Monday July 21, 2008 10:23am

After a long and difficult selection process, the proverbial white smoke has appeared above the Heschel offices and the new group of Fellows - the tenth - has been selected. As with each of the last few years, the standard of applicants has continued to increase. This meant harder work for the selection committee - of 100 applicants they interviewed 60 (!!!) and then had to work that down to the final group of 20.

Take an army officer, a filmmaker and a Heschel program and throw them all together..

We often talk about how the outcome of our Fellows program, and in fact of our network of sustainability advocates in general, is much greater than the sum of its parts. I'm sure we ourselves are only aware of a fraction of the changes made possible by our programs, but here's a cool example of the kind of synergies they make possible:

I'm a bit late reporting on this, but it's been a very busy couple of weeks!
On Thursday June 5 the annual Green Globes award ceremony took place at the Noga Theater in Jaffa. It is the key annual public event for the Israeli environmental movement, organized by Life and Environment - the umbrella organization, and grants awards for environmental activity and one "Black Globe" to the main offender of the year.

I haven't blogged for a while because of Shavuot and work overload, but there's actually been some great stuff to write about. However, I'm going to have to put off another post of our achievements to concentrate for once on the challenges. It's literally a black day for the environment in Israel:

On Sunday (June 1) two members of the Hazon team were at Heschel for a marathon meeting to hammer out details for next year's Heschel Hazon Hike Bishvil Yisrael. Nigel - Hazon's director - and Nancy - Outdoor Activities Director - were in Israel from the US for another Hazon event.

The Heschel Center's founder and director, Dr Eilon Schwartz wrote the following reflections on Israel's 60th anniversary for the website of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, a key Heschel Center supporter:

Last Friday (May 23), the Heschel Center hosted a festive premiere screening of Nitzan Horowitz's new film, Urban Legend, as part of the Ekolnoa environmental film festival. Nitzan, foreign desk reporter for Channel 10 News is a Heschel Environmental Fellow leading the incorporation of sustainability issues into mainstream Israeli media (more on Nitzan here).