Can environmental activism unite Israel, Diaspora?
Jpost.com Environmental activism could be the “special interest” that unites the Jewish world and reignites Jewish philanthropy, according to an unpublished report commissioned by UJA-NY and the CRB Foundation and obtained by The Jerusalem Post. Not only could Israel and the Diaspora rally around the environment, but the issue would also help bring in younger Jews who are rapidly becoming more and more disenchanted with affiliated Judaism, according to the report. While a senior development official at the Jewish Agency agreed on the environment’s fund-raising potential, that potential has yet to be realized, the American Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel’s co-chairman, Leon Sokol, told the Post on Wednesday. The report, authored by Jewish Council for Public Affairs Senior Associate Executive Director Martin J. Raffel late last year, argued that the environment was becoming an increasingly attractive issue for a variety of reasons. “First, the interest in environmentalism
