1988 results for tag: Uncategorized

Question of the Week #14

Laura Bellows, director of the Teva Learning Center's Congregational and Community programs, asks the Jewcology Question of the Week.

Environmental Tip of the Week: Support efforts to conserve marine environments!

Cross posted on The Daily Yay! and Environmental Tip of the Week You can provide financial support toward this goal and have a fun, educational experience at the same time by visiting an aquarium and paying the admission fee. My husband, baby Rena, father-in-law, and step-mother-in-law had a wonderful time on Sunday at the Seattle Aquarium. Rena got to hold a starfish and play with felt sea creatures. There were so many pretty fish, and the exhibits were arranged quite artistically! It's my favorite aquarium so far. If you're not in Seattle, check out a local aquarium. Israel has multiple aquariums, Chicago has the Shedd Aquarium and ...

Welcome to Miami

This is our first post to Jewcology.com, but not the first of our tour. To read our previous posts, go to topsyturvybus.org. But then come back here! Welcome to Miami The Sunshine State is no lie. Since we arrived in this tropical paradise both the weather and the people have been warm, bright, and sunny. In fact, this Topsy Turvy Educator, while clamboring over seven-foot-high-snow banks this winter back in New England, had forgotten how hot "hot" could be. So our pre-Shabbat plans last week required time for a stop at Macy's, where a friendly salesman named Marty - or Moshe Eliyahu - helped me pick ...

Honey From the Rock: Resilient Shabbat – Sustaining the Ability to Be

Thinking back to my experience at the ICLEI[1] World Congress in Capetown, South Africa in 2006, one thing in particular stands out in my mind’s eye. I was sitting in an explanatory session of the different topical themes that the congress was offering. A presenter rose to the podium and asked us to close our eyes, take in a deep breath, exhale, and do so again. In closing she informed us that we just had practiced resilience[2]. I learned an important lesson from that 15 second meditation…which is that resilience, the ability to restore, to heal, to make “Tikkun”[3], is in essence “being” in and of ...

The Privilege of CBI

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of teaching my first class at Congregation Beth Israel’s (CBI) Hebrew High School in Charlottesville, VA. I say a privilege because the students at CBI are curious, enthusiastic, and intelligent, but that isn’t all. It is also a privilege to be sharing some of what I learned living and growing in Israel from 2006 – 2010 as the founder and executive director of Earth’s Promise. The class is part of a two sequence workshop entitled “Israel: Beyond the Conflict”, that Rabbi Tom Gutherz and I developed for the Hebrew High School. Given the complexity and richness of Israeli ...

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...

350 eARTh: Climate Change Art Visible From Space

This resource's content is attached.

DC Admin Position with National Religious Partnership on the Environment

Office Manager / Executive Admin Assistant The National Religious Partnership for the Environment seeks an experienced, versatile, Office Manager / Executive Administrative Assistant (EAA) for its new office in Washington, DC. The Partnership, founded in 1993, is a highly respected, national alliance of four major independent faith groups (the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Coalition on Environment and Jewish Life, and the Evangelical Environmental Network), which undertake programs for environmental sustainability and justice through education, congregational outreach, ...

Question of the Week #13

Dr. Alon Tal, co-founder of the Green Zionist Alliance: The Grassroots Campaign for a Sustainable Israel, asks the Jewcology question of the week. What will you do? Share below.

Intertwine the Environment and Social Justice? Be Careful.

Recently there has been a lot of talk in the Jewish environmental community about the environmental interlinkage with social justice issues. You can see it in the talk about “food justice,” efforts on environmental justice, or in the Siach conference (An Environmental and Social Justice Conversation). Of course, these issues have always been intertwined for some Jewish-environmental organizations, such as the Shalom Center. But increasingly Jewish environmental programs and, worryingly, Jewish environmental grant opportunities – seem tied to the social justice movement, meaning they may need a “social justice” angle ...

New items in store! :)

http://www.jewcology.org/store I've listed two items of organic clothing, just two of several items of organic clothing in my new online shop, http://www.cafepress.com/ButterflyHaiku

Environmental Tip of the Week: Stay green even when moving, part 4

Cross posted on Environmental Tip of the Week Stay green even when moving, part 4 I know those massive amounts of cardboard boxes lying around are annoying. I'm not asking you to keep them all in case you need them in the future, just please remember to recycle them when you're done unpacking them. Alternatively, you can have them reused by giving them away to a new neighbor who is moving out of your neighborhood soon. (Thank you to The FlyLady for sharing this advice on her page with moving tips.)

Connecting to the Heart – Leadership Training March 13-14

Do you care about protecting our environment? Would you like to educate the Jewish community to learn more about this important issue? As you engage your family, school, or community, would you like to be more effective at speaking to people who don't always share the same views as you? Join us in March for a new in-person leadership training opportunity which will empower you to engage those who are not already involved in environmental action, and in so doing, raise the level of environmental engagement across the Jewish community. This training is perfect for rabbis, educators, synagogue lay leaders, and other community leaders at ...

Celebrate a Sustainable Purim!

Purim falls this year on March 20. Joyful and fun, the holiday also includes an opportunity to share your environmental commitments with your community. To help you save resources this Purim, Canfei Nesharim offers great ideas for healthy, beautiful, waste-free mishloach manot. Includes price-coded links for inexpensive and eco-friendly products that you might like to include in your mishloach manot package! You can also take advantage of our printable mishloach manot cards. Share your eco-commitment by dropping an eco-reminder into this year's mishloach manot. Your community members can learn tips to save resources from ...

A Plug for Whole Foods Products

Whole Foods recently established what they call their Premium Body Care® standards. They write: "Our experts spent years examining ingredients according to the strictest criteria for safety, efficacy and impact on the environment [emphasis added]." I'm regularly at Whole Foods because the local stores around here are accessible by public transportation. I can vouch for the Whole Foods Market Organic Castile Soap Peppermint which meets the PBC standard. http://www.wholefoods.com

Urban Crayola tools

Oh wow..! What a day it was… we started early morn the truck arrives with trees and bougainvilleas in all rainbow shades that lift our hearts already. The new immigrants coming straight from Ulpan (Hebrew class) folding sleeves and starting to work the staff from Netafim (a big local-based and international irrigation company) that have been aiding us from day one and have agreed to come and pitch in. It’s happening at last – we are growing and will now be able to offer 30 more plots for growing vegetables in the middle of the urban prairie. This move is after our 50 plots are already operated by families from the adjacent Ethiopian ...

Generation of Change: How Leaders in their 20s and 30s are Reshaping American Jewish Life

In September 2010, the Avi Chai Foundation put out a report “Generation of Change: How Leaders in their 20s and 30s are Reshaping American Jewish Life.” The report elicited responses from 4,466 Jewish leaders of all ages, myself included, and after thorough analysis of the data came up with a range of interesting results that I believe relate directly to our work as Jewcologists. The survey divided respondents into a number of categories, based on 2 main factors. Establishment vs Non-establishment Jewish leadership, and Young (20s& 30s) vs Older. It asked a range of questions on Jewish identify, practice, affiliation, goals, ...

Question of the Week #12

Yoshi Silverstein from Kayam Farm asks Jewcology's Question of the Week.

Jewish views on Food Security

Jews often talk about FOOD, and we often talk about SECURITY, but we don't often talk about FOOD SECURITY. Lately I've been reading many disturbing and important articles connecting recent riots throughout the Middle East and elswhere with increases in food prices and food shortages. The predictions are not good at all. Global food prices are at all time highs, and are not expected to go down any time soon. The riots are really just the tip of the iceberg, because rising food prices also means literally millions of people going hungry and malnurished. These issues are all connected under the general term of "Food Security" ...

A Tu BiShvat of Seeing

For Tu BiShvat this year at Gesher Jewish Day School, we ran a succesful program to help our students take a closer look at nature. We brought nature inside the school following a clever plan from the book Let the Earth Teach You Torah. Our school is set into a large property of woodland. We gathered many samples of tree branches, twigs, leaves and bark to the kids. Each one chose an item, and set to work examining it carefully. They wrote as detailed a description as they could, getting to know the item as a new friend. In the Middle School, the students also put their samples into a box, switched descriptions and tried to identify the new ...