Continental Airlines Goes Green. Or not. Or… Yes?

By Yannai Kranzler
How would you respond to sitting on an airplane, digging into the seat pocket in front of you, to discover that your complementary in-flight magazine was dedicated to caring for the environment?
Would you be thankful? Hopeful? Would you laugh? Would you sigh and say, “Well, I’m the one paying them to emit Carbon [...]

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Praying for Rain: Who Affects the Weather, God or Us?

By Rabbi Julian Sinclair
Sukkot has a special connection to rain. The Talmud (Rosh Hoshanah 16a) says that on Sukkot, we are judged for the rainfall we will receive in the coming year. On Shemini Atzeret, the final day of the holiday, we begin to say Mashiv Ha’Ruach u’morid Hagashem, in the Amidah prayer, invoking God [...]

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A Space for Being Sad

By Yannai Kranzler
I was a bit late to Beit Knesset, synagogue, last Thursday morning, on the Ninth of Av.  By the time I arrived, it was already full of men and women praying quietly.  A Jerusalem community known for singing and loud, lively davening, on this day, everyone was solemn, contemplative.  Some sat glumly on [...]

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The Ninth of Av, Copenhagen and Climate Change

By Rabbi Julian Sinclair
Recently I was asked an interesting question by an Israel environmental leader.
“I was a bit surprised and somewhat dismayed,” he began, ”to find out that the date chosen for the Copenhagen Planning Seminar was also Tisha B’Av.”

A bit of background for the uninitiated:
1.    The Copenhagen Summit in December is a gathering of world [...]

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Jon Stewart on Cap & Trade: Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

By Yannai Kranzler
How do you effectively photograph the earth getting a few degrees warmer? Or sea levels rising? Or animals migrating from native habitats?
Marketing Climate Change has always been a challenge. And even more complicated has been marketing solutions: the intricacies of sustainable economics are just not that thrilling for most people, not to mention [...]

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Climate Change, Copenhagen and the Three Weeks

By Rabbi Julian Sinclair
The Copenhagen Summit in December is a gathering of world leaders that aims to bash out a successor agreement to the Kyoto protocol that will limit CO2 emissions going forward. It is widely seen as a critical moment in the global effort to address the threat of climate change.
There is a remarkable [...]

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On Wings of Solar Panel: Swiss Team looks to Fly ‘Round the World in Sun-Powered Plane

By Yannai Kranzler
Today I booked a flight from home in Israel, to visit my family in New York. I’ll probably be one of tens of thousands of Jews flying to and from Israel this summer and holiday season.
As a nation, we really fly a lot. Proportionally, I’d bet there are more Jewish environmental organizations and [...]

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Founder of Heschel Center, Dr. Eilon Schwartz on What Jews can do about Climate Change

Hi Everyone,
In the following video, Dr. Eilon Schwartz, founder of Israel’s Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership challenges us to own up to our own implications in causing climate change, as well as our reservations in fighting it, and makes important suggestions as to what we can do, at Jewish Climate Initiative/Hazon’s Vayehi Or: [...]

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Envy-Based Economics and a Forgotten Tenth Commandment

By Rabbi Julian Sinclair
On Shavuot morning next Friday, in synagogues around the world, we will read the Ten Commandments. It’s remarkable, when you think about it, what a success they’ve been. Over the past 3000 years the Jewish people has done an extraordinary marketing job on conveying these basic ethical and spiritual laws. Across the [...]

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The Whole World is the Land of Israel: Rabbi Dov Berkowitz on Water, the Desert, the Jewish People and Climate Change

By Rabbi Julian Sinclair
This was one of the most exciting and original talks at JCI’s April conference. In it, Rabbi Dov Berkovitz asks what the 3000 years of Jewish tradition, “one of the most remarkable human creations on the planet”, can contribute to helping humanity grapple with global climate change (video of Rabbi Berkowitz’s speech [...]

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