Police holding cell after being released from police custody. I joined in today, very unexpectedly, with about 60 others to be arrested for “failure to obey a lawful order”. We stood in three long lines in front of the White House singing and chanting our protest of the Tar Sands oil pipeline that would extend from northern Canada, down through the heartland of the West, and directly through Yellowstone National Park, to Texas. This will be a dirty, toxic pipeline. Just the extraction of the oil in Canada ...

Recycling Alone

The environmental movement has not succeeded in protecting the environment. After all the lobbying, all the fundraising, all the laws and corporate partnerships, I would have expected to see more progress. Wouldn’t you? Instead, it seems that the environmental protection is weakening. Resources are being used more rapidly than ever. I hear more, and more heated, arguments against environmental protection than I used to. It seems that there is more and more intensive pursuit of carbon-based energy sources (hydro-fracking, off-shore oil drilling, etc.). In the court of public opinion and in the court of resource use, it ...

Results of Jewcology Leadership Trainings

“I enjoyed it very much and found the narrative format very powerful and the process even therapeutic.” - Jewcology Leadership Training Participant “…I felt empowered to tell my story… and I felt the intense writing sessions forced me to focus in on the most important aspects of my story. I fully intend to use what I've learned in ‘the real world’!” - Jewcology Leadership Training Participant “It taught me to articulate my motivations, and the importance of doing so to engage others in change.” - Jewcology Leadership Training Participant With the support of the ...

Fostering Environmentally Sustainable Behavior

Many of us who want to get people to behave in an environmentally sustainable way, tell them why they should do so. Sometime we even tell them how to do so. But research studies confirm what many of us have learned through personal experience. For most people, having the right attitudes, values and information is not sufficient to produce the amount of environmentally sustainable behavior that we would like. I attended Doug McKenzie-Mohr’s workshop on Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community Based Social Marketing and learned much about how to be more effective. Sometimes, doing the right thing requires too ...

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 ...

What is Public Narrative?

Although I have participated in all three of the Jewcology Public Narrative trainings, I still struggle to succinctly describe the experience (don’t tell). So I did what all good folks do in this day and age, I googled it. Marshall Ganz, Professor at the Kennedy School, long time organizer, has this to say in his course outline where he teaches the tenants of it: The questions of what am I called to do, what my community is called to do, and what we are called to do now are at least as old as Moses’ conversation with God at the burning bush. Why me? asks Moses, when called to free his people. And, who – or what - is ...

Baby steps…

As a participant in the recent Jewcology Public Narrative Training—surrounded by a collection of eloquent and accomplished Jewish environmental/ social justice activists—I couldn’t help but recall the classic “sailing” scene in the delightfully goofy 1991 Bill Murray comedy “What About Bob?” For those of you who haven’t seen the film, Murray plays Bob Wiley—a man so overcome by obsessive-compulsive fear and anxiety that he can hardly make it through his morning hygiene ritual, let alone face the world outside his front door. At a certain point in the movie, Bob is offered the opportunity to ...

Eco Connection launches in South Africa!

From the baking heat of Israel’s summer, Sviva Israel’s Director of Media & Technology flew last week to a chilly Johannesburg winter, to launch the Eco Connection in our first South African school. Despite the cold, she was warmly welcomed by the Israel Centre, under the directorship of Shimon Shamila, and the 7th grade students of the Torah Academy Girls School, who were all very excited to begin their participation in the Beit Shemesh-South African Eco Connection. The Beit-Shemesh South Africa Eco Connection is supported by the Beit Shemesh-Mateh Yehuda-South Africa Partnership 2Gether of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the ...

Bill McKibben Calls for Civil Disobedience Campaign in Washington DC in August 2011

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow Bill McKibben and several other leaders of the USand world-wide movement to prevent climate disaster have called for a wave of nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House gates between August 20 and Labor Day. The action will focus on convincing President Obama to withhold permits for the so-called ‘Keystone XLPipeline’ from Canada’s tar sands to flow to Texas refineries, thence to add enormously to planet-scorching CO2. Below you will find McKibben’s letter. More than 1100 people have signed up already. I am intending (God willing & the creeks don’t rise, or ...

The Tar Sands, Hydro-fracking, and Climate Reality

After the failure of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen 18 months ago, it seemed to me that the environmental movement was taking a long pause, trying to figure out how to engage the American population in the greatest challenge of our time. It seems to me now that this pause has ended, with a flurry of new activity that I’ve seen recently encouraging action on energy and climate change. There are three campaigns that I’ve recently become familiar with, and I will mention them with an eye toward what they are fighting and the difference they hope to make. The first campaign is the Tar Sands Action, which ...

Interfaith Climate Change Forum in Jerusalem on July 25th

The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development Cordially Invites You To an Interfaith Climate Change Forum on the topic How Can Religions Address the Climate Crisis? with the Honorable Panelists: His Beatitude Fouad Twal, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Haj Salah Zuheika, Deputy Minister of the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Religious Affairs Rabbi David Rosen, AJC International Director of Interreligious Affairs All of Whom are Members of The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land The American Colony Hotel One Louis Vincent Street, Jerusalem Monday, July 25th, 10:00 AM The ...

Leadership Training at Hazon Food Conference, August 21

Are you educating the Jewish community about protecting the environment? Have you faced challenges with: motivating people into action? inspiring Jews who don’t have the same values as you? or moving a community into activism and shared commitment? Jewcology is partnering with educators from Harvard University on a new leadership training intended to address these specific issues, in order to empower Jews who are seeking to educate Jewish communities about the importance of protecting the environment. Date: Sunday August 21 Time: 10:30am-6:30pm Location: UC-Davis (University of California) Cost: $60 This leadership ...

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 ...