Jewish on Earth

Columns

After 300 repetitive years, things can get boring

Martin Westerman -
SABERS have been rattling in Persia for nearly 3000 years, so this latest Iran flare-up looks boringly repetitive. Jews have spent most of their existence around warring empires — it’s where our “You tried to kill us/We survived/Let’s eat!”...
Columns

Is the Earth approaching its doomsday?

Martin Westerman -
If the world as we knew it was going to end, what would you tell your loved ones? Religious fundamentalists might find the End of Days prospect comforting: foretold in holy books, it promises a better scenario than...
Columns

Purim: The Book on Renewable Energy

Martin Westerman -
WHAT if everything you “knew” about something was wrong?  Would you cling to what you “knew” anyway, even in the face of new information? Here’s the news:  fossil fuels will be virtually obsolete by 2030. As of 2002, no...
Columns

Tu b’Shevat and the environment

Martin Westerman -
It’s cheaper to buy local, organic foods than industrially produced ones — except the savings are invisible.  Invisible, that is, to anyone who doesn’t buy, handle or grow them.  Local and organic was all our ancestors ever knew...
Columns

Hey Buddy: Can you spare a zuz?

Martin Westerman -
Next holiday season, you might consider buying your presents without US dollars. When you decide to buy something, you can also choose what you buy it with. It’s legal in the US to create our own currencies and...
Columns

The promise we billions don’t have to keep

Martin Westerman -
Is it ethical to burden future generations with the environmental mess this generation created? From a Jewish perspective, the answer is “No.” We’re constantly reminded about passing this world from generation to generation (dor l’dor). It’s almost inconceivable that...
Columns

Food-rich blessings, over-eating curse

Martin Westerman -
The harvest festival of Sukkot has passed and the feasting holidays of Thanksgiving and Chanukah approach. Let’s thank our farming and herding ancestors for helping make our civilization possible. And let’s thank our current farmers and ranchers for...
Columns

High Holidays in Eden

Martin Westerman -
Jews have been stressing about “G-d’s will” vs. free will, and the ideal vs. the pragmatic ever since G-d expelled humans from Eden for eating a Tree of Knowledge apple. Now here come the High Holidays again, when...
Columns

The new earth

Martin Westerman -
IN summer of 2006, I asked a “highly placed Israeli source” this question: “What’s with Olmert?!”  New Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was botching the Lebanon war, relations with the territories and his Kadima paty’s coalition, and facing criminal...
Columns

The people of sustainable impact

Martin Westerman -
ON July 4 last year, we were huddling around fires to keep warm in Seattle. This year, we’ve had 78 minutes of summer so far (i.e., temperatures over 80 degrees).  Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, where politicians are wasting taxpayer...
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Latest News

IntermountainSteve Mark -

Professionally Speaking: Eliav Bock, Ramah of the Rockies

It is lunchtime at Ramah in the Rockies, which is considered a sacred time for its camp director. Only a phone call from the supplier of a commercial vacuum cleaner can tear Rabbi Eliav Bock away from his campers. “We just got it, and it’s not the right thing,” says Bock.