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The Jewish Ecosphere Springs Forward: Social Justice & Innovation in the Expanding Universe of “JOFEE”

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The JOFEE Dialogues with Nigel Savage, Jon Marker, Nili Simhai, Seth Cohen, Lisa Farber Miller & Jakir Manela

One night this week — before spring arrived! — a statistic kept popping up in my Twitter feed: “Americans spend 90% of their time indoors.” Disturbing, right? As it turns out, the architect Marc Kushner had mentioned this disturbing fact during his TED2014 talk about how design and space impact our culture, communities and lives, deeply. Although he was talking about architecture, I was struck by the amount of time Americans spend outdoors — or don’t. Could it really be so little? The EPA thinks so.

One day this week, one of the top international bodies of scientists issued a report that might as well have been called “Wake the F-ck Up” or “Everything You Need to Know to Refute Climate Change Deniers.” Bearing the somewhat more sensible title “What We Know: The Reality, Risks and Response to Climate Change,” the report came on the heels of an all-nighter pulled by 31 members of Congress who spent their night indoors – but not at home — to talk about the urgency of acting on climate change. Like many others, Senator Brian Schatz (D, HI, Jewish) talked about impact on local communities: from flooding and erosion to higher food prices. It’s been a headline-heavy week for climate change, what with President Obama launching the Climate Change Data Initiative and Cosmos doing its thing.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch — well, in the Jewish ecosphere — a jackpot of data emerged thanks to the findings of a broad-based study released last week called Seeds of Opportunity: A National Study of Immersive Jewish Outdoor, Food, and Environmental Education (JOFEE), created by Hazon, in partnership with the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Leichtag Foundation, The Morningstar Foundation, Rose Community Foundation, Schusterman Family Foundation, and UJA-Federation of New York.

Adamah Blog

So why think about these three things together? When people spend more time outdoors, they become more invested in the environment, they feel healthier, and they’re more inclined to think beyond personal behavioral changes to addressing root causes. Take today’s youth: 76 percent “strongly believe issues like climate change can be solved if action is taken now,” according to a recent Nature Conservancy report. And with a growing food justice movement, more and more people are coming to understand and get involved in issues surrounding where and how their food reaches them.

This new study of Jewish experiences — focused exclusively on four-day or longer immersive experiences — tells us that if you provide young people with Jewish environmental experiences, they’re extremely likely to go home and start their own programs or experiences, replicating or innovating in their own communities. Not everyone will do this from a social action perspective, but they’ll be more likely to see the connections and be integrated into a world where the intersection of Judaism, environment and new behaviors are inextricably tied. At heart, the study isn’t about what participants do, but about how they’re transformed, and about how they’re then likely to excite, engage and maybe transform others.

You can read a rundown of the study over at the Jew & the Carrot:

In 2000, the year of Hazon’s founding, immersive JOFEE programs drew 197 people, but by the year 2012 such programs drew over 2,400 people annually. An immersive JOFEE program might include a bike ride through the Negev desert, a farming apprenticeship centered on Jewish learning, or teaching gardening at Jewish summer camps… By 2012, there were 41 programs, largely centered on hands-on outdoors experiences with Jewish farming groups like the Jewish Farm School, Adamah, and Pearlstone Center. Many of these groups operate under the auspices of Hazon.

Like the people it focuses on, “Seeds of Opportunity” is about linking dots: between shared Jewish practices and individual passions, between personal beliefs and action. The study itself is packed with examples of how this plays out, but two really typify the ones that came up during my own conversations.

Your phone rings. All my life, the caller says, I’ve been waiting for someone to connect my love of organic farming and my love of Judaism. And you just did it. — Lisa Farber Miller of the Rose Community Foundation talking about Ilan Salzberg, founder of Ekar Farm in Denver

JOFEE “connected me with my wife, life partner, and my life work.” —Jakir Manela, executive director, Pearlstone Center, founder of Kayam Farm

And yes, to the joy of sky-is-falling Pew Jews, these transformed people tend to be young and until their JOFEE experiences, unaffiliated.

*Almost a third (32%) reconnected to Jewish life due to JOFEE.

*While almost all (97%) respondents agree that Judaism/Jewish tradition adds meaning to their life, 76% of whom say this was influenced by their immersive JOFEE experiences.

*90% agree that their motivation to make the world a better place is driven by their Jewish values and traditions, 77% of whom say this was influenced by their immersive JOFEE experience.

FRESH AIR: SOCIAL HACKERS & SOCIAL GOOD

But there’s something else going on. There’s a tipping point — when people start behaving in new ways, a cultural paradigm shift is possible. Social change isn’t just about advocacy, or greater sustainability. Truly transformative change shifts the ground we’re walking on. So that takes us to one step beyond “social innovation”? Social hacking, as Dan Morrison wrote in the Guardian earlier this year: “Our global economy and society are unsustainable at their core. No amount of tweaking or fixing will make them sustainable,” he writes, adding:

Social entrepreneurs aren’t going far enough to create systemic change. What we need are social entrepreneurs who hack the hell out of the current system, destroy it and create new systems where the externalities are regenerative, sustainable, just and happy.

Like a breath of fresh air, many in the JOFEE ecosphere are doing just that, even as they breathe life and relevance into Judaism for a new generation, ones who are actively, joyously, Jewishly carving out new paths through unexplored terrain.

The JOFEE Dialogues with Nigel Savage, Jon Marker, Nili Simhai, Seth Cohen, Lisa Farber Miller & Jakir Manela

There’s a lot of different pieces that can be pulled from the study, as others have done elsewhere. I wanted to dig deeper into the elements that connect in some way with social change and the cultural shifting of social innovation. To that end, I spoke with several individuals closely involved– Nigel Savage of Hazon, and five members of the study’s 13-person advisory team: Jon Marker of the Jim Joseph Foundation, longtime Teva director Nili Simhai, Seth Cohen of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Lisa Farber Miller of the Rose Community Foundation, and Jakir Manela of the Pearlstone Center.

ZEEK: This must be a big moment for you, personally, since so much of your life’s work has been growing and developing this field. What are your Initial reactions, Nigel?

NIGEL SAVAGE: It’s important, significant. This whole space has arisen from the ground up. People have worked hard in different places, because we believe it makes sense for the Jewish community and the Jewish community’s contribution to the broader world. The field has grown strongly and is having a tremendous impact.

The key understanding is that many traditional institutions — ones I personally love, I go to synagogue, I give to Federation — are not speaking to our best and brightest young people. We enter human history outdoors and in relationship to planet earth. Our relationship to land, seasons, food, is embodied in the Torah. It shouldn’t be surprising when we connect. It’s having a big Jewish impact.

ZEEK: The “connection to social justice” is a primary motivation for nearly a fifth – 18% — of professionals doing this work. Climate change, food justice and environmental justice are both climbing up the priority list for Americans and American Jews, particularly young American Jews. What role do think JOFEE experiences can/should/will play in addressing these issues?

NIGEL SAVAGE: Part of the heart of the challenge here is around disempowerment: How can one person, one organization, even one entire people or faith community — actually make a difference on issues that are so huge and intractable? That’s a real challenge — not a rhetorical one. Really: what do we do? And on the one hand we’ve done some things— we played a key role in launching the Jewish Working Group on the Farm Bill, for instance, though AJWS really did the heavy lifting. But what we can/could/should do going forward – we’re thinking about that.

JON MARKER: JOFEE is broad – this is one of the things it involves. This study didn’t focus on advocacy specifically. It leaves more questions to be answered. When you look at the interaction of the outdoors, doing things Jewishly, this is where social justice overlaps. It’s the way that we are — people have these values. People are looking for ways to combine their story: “I care about social justice and therefore I engage in this.” We certainly see that with Repair the World, service learning, etc. One of the things we see is that these programs provide meaningful Jewish experiences for individuals who haven’t necessarily connected with Judaism through more traditional portals.

LISA FARBER MILLER: There are many people attracted to this field because they care about the environment. We wanted to understand people’s interests and have wanted to create the infrastructure to support them. One of our tracks focuses on policy – educating how you can become advocates. Advocacy is an important part of all of this work. I hope that there will be funders who will support this work. After the Jewish Funders Network conference, I had conversations with people who said, I love this work and am interested in advocacy — what should we think about? I think this study will foster that conversation. There will be people who will want to work in advocacy and policy and will work with anyone else who are interested in environment. There’s a real interest in social justice issues. We didn’t have many organizations that focus on the environment.

NILI SIMHAI: All of these experiences are in areas where people can find support around the things that interest and worry them and can find others who are actively doing things in a way that’s very integrated with their Jewish identity. There are lots of groups you can go to, to start a CSA, or go backpacking, or make cheese. What draws people here is that there is an attachment to the whole person – spiritual identity, and religious/cultural identity, integrates your activism side, supports your emotional needs. One of the best things in the study: Most are hopeful about Jewish life/future. A lot of it is that your full identity is engaged – be a participant in this life and this work. Especially young adults. When I come to a food conference or Shavuot in the woods, I get to talk to new peers, and new stuff comes out that flourishes in these hot, fast incubator spaces. Some people go and feel supported and some come out with 10 new things that they’re going to do. Some are things that program providers are doing, and some are just the all-important conversations. The events are incubators for community connections that are formed, the people continue beyond.

SETH COHEN: What Hazon and other organizations have done well is create a bridge between what individuals seek to experience personally and what they can achieve collectively in terms of addressing issues relating to food and the environment — they’ve created a nexus between issues driven by universal values and helped create a pathway for young Jewish adults to understand them through the context of Jewish values. The nexus between universal need and Jewish values – that’s the nexus these JOFEE experiences create.

Snapshot: Seeds of Opportunity

ZEEK: When I think of these kinds of experiential programs, I think about the union of personal ecology with environmental ecology, of efforts to push personal and societal practices in a more sustainable direction. How does this benefit the American Jewish future?

NIGEL SAVAGE (Hazon): YES! One of the insights, I think, of the JOFEE movement, is that some of the greatest Jewish challenges (renewing Jewish life, strengthening our connection to Israel etc.) and some of our greatest wide-world challenges — climate-change, civil society, overwork, food security — are best addressed together rather than separately. Doing so, on the one hand, actually renews Jewish life. And on the other hand it helps us, as a community, point our cultural and practical resources outward. That’s what Hazon’s network of CSAs is doing, for instance -it’s reframing Jewish life, it’s strengthening Jewish community, and it’s putting Jewish purchasing power behind more than 50 local organic farms.

ZEEK: It’s not clear how this study will impact how these kinds of programs/experiences are integrated into the broader community, and if that means adding new depths to traditional Jewish communities, as well as bringing these Jewish experiences and Jewish learning to more spaces that aren’t traditionally Jewish. What would you like to see?

LISA FARBER MILLER: The power of JOFEE efforts is very palpable here — it’s very meaningful to people of all ages, but especially young people. Our young families want Jewish friends for themselves and their families, and they’re not as eager to join our institutional life. These food and environmental programs are appealing because you can do it with your kids – seeing the bee hives, learning about permaculture, growing worms, but also harvesting food for people and meeting needs in our community. It’s been an interesting journey to see how it can change people’s lives, about them feeling part of something larger. You hear things like, “I didn’t know that there were other people that cared about these issues, and I didn’t know that there was a Jewish piece.” From my perspective as a funder, I hope other funders, both individuals and foundations, will see from this study that it’s worth investing in these efforts both on the grassroots and institutional levels. It’s not just about individuals; many of our institutions have changed their practices.

NILI SIMHAI: That’s one of the most exciting things when you look at Teva in the Jewish community. The number of other experiences of people who have been Teva educators. These are people who taught four-day programs for day schoolers. What I’ve heard people say, specifically about Teva experiences: “You were given the hope that whatever you want to do, was possible. There’s the big obvious leaders that come out of the movement, who start their own nonprofit or become the head of some organization. Last time I counted at Teva, we were at 14 new initiatives. Then there’s a different scale of leadership, which is the person who may not be shul or JCC types, but they’re not afraid to walk into the door and say, how about we start a CSA or a shmita Seder? They’re not just consumers, they’re producers and reproducers of experiences they’ve found inspiring.

NIGEL SAVAGE: Hmmm. On the one hand, JOFEE programs are attracted strongly engaged Jewish people and propelling them into further and deeper leadership. And on the other hand, it’s bringing new people through the door. I hope that there are Adamah alumni who become Zeek readers, for instance — and I also hope there are Zeek readers who become Adamahniks in the future. You’re all warmly invited…

ZEEK: What do the findings confirm for you? What’s been most surprising?

JON MARKER: We had been hearing a number of anecdotal pieces about this space. This Confirmed what we’d heard about growth and people looking for new ways to connect. 20% of JOFEE participants were previously disengaged, and JOFFEE is why they came back. We are really intrigued. 87% have gone back to their own communities and helped organize a JOFEE event. Jim Joseph focuses on 13 to 30 year olds. One of the things we’ve seen resonating — camp, alumni, service, JOFEE — people in this age demographic are really looking to make Judaism their own. We’re constantly working to bring more people into Jewish experiences. This is one of the bright spots. What’s surprising? That 75% of JOFEE participants are 18 to 49 years old.

SETH COHEN: One of the things we found most interesting is the real acceleration of growth in these activities and how diverse and widespread they are. Anytime young adults want to create community in their own image, we get excited. We see the creation that’s going on in this particular aspect and that it has the propulsion it does in terms of growth – that’s very exciting. The other thing that really struck us is the need for professional development and training for the leaders who are taking ownership for these new pathways in Jewish life. We think this is consistent with what we see elsewhere. The community has a responsibility to give these young adults capacity. We’re excited for the growth of the sector and the articulation of the need for investment in the development of the leaders in the sector.

The things that were interesting: First, the Jewish community seems to speak in terms of affiliated and unaffiliated. A significant number don’t sit in either of those two categories: They have some Jewish education, then bounced against it. Some have found a way back in through JOFEE. The second thing: An incredibly high proportion of JOFEE go on to found or launch or lead something and attribute it to JOFEE. The impact on leadership is profound. At the same time, it’s so clear that the field is under-resourced, and lots of the people working in and leading it feel very overstretched. If this study plays some small role in helping to reverse that, it will do incredible good in the field and the Jewish community.

ZEEK: How does JOFEE fit into broader social justice or social change movements — Jewish, American, global?

NIGEL SAVAGE: I think we’re absolutely part of the zeitgeist in all sorts of ways. First of all, food has become a huge issue from Michael Pollan to “Super Size Me” to “Fast Food Nation” to the farm bill. Environment and climate change are on the front page every day. And people are going outdoors more. In the Jewish world, JOFEE is one piece of a larger picture. This survey doesn’t formally cover summer camps, but there’s a growing number, and it doesn’t cover things like AJWS trips. We hope to someday soon see the Jewish Peace Corps! Generations of American Jewish leaders went to kibbutzes — they’re a generation older. That was their multi-day immersive experience, doing it in an explicitly Jewish way.

SETH COHEN: What we’ve learned is that young adults would like to be part of experiences and communities that are bigger than themselves. When possible, they also choose to participate in communities rooted in purpose, meaning and transformation. JOFEE experiences help individuals understand that they are part of something bigger than themselves and that in being part of something bigger, they have the responsibility to one another with respect to the outdoors they experience, the food they eat and the environment they live in. In all of those experiences, they get a broader sense of ownership and responsibility to help repair the world, akin to the other drivers of social justice, framed within a Jewish context.

ZEEK “48% of the national Jewish population is 18–49 years old, while 75% of JOFEE participants are 18–49.” What’s that mean, from where you sit? How do you hope these findings will impact the Jewish landscape? And the not-so-Jewish landscape, ie, young and young-ish, unaffiliated Jews?

NIGEL SAVAGE: Many JOFEE programs are and should be multigenerational. But to the extent that many American Jewish leaders feel that contemporary Jewish life isn’t reaching young adults, we thought it was significant that so many JOFEE participants were 20- and 30-somethings.

NILI SIMHAI:I Let’s go with the not-so-Jewish landscape. There is a group of people who are identifying Jewish and are unaffiliated, who are really not interested with affiliation. It’s not about the programming. It’s not about getting them where they’re at. They’re fulfilled, and strong Jewish affiliation is not something they need. You need to acknowledge that. There are a lot of people who fall into this — one, two, three rings from folks who affiliate strongly. One grew up in families that affiliate strongly, at some point they got mad/turned off/faded out of their lives, post-bar mitzvah. Those people oftentimes are not interested in going back to mainline institutions. They’re really happy to be reached out to — dinner, dynamic programs, cooking. And they’ll say, yeah, I like being Jewish. We can re-strengthen their identity. The next ring or two outward are people who maybe didn’t have as much affiliation growing up, or maybe they feel the religious approach isn’t for them. If you hit the right notes, they’re ready to reconnect. A lot of people are just waiting for that vibrant, relevant thing, they care about climate issues or white privilege or they like to cook or hike. So much of the population is in that cohort – it’s incredibly hopeful for the Jewish community. They’re the ones out there, they’re the leaders, and they’re more likely to connect with others.

ZEEK: There’s a line in the study about direction: “The balance of programmatic components within JOFEE – There can be a tension around which of the elements within JOFEE programming should have greater prominence within a program (e.g., greater focus on personal development versus addressing social justice issues).” How do you think these tensions can be addressed meaningfully?

NILI SIMHAI: From where I sit, I don’t see that there’s a tension. There’s different niches. The tension is more for an individual program provider, with finite time, how do I balance X with wanting to make change. A whole lot of people are in it to change society – whether it’s to make our communities more stable or combat climate change, or to move to more resilience. A lot of people are ready to be met at things that are more of a personal interest. There’s always a balance – you’re sitting and eating with people and learning how to make things. How much do we do that, and how much do we talk about the food bill? Sometimes the tension feels more intense because you have other stakeholders, whether that’s your shul partner or funder. Nobody works in a vacuum.

ZEEK: One thing that comes across in the study is that these are meaningful Jewish experiences for individuals who haven’t necessarily connected with Judaism through traditional points of entry, although many are observant. Do you see this as part of a broader shift in Jewish engagement?

NIGEL SAVAGE: Unfortunately, it’s possible to have elements of a Jewish education in this country and not necessarily experience Jewish tradition as rich and wise and relevant. So it makes sense that those of us who are crafting powerful new Jewish experiences are connecting Jewishly in new ways. Riding across America on a bicycle in an explicitly Jewish community is a profound experience. So is spending three months growing food or tending animals. And the evidence is that just a four-day experience - like Hazon’s Food Conference, or Wilderness Torah’s Sukkot on the farm, or Pearlstone’s Beit Midrash — can be really, really powerful.

ZEEK: Seth, you wrote last year about “boundary spanners,” those who “not only help to mash up innovation from inside and outside of the community, but … also bring new people into the mix, in turn fostering.. deeper connections to the Jewish community.” Most of the participants consider themselves to be Jewish leaders (73%) and the vast majority (87%) have organized a Jewish communal event. Are JOFEE participants boundary spanners?

SETH COHEN: Absolutely. JOFEE experiences provide us with one of the greatest opportunities to translate who they are individually into who they can be Jewishly. Given the passionate interest people have in experiences that relate to food and outdoor experiences, that helping those individuals understand some of the meaning behind their doing, and that some of that meaning can be Jewish can activate a whole new world of Jewish engagement by individuals who might not otherwise engage. That language of boundary spanning – JOFEE experiences are an accessible invitation to Jewish life that authentically connects to the passions of individuals – not just young adults but individuals across generations. That authentic connection, grounded in personal interest, around food, environment – key factors in growth of JOFEE sector.

ZEEK: Jakir, you’re someone whose leadership has blossomed through JOFEE. Tell me about the very short version of your path from your first JOFEE experience to now.

JAKIR MANELA: I’d discovered Teva and the Jewish environmental movement in college and was inspired by it. I went back to my campus in Madison after discovering Teva at a COEJL conversation. Isabella Freedman reached out to us, we came here 7.5 years ago to start what was at the time was the 2nd Jewish educational farm. Our model is servicing local community. Today we have a large farm staff, impacting 6,000 programmatically, with Pearlstone impacting 16,000 a year. When the executive director retired, I was given the opportunity to become the ED in July 2012. Now, I’m 32. Now we have two kids, 6 and 4, growing up on the farm, experiencing Judaism.

We do a lot of teaching around food justice and tzedakah in agricultural laws. We donate 10% harvest to a local family shelter – teach, practice, provide opportunities to connect orgs and individual. We try to empower our program participants to not just have a Jewish ignition to act Jewishly but environmentally to make it a form of living Judaism.

JOFEE is a really powerful catalyst — to find a form of Judaism that’s empowering for them and for us, to go through programs like this one. It gives great hope in creating a bright Jewish future. To have seen this movement burst and spread around the county, I feel pride and gratitude for the founders. And I feel excitement and faith that with the right kind of support, we’ll have our own success and success for the Jewish people as a whole.

ZEEK: Nili, you’ve been pushing this forward for a long time. Tell us a bit about your own JOFEE experiences and what you’re up to now.

NILI SIMHAI: I’m on a sabbatical year, so apropos. I was with Teva for 16 years, director for 14 years. Loved my job tremendously, but I needed a break, to renew and refresh. I’m on a sabbatical from my career. It’s important to me that I follow the principles of the sabbatical year in the Torah: let things lie fallow and see what springs up naturally. Not planned: very involved in outdoor classrooms. There’s actually a farm being built in association with our synagogue, and I’ve been teaching a lot about the sabbatical year.

We can’t fail to mention the big merger of Isabella Freedman, Hazon, and Teva, and that was a lot of what I did before I went on sabbatical. I always found these more collaborative than lots of other things we see in the Jewish community. Since Green Hevra – support group for the leadership of the green environmental movement – did another, smaller-scale analysis of the field, we’ve matured, and are able to reflect on how we’re going to move to our second phase.

ZEEK: Tell me a little bit about why you got involved in this study/your role in bringing it about.

JON MARKER: At the Jim Joseph Foundation, we were seeing something rising up among our grantees. We wanted to understand it more. So we took a step back, and started work with a group of funders to try to figure it out and more deeply understand the space. We got together a group of six funders and Hazon, the most hands-on practitioners in the field, to help us conceptualize. Then we hired a research team – over 40 interviews with professional leaders in the space, more than 650 participants in immersive experiences. From this, we get a real understanding at what is out there.

SETH COHEN: Schusterman looks at these kinds of research opportunities as a way to help us and help the broader community, to understand the interests of young Jewish adults. We’ve been hearing anecdotally that outdoor/food/environment are a growing interest in the population that we reach out to. It helps give a roadmap to how the broader Jewish community can support these as a pathway for Jewish engagement. In our ROI community, we’ve already had a significant number expressing interest.

ZEEK: Other thoughts – anything else you’d like to add?

NILI SIMHAI: It was just nice to see this in black and white on paper. The growth has been meteoric. I think that people are doing this work in a way that is joyous and hopeful. I see myself doing this work because it’s amazing. Incredibly demanding but it’s also very nourishing — a lot of times it’s just one or the other. It’s important to note how many of the key leaders in the field came to their work with zero background, who learned on the job, but who continuously feel spread way, way, way too thin. The Jewish community would be making a great investment in helping alleviate some of those stressors, it would go a long way.

SETH COHEN: There’s an elevation of consciousness about issues relating to health, health of those around us, health of ourselves, our environment, the world. This, coupled with a search for meaning that underlies that sense of consciousness, is leading people to explore, fueling the desire to find experiences/tools that link meaning and consciousness together, to find others and organizations to help them understand. Jewish heritage and knowledge provides a rich resource bank of that knowledge, and young adults are understanding/embracing it. What the JOFEE study can teach us most is the importance of not only listening to young adults but also being in dialogue with them about the ways they want to create community in their own image.

JON MARKER: There’s a really positive undercurrent that runs through this study, and “hope” is pulled out as one of the key concepts. As a young foundation concerned primarily about young Jews, we have a process of identifying an area we want to learn more about, bringing together a collaborative group of funders, listening closely to so many respondents. The process has developed when looking across the Jewish world since starting two or three years ago. This is the beginning of a conversation – the foundation is intrigued to see what opportunities might exist.

Erica Brody is an editor, writer and strategist committed to progressive causes, and the editor in chief and executive director of Zeek. For a decade and a half, she’s worked at the intersection of Judaism, justice and journalism, and believes that social justice is social. Erica has written about policy, arts and culture, women’s rights, activism, economic justice, religion, anti-poverty strategies and climate change. As an editor, she’s helped hundreds of emerging and established Jewish writers of all stripes develop their voices and writing. Erica lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter, and two portly cats.

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*A Critical Time for Jewish Youth: Rethinking the Bar and Bat Mitzvah by Sarai Shapiro and Zelig Golden August 2013

From Farm to *Seder Plate: Supporting a New Crop of Modern-day Isaiahs by Rabbi Eric Solomon, March 2013

*A Green Gevalt: Nigel Savage and David Weisberg on the Hazon/Freedman merger and the Jewish environmental movement by David Weisberg, Jay Michaelson and Nigel Savage, December 2012

*Why Jewish Environmental Education Matters by Nili Simhai, 2012

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*Earth Based Judaism – Reclaiming Our Roots, Reconnecting to Nature By Zelig Golden 2010

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