Dating an Environmentalist in Israel (A 5 Tip Survival Guide)
In Israel and around the planet – our big global village – it’s a tough dating world out there, as the most recent Valentine’s Day may have reminded us. Whether we’re lucky enough to meet someone through a chance encounter on a beach in Tel Aviv, or through directories that list free dating sites, or even through some good old fashioned Jewish matchmaking – meeting someone is only half the battle. The other half? Making it work. This can be especially tough sometimes when your love interest has strong ideals about something that you are… ahem… less passionate about. For those of you that are just starting to date an environmentalist in Israel (or dating an environmentalist in the Middle East at large), watch out for these five potential deal breakers: Read more
Fridge Voyeurism From Israel
Are you an organic food addict? Or do you insist on eating food that grown locally, but pesticide-ridden, to spare food miles (or to serve an ideology?)
As food production is a major source of greenhouse gas pollution (Read: Global Warming), eating locally, and consuming less meat is one way we can do our part.
Following a worldwide trend, where people are opening up their fridge to show people what’s in their fridge (and on their palette) today I will expose myself and show you what’s in mine. It feels a bit like opening my underwear drawer to strangers, but here goes:
CONTENTS (Door on right): Bio eggs, butter, organic strawberry jam, milk, mustard, sundried tomatoes, pomegranate concentrate, goat’s milk yogurt, V8, tehina, capers, guava juice, orange juice, batteries (not for eating!), coconut juice, goat’s yogurt, and the old Canadian maple syrup (thanks Mom!).
SOURCE: There are a number of imported items here like the V8 from North America and the juice from Egypt. The jam is from the United States. Phoeey on me, but it looked so good. And the pomegranate concentrate, I think is from Turkey, while syrup is from Canada. All the milk products are produced locally and bought at Eden Teva market or local non-organic shops. Milk costs about $1.50 a liter in Israel (non-organic), the organic yogurt about $3 a bottle.
CONTENTS: (from top to bottom, left to right) organic lentil sprouts, organic goat’s cheese, chessick fruit, soft regular white cheese 5%, organic red cabbage part of a weekly CSA veggie box delivery (choose from a list of CSAs here if you live in Israel); more cheese including a Rockfort goat’s cheese, Syrian dates, spicy lettuces, cabbage, parsley, green onions, carrots, leaks, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, and spinach.
SOURCE: Vegetables come from an organic farm, which delivers a box of whatever’s in season, once a week. Some of the cheese is from Eden Teva market, a health food store in Bnei Brak; some cheese is from Arab supermarket on the corner nearby my house. Reducing food miles is important to me from an environmental perspective. I try to eat locally produced food, and things which are in season.
CONTENTS: It being Passover in Israel means that a lot of the bread products you might see here other times of the year have been cleaned out, eaten or burned, as per Jewish custom. Moving on, there is some sort of white fish, hamburger organic and regular, rice (stored in freezer to keep the bugs out), and a strange kind of sheep tail fat (bottom right) for making a Bukharian food known as Osh Pollo. It is wrapped like that because someone (on their request) was supposed to “smuggle” it to the US where no such sheep tail fat can be found. It stays frozen in the meantime. (As a once a week meat-eater, Osh Pollo is very yummy and highly recommended.)
SOURCE: The frozen products come from Eden Teva Market, a health food store, a regular grocery store, and the sheep tail fat, a local market. Normally you won’t find so much meat in the freezer, as I tend to buy it when I want it. I have no idea how much meat costs per kilo, because I buy it so rarely. The organic hamburger, enough to feed 4, cost about $25 for the box, times 2 what you see above.
Want to know more about fridge voyeurism? Read this post in its original form with more details at Canada’s Israel. Or a past Green Prophet post on a fridge in Jerusalem.
We’d be happy to feature your Middle East fridge on Green Prophet, if you dare. Send us some pics and describe contents and food source, so we can know a little more about you, and what you eat. Send to contact@greenprophet.com.
Iran’s New Year “Nowruz” An Ecological Bridge To Make Peace With Israel?
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment
Jews in Israel and the world over are busy now celebrating Passover, while Christians ready themselves for Easter. Iranians, we learn had their own celebrations this time of the year, coinciding with the vernal equinox on March 21.
Iran’s political makeup and leadership may not be making many friends these days, but its annual festival Nowruz, or the Persian New Year festival, is being celebrated in a number of countries, and by several different religions as well.
Nowruz spelled also Nowrouz or Nouruz, which means “New Day” in Persian, officially marks the first day of Spring in the Persian calendar and corresponds to the Spring Equinox which is marked on Western calendars as March 21.
The holiday is not only celebrated by the Iranians, but also by countries in Central Asia, South Asia, Western China, The Crimea, and by a number of ethnic groups in Balkan countries such as Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia. The holiday marks the period when the sun crosses the celestial equator and creates equal day and night.
The sun and fire are important elements in the ancient Persian religion of Zoroaster and the festival is observed by this ancient monotheistic faith. In fact, Nowruz is one of the seven most important Zoroastrian festivals the festival is also observed by the much newer Bahai faith which also has its origins in Iran.
The founder of the Bahai religion, Bahalulah, placed much importance on the observance of this annual change of seasons and Bahai faith members the world over eagerly await this event.
Legend has it that this festival, which has it origins in ancient Persia around 600 BCE, is the basis for the Jewish festival of Purim which also comes around this time and is based on the lunar calendar. The festival is celebrated by a number of Muslim communities, including among the Alewite and Alevi sects.
Signifying rebirth, some of the main customs of the holiday includes spring cleaning and inter-family visitation.
As in other holidays that celebrate the New Year, it is believed that what people do on Nowruz will affect them for the remainder of the year. Certain flowers such as tulips and hycinths are placed in the home. Like before Jewish holidays, new clothing is also purchased. Another nice custom involves something sweet being hidden somewhere outside the home, and whoever finds its and brings it inside will have a better year. Families also visit the graves of loved ones on the last Thursday or Friday of the old year proceeding festival.
Faith plays an important role in spreading environmental awareness, and joint environmental concerns can unite faiths. Nowrouz and its many derivations means so much to so many people, it may yet be an excellent ecological “bridge” to unite peoples the world over.
This post was written by Maurice Picow and first appeared on the Middle East environment news site Green Prophet. To subscribe to the newsletter send an email to contact@greenprophet.com.
[Image via Hamed Saber]
Technology for the Birds
Filed under: Business, Environment, General, Israeliness, Technology, Travel
It almost sounds like a joke – something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, maybe. But “bird strikes” are apparently a serious problem for pilots and planes. That’s, apparently, what happened to a U.S. Airways jet that was forced to land in the Hudson River after taking off New York’s LaGuardia Airport minutes before. Nobody was hurt – amazingly – but in the battle between birds and pilots, humans haven’t always fared so well against avians. Luckily, Israel is on the case, working on ways to keep birds and planes away from each other!
According to experts, bird strikes – where a bird gets sucked into a jet’s engine, discombobulating the avionics (check out the photo of what an engine hit by birds looks like) – is not all that rare, and has plagued planes and even rockets. While not common in civilian aviation, bird strikes appear to be a near-plague for military flyers, according to this website which lists dozens of crashes, ejections, and even deaths of pilots due to bird strikes (at least two Israeli pilot deaths are listed). 
Because Israel is on the main north-south migratory route for birds, the IDF has been very concerned with bird strikes. According to the “Bird Strike Committee Proceedings” for 2002,
the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has focused attention in bird strike prevention on collisions between aircraft and migrating birds during low-level flight operations. Only in the last 2 years has the IAF begun to tackle the problem of reducing bird-aircraft collisions at or near airfields. A dramatic shift in thinking has led the IAF to initiate complete wildlife control programs at its airbases, featuring the employment of border collies and wildlife control officers to help eliminate the risk of wildlife collisions within the control zone (CTR) of each airfield.
As a crucial component of this program, the IAF has initiated major changes in habitat management at airfields, eliminating agricultural initiatives and undergoing large-scale modifications in airfield maintenance practices. Additionally, the IAF has altered flight and ground operations where possible to attenuate the risk imposed by birds and has coordinated efforts within various departments at each airbase to address bird strike control issues. Awareness and the resolve to eliminate wildlife hazards at its airfields are key features to the IAF’s new directive on bird strike prevention. Though still in its infancy, the IAF’s new wildlife control program has already shown dramatic improvements in the reduction of bird strike hazards at airbases.
My friends at the Fisher Institute in Herzliya have been on this problem as well, and have developed some new technology to ensure that both planes and birds can share the skies, that I hope to be able to report more about soon.
Strategic Solutions Floating Gas Pipes Could Avert Red-Dead Environmental Catastrophe
Those who have been following the Red-Dead canal proposal, and all its controversies, know that a lot is at stake. The Dead Sea is dying because natural estuaries, such as the Jordan River, Ein Gedi bottled spring water and rainwater are not making it to its shores. Politicians think that by carving a tunnel from the Red Sea all the way to the Dead Sea, Dead Sea water can be restocked easily and plentifully. Calling it the Peace Canal, they dont consider the impact of such water as it passes through the desert landscape.
An Israeli company Strategic Solutions has announced a new technology that can transport seawater from the Med Sea to Dead Sea, using floating pipes filled partially with natural gas. According to the company, this is a viable alternative to the canal/pipeline which is an ecological disaster but which has the backing of Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and World Bank. With this new technology it can be done cheaper, safer without impacting on the environment.
Besides the vast distance, over 200 km of the Red to Dead Sea vs. 70 km Med to Dead Sea, the main obstacle is environmental. This entire route is on an earthquake fault and it is inevitable that earthquakes will cause fissures and the salt water will destroy the freshwater aquifer as well as making the soil even more salty so that agriculture will be foreclosed. The sea spray will kill wildlife and plant life.
They write Green Prophet where this post is x-posted from: If, because of political or financial constraints, this is the only route to be considered, the only way for this to be viable is for the waterway to NOT be in canals/tunnels or pipelines on the ground, but rather the sea water must be enclosed and transported over the ground, in an aerial pipeline.
The Israeli scientists at Strategic Solutions designed a delivery system of natural gas and liquids, be it water, oil, or petroleum products. It is based on a very simple fact: natural gas is lighter than air.
Hope floats, we hope
Like with helium, fill a balloon with natural gas, it will float, the bigger the balloon, the stronger the pressure to rise. If the balloon is very tall, there will be stronger pressure to rise. If you put this very tall balloon on the side so that on one side the gas is coming in and the other end some is coming out, the middle will rise.
The fluids need to be pumped up, but travels by gradient like your drain pipes in your house. Using this aerial pipeline, natural gas can be delivered from isolated gas wells to industrial centers that need it. It can also deliver water to isolated regions that need it. It can deliver both simultaneously so that desalination can occur at point of need as there is also sufficient fuel, natural gas.
Viable energy production
Or the water falling can generate hydro-electricity and the desalination can be by one of the companys cleantech solar desalination methods. This presents a viable alternative to the Red to Dead Sea canal/pipeline touted by Shimon Peres and backed by the World Bank, they write.
Wed love to see some illustrations of how this would work/look. And can just imagine Israeli kids using the pipes for target practice. Lets wait and see.
Israelis like solutions that float. See Geotecturas solar energy balloons in Solar Energy Hope Floats.
(Above illustration comes from New York-based architect Phu Hoang Office who seeks to address and solve Dead Sea issues with No Mans Land, a series of artificial islands that would provide recreation, tourist attractions, renewable energy, and create fresh water. Via Inhabitat)
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