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. But the site, which calls itself a “transformational Web portal…
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….
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. At the previous…
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. He even jokingly insinuated that…
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. “We really tried to green everything,” said Harrison of her 2007 outdoor wedding in Garrison, N.Y., “and we tried to…
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…
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.” Today, with the “greening” of…
The New York Observer’s Azi Paybara has a great story about the Brooklyn councilman, who like Al Gore has focused on the environment after losing a high-profile race (in his case, for Congress).
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