Institute Places 'No Boundaries' When It Comes to Environment
April 24, 2008 - Michelle Mostovy-Eisenberg, Staff Writer |
| Itay Greenspan |
Ahmed "Jemie" Dababneh glanced out at his audience during a recent presentation at Congregation Adath Jeshurun and recounted his childhood growing up outside Amman, Jordan. Standing on the bimah, with a few dozen religious-school students in attendance, Dababneh spoke of how, when he was their age, all he knew about Israel was what he heard on television. Although he lived only 40 minutes from Jerusalem, he said he couldn't call or drive there, because "there was no peace" then.
But thanks to his participation in a multinational environmental program at the Arava Institute in Israel, Dababneh said he came to realize that he shares many traits with his Israeli neighbors.
The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is located in southern Israel, in the desert area that gives the school its name. It is a top-ranking environmental teaching and research program in the Mideast, which prepares students from Israel and Arab nations, including Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, among other locales, to become leaders in the environmental movement, in the hopes that they will tackle the serious challenges now facing the region.
Dababneh, who had a Christian background, noted that he even attended synagogue and participated in Shabbat services with his Jewish host family while attending the institute during the spring 2000 semester.
The experience "opened ... doors and my eyes," said Dababneh, 31, now an engineer in Harrisburg. "[It] made me decide what I wanted to do in life."
'We All Have an Interest'
He shared his story with a crowd of about 70 people at the Elkins Park shul on April 15 during a program titled "Building Peace in Israel Through Environmental Cooperation." It was presented by A.J. and Congregation Kol Ami, and was funded by a grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, administered through the Kehillah of Old York Road.
"The environment is something we all have an interest in," declared Rabbi Elliot Holin of Kol Ami, in his introductory remarks, noting this event's timeliness and its close proximity to to both Passover, which began at sundown April 19, and Earth Day, which took place on April 22.
David I. Weisberg, executive director of Friends of the Arava Institute, a Harrisburg-based nonprofit group that supports the Israeli school, likened the institute to Earth Day, which started as a small movement 38 years ago and has become an occasion celebrated in more than 130 nations around the world. He noted that the institute has grown tremendously in only 12 years; its 450 alumni, he declared, are "starting to make great changes in Israel and the Middle East."
The many environmental problems that Israel faces, noted Clive Lipchin, director of research at Arava, are not limited to its small terrain.
Rather, he explained, Israel and its Arab neighbors all have limited resources, especially water, and so all citizens must work jointly to overcome problems.
The evening's speakers highlighted some of the programs and projects under way at the institute, such as efforts to rejuvenate an extinct species of palm tree native to Israel. Seeds were excavated a few years ago, and a researcher at Arava was able to make them sprout into a tree.
If the tree germinates, which could happen by 2010, Weinberg said, the native Israeli dates mentioned in the Torah may be tasted for the first time in more than 2,000 years.
Itay Greenspan, 34, a native Israeli, an alumnus of Arava and currently a candidate for a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, noted a particular course he took where he and several classmates had to develop and implement an environmental curriculum for an elementary school.
His group, which consisted of two Jewish Israelis, an Arab-Israeli and a Jordanian, devised a program to teach about bird migration. The fact that his Jordanian colleague spoke no Hebrew made little difference, Greenspan noted; the three Israelis simply taught him the necessary words, such as "beak" and "wing."
The name of the curriculum they developed? It was appropriately called "No Boundaries."
