Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
As far as air pollution and carbon emissions go, transportation is usually a pretty major offender. Ranging from airplane transportation (which is the worst) to your run-of-the-mill daily transport via automobiles, transportation has a big negative impact on the environment and is, unfortunately, one of the most difficult habits to change since it’s so integral to people’s everyday routines.
Here on Green Prophet we’ve featured a number of posts about various types of transportation and green transportation initiatives, ranging from Public Transportation Day 2008 to the potential “greening” of Ben Gurion Airport to the Tel Aviv Light Rail and many, many more. Thankfully, for as many transportation problems that we’ve covered, we’ve been able to feature almost as many creative solutions. And they just keep on coming.
EasyBike, an Israeli company currently selling 4 versions of a “bikeboard” (a combination bike/scooter/electric vehicle), is one such solution which is most suitable for urbanites. As a portable, electric powered vehicle, it makes urban transportation more environmentally friendly, cheaper overall, and (as this clip shows) suitable for even suit-wearing business people:
Green Drinks, the loosely organized and phenomenally successful international meeting group for green people of all walks of life, is starting up its first chapter in the Middle East.
That’s right folks: Be a part of history on Monday night (Dec. 15) as Green Drinks TLV holds its inaugural event at the Gilda pub on Ahad Ha’am Street, starting at 8PM.
Open to the public, just walk in and ask someone: “Hey, are you green?” (You might want to try it in Hebrew: “Shalom, ata/at yarok/yeroka”), and you may find yourself engaging in a potentially very interesting conversation with all kinds of people who share your passion for the environment –– from the tie-wearing politician or clean tech professional all the way to the professional activists who hang out at Salon Mazal.
Who knows, maybe you’ll strike up a new business deal or find the love of your life at one of the regular meet ups?
How many times have you printed out a final draft and found out that it wasn’t as final as you had thought? I always feel bad for the paper, the ink, well, lot’s of guilt. Now there’s a solution!
“How much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability? After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink. Free to download, free to use.”
Thanks EcoFont! And thanks for the tip Tanya and James!
BDO-I2I is looking to bring Indian-made electric cars onto the Israeli market. REVA Electric Car Company and consulting firm BDO-I2I are still finalizing the details, but there are reports imports could start before the end of January.
The news comes as Shai Agassi’s Project Better Place unveiled a protoype of its battery charging station earlier this week in Israel. The project aims to put electric cars on Israel’s streets en masse, but the project deployment date isn’t until 2010, a full year after REVA could be on the market.
REVA’s car is a fully-automatic battery powered hatchback that can be charged from regular 15 ampere electric outlets. A system of eight battery units form the 30 kg battery that gives the car a range of about 100 kilometers on just a six hour charge. The car is made of lightweight panels on a steel body. The manufacturer’s web site claims the cars are dent and scratch-proof, a claim Green Prophet finds a little suspicious.
Planted in Israel’s Negev Desert is an academic oasis of scientists and their students. They are studying a natural resource that may be more valuable than oil in the not-so-distant future. That resource is water.
Dr. Ofer Dahan from the Department of Environmental Hydrology and Microbiology at Ben Gurion University is one of the 26 water specialists who have uprooted their families, bringing them to the remote village of 200 homes in Midreshet Ben Gurion, in the Negev. Dahan, a hydrologist, is devoting his life to studying water in one of the driest places in the world. For him, it’s not a strange concept at all.
“You see my research is conducted at sites around Israel, in Ashdod… in Ramat Hasharon, sites in places that are not all deserts. The uniqueness of this institute is that people live and work in the same place. You can’t go shopping in the evenings; kids can’t go to the mall. Any paved roads we have here are the playgrounds. We enjoy the safety of the place,” says Dahan, who was a fisherman, before he became a water researcher.
The significant role of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in developing the study of movement ecology has achieved international recognition through extensive coverage in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a leading American scientific journal.
Movement ecology is a developing academic pursuit, combining expertise in a variety of fields, including biology, ecology, botany, environmental science, physics, mathematics, virology and others. And tt might help scientists predict how animals will migrate when the effects of climate change become severe.
It involves the study of how microorganisms, plants and animals travel from one place to another, sometimes for great distances and in highly surprising ways. This movement is a crucial component of almost any ecological and evolutionary process, including major problems associated with habitat fragmentation, climate change, biological invasions, and the spread of pests and diseases.
The current edition of the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the USA (PNAS), contains a 76-page special feature on movement ecology, edited by Prof. Ran Nathan, who heads the Movement Ecology Laboratory in the Department of Evolution, Systematics and Ecology at the Hebrew University’s Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences.
We’ve hit the one-year anniversary of Green Prophet, and what a year it’s been! And just in time for the event, Green Prophet’s Karin was interviewed by Jerusalemite about green spaces in Jerusalem. (Karin was also interviewed in the November issue of Time Out Israel–may the media blitz continue!)
Just to whet your appetite, here’s a sample quote,
…Everyone who visits Jerusalem goes to the Old City, the Kotel, the churches, mosques, the museums. But it’s in the Jerusalem forests where you can actually smell Jerusalem, and in its pine needles hear the faint whisper of King David.
Living green is about not being wasteful. If you save up a little bit at a time it adds up! David Bach in “The Automatic Millionaire” calls this the “latte factor.” In a nutshell, if you drink a latte every day it can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars over forty years.
But how far should a person go to avoid wasting?
In this week’s segment, Vayishlach, Jacob finds himself alone late one night on the wrong side of the tracks– well, river. The medieval commentator Rashi quotes the Talmud (Hulin 91a) and explains that while Jacob was crossing the Jordan to return to Israel he had left behind a few small jars, and went back to get them. Because he was left alone, he was attacked by an angel, with whom he fought until the morning.
This week, Israel’s biggest solar power station was inaugurated in Katsrin, a place otherwise known for its archaeological sites. Generating 85,000 KWH per year, the power station represents a milestone in Israel’s adoption of alternative energy, which until now had hardly been a soaring success. But it also represents something else: A partnership between Israel and China.
The power plant was built with joint cooperation between Israel’s Solar-It Doral company and China’s Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd., a listed company in the NYSE, specializing in photovoltaics.
The power station has been integrated into Israel’s national grid and will be accompanied by incentives for consumers.
State officials of both countries have expressed hope that cooperation between Israel and China in renewable energies will continue. Suntech, for its part, is planning to build another solar power plant in southern Israel.
Searching for empowerment: Bedouin women from the Association for the Improvement of Women’s Status meet with visitors from the US.
Fair Trade and preserving local craftsmanship and culture, is an important aspect of the green movement –– at least for those environmentalists who value humankind and the health of its societies. Following that notion, we think it’s appropriate to feature the women from Lakia: as their agrarian society shifts to a western one, Bedouin are getting lost in the Negev dust. Literally. But an NGO founded by Bedouin women for Bedouin women, is giving new purpose to an old way of life. Here is their story.
As the Israeli Bedouin culture, which was once partially nomadic, adapts to the fast-paced ways of modern living, its women are being left behind. Undervalued at home, and with few skills that can lead to gainful employment (most are not allowed to leave the home for outside work), not only do Israeli Bedouin women suffer from high rates of poverty and abuse, they can pass on a sense of hopelessness to their children — a cycle that never ends.
As the once nomadic people transition into the modern way of life, the women are becoming more marginalized. In the past, they had responsibilities in the house — collecting water and wood, taking care of the livestock and setting up the family tent. These are skills no longer valued in their society. But that’s changing.
Determined to find a way to empower themselves, a group of four Bedouin women from the Bedouin town of Lakia, founded the Association for the Improvement of Women’s Status in 1992. Since creating their NGO, the women have been able to build a number of meaningful projects in their society that generate income and a sense of self-worth.
Drawing water from a new kind of well
“The women in Lakia no longer go to the well to collect water, but I tell them that the well is inside us,” says Naama Elsana, a co-founder of the association, who teaches women and their daughters the ancient Bedouin craft of embroidery, a skill that not only creates beautiful clothing and decorative items for the home, but which also transmits stories of the Bedouin way of life, inside the intricately detailed patterns.
In a bold move, the women of the Lakia association have veered from tradition and have created their own style of embroidery. In previous embroidery patterns developed by the tribe’s grandmothers, the men were at the center. (See also One World Many Beads)
“Today, we have our own pattern,” Elsana tells ISRAEL21c, as she shows her creations to a group of American executives visiting her tent as part of a tour by the non-profit foundation, Project Interchange: “In this one as you see here, the four women who have founded this organization are at the center, while the four sheiks of our community, are stitched on the outer corners.”
The well in Lakia (pictured above) used to be the source of community for the Bedouin women of Lakia. Now it is locked.
This past November, Naama and Hessin Elsana, a cofounder of the association, addressed a group of high-powered construction executives from the United States, in Israel at their village. The executives are CEOs and VPs who manage multi-million and billion companies in both America’s East and West Coasts, and had come to Israel for one week, on Project Interchange — seminars which help influential leaders see and experience Israel beyond the conflict, beyond the violence they see on CNN.
In Lakia, beside the greeting tent where guests can eat a traditionally cooked Bedouin lunch, and then hear a lecture with Elsana or one of her partners, there is also a gift shop where visitors can purchase unique jewellery, clothes, wall hangings, purses and handicrafts fashioned by the local Bedouin women.
A library on wheels
The association gives fulltime work to 70 Bedouin women. Teaching the traditional art of embroidery, and then selling the products is the association’s central activity, but there are other community activities that have branched out to further strengthen their society from within.
One is an adult literacy program the women have created, a special kindergarten for their children, and a mobile library, which passes through different neighbourhoods to spread literacy, and human rights education among the town’s children.
Today, Elsana reports that Bedouin women are undergoing a transformation — while only a handful of women went to university 10 years ago, this year there are about 350.
The Association for the Improvement of Women’s Status has an “open-tent” policy, which allows visitors from Israel and the outside world to experience the joys and hardships of being a Bedouin woman. They invite outsiders to come and meet them.
I am not against public transportation. In fact, I am very much in favor. As a person who lives in Tel Aviv and does not own a car, I am completely dependent on my bike and the bus and train systems. What’s more, it often seems like the half a million vehicles that enter the city every day are all stuck in traffic right underneath my apartment, honking away at each other. Anything that can reduce traffic in the city has my support.
But let’s face it – Tel Aviv’s light rail is not just around the corner, and in fact it has never looked further away.
Right: A computer rendering of the underground section of Tel Aviv’s future mass transit system. (image via skyscraperlife.com)
This should not come as a huge shock. After MTS repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for securing financial backing for the project, the world financial crisis hit, taking out some of the key players: Bank of Scotland, a major lender, was nationalized, AIG, the insurer, collapsed, and the rest are now demanding fundamental changes in the tender, in light of lessons learned from Jerusalem’s light rail project. MTS will find it very difficult to make the next deadline in late January.
Tel Aviv’s light rail/subway, which has been in the planning stages since Golda Meir was in power, does not seem likely to be built in this generation. It’s time to start thinking outside the box.
How’s that journal coming along? Not always easy to keep to, eh?
Try taking a page out of one of America’s founding father’s: Benjamin Franklin.
In his autobiography B. Franklin decided upon thirteen virtues that he would like to work on. After deciding upon his goals he made a chart listing them and for each virtue a box for every day of the week. For the first week he only worked on the first virtue, leaving the other ones behind, making notes for himself on every day that he found himself working on the virtue of the week.
After thirteen weeks he was able to work through all of the virtues, developing each of them more than what he would have had he tried working on all of them at once.
When taking on a big project of self development, as greening one’s life, this is good advice to keep in mind. Make a list of all aspects of your life that you would like to green, then tackle them one at a time.
Though Green Prophet is skeptical about Shai Agassi‘s Project Better Place, we are watching the developments of the project with interest. This week, the prototype of the electric car recharging station was unveiled in Israel. The prototype was designed in San Francisco and developed in Israel with the cooperation of Nekuda DM.
The station features two sockets for the simultaneous charging of two electric cars. The plan is for 400 of these stations to be installed in various locations in Israel as part of a six month pilot program, followed by similar installations in Hawaii, Denmark, Australia and California. The projected date of deployment is 2010, so don’t get rid of your car just yet. (Unless of course you can.)
Tal Agassi, director of infrastructure products and international deployment development for Better Place, said, “In designing and deploying the charge spot, our top priority is the driver’s experience. We set out to design a user friendly and simple charging experience for the user that will encourage drivers to switch from the pump to the plug.”
The Torah doesn’t talk much about breastfeeding, as it was taken for granted in ancient times. Moses’ mother doesn’t put bottles into the ark of bulrushes she sends down the Nile to save him from Pharaoh’s evil decree (Exodus 2).
According to the midrashic commentary Moses refused to nurse from an Egyptian nursemaid, so the biblical text has Pharaoh’s daughter sending for a Jewish one. The nursemaid turns out to be none other than Yocheved, Moses’ own mother.
If the Torah and Midrash saw breastfeeding as merely a feeding method, Moses would have nursed from an Egyptian woman and the story would have ended. The rabbis recognized that without the early influence of Yocheved, Moses could not grow up to become the modest, compassionate, and dedicated leader who rescued the Jews from slavery and turned them into a nation that rejected Egyptian immorality.
An emotional bond
Mothers (and all who care for the baby), do not only tend to a baby’s physical needs. By comforting her baby in distress, a mother models empathy. A baby learns language, tone, and communication while hearing her mother’s voice. Resting in his mother’s arms, a baby gauges her emotional state as she responds to what is going on around her. As babies grow, the observe their mothers at their daily tasks and begin to imitate them. Breastfed babies must stay near their mothers, and this closeness ensures that they receive regular, if not constant, contact and interaction that all humans crave.
Green Action‘s SAHA project brings together uniquely environmental and political issues promoting community trade between Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews.
The project initially began with a group of Palestinian farmers whose livelihood was threatened due to the occupation and separation wall. These farmers came together and set up the Zaytun Cooperative and work with Green Action to produce fair trade, organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Green Action now works with five different communities across Israel and Palestine: The Zaytun Farmers Cooperative; The Jerusalem Community Kitchen; the For You Project; The Women’s Association of Wadi Fukin and The Bridge Over the Wadi School. Their product range now includes: Syrian Pressed Olives, Sage, Organic jam and Liqueur.
The newest community is the Bridge Over the Wadi School.
As far as air pollution and carbon emissions go, transportation is usually a pretty major offender. Ranging from airplane transportation (which is the worst) to your run-of-the-mill daily transport via automobiles, transportation has a big negative impact on the environment and is, unfortunately, one of the most difficult habits to change since it’s so integral to people’s everyday routines.
The Torah doesn’t talk much about breastfeeding, as it was taken for granted in ancient times. Moses’ mother doesn’t put bottles into the ark of bulrushes she sends down the Nile to save him from Pharaoh’s evil decree (Exodus 2).
