Jewish Values and Environmental Responsibility: Israel's Environmental Movement
With Dr. Eilon Schwartz, Executive Director of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Israel.

Wednesday, January 23, 7:30pm at a private residence on the Upper West Side (RSVP for address).

A grantee of NIF's Green Environment Fund, the Heschel Center was established to lead Israel to become a society based on renewal of the values of justice and caring for the future of the land and its inhabitants.  The Center trains leading individuals from across the spectrum of Israeli society to become the social-environmental vanguard, implementing this innovative vision of an ecologically and socially sustainable future.  The Heschel Center is creating a body of concrete examples of what needs to be done and how to achieve it: planning and design which encourage community vibrancy and strengthen sustainable local economies, agriculture which grows healthy food for all citizens while enhancing land and water quality; participatory democracy based on active and committed citizens and enlightened, transparent government, building carbon-free energy self-reliance, revitalizing urban areas.   http://www.heschel.org.il/eng/

In addition to his work at the Heschel Center, Dr. Eilon Schwartz is a faculty member of the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he teaches courses in Judaism and environmental education, and environmental policy and ethics.  He is a member of the directorate of the Jewish National Fund.  Dr. Schwartz was the founding chairperson of the Israeli Union for Environmental Defense, and has served on the National Council of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.  Dr. Schwartz has published both academic and popular articles on related issues, and his book “Living in the World: Human Nature, Ecological Thought and Education after Darwin” will be published in 2009.