Shana Tova to all our friends and supporters. May we all be blessed with a year of success and sustenance, joy and justice, peace and prosperity for all.

With thanks for your support and cooperation,
The Heschel Center Staff and Board

Heschel Center, Decade of Success Appeal –

Help us create a Sustainable Future for Israel in the Next Decade

Read the full appeal letter here

Holiday Webinar

After the success (and initial teething problems) of our first webinar (at Shavuot), we are hosting a new Holiday Webinar, including:

• A printable article (here) about Yom Kippur and Sukkot, plus
• A live presentation by Dr Jeremy Benstein, followed by a conference-call discussion: October 19 – Sunday Hol hamo'ed sukkot – 21:00 Israel (3pm US Eastern Daylight Time)

Details here

Jeremy is the author of the recently published seminal book, The Way Into Judaism and the Environment.

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2009 Hike Bishvil Yisrael

Registration is open for the 2009 Heschel Hazon Hike - March 15-19, 2009.

For the chagim, we are offering a special 2-for-1 deal:

If you register before September 30 and bring a friend, you can both use the discount code "2for1" to receive 50% off registration. Have your friend write your name as a referral when they register.

Learn about the environment and sustainability in Israel and Judaism.

Meet and walk with professionals working to create a better Israel.
Help create a sustainable future for Israel

Please contact me with any questions or for more information:
David Pearlman-Paran - david@heschel.org.il

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Activity Updates

Heschel Center 10th Anniversary Conference:

Israeli Sustainability – the Next Decade

As mentioned above the Heschel Center is launching what will hopefully become an annual national Sustainability Conference on December 17. The conference will feature major international speakers, such as David Orr and Vandana Shiva, as well as leading Israelis – Knesset members, journalists, writers, academics, activists – who will present the major challenges. The hundreds of participants will then split into over 40 workshops to develop the outline of an agenda for the sustainability movement in Israel in a wide range of fields. Rather than a one-off event, the conference will launch a web-based network infrastructure to maintain and foster the connections and activities.

Read more about the conference and network here

New Fellows – 10th Anniversary Group

The new group of Fellows - the tenth – has just begun their year-long training program (one day a week + two 2-day study tours). 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.
It is clear that the Fellows program is becoming more and more recognized and sought after. But this is also an indicator that the shift towards sustainability that the Heschel Center promotes is accelerating. There are more and more leading professionals who are what we call "early adopters" of a sustainability worldview - potential agents of change.
You can see descriptions of this year's group here.
It is, once again, diverse and impressive including:

• a Beduin film-maker and activist
• parliamentary aide to a leading MK
• the Ministry of Housing's head architect
• senior executives from major industrial corporations (including two from Israel Chemicals subsidiaries: Dead Sea Works, ICL Industrial Products)
• entrepreneurs
• academics and activists (including two involved in connections between Judaism and the environment)

This is a particularly exciting year, because it is the tenth anniversary Fellows group (see Decade of Success campaign letter).

Featured Fellow — Valentina Nelin, (Fellows 2001-2)

Valentina was born in Russia and moved to Israel after receiving a master's degree in environmental and bioclimatic architecture in Madrid. Valentina works as a green architecture consultant and is currently preparing an application to the Standards Institute of Israel for the standard that covers energy, water, land and other environmental issues including air quality and the building process.

Greening the City of Gold :

A new 40-unit development in the Jerusalem suburb of Katamon is due to combine what Nelin describes as "a high standard of living with a low environmental impact."The project on Sderot Shai Agnon, due to get under way shortly, aims to be the first residential building constructed according to the Israeli "Green Building" Standard 5281, which encourages more environmentally sustainable building practices: "Jerusalem is a special place; it has virtually the perfect temperature for houses. If your house is oriented correctly, you don't have the greenhouse effect in the summer [causing houses to absorb excess heat and warm up]," says Nelin.

If the development scores 55 or more out of 100 points specified by the conditions in the standard, then it will be able to call itself the first officially "green" home in Israel.

"I set myself the goal that in 10 years all new buildings in Israel will be
built according to green architectural principles," says Nelin. "I hope it
[Shai Agnon] will be an example to others."

(adapted form a recent article in the Jerusalem Post, here)

Local Sustainability Center Awarded "Green Globe"

On Thursday June 5, the annual Green Globes award ceremony took place at the Noga Theater in Jaffa. Heschel's Local Sustainability Center won the award for municipal activity (see film-clip in Hebrew, here). 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.
Orli Ronen-Rotem, the center's director and Heschel's deputy director, gave an emotional and impressive acceptance speech. She was joined onstage by representatives of the project's Israeli partners - Tel Aviv University's Porter School for Environmental Studies and the Ministry for the Environment - and of participating municipalities. All of them expressed their appreciation and respect for the work of the center, Orli and its staff.
Eitan Atia, director of the Forum of 15 Self-Governed Cities in Israel was particularly eloquent and effusive in his praise. As a result of the Local Sustainability Center's efforts, the Forum of 15, which represents Israel's largest and strongest cities, signed the Cities for Climate Protection international charter, committing to reduce their carbon and air pollution emissions. The charter is run by another of the project partners, ICLEI - the International Center for Local Sustainability.
In fact, the Forum of 15 and ICLEI have just joined the Heschel Center in submitting a proposal to the EC for a nation-wide project to implement city-based climate reduction. Let's hope it's successful!

The Heschel Center had a strong showing in general at the ceremony: the director Dr Eilon Schwartz gave the opening remarks in his capacity as chair of Life and Environment; Heschel Fellow Yotam Avizohar won the award for environmental activist of the year for his work as director of the Israel Bicycle Association; Heschel Fellow Sigal Yaniv, director of the Green Environment Fund, presented an award; Channel 10 journalist Nitzan Horowitz, another Fellow, broadcast from the event directly to the channel's main news magazine; the event was organized by Heschel Fellow Naor Yerushalmi, Associate Director of Life and Environment; the film-clips in the ceremony were created by Yuval Shor, coordinator of Heschel's Artists for Sustainability Forum.

The film-clip on the Local Sustainability Center, prepared for the eventcan be seen here (Hebrew) .

First ever national Conference for Sustainable Education - 120 educational leaders attend

On June 23-24, the Heschel Center hosted a national conference on Education for Sustainability. Over 120 leading decision-makers, educators and activists for environmental education in Israel took part in the groundbreaking event which included lectures, discussions and working-groups. The participants – senior government executives from the Education and Environment Ministries, academics, principals and Green School Network personnel – worked together to develop priorities and action plans for implementing education for sustainability throughout Israel. The results were put together on a dedicated website (in Hebrew – here) and the groups are currently working on follow-up activities.

Creating Sustainable Local Economies

30 community leaders, representatives of 19 different organizations, government and development agencies, attended our innovative course on developing sustainable local economies. The seminar succeeded in developing the framework for two regional hubs in theNegev and the Galilee which will work on implementing the tools with local communities. It also helped develop two initiatives in the center of Israel

In order to help disseminate the ideas and tools of sustainable local economies, we established a website that includes PowerPoint presentations, translated articles, a guide book and descriptions of the different tools (in Hebrew, here). The materials will also be presented on an international site created by our international partners, the new economics foundation.

A number of initiatives have already emerged as a result:

• The director of the Mandel Institute for Leadership in the Negev has incorporated the concepts of sustainable local economies into a leadership program that he runs in the development town of Netivot (near Sderot). The program includes local entrepreneurs and is supported by the municipality. There are plans to develop this further into a full-fledged offshoot program to develop sustainable local economic initiatives.
• Another participant organized a festival of music and environment in the Golda Park in the Negev (July 17-18) that was specifically built on the principles of sustainable local economies.
• In Yeroham, one of the participants is developing an incoming tourism center for bicycle rides which will help promote further local economic and social activities. He is also successfully promoting the ideas of sustainable local economies in his organization - Partnership 2000 for Social Responsibility (of the Jewish Agency) ­­- to focus their projects in deprived areas throughout Israel.

JGEN – Jewish Global Environmental Network

Creator of Meatrix in Israel as Heschel guest

Louis Fox, founding director of Free Range Studios, which has created ground-breaking and influential award-winning web-films such as The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff, was recently in Israel as the guest of the Heschel Center through our JGEN program. Louis gave a successful workshop at the Heschel Center to filmmakers and activists and his films were screened along with a talk to a packed audience as part of the annual Ekolnoa Environmental Film Festival.