Jewish Man, Yellow Cab, Green Street
After editing the national magazine American Jewish Life and wandering around the Bible Belt for a year Benyamin Cohen (“My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith,” HarperCollins, 2008) decided to save the world from itself.
Cohen joined up with the fledgling Mother Nature Network and, using his Jewish media experience, developed the role of Content Director. Just as Jewish media eschews limiting definitions of Jewishness to report broader Jewish culture the resulting content of this avowedly environmental news site often veers away from direct facts into what might be loosely called “environmental culture.”
Today marks the start of MNN’s most recent series, “On the Streets” featuring Forward contributor Jonathan Kesselman. When not writing his Machal pieces for us, he’s apparently making an environmental nuisance of himself on the streets of Manhattan and either causing or observing mayhem depending on how you view it.
It’s not exactly clear how new video-recorded craziness every Tuesday helps the Jews, but as long as it’s good for the environment we’re down with it.