Peonies and Pineapples in the Negev Desert

By KKL-JNF for JPost

Open Day 2016 at the Western Negev Research and Development Station in Besor

If the idea of pineapples in the desert sounds like a total anomaly, a visit to the Western Negev Research and Development Station in Israel’s Besor region proves quite the opposite. Over 4,000 people from Israel and abroad, including the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority and neighboring Arab countries, attended the Open Day Agricultural Exhibition at the R&D station on Wednesday February 24.

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The Jewish Farm School

A Sustainable Organization Rooted in Jewish Traditions

The Jewish Farm School teaches about contemporary food and environmental issues through innovative trainings and skill-based Jewish agricultural education. 

We are driven by traditions of using food and agriculture as tools for social justice and spiritual mindfulness. Through our programs, we address the injustices embedded in today’s mainstream food systems and work to create greater access to sustainably grown foods, produced from a consciousness of both ecological and social well being.

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Israeli car engine could halve fuel costs, emissions

By David Shamah for The Times of Israel

Aquarius’s new take on internal combustion engines will be the big leap forward that vehicles need, says company founder

The notoriously conservative car business – autos, after all, are still largely powered by the internal combustion engine, developed nearly 150 years ago – is in for big changes, according to Gal Fridman, chief marketing officer and co-founder of Aquarius Engines.

“Our enhanced engine design uses energy much more efficiently, and eliminates the valves and rods that cause energy loss,” he said. “If a car equipped with a modern standard internal combustion engine can go about 600 kilometers on a tank of gas, ours can more than double that.”

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How One Jewish Mother Inspired a Global Eco-Revolution

By Aron Hirt-Manheimer for ReformJudaism.org

When I first visited Lotan, a Reform kibbutz in the Negev Desert, and witnessed the community’s artful integration of ancient and modern building methods, I asked founding member Alex Cicelsky how Lotan had become an internationally recognized center for ecological experimentation and training.

It all started 20 years ago, he said, when one kibbutz member’s mother came to visit him from a town north of London, where she grew organic vegetables in her small backyard. Dismayed by the sight of food scraps discarded into trash bins in the kibbutz communal kitchen, she complained: How can an intentional community built on Jewish values not be composting?

Lotan’s members took the complaint to heart and decided to recycle all of their waste.

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Eurovision Contestants Plant Trees in Israel

By KKL-JNF for JPost.com

 Twenty young singers from different countries in Europe, who are taking part in Eurovision 2016, arrived in Israel for a short visit. On Tuesday, April 12, they enjoyed the experience of planting trees at the KKL-JNF Tree Planting Center in The President's-Tzora Forest.

“It was a thrilling sensation to feel the earth in my hands and plant a tree,” said Rykka from Switzerland. “I was surprised to see how green Israel is. I was expecting to see a desert, and here we are, standing in a forest.”

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