The mandate of tikkun olam – repair of the world – is familiar to Jewish people everywhere. Today, a group of Jews on opposite sides of the world are taking the concept of tikkun olam literally as they begin to collaborate on ways to improve and repair our environment.

Israeli members of the Environmental Delegation outside the DWP headquarters

Through the Federation’s
Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership’s Environmental Initiative Delegation, 16 of Israel’s top environmentalists from different municipalities, government, and nonprofit programs spent the week of March 3-7 in Los Angeles, where they had the opportunity to meet with top environmentalists, activists, and other leading experts in the field. The delegation was hosted by the Federation and supported by the City of Los Angeles, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life of Southern California (CoejlSC), Friends of Israel’s Environment, and the Plum Foundation.

The group visited the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the Hyperion Waste Water Treatment Facility, several Los Angeles State Parks, and met with individuals from Tree People, CoejlSC and the City Planning Department, where they discussed the Green Building Program, a new L.A. initiative that supports increasing the efficiency of resources used to build buildings (including energy, water, and electricity) in order to reduce strains on the environment. Israel and Los Angeles share similar concerns regarding water, air, and land use and conservation, and the two groups hoped to use the week as an opportunity to learn from each other’s leading experts in the field.

At the end of the week, during an overview and wrap-up of the program, Lee Wallach, President of CoejlSC, emphasized the importance of the two groups continuing to glean information from each other and adapt it in order to fit their individual city’s needs. “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” he told the group. “You can take things that we’re doing here and bring them there, and we’ll do the same, because there are plenty of things you excel at in Israel that we could implement here in Los Angeles.”

At the meeting, Wallach also brought up an important environmental initiative that had been discussed at length numerous times throughout the program. During the week, the Israeli delegation learned that the City of Santa Monica has voted to ban single-use plastic bags throughout the city, preferring instead to encourage customers to use canvas recyclable bags for groceries and other items. Though this concept has already been discussed in Israel by solid waste experts, seeing and hearing about the ban’s planned implementation in California prompted several members of the delegation to think seriously about bringing the idea to Israel.

Gilad Ostrovsky from the Israel Union for Environmental Defense and Gil Yaakov of Green Course

Gilad Ostrovsky, a senior member of the Science Department for Waste & Recycling in the Israel Union for Environmental Defense and a solid waste expert, was impressed with the ban’s successful implementation in Santa Monica, and discussed the steps Israel is taking towards the plastic bag issue. “We have initiated legislation for it in Israel recently,” he said. “I believe that the best way to confront the plastic bag problem is to aim for reduction and not for substitution – a shift from plastic to paper bags is not desirable at all, for example.” Therefore, he says, Israel has decided to begin charging for plastic bags. “The fee will drive people away from those disposables so they begin recycling and reusing.”

One of the members of the Israeli delegation, Gil Yaakov, is the Executive Director of Green Course: Students for the Environment, the largest environmental volunteer organization in Israel, which focuses on greening university campuses and promoting environmental education throughout the country. He was particularly impressed with seeing the efforts the City of Los Angeles has taken towards greening buildings. “Just seeing where to start was helpful. Israel isn’t building green buildings yet, and we don’t have a lot of information about it, but here, it’s already in progress. Now when we return, we will have a lot of ideas about how to doing something like this in Israel.”

Environmental Delegation chairs Evan J. Kaizer and Dr. Miriam Haran

Evan J. Kaizer, the Los Angeles Environmental Committee Chair of the Partnership, called the first project between the two groups extraordinarily successful. “We saw again that bringing in a delegation of extremely motivated, talented, committed people and setting them up here with their counterparts serves both communities in incredibly powerful ways,” he said.

Kaizer stressed that this is only the beginning of the relationship between the experts. “We learned this week that there is a ton of work to do, but the great thing about the people involved with this project is that everyone is committed to doing the work and making sure change happens in the future, which benefits both our cities.”

“This opportunity opened up a great dialogue between our two cities and the committee, and the dialogue will continue as our joint mission becomes more focused,” he added. “Great things came out of this week, and great things will continue to come as we keep working together. This is not the end.”

For more information on the Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership, please contact Jill Holtzman Hoyt at (323) 761-8161 or JHoyt@JewishLA.org.