by David Sheen, JGooders Content Editor

As I was growing up, my whole wide world was Jewish: Jewish camp, Jewish synagogue, Jewish youth group, Jewish neighborhood. From nursery all the way up to the end of twelfth grade, I attended Jewish day school. I lived, ate, and breathed Jewdom, and inevitably all of my friends were Jewwy Jews, just like me. I didn’t choose that life, mind you, it was chosen for me by my parents, and once I graduated high school, my universe expanded to include the ethnocultural communities that had always existed only a bus ride away, just beyond the pale of the Jewish settlement pattern. Now, looking back upon that era, when there were never fewer than three or four David’s in a room at any one time, I can reflect upon the various advantages and disadvantages of living in a sheltered shtetl, the equivalent of a tiny little village nestled inside of a multicultural metropolis.

I don’t have any regrets about the way that I was brought up. As immigrants and ethnic minorities, my parents did the best that they could under the circumstances. I sure learned a lot about Biblical and Rabbinic scripture, Jewish history, and how to speak Hebrew. But I’m a naturally curious person, and if I wouldn’t have picked that up in high school, I would have learned it auto-didactically afterwards. At that time, my understanding of other people’s herstories was regrettably minimal; but in the years that would follow, I availed myself of many other opportunities to become intimately acquainted with the narratives of other nations. I could not possibly have learned everything that I need to know in the world in only four years, or even in fourteen. Thankfully, I was born at the right time in the right place on the right side of the border, with the right amount of money, so I continue to have access to all kinds of information.

But I do feel that Diasporic Jewish education is delinquent in at least one way: in its inordinate focus on law and accounting, to the detriment of the arts. In the big city that I grew up in, the local Hebrew high school didn’t have any arts program to speak of. I realize that because almost all Jewish schools are privately-funded, the cost of tuition is prohibitively high for many families, and so in order to remain economically competitive, something’s got to give, and it sure isn’t going to be reading, writing, or arithmetic. So we can’t judge Jewish schools by same standards as federally-funded public schools, in terms of resources devoted to creative arts and media literacy. But the overwhelming emphasis that is put on the most economically lucrative professions means that Jewish generations Y & Z are not picking up enough of the artistic tools that they will need to reinterpret and reinvent the world around them. Instead of getting an education in the Classics, too many Jewish students are getting an education in classism.

If you’ve ever been to Israel, one of the first things you will notice is that almost all of the security guards here are Jewish. So are almost all of the waiters, as are a majority of the street sweepers. In Israel, Jews have cornered the market on carpentry, and the city streets are crawling with circumcised bike couriers. There are obvious exceptions to this general rule; in the last twenty years, Israeli big business drove down real wages for working-class Jews, so the government imported a third-world work force that is willing to labour for less than minimum wage. But for the most part, there is much less social stigma attached to doing manual labour, working in the service trades, and in general, earning modest wages for honest work. Here, cab drivers aren’t considered to be stupid; they are the average man’s go-to guys when you need some amateur psychological advice.

Back to the other side of the pond. Let me turn the tables and play devil’s advocate for a minute. Wouldn’t you say that there are probably enough lawyers in the world already? I mean, ideally, shouldn’t the law of the land should be basic enough for just about anybody to be able to easily comprehend? Doesn’t true democracy dictate that we should never require intermediaries or paid professionals just to negotiate simple justice? And I think accountants fall into this category as well — the category of propping up an overly-complicated and often-corrupt system of centralization of power. Because if it’s so complicated to calculate the amount of money that I need to contribute to the collective, then perhaps it shouldn’t be leaving the community in the first place? Maybe more of the surplus that we produce should remain in our neighborhoods, so that we can see the good that it does in measurable amounts. Better that we have resilient local economies that bloated bureaucracies and impoverished peripheries, right?

I realize that some of the people reading this article may be lawyers and accountants themselves! Try not to take this as a personal attack, it’s not about you, it’s about the system. Ultimately, it’s not about exchanging court cases and calculators for paintbrushes and poetry notebooks; it’s about rounding out the Jewish school regimen with a curriculum that encourages creativity. You may point out that we are dependent upon the rich and powerful professionals who can afford to donate large sums of money to worthy community causes. Up until now, that may very well have been the case. But this is one of the very reasons that JGooders even exists: to make microphilanthropy a viable strategy, so that everyday people earning average incomes can financially contribute to the community. Together, we can all take care of the segments of our society that are still struggling.

Ultimately, it would be amazing if every single student grew up to become exactly what he or she wanted to. I hope that gets to happen as often as possible. But our children’s choices do not exist in a vacuum; they are informed by the priorities that we establish for them, and more specifically, what we fund with our donation dollars. Parents and principals are setting benchmarks for the next generation of Jews, and so should the people. If your Jewish experience is informed by Jewish art and architecture, Jewish painting and poetry, Jewish music and theatre — and when you think about it, whose Jewish experience isn’t? — then it is incumbent upon you to actively support a flourishing Jewish art scene. Because not every Jewish student wants to get their MBA, and thankfully not all of them need to. For every kid that really wants to go into business or banking, there are a hundred helping hands. And for the rest of us artsy-fartsy types, there is the Paideia Project and the Jewish Salons.

by David Sheen, JGooders Content Editor

The hour-and-a-half-long documentary Earthlings starts off with a statement of fact that will resonate with anyone who has ever taken an active role in a social justice movement. There are three stages in the response to Truth: At first, Ridicule. Then, Violent Opposition. And finally, Acceptance. That’s the way it always is with the fight for civil liberties, and that’s the way it was exactly fifty years ago when four Black students sat down at a cafeteria in North Carolina and ordered food, expecting to be served just like anybody else. Racism isn’t over, not in the United States, and not anywhere else in the world, not by a long shot. But at least the most obvious and obscene manifestations of it, the Jim Crow laws, have been obliterated for good.

The struggle for legal equality and human dignity would take four more years until the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. But only a month and a half after the original 1960 sit-in, President Eisenhower voiced his support for the Greensboro Four, publicly announcing that he was “deeply sympathetic with efforts of any group to enjoy the rights of equality”. Take careful note of the course of events: a group of people openly act in contravention to the law of the land — in a non-violent manner — because they believe that the law itself is unjust; and the Chief Executive Officer commissioned to uphold and enforce those laws lends ideological support to said lawbreakers. This is why a national holiday was established to honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: to honor the all-American acts of civil disobedience in the face of injustice.

As time passes, we continue to realize the existence of other oppressions that we are partially responsible for, and one by one, the most altruistic among us fight alongside the oppressed class to secure their welfare and equal rights. In time-honored tradition, social conservatives resist the demands for full equality, and social progressives advocate for it. Eventually, there is a critical mass of social liberals in the middle that are converted to the cause, and the tide turns. But ever since 9/11, the status quo has started to pole-shift in the opposite direction. Dr. King’s legacy has been appropriated and whitewashed; nowadays, nobody remembers his support for labor struggles and his public opposition to the war in Vietnam. Francis Fukuyama would have us believe that we have reached the end of history: America is perfect, and there are no more inequalities to uncover, no more injustices to rail against.

This is why animal-rights activists are now being criminalized by the corporations with the help of the politicians that are in their pockets. In March of 2009, Will Potter of GreenIsTheNewRed.com wrote: “With just six members of Congress in the room, just hours after lawmakers and celebrities were on hand to break ground for the new memorial honoring… Martin Luther King Jr., the House of Representatives passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law so vague and broad that the non-violent tactics of MLK and Gandhi are now ‘terrorism’.” Free speech in defense of non-human animals — the kind that was previously protected under the First Amendment – was made illegal with the stroke of a pen. Animal-rights activists that have never physically harmed another human are being legally labeled full-on terrorists by the federal government.

Why is this happening? Because we’re winning. High-tech spy cameras now allow investigative journalists to infiltrate the factories where the worst abuses are perpetrated and shine a light on the atrocities. When ethical individuals learn of the crimes that are committed in their names behind closed doors, they become morally outraged and demand an end to the inhumanity. But treating animals as anything other than non-sentient raw materials for the money machine would cut into the industry’s annual profit margins. So to stem the spread of anti-meat sentiment, the corporations of carnage ridiculously rebrand the Humane Society as the new Al-Qaida (link potentially NSFW). But there are two sides to this propaganda battle. As Jewish Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevitz Singer said on more than one occasion, “In relation to animals, all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka”.

This issue isn’t about humans eating animals for sustenance. Jewish people bury their dead in simple caskets that can be bored through in no time. In Israel, Jews are laid to rest under the ground with nothing but a simple shroud. Within weeks, the worms start to eat away at our flesh, and birds eventually eat those worms. It would be inconsistent to proclaim that all animal meat is off-limits to humans, when our own molecules are funneled right back into the food chain. We can commend people who choose not to eat any animal products altogether, but not every animal-rights activist is a seventh-level vegan; it is possible to eat animal meat, and still do so respectfully. But conventional animal farms and industrial abattoirs treat living beings, our animal brothers and sisters, like inanimate objects with no holy soul. Cosmetic laboratories and fur farms occupy an even lower rung on the ladder of human cruelty.

It is quite likely that in another fifty years time — if our civilization is still standing! — we will have added speciesism (discrimination against other species) to sexism, racism, and the rest of the long list of isms that we righteously vilify. If that day comes, we will look back upon this battle as just one more stepping stone towards the liberation of all living beings, the fullest realization of the phrase Tikkun Olam. But in this day and age, it has become risky business to make a public appeal to support the actions of animal-rights activists. So I will simply direct your attention to an organization whose activities are still considered to be completely legal, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. If you care for the animal kingdom, and if you believe that one measure of our own divinity is the way in which we treat other species, then please do what you can to support their struggle.

Photographs by Peter Menzel

Blog by David Sheen, JGooders Content Editor

Man cannot survive on bread alone. But he certainly cannot survive without bread… or at least its nutritional equivalent. Once upon a time, our ancestors simply wandered through the rainforests and picked fresh fruit out of the air, or dug protein-rich nuts out of the ground, and ate them on the spot. We can simulate the same hunter-gatherer foraging experience when we meander up and down the aisles of Whole Foods or some other supermarket, and help ourselves to marinated olives, or sample one of half a dozen different kinds of croissants. Certainly, the food cycle has come full circle, and we once again find ourselves in the gastronomical Garden of Eden, able to almost effortlessly satisfy our food requirements.

Now I don’t mean to spit in your whole wheat organic grain non-genetically modified corn flakes… but if you believe what I just wrote in the previous paragraph to be true, then you may be metaphorically standing on a sandy beach, soaking up the sun, facing away from the shoreline, not noticing the 100-foot high tsunami that is about to alter our reality, irrevocably. If you live in North America or Northern Europe, then you have your pick of the crop, every crop. But the crop is increasingly grown elsewhere, criss-crossing thousands of fossil fuel miles before it reaches your borders, let alone your plate. Which means that according to no less authoritative a source than the US Army, it’s all going to cost much, much more in the very near future.

Our situation is not unlike that of the biblical Joseph, who knew that the years of agricultural surplus would be followed by years of shortfall. According to the Torah, Joseph raised taxes through the roof, restricting the consumption patterns of average Egyptians, thereby preventing gluttonous waste in the epoch of the cornucopia. It took a totalitarian regime with a benevolent dictator, and clever experts in agriculture and economics, to have the foresight to draw up a suitable plan of action, and the political power to implement it. Three thousand five hundred years later, we aren’t short on Einsteins of Agronomy — award-winning author Michael Pollan is but one of them — but the plutocratic political apparatus stymies any effort to execute a sustainable food policy.

The truth is that while we wait for the tip-toe of the other shoe to fall, its heel has already hit the ground, and it’s starting to crush communities all over the world. In the last three years, more than twenty different third-world countries across the globe experienced full-scale food riots due to rising prices. Even in the USA, if you live in an impoverished community, the food situation is dismal and deteriorating rapidly. Two summers ago, a line-up for food stamps in Milwaukee, Wisconsin turned into a chaotic free-for-all, the kind of tragic disaster that was only supposed to happen elsewhere. We’ve all been eating the equivalent of ten calories in petro-dollars, for every one calorie of actual edible foodstuffs. And now we’re going to have to wean ourselves off of the black crack.

I wish that all of the captains of industry would have spent the world’s oil wealth more wisely. But at this point, instead of crying over spilled milk, let’s save and not waste the little milk we have left, make sure that everyone gets their fair share of milk, and make an intelligent plan for future milk production and distribution. Pester your elected officials until they step up to the plate and take responsibility for the future of food. And give generously to the organizations that are staving off starvation for the most at-risk among us. Groups like Meir Panim and Yad Ezra V’Shulamit feed the needy in Israel, making sure that people who need it get three square meals a day. Really, it’s the least we can do, considering all of the calories that we consume. And the next least thing we can do is to start saving seeds.

by David Sheen, JGooders Content Editor

Sometimes when I am scanning news items, I have a weird out-of-body experience. I read some story that’s buried in the electronic equivalent of the back page, and I can’t understand why it isn’t one page one, on the top of the page. In really big bold letters. Every single day, for at least a year. Zooming out of our solar system, I picture in my mind’s eye what we must look like to a race of aliens from another galaxy. When I feel connected to gOd, I wonder if she feels frustrated by our infantile myopia.

Well, it turns out that I’m not the only one that is frustrated by the fluff that passes for news in the mainstream media. There is an organization called The Long Now Foundation that sits on a cloud somewhere up on Alpha Centauri with a massive telescope, sifting through the incessant babble on Planet Earth, filtering out whatever will be irrelevant in a year, ten years, a hundred years’ time. It would seem that means about 99.9% of what passes for news items nowadays! Thanks, Long Now, I’m glad someone’s looking out for future generations.

Now I’m not so sullen and serious, I’m willing to listen to all kinds of trivial information that doesn’t have anything to do with my survival. It’s completely natural for human beings to be interested in each other’s love lives, and I’m a sucker for a good soap opera, straight up. But I just don’t understand why the news agencies have to lead with this stuff. Okay, so Lady Gaga is now dating Marilyn Manson; Wow! My life is oh-so much more complete for knowing this potent piece of information. But is it more important than the imminent evaporation of the Jordan River?

Just what I said! The Jordan River — yup, same one as in the Torah — is going to be the Jordan RiverBED in a year and a half! I live in this country and I read the news headlines every day. Why am I learning about this from ecological groups on the other side of the ocean? This is the single largest source of fresh water in Israel. Needless to say, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, like other human beings all over the world, are essentially skin-sacks of water and a handful of minerals. No water, no us. Why aren’t we talking about this?!

That’s a rhetorical question. I know at least a few of the reasons why water is not on the media radar. The largest consumers of water on the Israeli side of the river are the big agro-businesses. Well, we need to eat, right? Yes, we do; it is important that we grow our own food. Growing food locally means that fresh fruit and vegetables make it to your table much quicker, with far fewer petroleum dollars. Also, the ability to provide for our own nutritional needs ensures that we will remain a sovereign state, whether we get along with our neighbors or not.

Okay, so we need to divert water from the Jordan River in order to grow food crops. But do we really need to reduce the river to desertification levels in order to grow dates and grapes, not for ourselves, but for Northern European people thousands of miles away? I imagine that large profits are being made selling Mediterranean mangos to Scotland and Scandinavia, but at what cost? This water is the lifesblood of every living being in the bioregion, it cannot be embedded and exported in the form of fruit just so Montsanto can make a quick buck!

I’m not a protectionist patriot, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t engage in fair trade with far-off friends and allies. But to be stocking supermarket shelves from the UK to Canada means selling off our dissipating water supplies. As the Cree people say: “Only when the last tree has been cut down; Only when the last river has been poisoned; Only when the last fish has been caught; Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten!” I repeat: you cannot eat hummus with computer chips, you cannot eat felafels made out of fighter jets, and you cannot eat New Israeli Shekels!

Have I struck terror into your hearts with tales of our water woes? I must sound like Debbie Downer, huh? Yeah, this is the second reason why the media almost never makes mention of it. Who wants to hear such horrible news? Please don’t kill the messenger! Okay, friend, I’m going to cut a deal with you. I’m going to tell you the name of an organization here in Israel that is doing whatever it can to protect our precious water supply. What do you say? You help them help us out, and I’ll stop manic street preaching? Deal?

Okay: the name of the organization is Good Water Neighbors, and here is their webpage. Thank you in advance. And if you love H2O like I love H2O, learn more at Know Your H2O!

by David Sheen, JGooders Content Editor

Life on the material plane is full of all kinds of contradictions. It’s impossible to always walk the talk; inevitably, there is going to be a gap between what we say and what we do. If you slip up once in a while, it doesn’t discredit every single thing that you stand for. But at the same time, there has got to be some consistency in your rhetorical arguments. If I’m able to poke holes in your propaganda without even working up a sweat, then you had better go back to the drawing board and start plugging up those holes in your internal logic. And if you try to force your imperfect ideology down my throat… then to paraphrase John Wayne, I’ll make such a stink that you’ll be walking in and out of your Yeshiva with gas masks.

This article is about religious ritual and cultural appropriation. It’s about religious sensitivities and fundamentalist fury. It’s about identifying enemies and the separation of synagogue and state. And it’s about a Jewish woman living in Israel, standing at a bus stop in Beersheba last week, minding her own business… and being beaten by a stranger. Her crime: her uncovered arms bore the imprint of tefillin — phylacteries, the leather straps that Jewish religious men strap to their arms every morning. This article is about male privilege and misogyny. It’s about power-play and sadomasochism. And it’s about the hypocracy of Zionist Jews hating Islam for supposedly feminist reasons.

Orthodox Jews follow the Torah and Talmud to the letter of the law, so they must justify any position that they take with supporting scripture. This allows for some flexibility, because many religious issues remain in dispute. If you can find at least one respected rabbi that shares your point of view, you can claim to follow his interpretation of the law. In the case of phylacteries, it states in the Talmud that Michal, the daughter of King Saul and King David’s first wife, wore tefillin, as did all three of Rashi’s daughters. By legalistic standards, that settles the matter. Rama, a Polish dude that lived some four hundred and fifty years ago, believed that women should be discouraged from laying tefillin. But he never said a single thing about beating them.

In a secular democracy, we do not defer to a bunch of dead white guys when deciding what to do. Correction: we defer to a different bunch of dead white guys when deciding what to do. There are plenty of problems with representative democracy, and there are many obstacles that are preventing women from achieving full equality in Israeli society. The Israeli government is an old boys’ club: only about 17% of the Knesset seats are filled by female members. But at the very least, on paper, women are guaranteed equal rights under the law. That means the freedom of speech. It means the freedom of religious expression. It means the freedom to dress any which way they want to in a public place. If you don’t like what you see, then look in the other direction, or just walk away. And keep your damn hands to yourself, thank you very much.

Now I’m going to say a few things about tefillin itself. Physical phylacteries were found in the Qmran caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were uncovered, so we know for a fact that this actual practice is at least two thousand years old. In the biblical book of Deuteronomy (11:13), Yahweh instructs the people to bind themselves with signs to symbolize their subservience to him: “to serve me, with all of your heart and soul”. Regarding the reasons for laying tefillin, Maimonedes said, “As long as the tefillin are on the head and on the arm of a person, they will be modest and God-fearing”. So both the Torah and Talmud explicitly state that phylacteries are a symbol of bondage, to God. Of course, this would be incredibly obvious to anyone without all of our cultural baggage.  I’m not going to post photos of any real people wearing leather straps on their arms… but if a UFO full of space aliens came down to earth and saw what we were getting up in arms about…

All I am saying here is that tefillin is an article of clothing that symbolizes the exchange of power. It is about giving your power up to God — committing yourself to follow what you believe to be His wishes. But it is also about absorbing power — create a connection between yourself and the Diety, the Divine. These rituals — and the daily life of an observant Orthodox Jew is chock-full of dozens, or even hundreds of rituals just like this — bestow upon the actor enhanced status, and they grant him greater standing in the community. In a class society, heterosexual male privilege is the final refuge for men whose lives have been stomped on by systemic poverty. That’s why, when women and sensitive men challenge conventional notions of masculinity that say that women and men are diametrically different, and that the man is always the head of the household — it is a kick in the groin to the poor sod that has long-since cut a deal with the religious power-brokers, trading his freedom for some small measure of political power.

One last point: those Jews that would attack Iran, claiming that its religious regime oppresses women and other minorities, would do well to ensure that their own homes are made out of a lot less glass than they currently are, before they start throwing stones by the sack-full. Of course, it is dead wrong for Muslim modesty police to beat women on the streets and back alleys of Isfahan for not complying with their repressive dress code. The religious elite may legislate the activities that are permitted to take place in the public space, but they cannot control women’s bodies; they can wear whatever they want to, and adorn themselves as they wish. But our own three-thousand-year-old religion is rife with similar restrictions, and its practitioners are violating people’s human rights right here in the Holy Land. So if you want to go to war with Iran, come up with some other justification, don’t use a feminist fig leaf. Let the Persians protest against their own persecutors… and if you want to fight for the feminists, then bring the battle back to Beersheba.

Ultimately, symbols cannot ever be owned. They can be utilized for the effect they were intended for, and they can be culture-jammed to serve the exact opposite purpose. If you don’t want to be associated with something or someone that you strongly disagree with, then don’t become attached to any symbols that can be reappropriated. After all, the most fundamental tenet of Abrahamic Judaism is iconoclasm, the smashing of all false idols. And maybe the most fundamental tenet of Rabbinic Judaism is the multiplicity of interpretations, the never-ending debate over the best way to be a better person. So if you want to give women a way to study Torah and reclaim it for themselves, then check out the Women’s Institute for Jewish Studies. And if you want to support women who have been the victims of violence, then check out Empowerment for Independence. Because this isn’t a democracy until the streets are safe for all of our sisters. Happy Shavuot!

by David Sheen, JGooders Content Editor

When I wrote about May Day at the beginning of this week, I wasn’t even cognizant of the fact that May 4th is also a very important anniversary for the civil rights movement in the USA: it is forty years to the day since the shootings at Kent State. And until I read an article by Jonah Lowenfeld, published last week in the Jewish Daily Forward, I definitely didn’t know that 3 out of the 4 young people that died on that day were Jews. Well, it’s one thing to consider a group of people that died for a noble cause over a century ago, Victorian-age activists who dug trenches while wearing three-piece suits, without even a soundtrack by Stravinsky. But it’s another thing entirely to contemplate the martyrdom of people who wore jeans and T-shirts, listened to rock’n'roll music, and could have been my mother or father, if only they had lived long enough.

If you’re too young to remember Kent State, here is a brief recapitulation of the events that took place. In 1970, US President Richard Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia. Students across the country were furious that Nixon had escalated the war in Southeast Asia after he had been elected on a promise to remove US troops as soon as possible. At Kent State University in Ohio, some students protested with signs and slogans, while others caused property damage to symbols of the military machine, such as an army recruiting station on campus. The Governor sent in the National Guard to occupy the campus and disperse anti-war protestors. In the melees that inevitably ensued, infantry units of armored cavalry bayoneted some students and shot 13 others, some of whom were not even protesting, but merely spectating. They were shot down from a distance of over 250 feet, clearly posing no threat to the soldiers or anyone else.

The events at Kent State occurred in a climate of political intolerance that still exists even today. When protestors paint the face of the President or Prime Minster that they oppose in the garb of an historic or present-day mass murderer, they are putting out a call for political violence. When people call their political opponents traitors to the state or fascist collaborators, they are instilling hatred in the other. And this hatred isn’t hypothetical. Here in Israel, I’m sad to say that there is a long history of Zionist political violence perpetrated by Jews against Jews, from Arlozorov to the Altalena — to say nothing of the seemingly never-ending cycle of political violence between Jews and Arabs. Unless we are willing to wade in the bloodbath of civil war, we cannot afford an escalation of political libel. And yet, to repress free speech, to stifle the voices of youth movements and political factions, is to court even more violence. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “When you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable”.

Today the political battleground is the Middle East, with the Left and Right facing off over the occupation of Iraq and the Palestinian situation. Add the social nitroglycerin of race and religion to the volatile mix of economic and ecologic collapse, and it looks like we’re heading straight for World War Four. I’ve got my own biases, and it’s no big secret which side of the political spectrum I want to win that debate. But if it means that the whole globe is going to go down in a big ball of flames, then maybe we all need to take a deep breath and step back from the precipice before it’s a little too late. If we can see the soul, the spark, the very self in our so-called political opponents, then maybe we might even stand a chance at survival. That’s why I’m thankful that the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is educating young Jews and Arabs in Israel, teaching them respect for democracy and pluralistic values. For the memories of Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Sandra Scheuer and Jeffrey Miller, let’s do what we can to ensure that they can continue to do so indefinitely.

by David Sheen, JGooders Content Editor

Today is the fortieth annivesary of the first Earth Day, so I should probably say something about the current state of ecological affairs. But it is a little bit difficult for me to talk about this topic without sounding vanguardist; I’ve been intensely involved in the Deep Ecology movement for almost a decade now. When I read an article about some new and wonderful technological invention that is supposed to fix all of the problems caused by the previous new and wonderful technological invention, I am knowledgeable enough to analyze the science behind it and realize that it won’t work. And when I read headline after headline about collapsing ecosystems all over the planet, it’s all I can do not to knock my head against the wall and bang out in morse code: “I T-O-L-D Y-O-U S-O”.

I think that I’m willing to listen to accusatory cries of moral outrage, and I usually prefer to hear the bad news without any sugar-coating. But reading the ecological doctor’s report that takes the pulse of Planet Earth — the almost-certain terminal diagnosis — that’s a bitter pill to swallow. And if you’ve brought any children into the world, then you have their bodies and souls to be responsible for, as well. So I can kind of understand why it’s hard to hear what surely sounds like Cassandra yelling her head off about end times. Alright, then, I’m not going to go eco-apocalyptic on you and demand that you reduce your fossil fuel use to Third World levels. But at the same time, I’m not going to pretend for a second that if we only recycle our plastic pop bottles and install fluorescent light bulbs, that massive herbs of bison will soon be roaming across the Great Plains.

However, there is some good news: there seems to be a correlation between environmental awareness and technological proficiency. So if a group of people are conscious of our increasingly rapid destruction of the natural world; and if they have banded together to organize an action to do something about it; and if they have realized that in order to make that plan of action manifest in the world, that it is going to take more financial resources that they currently have access to; then they are more likely to be hip to the JGooders game, to realize the vast potential for online fundraising that platforms like ours make possible. There are no shortage of eco-NGO’s that are vying for your charity dollar on the JGooders website. Feel free to check out Canfei Nesharim or Environment as a Jewish Responsibility, or search the site for a green organization that resonates with your own ideals.

And here’s another little slice of good green news: the solutions to species extinction and soil erosion are not being developed in multi-million-dollar corporate laboratories, and the appropriate responses to resource depletion and climate change aren’t being formulated in multi-billion-dollar government think-tanks. Because the solutions are not physical, they’re spiritual. Don’t get me wrong: we can’t even begin to fathom the changes that our basic infrastructure is going to undergo in the decades to come, as it finally comes to grips with the planet’s finite physical limits. But that’s just the point: we can’t fathom them because our hearts and minds are ecologically immature. The key to our ecological sustainability and survival is education. And I believe that learning to treat, not just every Jew, or every human, but every other living creature, the way we would like to be treated, will be a difficult task. But not more difficult than splitting the atom or landing on the moon.

So roll your sleeves up, and smile! Happy Earth Day 2010!

Now that 2009 is three months behind us – the numbers are starting to roll in – how much did the internet grow, how many people used it – and for what? Below I’ve compiled some of the more interesting figures from the year – enjoy! (Unless otherwise stated, data is courtesy Pingdom)

JGooders was not the only new website added to the growing cyberspace over the course of last year; 47 million new sites were launched in 2009. Luckily, while number of sites continued to grow, there was also an increase in the number of users by 18% over the previous year. In September 2009, it is estimated that there were 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide. One might assume that most of them come from North America – but see the numbers below:

* 738,257,230 – Internet users in Asia
* 418,029,796 – Internet users in Europe
* 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America
* 179,031,479 – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean
* 67,371,700 – Internet users in Africa
* 57,425,046 – Internet users in the Middle East
* 20,970,490 – Internet users in Oceania / Australia

When I saw the following numbers below, I couldn’t help thinking about how we spend our time, and what we have to give up doing to do be online as much as we are:

* 90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009
* 247 billion – Average number of email messages per day
* 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide
* 100 million – New email users since the year before

Makes you wonder…but even these numbers don’t reflect our time online – it’s just e-mails. You need to read and answer them but then think about all the other online activities out there – tweeting, sharing links with the growing number of your online friends, groups, blogs, networks, etc.. So here is what it accumulates to globally:

350 million – People on Facebook
50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day
126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse)
84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men
27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States

And we did not mention, googling, gaming, shopping, chatting, traveling, Skypeing…if this is how much time we spent online in 2009 – just imagine what the future holds – each of us will literally spend years of our lives in front of computers. We had better do good with some of this years.

No one can be prouder than the Jewish and Israeli communities – from the much-lauded field hospitals, to the millions raised by NGOs – even the media has highlighted our impressive work. As a primary Jewish value, tikkun olam unites us all in our desire to build a better world – and our institutional and grassroots bodies have been wonderfully effective in rallying to meet the critical needs in Haiti.

But the crisis isn’t over – and won’t be for months. The initial rush of aid has ended – but the needs are still great. From the very basics of providing food, water and shelter to the hundreds of thousands of people living without homes – to the long and difficult rebuilding process that lays ahead – the work is great.

If you have already donated and are capable of more, even a little more – we urge you to support the important projects that are helping the people of Haiti in their time of need. If you have not yet donated – there has never been a better time. No donation is too small – and every amount makes a difference.

There are so many options and so JGooders has made it easy for you. We have gathered five Jewish and/or Israeli organizations, of all sizes and orientations that are working in Haiti. These organizations are among the most experienced in the world in relief efforts – and allow you to fulfill your commitment to tikkun olam and humankind through Jewish and Israeli frameworks – according to your interests.

Visit our Haiti page to read about these incredible projects and to support their relief efforts.

With deep appreciation to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, American Jewish World Service, Israel Flying Aid, Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, and World ORT for all they are doing to help in Haiti – and beyond.

It is both a human and a Jewish responsibility to act – and millions of people have done so via the web since last Tuesday. But as all media and governments report – the need is great and will continue to be so over the next weeks and months.

JGooders wants to help you help those in the direst of need and so are featuring the American Jewish Joint Distribution (JDC)’s Earthquake Disaster Relief project in Haiti.
To help respond to this earthquake, JDC is focusing its efforts on providing emergency medical aid to the injured. Supplies are needed to treat the scores of victims including medicines, medical equipment and other aid. In addition, with people displaced from their home, they have little or no food. JDC is also on providing meals to Haitians.

JDC is working with a network of Israeli, American, and other local partners on the ground and is fully coordinated with the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) as well as Interaction in Washington D.C

As we begin this week – please contribute a few minutes of your time, and whatever resources you are able, to help those in need. Please also pass this on to others looking for a quick, safe way to donate.