Educating for Change in Attitudes toward Nature and Environment among Oriental Jews in Israel

Abstract

Like other industrial and developing states, Israel needs to instill into its population a sense of care for the environment. This is easier to achieve with Israelis from a European background than with the Oriental Jews. This large group, comprising about half of Israel's Jews, are going through a process of Westernization, which involves a radical change in their traditional attitudes in many aspects of life. Different programs carried out by the Society for Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) aim at educating this population, and especially the younger, Israel-born generation, toward a change in their views of and relations to nature and the environment. An account is given of the prevailing attitudes found in traditional Jewish-Oriental society, based on one hand on general Jewish religious sources and on the other hand on oral and written texts of the Oriental communities themselves. A limited comparison shows the existence of similar attitudes in other Jewish and non-Jewish traditional societies. Anecdotal material is cited as evidence for the continuity of these points of view and ways of behaving among children and youth. These are followed by a description of the SPNI programs for adults and children aimed at bringing them nearer to an appreciation of the importance of nature and the environment in human life and an understanding of the need for their protection.