The Nabataeans understood that prosperity in the desert depended on respecting environmental limits. Two thousand years later, Petra's greatest attraction may still be the wisdom of the people who learned to live within them.
From Bill McKibben to climate organizers across the Middle East, Green Prophet has followed 350.org for 16 years. At COP31 in Türkiye, the movement is demanding an end to fossil fuel expansion and a fair transition to renewable energy.
One of the most persistent questions in seismology concerns whether scientists will eventually be able to predict major earthquakes before they happen.
I believe Jordan needs a cultural transformation alongside its infrastructure investments. We must begin by redefining social prestige. Why should ownership of an expensive car be considered a greater achievement than making an environmentally responsible transportation choice? Why should travelling by bus carry a social stigma?
Unstageable wounds are another group of pressure injuries characterized by slough or eschar covering, which makes it hard to determine the real depth of the wound.
The Nabataeans understood that prosperity in the desert depended on respecting environmental limits. Two thousand years later, Petra's greatest attraction may still be the wisdom of the people who learned to live within them.
From Bill McKibben to climate organizers across the Middle East, Green Prophet has followed 350.org for 16 years. At COP31 in Türkiye, the movement is demanding an end to fossil fuel expansion and a fair transition to renewable energy.
One of the most persistent questions in seismology concerns whether scientists will eventually be able to predict major earthquakes before they happen.
I believe Jordan needs a cultural transformation alongside its infrastructure investments. We must begin by redefining social prestige. Why should ownership of an expensive car be considered a greater achievement than making an environmentally responsible transportation choice? Why should travelling by bus carry a social stigma?
Unstageable wounds are another group of pressure injuries characterized by slough or eschar covering, which makes it hard to determine the real depth of the wound.
The Nabataeans understood that prosperity in the desert depended on respecting environmental limits. Two thousand years later, Petra's greatest attraction may still be the wisdom of the people who learned to live within them.
From Bill McKibben to climate organizers across the Middle East, Green Prophet has followed 350.org for 16 years. At COP31 in Türkiye, the movement is demanding an end to fossil fuel expansion and a fair transition to renewable energy.
One of the most persistent questions in seismology concerns whether scientists will eventually be able to predict major earthquakes before they happen.
I believe Jordan needs a cultural transformation alongside its infrastructure investments. We must begin by redefining social prestige. Why should ownership of an expensive car be considered a greater achievement than making an environmentally responsible transportation choice? Why should travelling by bus carry a social stigma?
Unstageable wounds are another group of pressure injuries characterized by slough or eschar covering, which makes it hard to determine the real depth of the wound.
The Nabataeans understood that prosperity in the desert depended on respecting environmental limits. Two thousand years later, Petra's greatest attraction may still be the wisdom of the people who learned to live within them.
From Bill McKibben to climate organizers across the Middle East, Green Prophet has followed 350.org for 16 years. At COP31 in Türkiye, the movement is demanding an end to fossil fuel expansion and a fair transition to renewable energy.
One of the most persistent questions in seismology concerns whether scientists will eventually be able to predict major earthquakes before they happen.
I believe Jordan needs a cultural transformation alongside its infrastructure investments. We must begin by redefining social prestige. Why should ownership of an expensive car be considered a greater achievement than making an environmentally responsible transportation choice? Why should travelling by bus carry a social stigma?
Unstageable wounds are another group of pressure injuries characterized by slough or eschar covering, which makes it hard to determine the real depth of the wound.
The Nabataeans understood that prosperity in the desert depended on respecting environmental limits. Two thousand years later, Petra's greatest attraction may still be the wisdom of the people who learned to live within them.
From Bill McKibben to climate organizers across the Middle East, Green Prophet has followed 350.org for 16 years. At COP31 in Türkiye, the movement is demanding an end to fossil fuel expansion and a fair transition to renewable energy.
One of the most persistent questions in seismology concerns whether scientists will eventually be able to predict major earthquakes before they happen.
I believe Jordan needs a cultural transformation alongside its infrastructure investments. We must begin by redefining social prestige. Why should ownership of an expensive car be considered a greater achievement than making an environmentally responsible transportation choice? Why should travelling by bus carry a social stigma?
Unstageable wounds are another group of pressure injuries characterized by slough or eschar covering, which makes it hard to determine the real depth of the wound.
The Nabataeans understood that prosperity in the desert depended on respecting environmental limits. Two thousand years later, Petra's greatest attraction may still be the wisdom of the people who learned to live within them.
From Bill McKibben to climate organizers across the Middle East, Green Prophet has followed 350.org for 16 years. At COP31 in Türkiye, the movement is demanding an end to fossil fuel expansion and a fair transition to renewable energy.
One of the most persistent questions in seismology concerns whether scientists will eventually be able to predict major earthquakes before they happen.
I believe Jordan needs a cultural transformation alongside its infrastructure investments. We must begin by redefining social prestige. Why should ownership of an expensive car be considered a greater achievement than making an environmentally responsible transportation choice? Why should travelling by bus carry a social stigma?
Unstageable wounds are another group of pressure injuries characterized by slough or eschar covering, which makes it hard to determine the real depth of the wound.
The Nabataeans understood that prosperity in the desert depended on respecting environmental limits. Two thousand years later, Petra's greatest attraction may still be the wisdom of the people who learned to live within them.
From Bill McKibben to climate organizers across the Middle East, Green Prophet has followed 350.org for 16 years. At COP31 in Türkiye, the movement is demanding an end to fossil fuel expansion and a fair transition to renewable energy.
One of the most persistent questions in seismology concerns whether scientists will eventually be able to predict major earthquakes before they happen.
I believe Jordan needs a cultural transformation alongside its infrastructure investments. We must begin by redefining social prestige. Why should ownership of an expensive car be considered a greater achievement than making an environmentally responsible transportation choice? Why should travelling by bus carry a social stigma?
Unstageable wounds are another group of pressure injuries characterized by slough or eschar covering, which makes it hard to determine the real depth of the wound.
The Nabataeans understood that prosperity in the desert depended on respecting environmental limits. Two thousand years later, Petra's greatest attraction may still be the wisdom of the people who learned to live within them.
From Bill McKibben to climate organizers across the Middle East, Green Prophet has followed 350.org for 16 years. At COP31 in Türkiye, the movement is demanding an end to fossil fuel expansion and a fair transition to renewable energy.
One of the most persistent questions in seismology concerns whether scientists will eventually be able to predict major earthquakes before they happen.
I believe Jordan needs a cultural transformation alongside its infrastructure investments. We must begin by redefining social prestige. Why should ownership of an expensive car be considered a greater achievement than making an environmentally responsible transportation choice? Why should travelling by bus carry a social stigma?
Unstageable wounds are another group of pressure injuries characterized by slough or eschar covering, which makes it hard to determine the real depth of the wound.
There is a lot of talk these days about carbon footprints. And there is much debate over how people can reduce theirs.
A carbon footprint is essentially the amount of CO2 a person leaves behind as a result of personal transportation (cars and plane), heating their homes and even putting food on their tables.
That’s why a lot of green advocates talk about eating locally in order to reduce the pollution caused by transporting your food; and some advocate carbon offsetting.
And while the whole notion of carbon offsetting is highly controversial, most would agree that global warming is man-made and caused by carbon dioxide emissions.
Peeking inside people’s fridges is a new series being put on by the BBC, as part of their research into sustainable eating around the world. It is not a new idea, and what people are eating has been well-documented by photojournalists (The Walrus magazine) and also on the internet. You can even take a snapshot of your own fridge and send it in. We’d need to do some serious cleaning of ours before we sent anyone anywhere a pic of what’s going on in there.
And while we get a secret thrill of checking out what others may be stocking up on, there is also something creepy about it – like sharing your underwear drawer.
All that aside, a Jerusalem resident Khalil Abu Arqub was interviewed by BBC to show his fridge. What does Khalil eat and where does he buy it? The list includes tomatoes, peppers, lemon, cucumber, bananas, apples, hummous, labneh, tuna, spam, sugary water, potatoes, pepper sauce (for chicken) and ketchup. In the freezer are 2kg of chicken and 2kg of chicken liver.
He buys most of his goods from the West Bank; the bananas come from Jericho; the hummus, labaneh, potato and pepper sauce and sugary water are homemade.
Says Khalil, “I’m very conscious about the quality of food that I buy for my wife and our five children. I know that some Palestinian farmers use water tainted by sewage to irrigate their crops, and I don’t want my family to eat this produce.”
Produce supplied to Israelis also comes from the West Bank and we’ve always been suspicious on how pesticides are regulated there. A good reason to switch to organic, and to start a small veggie garden on your porch?
Or are you observing shmita the Jewish Sabbatical year for the land and buying only from abroad? For some starting points, see Ornitte’s lovely post on cheap organic options.
And hey BBC, we’d like to see what’s in the fridge of someone from Tel Aviv, or the other side of Jerusalem. Show us for once, that you’re not so predictably anti-Israel.
Israeli designer Elanit Neutra, based in Tel Aviv, is getting into the green spirit. She’s developed a designer bag and wallet series out of old recycled tire inner tubes.
Elanit Neutra upcycling tires
Elanit collects the inner tubes from nearby garages, cleans them, cuts them up and fashions them into environmentally-friendly products, which you can use.
Find them in Tel Aviv boutiques, the Eretz Israel Museum and the LA Country Museum of Art store.
Some people think of old tires as rubbish. Not Neutra. She is giving them a new lease of life by transforming them into wallets, purses, notebooks and bags. Now her work is turning heads across the US. See also Abu Yoyo upcycling billboard plastic.
Some women send their husbands out of the house to get rid of the trash. But she sends her husband to fetch it in: in this case used rubber inner tubes from old tires at a local garage.
After a scrub and clean, Neutra cuts the rubber to a desired shape, patches the pieces together and creates one-of-a-kind designs – wallets, purses, notebooks, and laptop bags – all making treads in the fashion world, both in Israel and in the US.
US distributor Lihi Yami had Neutra’s goods on display at a New York gift show, Neutra’s third US-based show Her goods can now be bought at a number of locations including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and from Agas and Tamar, a design shop on Mott Street in New York City.
Wallets are her most popular item, she guesses, but people also like the messenger bags and purses – the trendy accessories that look like leather, but which have distinctive patterns and qualities of their own.
Most importantly, perhaps, is the environmental aspect of Neutra’s work. She gives years of extra mileage to rubber inner tubes that might otherwise end up in landfill, taking hundreds of years to break down.
Neutra, who works from home in Tel Aviv, and now a studio in Jaffa’s Noga area is tuned in to environmental issues and the problem with tires, and imagines that’s why eco-hip Americans are starting to catch on to her handmade creations. “They really like what I do, maybe because the eco-trend is really exciting for them,” she says.
“For me it’s the attitude of the material,” she confesses. And about the lingering rubber smell that might seep into one’s personal effects, she agrees that it’s there, but notes: “I like it and besides, it fades away after a while.”
Neutra’s first taste for rubber came one day about five years ago when she was walking down the street in Tel Aviv. She noticed an old tire and realized that it had an interesting texture. Since then her husband has been collecting a steady supply of inner tube “raw material” from a local garage.
According to a 2003 study by the US Environmental Protection Agency, about 290 million scrap tires are generated each year in the US. The stockpiling of tires in landfill poses many environmental and health risks: tire fires, if they happen, pollute the air in an extreme way, and discarded tires create ideal habitats for disease carrying insects such as mosquitos.
To tackle the problem of used tires, new markets in the US are opening to find ways of recycling the rubber, such as in basketball courts and in shoes. Perhaps more designers will take Neutra’s lead and create fashionable items from rubber.
But do-it-yourselfers, be warned. It’s not so easy lugging around big inner tubes, washing them and cutting them to size, reports Neutra. “Every tire has its own thickness and personality,” she concludes.
There has been a buzz in the news over the past few days. This buzzing is over how three Israelis have made it into an exclusive list of Scientific American’s ‘50 most significant scientific breakthroughs in 2007.’
Making that list is not our only ‘top’ accomplishment for this year. An Israeli scientist has also made it to a top spot on another top achievements list… to spot number four! Wired Newshas come out with a list of “The Year’s 10 Craziest Ways to Hack the Earth.”
This list rates the top ten extreme, and some might even say crazy, schemes developed to counteract global warming.
Why is it more expensive to buy ‘clean’ food than food containing additives and pesticide residues?Many people who would like to eat naturally, are forced to eat commercially-produced food containing pesticide residues and preservatives because natural food is beyond their budget.
This seems counterintuitive.
Every person regardless of income level should have the basic right to eat healthy food.While about 1.5% of total agricultural production in Israel is organic, over 80% is exported for sale abroad. This low demand for organic in Israel contributes to higher prices. Hopefully increased awareness and demand will bring prices down in the future.
In the meantime, some farmers are willing to sell food directly to consumers, cutting out the middle men. This slightly reduces the cost of eating organic, and for those who have never tasted the difference between freshly-picked veggies and cold-storage veggies, you won’t believe the difference!
Organic farmers who sell directly to consumers:
Name
Location
Telephone
Description
Biocenter
Givat Chen, near Raanana
09-744-6080
Every Friday between 13:00 and 15:00 this health food store has a large sale on about 10-15 different types of fruits and vegetables. Prices can be as much as 50% off! (Mostly cold-storage produce)
Gan HaSadeh – Roi
Modiin, deliveries to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
054-6939320
Freshly-picked vegetables, also offers fruit and some staples at bulk prices from other suppliers.
Derech Chaim
near Michmoret, no deliveries
054-4522658
Sell vegetables they grow, plus from other suppliers.
Teva HaBasor
Ein HaBasor, regional deliveries
08-9982214
Freshly-picked vegetables and herbs, plus fruits and staples from other suppliers.
Hubeiza
near Latrun, deliveries between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
Thousands of years before green became hot, the Jewish people were observing the Shmitta, or shmita, a sabbatical year.
The Shmitta is documented in the bible as a year where farmers are forbidden to work the land in order to give the land a rest.
The Lord said to Moses on Mount Sinai. (2) Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord. (3) For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. (4) But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.’(Lev. 25: 1-4).
Talk about giving it a rest! In yesterday’s post we spoke about how radically we could cut down our emissions if the world would take upon itself the Jewish Sabbath. Now we would like you to consider the ramifications of taking a whole Sabbatical year.
For one out of seven years, religious Zionist farmers give the land a rest. No farming, no pruning, nada! Rabbis later on amended this law so that if there will be damage to your land as a result, you can take minimum care of your land so that you will not lose out in the long term.
It would take some pretty drastic planning ahead, stockpiling grains, pre-freezing fruits and veggies so that during the year off we could eat. But it could be feasible. The whole world could give it a try… The question is would it be good for the land?
Early crop rotation methods were mentioned in Roman literature, and referred to by several civilizations in Asia and Africa. Crop rotation is used in order to fortify the farmed land against depletion of its minerals. This isn’t quite the same, would a Sabbath replenish the land?
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs discusses this very same question on their website. Samuel Chayen explains that there is a current world-wide debate about sustainability; how to modify our current practices so that we can ensure a future for many years to come.
Chayen shares an anecdote: “Ten years ago, while attending a conference on Microbial Ecology, I listened to a “roundtable” debate dealing with Sustainable Agriculture. One of the speakers mentioned that in some places grazing land is abandoned every few years to let the grass grow and to enhance nitrogen assimilation on the roots of legumes by Rhizobacteria, thus increasing productivity in the following years.
“Given permission to speak, I pointed out that the Jewish law of Shmitta, the Sabbatical Year, provides exactly such orders for the Jewish farmer.”
The truth hurts: that adorable sweater you found on sale at Banana Republic for $25 is no harmless indulgence. The production, transportation and washing of clothing is responsible for approximately 25 percent of an individual’s C02 emissions- -about one ton per person. In a move to green their products, Israeli clothing company Delta Galil has introduced a new feature into its RealCool Cotton brand: now RealCool garments will be treated with natural antibacterial and odor-repelling agents. These treatments counteract the growth of bacteria and odors in the fabric, so that clothing doesn’t have to be washed as often or with hot water.
Energy, we all need it for practically everything we do. With global warming accelerating and fossil fuels expected to run out in decades, the hunt is on for alternative energy sources.
Professor Dan Zaslavsky from the Technion in Haifa has come up with a solution (expanding on the work of Dr. Phillip Carlson) and it’s called the Energy Tower – which will not only reduce the costs of energy from our pockets but from our planet as well.
“It’s a radically simple idea. We could easily produce between 15 to 20 times the total electricity the world uses today,” he says.
Standing 1,000 yards tall and 400 across, Zaslavsky’s tower takes advantage of convection, the natural principle that warm air rises and cool air sinks. Placed in a hot dry place, with access to water, the tower sucks in hot air traveling above it and water lining the tower cools the hot air as it gets pulled down.
(Cool air picks up speed as it goes down).
When this air reaches the bottom of the tower it is traveling at such a speed that it can power turbines at the tower’s base and create electricity. The water that comes out is cool and humid.
This design isn’t only capable of creating electricity it can do much more. With simple alterations Zaslavsky explains:
He tells Green Prophet: “We can produce cheap desalinated water, we can irrigate the desert, we can produce bio-fuel, we can boost aquaculture.”
It’s not surprising that the country of Israel, which made its deserts bloom, developed this idea.
Estimates predict that Zaslavsky’s looming tower could create electricity at 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, less than a third of the cost of electricity in Israel today.
Iranian designers update the Energy Tower idea in 2025
We could put these towers in driest regions of the world. Sure it would mean figuring out how to get the water there, but because the process desalinates we don’t have to waste precious drinking water and the towers emit humid air instead of greenhouse gasses. In fact, it could drastically transform barren deserts to habitable places.
Cynical reports suggest that these towers are not practical because: “The technology requires a hot and arid climate, and at the same time access to large amounts of water… Most of these regions are remote and thinly populated, and would require power to be transported over long distances to where it is needed.”
They are overseeing the fact that the Sharav Sluice Energy Tower would make these places habitable
Green Prophet related:
Apartments for China, outfitted with individual greenhouses. We’d live in one of these eco-abodes.
Outdoor vegetable gardens are nice, but as it turns out, they are so 2007. Now Technion Institute researchers Tagit Klimor and David Knafo have developed a design for high-rise apartments that will have their own self-sustaining greenhouses.
The greenhouse spaces will enable families to grow produce for their own consumption, with enough left over to generate additional income.
Each apartment will have a trellised greenhouse space measuring approximately 100 feet. These areas would be climate controlled and employ a system that uses soilless growing media (such as coconut, peat and other organic mixtures), a liquid fertilization system, and an advanced drip irrigation system.
The irrigation system will use recycled water from the apartments and rainwater collected from the rooftop. The building will also feature solar heating and cooling systems and a geothermal system.
Now that Tel Aviv has car-sharing, it’s even harder to find parking. But there are less cars on the road, so good?
(Parking at Rabin Square and pool of water in the parking lot.)
People who live in Israel and who have to negotiate its roads might not feel that they have arrived in Gan Eden (“Eden”). As the standard of living increases on a yearly basis, so does the number of cars and parking lots. Any of our readers try and find a parking spot in north Tel Aviv on any given day of the week? You can circle for an hour and still be at a loss as to where to park – even for a fee.
The Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University recently held a conference to address their concerns about mushrooming parking lots in Israeli cities: “How much parking do we need in Israel’s major cities?” they ask.
“How long do we spend searching for a space to park? What are the costs of “free” parking? Is it time to start charging drivers a price that reflects the real cost of their parking place?”
Car drivers still enjoy free parking in many countries around the world. In the USA, for example, drivers park for free on 99% of all their car trips. Israel is certainly no exception to the rule. Even in Tel Aviv, the city with the highest demand for parking, most drivers still park for free or in exchange for an exceptionally small fee.Drivers may park for free, but is parking truly free?
As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a “free lunch.” And so it is with parking. The cost of parking is simply hidden – it has been transferred from the driver of the car to the general public.
When parking is free, we all want to use it. With free parking, car use goes up, and with it all the negative impacts in terms of search time, traffic congestion, environmental pollution, and road safety. Studies have shown that in some neighborhoods 74% of all car traffic consists of drivers searching for a parking place!
What are the solutions? So far, there is little agreement among experts or the public at large. Various suggestions have included limiting parking spaces or placing a tax on parking spaces around the city. While the solutions may still provide free parking, each of them comes with a cost. At the conference, both the academic world and the Tel Aviv Municipality presented approaches to escaping the parking deadlock.
As far as we are concerned, it’s better to ditch the car and take the bus or a mini van. Or for the sign of the times, take a scooter or an e-bike like the one we rented with teens in Bangkok. No parking needed!
The year 2020 onwards will be the decade of action for renewable energy. This is a solar energy field in Israel’s Negev Desert.
Deep in the heart of the Negev Desert, there is but one natural resource: the sun. David Faiman from Ben Gurion University has found a way to use solar energy to concentrate the light of a 1,000 suns.
Using reflective mirrors made from silicon, David has built a series of mirrors that concentrate the penetrating desert rays back to a large reflector dish.
The solution is one of a few in the world that may make solar energy a viable energy alternative within the next few years. And if Faiman and his startup company Zenith Solar are right, their solution will be able to provide enough energy for 10% of Israel’s population (1,0000 MW) using only 12 square kilometres of land.
This equals pollution-free energy for about one million people.
Says Faiman: “Traditional photovoltaic cells do two things: collect sunlight and generate electricity from it. What we’ve done is simply split those two functions, so that the sunlight is collected and concentrated by a dish-shaped mirror, and a small number of concentrator cells generate electricity from that highly concentrated sunlight.
“Photovoltaic material is far too expensive to waste on something that can be accomplished with cheap glass and steel.”
People are dying in Israeli cities from pollution. New solutions can’t come fast enough.
According to a company press release the Israeli tidal wave energy company S.D.E. began talks with Sri Lankan officials to construct and install a 200 MW power plant at an estimated cost of $130 million.
If negotiations are successful, they say, the plant will be the first of its kind to produce electricity at a commercial quantity from sea waves.
Once the plant is completed and fully operated, an agreement is expected to be signed for the construction of more power plants on the island.
Amirim, a vegetarian village in the Sea of Galilee region
Long before veganism became mainstream and wellness retreats became a global industry, there was Amirim. Now a wellness village perched above the Sea of Galilee with incredible views, it was originally founded as a vegetarian village. In the hippy days being a vegetarian said it all.
Perched 650 meters above sea level in the hills of the Upper Galilee, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Amirim remains one of Israel’s most unusual and enduring communities. Founded in 1958 by Holocaust survivors and immigrants who wanted to create a village based on vegetarian principles, Amirim rejected livestock farming and the meat industry in favor of a lifestyle centered on health, nature, hospitality, and respect for animals.
Nearly seven decades later, the village’s founding ideals feel more relevant than ever.
As concerns about climate change, sustainable food systems, animal welfare, and personal wellbeing continue to grow, Amirim stands as a living example of a community built around many of the values now embraced by younger generations around the world.
A village built by vegetarians
Several attempts were made to establish a settlement on the site before Amirim finally took root. Unlike neighboring agricultural communities, however, the founders chose not to raise animals for food. Instead, they built a moshav centered on vegetarianism, organic agriculture, and tourism.
Because traditional farming offered limited economic opportunities under these constraints, residents began opening guesthouses to visitors seeking fresh air, quiet surroundings, and a different way of life. What began as a practical solution eventually became the foundation of Amirim’s success. Today, the village remains one of Israel’s most distinctive tourism destinations.
Amirim Sold Wellness Before It Was Trendy
Hidden among the trees of Amirim, the Solitary Cabin attracts writers, artists, hikers, and couples looking for quiet in Israel’s vegetarian village.
Long before wellness became a buzzword, Amirim attracted people interested in holistic living. Many residents have long been involved in:
Herbal medicine
Massage therapy
Yoga and meditation
Natural nutrition
Alternative healing practices
Organic gardening
The village retains a relaxed atmosphere that feels far removed from Israel’s larger cities. Visitors come to slow down, hike forest trails, read on a balcony overlooking the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), or simply enjoy a few days without noise and traffic.
Artists, Musicians and Free Spirits
Amirim has always attracted creative people. Studios and workshops throughout the village feature local artists, ceramicists, woodworkers, jewelers, and craftspeople. Open studio events and seasonal gatherings continue to draw visitors interested in art, culture, and community. The village’s reputation as a haven for musicians, healers, and alternative thinkers remains part of its charm. In the same vein, look for other villages in Israel like Klil.
Some longtime residents include the beloved multicultural Israeli band Sheva. Their story captures the village’s free-spirited atmosphere perfectly.
Nature at Your Doorstep
Amirim sits on one of the most beautiful roads in northern Israel, between Karmiel and Safed. From the village, visitors can explore:
Forest walking trails
Scenic viewpoints overlooking the Sea of Galilee
Cycling routes through the Galilee hills
Nearby wineries
Ancient olive groves
Nature reserves and birdwatching sites
In spring, the surrounding hills are covered with wildflowers. In winter, mist often drifts across the valleys below, creating dramatic views from the village’s hilltop location.
Where to Stay in Amirim
Amirim continues to offer some of the most charming guest accommodations in northern Israel. Longtime favorites include:
Honny Guesthouse – One of the village’s classic zimmers, known for warm hospitality, gardens, and peaceful surroundings. Ohn-Bar Guesthouse – A longtime favorite offering panoramic views, spacious suites, and easy access to hiking trails. Michal Guest House – Family-run accommodations with a cozy atmosphere and beautiful Galilee scenery.
Newer options have expanded the village’s appeal:
First Light Cabins, Amirim
First Light Cabins – Modern boutique cabins designed for couples seeking quiet, privacy, and forest views. Amirim Atmosphere – A wellness-oriented retreat featuring gardens, spa amenities, and mountain views. Dream Time Villa – Popular with families and groups looking for spacious accommodations and a peaceful setting. Blue House in the Woods – A nature-focused hideaway surrounded by oak trees and walking trails. The Solitary Cabin – A secluded retreat ideal for writers, artists, and anyone seeking complete tranquility. Geodesic Dome Retreats – Unique eco-friendly domes that combine glamping, architecture, and nature.
The Solitary Cabin in Amirim offers a peaceful retreat among the oak forests of the Upper Galilee, combining privacy, nature, and panoramic views for visitors seeking a slower pace of life.
Many accommodations feature private hot tubs, fireplaces, outdoor decks, and spectacular views stretching toward the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights. We actually prefer the places without hot tubs as they tend to feel old and moldy after some use. Plus Israel is a water insecure country. Better take a quick shower than run a giant bathtub full of water.
Room Amirim offers guest accommodations in Amirim that blend rustic charm, wellness-focused living, and stunning views of northern Israel’s landscapes.
Amirim was way ahead of its time
When Amirim’s founders chose vegetarianism in the 1950s, many considered the idea unusual. Today, plant-based diets, sustainable tourism, local food systems, and wellness travel have become global trends. And fun fact: Israel has the most vegans per capita in the world, and the most alt-food companies startup up per capital.
What once seemed radical now appears remarkably forward-looking.
Nearly seventy years after its founding, Amirim continues to offer visitors something increasingly rare: a community built around simplicity, nature, hospitality, creativity, and a belief that people can live more lightly on the land. It’s worth a visit just to witness the Age of Aquarius as it happened and speak to the elders of the village about how it all unfolded with their very hands.
There is a lot of talk these days about carbon footprints. And there is much debate over how people can reduce theirs.
