Our resourceful friends at the Bedouin NGO Bustan are refusing to allow the current tension in the South of Israel affect them. Despite having to cancel some tree planting dates due to the war and the related school closures, they…
With Hannuka – a holiday involving miraculous energy conservation – behind us, we can now look forward to the next holiday, Tu B’Shvat. And Tu B’Shvat is, by definition, green. Tu B’Shvat is the Jewish holiday marking the beginning of…
In this week’s segment, Parshat Vayigash, Jacob and his family go down to Egypt to Joseph, who is now second, only to Pharaoh, in Egypt. On his way down the Bible explains that Jacob went via Beersheba. The Midrash Bereshit…
If you were going to use one word to describe Israel, the word “construction” would be a definite possibility. Visitors who come to Israel within intervals of only a few years are often shocked at the rapid development in the…
You love reading books, and at the same time you care about the environment and don’t feel too good about all the trees cut down for printing these books. So what can you do to green up your reading? There…
One of our favourite Green NGO’s in Israel, Bustan, are holding a special tree planting event tommorrow (Thursday the 11th of September) at Segev Shalom. With the help of local Bedouin residents, Bustan are planting an orchard (bustan, Hebrew and…
I’ve been researching Bedouin issues in the Negev Desert for about 5 years, and one of the first individuals I met was Nuri El-Ukbi. Nuri and the El-Ukbi tribe have claims to the land named in arabic El-Araquib, which is…
This post is devoted to the sheer joy of growing something, in this case, an organic gooseberry bush (Hebrew: Hazrazar) (Latin: Ribes Grossularia). Growing something – anything really, from a geranium stem, roughly transplanted and shoved in soil, to vegetables…
(Cross-posted on the Jew and the Carrot.)Although Israel has grown into a modern post-industrial economy, the country still has strong agrarian roots, most famously, the agricultural socialist community of the kibbutz.So it’s no surprise that the relatively minor Jewish festival…
