Green Zionism

Protecting the Land of Israel provides the central connection between environmental responsibility and Zionist attachment in the related idea of “Eco-Zionism.”[1] This approach joins love for Israel with concern for Creation, treating the protection of a small, densely populated, sacred country as part of responsibility toward other people, other creatures, and future generations.[1] Organizationally, the Green Zionist Alliance gives this outlook a Diaspora dimension through its mission to educate and mobilize Jews outside Israel on behalf of Israel’s environment.[3]

The religious resources associated with this outlook include prohibitions on destructive treatment of trees, obligations to allow agricultural land to rest, and an understanding of the natural world as a trust rather than an unrestricted possession.[4] Its Zionist historical resources include agricultural settlement, communal life close to nature, and A. D. Gordon’s association of national renewal with manual work on the land.[6][7] Contemporary applications include environmental education, sustainable construction, and renewable-energy advocacy,[8] as well as litigation against pollution.[9]

The relationship between Zionism and environmental thought has changed with agricultural practices and local conditions, rather than following one continuous environmental ethic.[5] Research identifies enduring technological optimism alongside changing attitudes toward nature and human intervention as pioneering agriculture became more industrialized.[5] The label Green Zionism can therefore encompass practical conservation, religious stewardship, and efforts to make national development environmentally sustainable, rather than only tree planting or agricultural cultivation.[1][8]

Genesis 2:15, with its instruction to work and guard the Garden of Eden, supplies a scriptural foundation for understanding humanity as responsible for the natural world.[4] Biblical and rabbinic rules extend that responsibility to trees, agricultural land, and shared spaces.[4] The prohibition on destroying fruit trees during a siege was extended in rabbinic interpretation to peacetime, while shmittah requires agricultural land in Eretz Yisrael to lie fallow every seventh year.[4] Jewish liturgical references to rainfall and dew also connect religious life with the conditions on which cultivation depends.[10]

Tu Bishvat preserves a particularly close relationship between Jewish life and the land.[11] In the Temple period, the date helped determine the age of trees for taxation and the initial three-year period of growth; this practice was lost after the Temple’s destruction and the loss of Jewish sovereignty.[11] Sixteenth-century Kabbalists in Safed developed a ritual modeled on the Passover seder, giving the date a renewed spiritual expression through fruit and study.[11][12] In modern Israel, Tu Bishvat became a day for planting trees and celebrating agriculture and forest replanting, while communities elsewhere increasingly observed it as a celebration of ecology and care for the earth.[12]

Agricultural work became one strand of Zionist immigration from the mid-nineteenth century.[13] Hovevei Zion was established in 1881, and approximately 65,000 Jews arrived in the Land of Israel during the First and Second Aliyah waves of 1882–1914, helping establish new rural and urban Hebrew settlement.[6] Early rural communities adopted modern agricultural techniques and contributed to collectivist forms of Zionism, including kibbutzim and moshavim.[13] Private Jewish buyers accounted for 75 percent of the land purchased by new Jewish immigrants by 1914; national Jewish organizations assumed a central funding and settlement role in the 1920s.[13]

A. D. Gordon (1856–1922), a philosopher of Labor Zionism, connected Jewish national renewal with a return to nature.[7] After immigrating to Palestine in 1904, he performed agricultural labor in settlements including Degania.[7] For Gordon, manual work could restore Jewish relationships with the land and nature through a project that was spiritual as well as national.[7] He regarded the reduction of nature to an exploitable commodity as harmful both to nature and to human social relations.[7] His legacy has consequently been connected with sustainable development, restraint in consumption, and the principle that industry should serve rather than damage nature.[7]

Hashomer Hatzair, founded in Galicia in 1913, combined Hebrew education, communal living, closeness to nature, and preparation for immigration to the Land of Israel.[6] From the 1920s, its socialist program also linked the construction of a Jewish workers’ society with recognition of an Arab people and its rights.[6] These educational and communal practices placed encounters with nature within a broader project of national and social reconstruction.[6]

Organized nature protection developed as the new state expanded towns, agriculture, water infrastructure, roads, and airports, while population growth and industrial development created environmental pressures.[14] A formative campaign concerned the draining of Lake Hula and its surrounding swamps between 1951 and 1958, undertaken to combat malaria and reclaim agricultural land.[15] Scientists and nature enthusiasts successfully sought preservation of part of the wetland to protect indigenous flora and fauna, helping launch Israel’s nature-protection movement.[15]

The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, founded in 1953, campaigned to defend landscapes, wildlife, natural environments, and open spaces against damaging development.[15] When popular wildflowers, including anemones and cyclamen, approached extinction in the early 1960s, public education and legislation were combined to discourage picking them.[15] Institutional milestones included the establishment of the National Parks Authority in 1963, the designation of Lake Hula as Israel’s first nature reserve in 1964, the Environmental Protection Service in 1973, and the Ministry of the Environment in December 1988.[14]

Modern Jewish environmentalism also developed outside Israel, especially in North America around 1970, in response to pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, species loss, and climate change.[16] Early-1970s writing addressed destructive technologies and criticism of religious understandings of humanity’s place in nature.[17] A “Rabbinic Stewardship” approach located environmental protection within Jewish tradition, while other approaches drew more extensively on Hasidic thought and related Western ideas; both influenced renewed Tu Bishvat observances.[17] The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, founded in 1993, coordinated education and brought Jewish participation into environmental policymaking.[16]

The Green Zionist Alliance translates environmental attachment to Israel into education, organizing, and participation in Zionist institutions.[3][18] At the 36th World Zionist Congress, the alliance won three of the 145 elected United States delegate seats and aligned with MERCAZ, the Conservative/Masorti movement’s Zionist arm.[18] It advanced resolutions on climate control, alternative fuels, sustainable development, carbon mitigation, recycling, and energy conservation, including a proposal to use compact fluorescent or LED lighting in World Zionist Organization buildings and offices.[18]

In the 2015 United States World Zionist Congress election, Green Israel was identified with Aytzim, the Green Zionist Alliance, and Jewcology.[19] Its priorities included cleaner air, attention to stray animals, expanded recycling, organic agriculture, and sustainable building.[19] Aytzim: Ecological Judaism also operated Jewcology.org and Shomrei Breishit: Rabbis and Cantors for the Earth.[20] Writing in 2021, Aytzim president David Krantz described it as an all-volunteer nonprofit he had cofounded during the Second Intifada with Jewish environmentalists including Rabbi Michael Cohen, Eilon Schwartz, and Alon Tal.[21]

Holiday observance offers another route into practical environmental action.[12][20] Krantz connected Hanukkah’s oil story with energy conservation and a call for clean air, water, and land.[20] Tu Bishvat observances combine tree planting, fruit, study, and celebration of Israeli agriculture with broader concern for the earth.[12] In a 2008 discussion, Nigel Savage advocated moving beyond individual lifestyle changes toward education, collective action, and advocacy, including stronger relationships between Jewish organizations and Israel’s environmental movement.[8] His proposals connected food systems, transportation, and climate change with Jewish learning and institutional practice.[8]

Jewish environmental education has also acquired academic and educational settings in Israel.[22] In 1999, the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership organized meetings and a symposium on Jewish environmental issues; in 2000, the Jerusalem College of Technology established its Center for Judaism and the Environment.[22] The survey’s author characterized the latter as the first center of its kind affiliated with an academic institution, while describing Israeli Jewish environmental activity at the time as sporadic compared with activity in the United States and Great Britain.[22]

Agriculture provides opportunities to connect religious land obligations with ecological design.[2] At Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev, Shoshana Rappeport’s family selected argan as a drought-resistant desert tree with low water requirements and no need for pesticides or fertilizers.[2] The project sought to support the local economy and encourage settlement in the town, while connecting cultivation with commandments to rest the land in the seventh year, leave portions for the poor, and give tithes.[2] A crowdfunding effort attracted supporters from Papua New Guinea, St. Petersburg, Central America, Singapore, the United States, Europe, and Africa.[2]

Israeli agricultural innovation has included drip irrigation, shade-house agriculture, aquaponics, and mineral-rich fertilizers from the Dead Sea.[13] Water provision has also drawn on desalination: in 2016, five active plants produced more than half of Israel’s drinking water.[13] Renewable-energy development supplied another practical field; passive-solar architectural design was adopted in the 1970s, and a historical account reported that solar energy had supplied more than half of domestic hot water since the 1950s.[23] The same account reported that the Israeli-American company Luz generated 95 percent of the world’s solar energy by the 1980s.[23]

Forestry and water management have been prominent activities of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael–Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901.[24] Figures published in 2023 credited it with planting 240 million trees and managing forests covering approximately 920,000 dunams, alongside environmental education, forest planning, stream and water restoration, and biodiversity work.[24] A 2011 commentary reported more than 220 JNF reservoirs, including 21 built in 2010, and plans for a wastewater-purification plant near Kfar Saba using plants, bacteria, and soil.[18] The commentary also described community participation in forest rehabilitation after the Carmel fire and in developing bicycle paths.[18]

Environmental advocacy has included legal action against pollution.[9] After returning to Israel in 1990, Alon Tal founded Adam Teva V’Din, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, and used court petitions to challenge polluters.[9] In its Kishon River case, independent tests found factory discharges exceeding reported levels; the resulting victory led to a $10 million purification installation, compensation for fishermen, and a fund for environmental issues.[9] Tal later worked to move the Jewish National Fund toward nature preservation and environmental activity.[9]

Restoration of damaged urban landscapes offers a further application.[25] Ariel Sharon Park was described in 2024 as covering about 8,400 dunams and functioning as an ecological corridor in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.[25] Its director connected the transformation of a neglected site into a public resource with environmental repair, ecological restoration, social justice, and access to nature for present and future generations.[25]

The story of Choni the Circle Drawer and a man planting a carob tree expresses an intergenerational principle central to Jewish environmental responsibility.[4] Asked why he was planting a tree that would take seventy years to bear fruit, the man explained: “My forefathers planted for me and I am planting the tree for my children.”[4] Samson Raphael Hirsch’s formulation—“Destroy none; abuse none; waste nothing; employ all things wisely”—similarly presents restraint and careful use as responsibilities extending across ordinary life.[4]

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks connected these responsibilities with Jewish sovereignty in a 1992 lecture to a Jewish National Fund rabbinical conference.[26] He interpreted settlement and improvement of the land through “conservation, afforestation, and restoration” as an ecological dimension of yishuv ha’aretz, linking Tu Bishvat with Jewish attachment to the land.[26] Sacks argued that Jewish environmental ethics must confront tensions between human use and respect for nature, and between immediate economic interests and long-term consequences.[26] He identified bal tashchit, Shabbat, shemittah, and yovel as resources for considering limits, and maintained that Israel’s emergence as a state made large-scale economic and conservation questions newly pressing for Jewish law.[26]

A survey of Jewish environmental studies likewise identified bal tashchit, avoidance of cruelty to animals, sabbatical and jubilee laws, and rules protecting open space around Levite cities as relevant legal concepts.[22] Its author called for separate study of the kibbutz and religious kibbutz movements’ attitudes toward nature, emphasizing the breadth of material available for examining Zionism’s environmental relationships.[22] In a contemporary commentary, Einat Kramer framed love for the Land of Israel as a responsibility to protect it for future generations, connecting Jewish agricultural traditions with the pioneers’ revival of the land.[27]

Green Zionist approaches also connect local attachment with wider ecological responsibility.[1] Jewish environmental thought extends responsibility to the whole planet, not exclusively to the Land of Israel.[17] Greenpeace Israel director Yonatan Aikhenbaum nevertheless articulated a specifically local approach: protecting Israel’s natural heritage because it belongs to the country’s shared environment, an outlook he believed could appeal across religious and political communities.[28] He also identified bal tashchit and the obligation to protect health as Jewish grounds for environmental action.[28]

Environmental history has widened attention beyond planting and cultivation to the consequences of development.[29][30] Alon Tal’s Pollution in a Promised Land drew on interviews with hundreds of experts and activists and examined air pollution, contaminated groundwater, urban sprawl, habitat loss, and river reclamation.[29] Between Ruin and Restoration places the preceding 150 years within a longer history extending from the biblical era toward future aspirations, addressing population, the agricultural roots of water problems, open space, party politics, and environmental challenges in Arab society in Israel.[30] These subjects give environmental responsibility a scope encompassing public health, planning, and social conditions as well as conservation.[29][30]

Proposals in the 2008 Jewish environmental discussion included carbon neutrality for Israel, renewable-energy targets, solar investment, and green building.[8] Yosef Israel Abramowitz advanced these as a future agenda rather than existing policy, connecting a long-running Jewish commitment to tree planting with a broader program of climate action.[8] Such proposals place environmental work within national institutions and collective decision-making, alongside education and individual observance.[8]

Interpretations differ over whether Zionism’s historical relationship with nature was primarily restorative, transformative, religious, or secular.[5][16] In 2008, Eilon Schwartz contrasted A. D. Gordon and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook with an ethos of conquering the desert and David Ben-Gurion’s technological optimism, connecting that optimism with both Israeli high-tech achievements and environmental crisis.[8] Aikhenbaum similarly argued that national construction had too often treated the landscape as empty wilderness, and criticized the limited attention environmental questions received in some religious and Haredi political settings.[28] These are interpretations of development and political priorities, rather than a single agreed account.[28]

Retrospective descriptions of early Zionism as environmental also require interpretive care.[31][32] A 2023 essay argued that the movement “began as a green movement,” drawing on JNF planting and the electric transport, agriculture, and power distribution imagined in Herzl’s Altneuland of 1902.[31] Another interpretation presented Herzl’s imagined power system as carbon-neutral and a replacement for fossil fuels; such readings apply contemporary environmental categories to his fictional and political vision.[32]

Tree planting has generated substantive ecological and land-use disputes.[33] In 2022, Bedouin protesters in the Negev objected to planting they said disrupted farming livelihoods, while ecological arguments concerned biodiversity and fire risk.[33] A Weizmann Institute botanist distinguished the native status of Aleppo pine from JNF’s expansion of its range, observing that planted pine forests generally supported less biodiversity than naturally occurring Mediterranean forests; JNF representatives disputed claims about invasiveness and flammability.[33] Abramowitz had earlier recommended Mediterranean oak and other locally suited trees instead of extensive pine planting.[8]

Accusations of “greenwashing” concern whether environmental initiatives divert attention from alleged persecution of Palestinians.[34] The Anti-Defamation League rejects that framing and argues that recognition of Israeli environmental achievements can coexist with criticism of Israeli policies.[34] This political dispute concerns the interpretation and presentation of environmental work, not an agreed definition of Green Zionism.[34]