Sukkot is the Jewish Environment Holiday in Israel
This week marks the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Jews will build small huts and live in them for a week.
Tonight marks the first night of Sukkot, the Jewish Festival of Booths. This post cross-posted at Green Prophet by Alex Gutman, explains the history and traditions of this inherently green holiday. If you are in Israel this week and notice people living in small wood huts, it’s not the tent protestors, but Jews of all ages living in their booth, to remind them of Exodus from ancient times.
Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, couldn’t come at a better time than now. After the heaviness of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Sukkot joins Passover and Shavuot as a Jewish holiday which celebrates agriculture and is known as Z’man Simchateinu, the season of our rejoicing. It is the most festive of all the holidays and lasts for seven days and has a direct link to the environment. Read more
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
Chickens (and Eggs) in Jaffa
From a long line of egg farmers, Karin’s dad finally builds her a chicken coop
Imagine getting fresh, free-range organic eggs every day? When my parents came to visit me in Jaffa a few months ago, Dad found himself bored. Back in Holland, my family the Van Der Meers were one of the biggest egg producers in the country before the Depression. So you could say, eggs are in our genes. With Dad nothing to do for a few weeks, I brought up the idea of having him build me a chicken coop. That got him kind of excited. He foraged for wood in my backyard and came up with a coop that resembles a bus stop. Read more
Dating Sites Online and On The Earth, For Israelis
The winter weather (though fairly mild in Israel and the Middle East) makes us want to cuddle with loved ones while drinking hot cocoa and wrapped in blankets. This is easy enough if you already have a loved one, but if you find yourself single in December or January you may be scanning those dating site directories (JDate is obviously a favorite in Israel – listed on the directory). Even though Israelis have Tu B’Av, the Hebrew holiday of love, they are starting more and more to observe the North American Valentine’s Day.
So how do you set yourself apart from the crowd and also bring some eco-consciousness to your dating? Luckily, in Israel, there are lots of original ways to eco-date. Read more
New Jewish environment website launches
Green websites are a dime a dozen these days. So when Jewcology launched this week, I wasn’t expecting much. But the site has two things going for it: an international cast of characters and a $50,000 grant from the ROI Community for Young Jewish Innovators.
Jewcology says its aim is “to advance Jewish environmental awareness and action.” The project brings together 19 environmental advocates, including several key players in Israel.
Baruch Rock
One is Baruch Rock, an Efrat resident and rabbinical student at Ohr Torah Stone. Another, Noga Zohar, is from Beersheva; she’s also the executive director of Shvuat HaAdamah (“Earth’s Promise”). Both have high hopes for the site.
”Jewcology is an amazing platform for organizations like ours to share some of the daily wonders and struggles in creating a sustainable future in the middle of the desert city of Beersheva,” Zohar said in a release. Rock describes the new Internet portal as “the go-to place for Jewish environmentalists and laypeople.”
The Jewcology website is still a little rough around the edges – content is sparse and the look and feel could already use a make over – but the mission is one I applaud and hope will grow over time. In the meantime, that ROI grant should give Jewcology a little breathing room.
Other Israeli contributors to the site include Teva Ivri, an organization founded by Einat Kramer from the Galilee village of Eshchar to promote environmental and social values rooted in Jewish tradition, and Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, head of the Petach Tikva Hesder Yeshiva, who will be posting Torah lessons with an environmental message.
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