LSP Environmental Studies Community Event Reports

Yaron Weitzman

Event Blog 2

For my second event I went to a lecture given by Rabbi Michael Cohen in the NYU Hillel. Rabbi Cohen is a founding faculty member of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. The Arava institute for Environmental Studies is a non-profit organization located in the southern Israeli dessert that focuses on helping the Middle East reach peace as well as developing a sustainable environment on a regional and global scale. Arava uses the universal issue of the environment to bring Israelis and Arabs to work together and cooperatively solve the regions environmental challenges. Essentially, the Arava institute uses the environment as a platform to bring Jews, Muslims, and Christians together while giving them the ability and platform needed to resolve their differences and work towards a common goal. The Arava institute does lots of research projects, working with Palestinians and Jordanians on projects such as Biodiversity, sustainable agriculture in the Middle East, and environmental education.
Rabbi Cohen has served as the Executive Director of the Arava Institute North America, and also co-founded the Green Zionist Alliance, the first Environmental Zionist party to run in the World Zionist Congress elections, in 2002. At the lecture Rabbi Cohen spoke about how it is important to understand that Judaism and care for the environment go hand in hand. His lecture was specifically about reinterpreting the story of creation without looking at people as the center of creation, rather understanding that God created both man and the earth and both are important to him. This is not to say that humans are not important, rather the point is that as human beings, and more specifically Jews who believe in Judaism and God, we have to make sure to take care of the earth. It is our responsibility to God to live environmentally friendly lives and since the earth wasn’t created for man, we are not allowed to destroy the earth and use the earth at our disposal. Rabbi Cohen gave other examples throughout the bible and the book of Genesis showing that things like biodiversity are moral and desired by God.
I though this lecture was very interesting because I had never heard anyone else make these exact points connecting God, Judaism, and the Environment. I have heard lectures about how as religious or God believing people to not care about the environment is somewhat insincere, however I have never heard anything like this redefining of creation and I found it very interesting. . I was also very impressed with the Arava institute and love what they are trying to do in terms of bringing Israelis and Arabs to work together on issues that affect everyone like the environment, thus getting them to work together and see that things can be done together.

(Here is a link to the Arava Institute’s website: http://www.arava.org/new/).