71 results for tag: Community Organizing and Policymaking

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 ...

Community open to New Ideas (CJN September 2011)

This "Sustainable Jew" column appeared in the Canadian Jewish News, September 8, 2011 How does a community come together to look at new ideas and decide which ones to make a small investment in and see if they will succeed? The GTA Jewish community brought forward 78 proposals to the UJA Federation’s SixPoints Jewish Venture Philanthropy Fund. Sixty individuals pooled their financial resources and business planning skills to fund and support new and innovative programs, consistent with Jewish values. Each proposal team was asked to record a short video and write up their project describing the hypothetical community ...

Feb 6: COEJL’s declaration signing ceremony

The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) invites you to the official signing ceremony of the “Jewish Environmental and Energy Imperative” declaration, part of its Jewish Energy Covenant Campaign. Two days before the Jewish celebration of Tu B’shvat, the New Year for trees, leaders of the Jewish community will set the community-wide goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 14% by 2014. Who: On behalf of a broad spectrum of national Jewish leaders, Rabbi Steve Gutow, president and CEO, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and co-chair, COEJL; Rabbi David Saperstein, director and counsel, Religi...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

Coming Together

Writing a blog post for Jewcology is usually a fairly fluid process for me. Throughout the month I generally collect different articles and compile thoughts in a document that I then go back to when I am trying to figure out what theme I want to address in my blog. This month was different. It did not occur to me until last week that the blog I was going to post had a deadline of September 11th. Sitting in the passenger seat of my car, with the Hudson River to my right and my wife listening to NPR which is playing personal stories of families who lost loved ones on 9-11, I feel compelled to convey a story of hope that is also ...

Jewish youth starts teen environmental group

Ariel Allen, age 16, a resident of Atlanta, GA, a student of The Paideia School and a current Bronfman Fellow, is a winner of Action For Nature’s 2011 International Young Eco-Hero Award. Allen was honored for starting a Jewish Teen environmental group. San Francisco, CA (July 22, 2011) – Kosher Crew, founded by Ari, motivates Jewish teens to become active conservationists by taking part in tikkun olam, or “healing the world.” Inspired by two summer internships with the Student Conservation Association, he runs fun, peer-led outings to do hands-on environmental work. Kosher Crew’s goal is to motivate ...

Georgia youth wins International Young Eco-Hero award

Kosher Crew, founded by Ariel Allen (Ari) of Atlanta, Georgia, motivates Jewish teens to become active conservationists by taking part in tikkun olam, or “healing the world.” Inspired by two summer internships with the Student Conservation Association, he runs fun, peer-led outings to do hands-on environmental work. Kosher Crew’s goal is to motivate participants to be active and healthy and to make a positive impact on the environment while encompassing core values of Judaism. He wanted to create something for Jewish youth because so many environmental events are on Saturdays which they are unable to attend. Participation, ...

Jewcology Leadership Trainings

Connecting to the Heart: A Leadership Tool for Engaging the Unengaged Are you seeking to make environmental change in local or national Jewish communities?  Looking for ways to move people that do not always share the same views as you?   Would you like to learn how to use a leadership skill to connect to people’s hearts? How can we use the stories of our lives to inspire, teach, and motivate others?  In this training we will learn to share the experiences and values that have led us to devote our lives to Jewish-environmental education and action, and to connect to others through these values.  We will be trained to express our environmen...