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Israel’s Heschel Center

Karen Chernick
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Israel’s Heschel Center
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The Heschel Center educates Israelis about nature, science and society.

There are lots of great environmentally friendly outdoor activities to do during the Hebrew holiday of Shavuot, but if you don’t feel like going outdoors (or if you’re in a cheese coma) then the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership is hosting an online seminar about Shavuot and the environment.

We applaud the Heschel Center for this creative type of seminar which is super green in two ways: it’s about the environment, and it eliminates all of the transportation needs associated with conventional seminars. This is a seminar on a carbon emission diet.

The Seminar is called Lu’ach Ve’Ru’ach – The Hebrew Calendar, Shavuot, Justice and the Earth and is being hosted by the deputy director of the Heschel Center, Dr. Jeremy Benstein. There are three ways to participate:

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Water Arc's Water Recycling Gets a Boost at Cleantech 2008

Michael Green
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Water Arc's Water Recycling Gets a Boost at Cleantech 2008

Last week, Green Prophet reported from the Cleantech 2008 expo, the annual exhibition of environmentally-friendly technologies and innovations in Israel. The talk of the town (or Airport City, at least) was the sun, following the announcement that the Israel Electric Company is going to pay families producing clean energy via solar panels. The sun’s nemesis, water, also featured heavily and Green Prophet spoke to a number of businesses working on solutions to the crisis of one of the regions most scarce resources.

“Forty per cent of household water can actually be reused,” says Ilan Katz, managing director of Water Arc, a new initiative to reduce the demand for water in urban areas. So-called “grey-water” includes waste water from showers, washing machines and bathroom sinks which can be reused for flushing toilets, which accounts for around 35% of the total water used by an average Israeli household, as well as watering plants and gardens.

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Tel Aviv March Persuades Lawmakers to Pass Clean Air Act

Jesse Fox
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Last month, hundreds of Tel Aviv residents spent their Friday afternoon marching up Rothschild Boulevard in support of the Clean Air Act, stuck in the Knesset for the past three years. Knesset lawmakers must have been paying attention – last week the act passed its first reading.

Video by Daniel Cherrin and Jesse Fox.

Put Down the Lid

Jack Reichert
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Put Down the Lid

Living green means living healthy as well. Did you know that when you flush the toilet with the lid up droplets of water can spray up to twenty feet in the air. If you put the lid down it keeps sprayage down to a minimum and you can avoid picking up unwanted germs.
This has another added benefit. No more fighting between spouses about keeping the seat up or down. Now it’s just as inconvenient for both parties…

Eco Rabbi on Parshat Naso: Nazir – Making Changes in Our Lives

Jack Reichert
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Eco Rabbi on Parshat Naso: Nazir – Making Changes in Our Lives

When attempting to incorporate new elements and habits into our life what is the best way to do this? If I want to be greener, how do I go about doing it? If I want to be friendlier, how do I add this to my life?

In this week’s Weekly Bible segment the laws of the Nazir are discussed. The Nazir is a person who decides to accept upon himself a higher spiritual level. He may feel that he has been slipping, or just wants more spirituality in his life. He then will commit himself to be a Nazir for a specific time period during which he will refrain from all grape products, cutting any body hair and avoid anything that is spiritually impure. At the end of this period the Nazir brings an offering, including a sin offering in the temple and shaves all of the hair from his body.

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Brightsource Launches Solar Energy Plant in the Negev

Ilana Teitelbaum
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Brightsource Launches Solar Energy Plant in the Negev

solar energy plant brightsource launches in israel

Israel’s natural resources are few and far between. But one resource that Israel has in abundance is sunlight, and perhaps for that reason, Israel has been a world leader in solar energy.

Until now, most of Israel’s cutting edge solar technology companies have focused their energies abroad, in California’s Mojave Desert and elsewhere. A huge solar plant has never appeared on Israel’s horizon…Until now. The new plant is generating interest among alternative energy countries worldwide, and will be dedicated next week, on June 12th.

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Israel's Tourism Ministry Going Green for 2009

Ilana Teitelbaum
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Israel's Tourism Ministry Going Green for 2009


Finding win/win solutions to our environmental crises is a cornerstone of our philosophy here at Green Prophet. We know that there are days when a plastic bag just seems like a plastic bag, dammit; and you really need that gallon of milk but forgot to bring along the eco-friendly canvas tote you love to shop with, and you can’t seriously lug a gallon of milk up one of Jerusalem’s many hills without a bag of some sort. Seriously, we know.

So we love when going green is not only the right thing to do, but actually pays. That’s why we’re especially pleased that the Ministry of Tourism has announced, in advance of World Environment Day (June 5th) to implement strategies to “green” tourism.

The “win” for us: a clean environment as we relax on the beach, knowing that we are part of the solution and not the problem. The “win” for the Ministry: International studies indicate that 70% of tourists from the U.S., Australia and Britain will plonk down as much as $150 extra per week for a hotel that they know is environmentally friendly. Multiply that by millions of tourists, and the moolah really starts to add up.

So how does it work?

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Israeli Households to Get Paid for Producing Solar Electricity

Michael Green
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Israeli Households to Get Paid for Producing Solar Electricity

Yesterday was much like any other summer day in Israel: sunny, hot and dry.

But for Alon Tamari, CEO of SolarPower Israel, it is not one that will be forgotten in a hurry: “It’s a historical day, there’s no other way to put it.” Along with the summer heat came the long-awaited announcement that the government will be offering financial incentives to Israeli households who produce their own clean electricity via solar panels.

“The Government started speaking about it three or four years ago and we expected the regulation in one or two years,” Tamari told Green Prophet at the Cleantech 2008 exhibition. “I’ve got 700 grey hairs since then,” said Tamari, pointing to his head. Earlier in the day at Cleantech, the Public Utilities Authority confirmed that they will be offering 20-year contracts with households to buy their solar electricity from them for NIS 2.01 per Kilowatt, which means saying “goodbye” to electricity bills and “hello” to a cheque each month from the Israel Electricity Company.

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City Tree: A Green Oasis in the Middle of Tel Aviv

Karen Chernick
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City Tree: A Green Oasis in the Middle of Tel Aviv

You wouldn’t generally think of Tel Aviv as a green oasis. A nightlife oasis, yes. A beachy oasis, city tree tel avivyes. A trendy oasis, yeah, you could call it that too. But when you’re walking on busy Allenby Street or Dizengoff – the natural environment is probably the furthest thing from your urban experience.

But tucked away in Bialik Square, in the center of Tel Aviv, a green oasis exists.

city tree tel avivCity Tree is a green housing project that, like the Eco-Housing Pilot Project of Jerusalem, has adopted an older building and made it suitable for sustainable living habits. City Tree may have it a little tougher than the Eco-Housing project, though, since their building is over 80 years old and is constructed in the historical Tel Aviv architecture style of the 1920s.

City Tree has many projects, including:

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Review of 'God in the Wilderness'

James Murray-White
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Review of 'God in the Wilderness'

Here is the first in the summer season of Green Prophet ‘eco-reads festival’: environment-focussed books , some sharp and caustic, some funny or fact-filled, all written to get us thinking and working for the earth. Over the next month or so, a new review will go live each week, written by a diverse group of International writer/reviewers (all with an Israel connection) all with a passionate connection to the land in some way.

Review of ‘God in the Wilderness’ by Rabbi Jamie Korngold

Review by Ahron Shapiro

Rabbi Jamie Korngold is the Adventure Rabbi. Let me get that out of the way straight away. She is a Triathlon athlete and expert skier. She is charismatic, and she guides an ever-growing community of like-minded Jews. Why it is necessary to attach the Adventure Rabbi moniker to Rabbi Korngold is a question that gets to the heart of the story behind ‘God in the Wilderness: Rediscovering the Spirituality of the Great Outdoors with the Adventure Rabbi.’ The book serves as a spiritual trail map for those who might identify with this form of Jewish practice.

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Arik Levy’s sustainable lighting

ziva haller
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Arik Levy’s sustainable lighting

arik levy sustainable lighting

Forget the eco-friendly lightbulbs. Arik Levy’s got a new solution: Teaming up with couture lighting company Saazs and other noted designers, the invention is light-emitting glass plates.

Apparently something called “planilum technology”, which sounds like it’s straight from a work of science fiction or comic book, enables the glass itself to emit light. And cutting-edge designers like Arik Levy, Christian Biecher and Adrien Gardere have incorporated the glass into shelving units, tables and standing fixtures for your home or office.

arik levy sustainable lighting

Levy’s work, featured above, combined wood with the glass light reflecting his interest in creating points of contrast and innovation in the relationship between nature and technology.

The beautifully soft and ethereal installations actually better serve the environment by: using a non-toxic gas (as opposed to mercury-infused neon bulbs); lasting approximately for 20 years of use (compared to your average few months of your average bulb); and keeping 90% of the design recyclable, since it’s essentially based on glass.

Green Shavuot Activities (Because You're Gonna Need a Break From All That Cheese)

Karen Chernick
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Green Shavuot Activities (Because You're Gonna Need a Break From All That Cheese)

moldy cheese shavuotI hate to admit it (especially since I’m a vegetarian and like to think of Shavuot as my holiday), but sooner or later the cheese thing is gonna get old. And not in a French, moldy blue cheese kind of way. More of in a self-induced lactose intolerance kind of way.

Which is why it might be good to get some fresh air at some point and get in touch with Mother Nature, which is what Shavuot is all about.

There are many outdoor Shavuot activities being publicized for this coming weekend, but not all of them are environmentally friendly. So if that’s your thing (and we hope it is), try out these options:

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JTA Covers Cleantech and Israel-Diaspora Relations

Jonathan Shapira
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JTA Covers Cleantech and Israel-Diaspora Relations

thermal energy solar power water heaters (dud shemesh) are lit up by the morning sun in Tel Aviv photo

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) just published a lengthy article about the cleantech scene in Israel. JTA articles are republished in Jewish newspapers around the world, and it is nice to see Israel’s cleantech sector getting publicity in the Diaspora. For another example, see Karin Kloosterman’s interview in the New Vilna Review.

I am quoted in the article — as a cleantech blogger and an organizer of the Cleantech Israel meetup group — alongside industry players including Dov Raviv (CEO of MST), Yael Cohen-Paran (Director of the Israel Energy Forum), Yossi Abramowitz (Chairman of the Arava Power Company), Prof. David Faiman of Ben-Gurion University, and Dr. Isaac Berzin (Founder of GreenFuel Technologies).

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The Forbidden Fruit of Eden Hills

Michael Green
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The Forbidden Fruit of Eden Hills

The Elah Valley. Beautiful rolling hills, a patchwork of gold, green and brown with fields, orchards and pasture steeped in biblical tales: Who wouldn’t want to live here?

Thanks to developer Jake Leibowitz, hundreds of new immigrants, mostly from North America, will soon be able to move into the luxury Eden Hills development after 18 years of delays and setbacks. The developers describe the community as a “celebration for ecology and Zionism”, succeeding in settling Jewish olim as well as incorporating green innovations including solar power, geothermal technology and water purification.

But the congenial mezuzah-fixing ceremony attended by Minister of Housing Zeev Boim recently glossed-over the bitter quarrel between the developers and environmentalists who sought to stop the new 1,000 dunam town dead in its tracks. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel’s (SPNI) Michelle Levine describes the development as an “environmental catastrophe” and told Green Prophet that it “is in essence a bigger disaster to the environment than their gray water and solar power schemes could ever hope to rectify”.

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Eco Contact Gets a Green Spin at Bodyways and Vertigo Dance Festival

Karin Kloosterman
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2
Eco Contact Gets a Green Spin at Bodyways and Vertigo Dance Festival

We’d featured Vertigo’s eco-village taking root in a chicken coop on Green Prophet before, and our friend Ehud from the Jerusalem Post, wrote a brilliant piece on the village.

Today Rivi Nissim, our multi-talented dance friend, photographer and architect from Bodyways, Israel’s largest dance portal, sent us a notice of a new eco-themed festival she’s planning with Vertigo for next weekend –– “Where body and nature collide.”

Green sensory overload. We love it.

It’s the first dance festival Rivi has planned with Vertigo and the first with a decidedly green theme. The four day celebration, a collaboration between Bodyways and Vertigo Dance Company, called Hagiga, will include workshops, performances, jams and dancing. Following the successes of previous years, the festival organizers invite curious people to meet, move and learn, face to face in expressive ways with the body. It’s all happening during the Hebrew holiday of Shavuot.

In a special performance, Vertigo will perform Birth of the Phoenix, their ecologically-minded dance performance about the dialogue between humans and the environment.

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