By Nathan Jeffay
It’s a constant worry to most environmentalists. A plastic bottle discarded today is likely to be intact in a landfill hundreds of years from now. But for Haifa-based industrial designer Hadas Itzcovitch, the durability of those bottles has a silver lining.Read More
By Nigel Savage
As we make plans to celebrate Earth Day 2011, we worry about radiation from a crippled nuclear plant in Japan. We face air pollution, species extinction, climate change. Major fish stocks are down 90%. And, more parochially, the Jewish community faces extraordinary stress and uncertainty. The federation system and many of our synagogues have lost members, revenues and staff. The issue of Israel in American Jewish life has become more complex than ever. Our day schools confront a deeply challenging business model.
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By Michael Kaminer
The website Jewcology.com launched late last year with guns blazing. A statement from 135 alt-Jewish heavyweights, from foundation executives to academics, supported its creation. A $50,000 grant from the Jerusalem-based ROI Community of Young Jewish Innovators funded its development. The global press trumpeted its debut.
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By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
For kids, summer days at Eden Village Camp, some 50 miles north of New York City in Putnam Valley, N.Y., will be different from days at other Jewish overnight camps. Oh, there will be swimming in the camp’s lake and plenty of hiking. But instead of games of tennis there will be pickling and permaculture. Rather than visiting the canteen for ice cream, kids will pick snap peas to munch from their bunk’s own “snack garden.”
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By Paul Berger
The Green Zionist Alliance is an unlikely force in Jewish environmental politics. Run by volunteers and largely unknown, the New York-based group heads into the 2010 World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem in June armed with seven resolutions, touching on topics from Israeli farming and sustainable business to renewable energy and climate change.Read More
By Gordon Haber
In most ways, Ralph Montview is a typical graduate student. On a recent weekday, he looked tired after a late night of proofing his master’s thesis, “Elements for Design of a Public Transit System.” His apartment in Anaheim, Calif., was messy, with books and papers piled on every available surface.
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By Josh Tapper
Kate Harrison and Barry Muchnick knew that when they got married, their wedding ceremony would need to reflect their environmentalism. After all, they had met at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
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By Beth Schwartzapfel
During a Sabbath evening service one Friday in February, Seth Goldstein and his 9-year-old son, Ozi, sat with their eyes closed in the synagogue in Olympia, Wash., where Goldstein is the rabbi. From the bimah, Nalini Nadkarni asked congregants to imagine a tree that was important to them. She described the maple trees that had lined the driveway of her childhood home. Amid the confusion of growing up, they had been a refuge. She would climb their limbs with a book and a snack, and spend entire afternoons up in the air.
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By Samuel D. Gruber
In the early 13th century, Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna wrote, “…whoever pays attention to a beautiful tree doesn’t concentrate on his study and interrupts it. All the more so in prayer, which needs greater concentration; one cannot concentrate as required when looking at trees drawn on the wall.”
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By Deborah Kolben
Why is the environment a Jewish issue? Sybil Sanchez is the new leader of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life — an Organization that asks American Jews to pledge to consume less, help raise awareness and push for public policies that promote environmentalism — explains.
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As First Maharats Graduate, Orthodox Women Leap Forward
Why a Rabbi Should Not Marry Outside the Faith
Why I Only Date Jewish Guys
Taking Aim at Corporate Jewish Burial Business
Barbra Streisand Visits Western Wall After Landing in Israel With Puppy
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