Skip to content

Where different views on Israel and Judaism are welcome.

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • [email protected]! video
Weinberg Residence Spring 2023 box ad

Search

Archives

"The Basketball Game" is a graphic novel adaptation of the award-winning National Film Board of Canada animated short of the same name – intended for audiences aged 12 years and up. It's a poignant tale of the power of community as a means to rise above hatred and bigotry. In the end, as is recognized by the kids playing the basketball game, we're all in this together.

Recent Posts

  • Who decides what culture is?
  • Time of change at the Peretz
  • Gallup poll concerning
  • What survey box to check?
  • The gift of sobriety
  • Systemic change possible?
  • Survivor breaks his silence
  • Burying sacred books
  • On being an Upstander
  • Community milestones … Louis Brier Jewish Aged Foundation, Chabad Richmond
  • Giving for the future
  • New season of standup
  • Thinker on hate at 100
  • Beauty amid turbulent times
  • Jewish life in colonial Sumatra
  • About this year’s Passover cover art
  • The modern seder plate
  • Customs from around world
  • Leftovers made yummy
  • A Passover chuckle …
  • המשבר החמור בישראל
  • Not your parents’ Netanyahu
  • Finding community in art
  • Standing by our family
  • Local heads new office
  • Hillel BC marks its 75th
  • Give to increase housing
  • Alegría a gratifying movie
  • Depictions of turbulent times
  • Moscovitch play about life in Canada pre-legalized birth control
  • Helping people stay at home
  • B’nai mitzvah tutoring
  • Avoid being scammed
  • Canadians Jews doing well
  • Join rally to support Israeli democracy
  • Rallying in Rishon Le-Tzion

Recent Tweets

Tweets by @JewishIndie
photos - Dr. Larry Barzelai and Maayan Kreitzman will talk about environmental activism at Limmud on March 1

Climate hot topic at Limmud

0 Flares 0 Flares ×

Dr. Larry Barzelai and Maayan Kreitzman will talk about environmental activism at Limmud on March 1. (photos from the interviewees)

Environmental activism is among Canada’s top news stories in recent days and the issue will be confronted from both a Jewish and a broader perspective by two leading voices at Limmud Vancouver next month.

Dr. Larry Barzelai, a Vancouver family doctor, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine and B.C. chair of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), will present alongside Maayan Kreitzman, a PhD candidate at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at UBC. The pair acknowledges that they come at the topic using different tactics, but aim for the same objective.

Kreitzman has been among those blockading the port and traffic.

“The actions happening in the streets right now are in response to this Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline construction on Wet’suwet’an land,” she said. But this is only one element of the much larger picture, which is that oil and gas development is “occurring unabated and greenhouse gas emissions and ecological destruction is continuing unabated throughout the world, when we know that these activities are threatening our life-support system and are putting billions of people at risk over the next decade. People are already being impacted today.”

The issue brings together a host of concerns, she said, including “indigenous rights and sovereignty, the Canadian government’s complicity in a climate-unsafe future … as well as the business side of that from the private sector.”

Kreitzman has heard the complaints that disruptive protests may turn off potential allies and anger the general public.

“I think people’s emotions are valid and there is a valid concern about disrupting ordinary people that need to make a living and need to take care of their families,” she told the Independent. “On the other hand, I think many of the people that sometimes make these kind of complaints aren’t really the people that are struggling to feed their families. People that come from a place of privilege need to recognize that these protests inconveniencing them is a small price to pay for the types of progressive changes that will benefit all of us, including their children.”

Kreitzman said she and Barzelai will “bring a concise summary of the latest science to people so that they really understand the magnitude of the situation that we’re in.”

She said, “We’ll be speaking to a spectrum of different actions, from the personal to the more conventional campaigning type of approaches, like report-writing, research, lobbying, letter-writing, to direct-action approaches, which is what I’m most interested in, where people that have privilege start putting their bodies on the line and breaking the law on purpose, using the message of nonviolent civil resistance, which has been successful in many movements throughout history.”

Barzelai takes a more conventional approach to advocacy, but shares Kreitzman’s sense of urgency.

“Climate change, which we’re calling a climate emergency, is upon us,” he told the Independent. “It’s dramatic and we have to take big steps to do something about it. Maayan is taking a bit more radical approach to this. Myself and my group are a bit more middle-of-the-road, shall we say, but I think we both have the same endpoint in mind – that things have to change dramatically.”

CAPE, which has been around for about 25 years, focuses on the health impacts of environmental decisions and climate change.

“We see diseases that are spreading, we see cancers that are becoming more rampant, we are seeing the floods and the wildfires and the temperature changes that are dramatically affecting people’s health and we figure it’s our responsibility as doctors to look at climate change from a health perspective and to inform people of what’s going to happen unless we make dramatic changes,” he said.

Fracking is one area where he thinks British Columbia is “really going down the wrong path.”

“They’ve bought this myth that natural gas is clean energy, which it is absolutely not, and they are doing their best to increase rather than decrease global warming, and we think that’s the crucial issue that needs to be discussed in Canada and especially in B.C.,” he said.

Kreitzman and Barzelai will speak at Limmud Vancouver on March 1.

Tickets and more information can be found at limmudvancouver.com.

Print/Email
0 Flares Twitter 0 Facebook 0 Google+ 0 0 Flares ×
Format ImagePosted on February 21, 2020February 19, 2020Author Pat JohnsonCategories LocalTags climate crisis, education, environment, Larry Barzelai, Limmud Vancouver, Maayan Kreitzman, tikkun olam

Post navigation

Previous Previous post: Many ideas at Limmud
Next Next post: ‘הקהילה היהודית בוונקובר, חלק א
Proudly powered by WordPress