Author: Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert

A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Peace and War, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , ,
No War in Syria Candlelight Vigil, Northampton MA 9-9-13
No War in Syria Candlelight Vigil, Northampton MA 9-9-13

Something magical happened at the peace demonstration in Northampton, Massachusetts tonight.

A young man crossed the street to read our signs, and then engaged in dialog with four of us. He told us that he was very ambivalent, because he didn’t want to be seen as supporting chemical weapons. I told him, “I don’t think you’ll find a single one of us [sweeping my hand to indicate the more than 200 demonstrators] in favor of chemical weapons. And it isn’t clear who it was that used the chemical weapons—but it is clear that war will not solve the problem, and will destabilize the region. It doesn’t have to be only two choices: war or no action. There are a lot of other options.”

Another demonstrator talked about the likelihood that Iran and Israel would be drawn into the conflict. And someone else noted, “200,000 people have died in this conflict. I don’t see that chemical weapons are so much worse than landmines as to be worth going to war.” To which the young man replied, “That’s a really good point. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.” No doubt reflecting on our questioner’s age, the fourth demonstrator talked about the likelihood that a new war could reinstate the draft.

I spoke again: “With the possible exception of the former Yugoslavia, I can’t think of a single war after World War II where war solved the problem, and I can think of many where it made it worse. I don’t understand how killing innocent people to protest the killing of innocent people makes any sense.”

At that point, the young man said he had to go meet his friend, but he thanked us for the dialogue and said we’d left him with a lot to think about.

To me, participating in this dialogue and watching a mind open in front of us (not necessarily change, but open) makes it all worthwhile. It is so rare to get immediate feedback that our actions make a difference—but tonight, I and three other people made a difference in thinking of one young man.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
—Margaret Mead

In 44 years of participating in political protest, I can count a dozen or so times where I could see instantly that my actions actually mattered. This was one of them. Another was the very first demonstration I ever went to, in 1969 when I was 12. That time, the person who was changed was me.

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By Posted on Posted in language, Media Ethics, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This year’s “Shame On You, That’s Propaganda, Not Journalism” award goes to AP reporter Julie Pace, the Associated Press for distributing it, and the dozens of newspapers and blogs that ran the story on President Barack Obama’s decision to consult Congress before going to war with Syria over chemical weapons.

Pace’s story, “Analysis: Obama’s credibility on line in reversal,” greeted me from Page 1 of my local newspaper this morning. Her message: Obama will be seen as weak if his line-in-the-sand on chemical weapons doesn’t lead him to military action.

Perhaps channelling the discredited Judith Miller of the New York Times, who helped drum up domestic support for the ill-advised, illegal, and tragic war in Iraq during the George W. Bush presidency, Pace writes, among other zingers,

President Barack Obama’s abrupt decision to instead ask Congress for permission left him with a high-risk gamble that could devastate his credibility if no action is ultimately taken in response to a deadly chemical weapons attack that crossed his own “red line.”

The stunning reversal also raises questions about the president’s decisiveness and could embolden leaders in Syria, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere, leaving them with the impression of a U.S. president unwilling to back up his words with actions.

If you ask ME…

  1. The President is constitutionally required to get Congress’s permission. Even G.W. Bush did so, though based on a tangled web of fabrications, untruths, and misleading statements.
  2. It is fairly clear that chemical weapons were used in Syria, and that is definitely not acceptable. However, there’s been quite a bit of speculation about who actually used them. Here, for example, a Congressman in Obama’s own party expresses skepticism about who used the weapons—and about their use to justify military action. And here, an AP story that speculates the rebels may have been the ones using chemical weapons, in order to draw other countries into the conflict.
  3. Pace makes an assumption that military force is the only acceptable response. That, frankly, is just plain crazy. Why not just send in a small, well-protected squad of international peacekeepers to arrest Assad, and try him? This is not so different from the way the US killed Bin Laden, after all.
  4. If the justification is to save innocent lives, please explain to me how the far greater bloodshed that inevitably occurs in war will accomplish anything other than the embitterment of the local populace against us and their recruitment by terror elements, as has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan—which, not coincidentally, undermined most of our credibility and our reservoir of good will in those parts of the world.
  5. War generally does not solve problems. Usually, it makes things much worse.
  6. In this case, war with Syria runs huge risks of involving Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Iran. Do we really want to create a regional holocaust and the potential for World War III?
  7. Diplomacy and example are much more powerful credibility builders than macho posturing.
  8. Speaking of example, the US is not in a position to throw stones here. The US has a long and ugly history of using unconscionable weapons that disproportionately affect civilians. Examples include the Dresden firebombing against German civilians and the use of atomic bombs against Japanese civilians during World War II, Napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam (aren’t those chemical weapons?), and depleted uranium in Iraq.

Lastly, which part of Obama’s noncredibility do we want to focus on? Is it the red line in the sand about chemical weapons that Pace focuses on—or the deeper issue that even she mentions later in the article?

Obama could make good on the promises he made as a senator and presidential candidate, when he called for restraint and congressional consultation by White House’s seeking military force. And with the American public weary of war and many opposed to even modest military action against Syria, Obama could share with Congress the burden of launching an attack.

To me, he started losing credibility when he failed to make good on those promises of peace for which he was elected. He has proven himself a war hawk, a lover of the Bush-era NSA spy apparatus, an enabler of torture and false imprisonment at Guantanamo, a suppressor of dissent, and  unworthy of my trust. If he tries to be a Boy Scut about his promise of retaliation if chemical weapons are used, he breaks those earlier, more crucial promises yet again.

Barack Obama is still an improvement over Bush, but it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles Tagged with , ,

Yesterday, I showed you  how local organic food makes a difference in my life, my wallet, and in the health of the planet. The day before, I shared the five-course locavore feast I made, where the only nonlocal main ingredient I used was rice. Today, we wrap up this series with 10 specific ways you can get more local and organic food into your life—even if you live in a big-city apartment: Grow Your Own:

  • Grow herbs and dwarf tomatoes on a sunny windowsill
  • Set up a vertical garden—if you have about three square feet of space, you can buy a plastic tower for hydroponic gardening, and it’s amazing how much food you can get from this
  • Get a plot at a local community garden (or organize your neighbors to convert a vacant lot from an eyesore into a bountiful community-building enterprise)
  • Grow potted or raised-bed food plants on your balcony, terrace, or fire escape (as long as you don’t block the exit pathways)—and investigate whether your roof is suitable for a garden
  • Find a friend in the neighborhood who has a yard, and who will let you garden there for a portion of the harvest
  • Make friends with a gardener who will give you some of the harvest in exchange for your labor

Buy From Farmers:

All this is possible even in the largest cities. Watch the movie, “No Impact Man” (or read the book) to see how one Manhattan family switched to 100% locavore eating. (Link goes to my blog about the movie.) Enjoy!

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

Yesterday, I wrote about how much fun I have cooking and eating local organic food—and how it’s not uncommon for 80 percent of our dinners to be grown within a few miles of our house.

Today, I want to talk about what local organic food means personally, and to the planet.

For me:

  • Food that’s fun to cook and delicious to eat
  • Super-fresh, and loaded with nutrition, vitamins, and minerals (instead of toxic chemicals)
  • Very frugal
  • Children who feel a direct connection to where their food comes from and how it grows—and who have carried their food awareness into their own lives in big cities, now that they’re grown
  • Community; we always see friends when we pick up our share at the CSA farm, and they have educational programs like herb walks or food preservation workshops, potlucks and concerts once in a while

As an example of the dollars and cents, consider the six-flat of tomato plants we bought. I think we paid $3—so 50 cents per plant. Let’s amortize the fixed costs of the garden across all the crops, and add another $3 to cover the tomatoes’ share. So we’re up to $6.

Fresh local organic tomatoes are usually around $3 per pound at the local farmers  markets—so we break even on the second pound. This is a slow year; we’re only getting about a dozen tomatoes a week, perhaps four pounds. Some years we get more like 40 pounds a week. But even with this year’s limited crop, that means we’re pulling in $120 worth over a ten-week harvest season, and in a good year, that number is more like $1200. And that’s just one crop; we’re also growing broccoli, green beans, kidney beans, eggplant, kale, onions, basil, rosemary, cucumbers, zucchini, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and peas (earlier in the year). The whole garden costs us less than $100 for the year.

We split the $600 CSA membership with another family, and we collect our share for about 23 weeks, typically getting 10-20 pounds of organic produce per week—or roughly 345 pounds for the year. If the stores averaged even $4 per pound (they’re often higher for organic), that means our $300 has turned into $1380—not bad!

Saving so much money on our local organic produce lets us justify the expense of the locally produced food craft items at the farmers markets; the cheeses and eggs are quite a bit more expensive than the industrial versions in supermarkets. But it’s worth it, because they taste so much better, feel so much better in our bodies, and help our local organic farmers stay in farming. And with those foods, a little goes a long way; $10 or $20 a week gives us all we need.

The Planet:

Now, let’s look at what my food lifestyle means to the economy and ecology of my town, and the whole country:

  • Very low carbon footprint. Instead of being shipped across the country, our food is hand-carried about 100 feet from our garden to our kitchen, or brought three miles (five kilometers) from the CSA farm either by car or bicycle. Instead of requiring huge inputs of petrochemicals and petrolabor, we work our garden by hand, except for the initial rototilling. And as vegetarians, our carbon footprint is much lower than if we ate meat (it would be lower still if we went vegan).
  • Chemical-free. No health effects from pesticides and herbicides—to me and those who share my table, or to the farmers who grow it. AND no harmful effects to the soil and the water.
  • Good for the local economy. Our farm membership fee and the dollars we spend on local dairy products, bread, and fruit stay in the community, instead of being siphoned off by a dozen middlemen and into the coffers of far-away corporations.
  • Good for farmland. Every farmer that sells food to us is a farmer who is keeping the land in agriculture instead of selling that land off for development—and every successful local organic farm is a living lesson to other farmers that they don’t need to douse the earth (and their customers’ bodies) with poisons.

Pretty cool!

Now it’s Your Turn:

Please leave a comment about how you’ve incorporated (or will start incorporating) local artisan foods into your lifestyle. How are local organic foods making a difference to you?

Still need ideas? Tomorrow’s blog will provide concrete steps you can take to green your food, even if you live in a city. I do have to warn you though: once you’ve tasted REAL food, you won’t ever be satisfied by the poor imitations that dominate the industrial food system.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , ,

Are you a locavore?

From June through October, the vast majority of or dinners are 60 percent or more sourced locally—and the majority of that, hyperlocally: either our own garden, or the Next Barn Over CSA farm 3 miles up the road, or the artisan cheeses and breads we buy from area farmers markets. (In a CSA farm, you pay a membership fee and then collect the harvest all season)

Last night’s dinner, about 80 percent locavore, was typical: Of the five different dishes I prepared, four used only local main ingredients (plus very small quantities of non-local flavorings, such as olive oil, salt, and balsamic vinegar):

  1. Cucumber-tomato-basil soup. All three main ingredients from our garden, plus a touch of hot pepper from the CSA .
  2. Grilled shitake mushrooms, grown by a friend of ours one town over, and seasoned with herbs from the CSA farm.
  3. Our own green beans and onions in a nonspicy peanut sauce (locally made one-ingredient natural peanut butter thinned with boiling water—yes, I know, the peanuts, were grown elsewhere, but I ground them myself a couple of days ago, using the store’s machine).
  4. Organic brown rice (the one nonlocal main ingredient) with our own tomatoes, our own oregano and lavender, the farm’s thyme, and local Greek yogurt.
  5. Salad with our own cucumbers, the farm’s salad greens and red bell pepper, and a local artisan goat cheese, garnished with non-local walnuts.

I was in a Mediterranean mood, so I used a lot of oregano, thyme, Greek yogurt, and salt. Some meals are more Indian,  Chinese, Italian, or Mexican themed, some are a mix—and some have no theme at all.

Eating like this has been remarkably easy, frugal, and infinitely rewarding—I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

This time of year, our menu planning revolves around what’s in the crisper. I cooked what I cooked because we had two big bags of green beans in the fridge,and one of them was harvested three or four days ago and was not going to last too much longer, by our standards. I’d originally thought I’d make a mixed-veggie dish with our garden broccoli, zucchini, and eggplant—but when I saw the large number of beans that had to be used, I shifted the plan. The rice was left over from Dina’s cooking Thursday night, and we’re still inundated with cucumbers, so I built both the soup and salad around them (all-told, I used eight cukes and four tomatoes plus another seven or so for a batch of frozen sauce I made this morning).

Last night’s feast was a typical meal in the Horowitz/Friedman household. It’s how we eat in the summer and fall. In the winter, we often still manage to eat 30 to 50 percent locavore, drawing heavily on what we’ve frozen and dried during the harvest.

It’s still August, and our freezer is already crammed with corn, kale, green beans, three kinds of our own berries, tomato sauce, garlic scapes, basil pesto, and I forget what all else, and our pantry is lined with jars of dried zucchini and tomatoes—all of it local and organic, and processed while still very fresh.

Growing up in New York City apartment buildings in the 1960s and 70s, “locavore” was an unknown concept. The “fresh” vegetables  we ate were trucked from California and had been sitting for weeks and most of our my friends ate their veggies out of cans. So the way I eat is a radical departure from the way I ate as a child. I knew ONE family with a garden: friends of my mother who lived in suburban Westchester County.

Tomorrow, please check back—we’ll look at the impact of eating locally and organic—how being a locavore is good for you, your wallet, and the planet.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

Entergy’s Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant has been operating illegally since March 2012 and unsafely since its opening in 1972. It is the same design as the plants that failed at Fukushima.

Although continued operation past the original license expiration date has been illegal under the plant’s agreement with the state of Vermont, the federal government has allowed the plant to keep operating, and even renewed the license for another 20 years.

The economics have been questionable for much of that time, and today, Entergy announced that it will close the plant no later than the end of 2014. (That link is the coverage by the Wall Street Journal.)

Now, if we can just baby it along without a major accident until then…

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

In Part 1, I looked at my own history as a bicultural who is at home in my native New York City as well as in the farm village of 200 people where I live now. Part 2 looked at the context of going no-impact in present-day NYC, and how in some ways it’s easier now, and outlined Colin Beavan’s choices in attempting to live a year with no net negative impact on the environment.

In this final part, I close the circle and direct my bicultural lens on Colin’s choices.

First, I have enormous respect for what he and his wife did. They telescoped into a matter of weeks lifestyle choices that took us decades to evolve, and with considerable personal sacrifice. No  movies, no eating out, no curling up with a great book long after the lights are out.

Second, I understand why they took it to the extreme they did. Their lives were so far out of balance that it took radical surgery to set it right, and it was clear at the end of the movie that as the cycle ended, they would reintroduce some of those comforts, starting with electricity.

But I don’t go quite that far. I’ve always had a goal of low negative environmental impact, rather than no environmental impact.

When I lived in Northampton, I walked or biked constantly—but I could get to town in three minutes by bike, or eight on foot. Now, I live in a place that is not served by public transit. And while I’ve been biking more frequently to Amherst or Northampton, I don’t always have the two hours to bike round-trip, versus 30 to 40 minutes by car.

On the other hand, I eat very locally. In the summer and fall, about 75% of our diet is hyperlocal, either from our own garden or from the CSA farm three miles away (and yes, we often pick up our veggies by bike). Another big chunk comes from local farmers markets eight miles away, whose vendors are mostly within 20 miles. But that still leaves us eating plenty of stuff that doesn’t grow around here.

And I’ve had a consciousness about local food for 30 years—something that’s very common here in the Valley even among the most mainstream people. Living here, I see the cycles of food in a way that’s difficult to experience in New York City.

I live in a single family home that could be better insulated, and now that the kids are grown, it’s a lot of space for two people. Certainly more than we absolutely need.

On the other hand, we’ve added solar hot water and photovoltaic, and the house, built in 1743, long ago amortized the carbon footprint of its construction.

Colin chose to give up toilet paper in favor of rewashable cloth, because he didn’t want to be responsible for cutting down trees. I am not sure that’s actually the most eco-friendly option. First of all, toilet paper NOT made from virgin wood is widely available. In New York City, at least four brands of recycled toilet paper are easily available, including Marcal, which actually uses New York City’s junk mail to manufacture its paper goods, and has for 63 years. So using that solution actually reduces landfill impact. And second, in order to avoid a BIG problem with germs, the water to wash those cloths has to be really, really hot. And hot water, unless it’s solar-heated, is an emormous draw-down of energy and user of fossil fuels.

If were to be eco-purist, I could find 100 little inconsistencies to carp about—but that’s not the point. The point is that this experiment transformed Colin and Michelle’s lives, and actually had a large impact on the way people think—particularly people in large cities.

And what do YOU think? Please leave your comment below.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Arts & Entertainment, Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, media-general, Social and Economic Justice, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

With the personal history I described in Part 1, our viewing of “No Impact Man” reflects both our urban past and our rural present: two very different worlds. Although we were never hyperconsumerist like Michelle, we certainly absorbed the message of that mindset. Growing up, we lived in a culture that gave very little thought to where its food or clothing came from. Even though I was already environmentally conscious, I was not aware of a single farmers market in New York City until shortly before we moved away, when I learned about the market in Union Square. I bought my veggies at a minuscule, locally owned, independent produce store that paid attention to freshness and quality; I even had a job there for a while.

New York City Is More Open to No Impact Lifestyle Now

On the other hand, New York City is one place where it’s considered normal not to have a car. And since our day, the city has evolved not only much more of a consciousness around local and green, but an infrastructure. Colin Beavan and Michelle’s Manhattan residence is walkable from the massive 4-times-a-week farmers market in Union Square (up to 140 vendors). The market was their major food supplier for their year of localism.And they could  shop often enough that living without a refrigerator was not that big a problem (though there was at least one spoiled milk incident). When I lived in the city, the Union Square market actually did exist—it was founded in 1976)—but it was tiny, much less frequent, and not widely publicized. These days, there are at least 107 farmers markets in the city, 54 of them under the umbrella of GrowNYC.

Colin Beavan’s Choice

Colin Beavan, co-star with his wife, Michelle Conlin, of “No Impact Man,” decided to phase down most modern conveniences. No plastic packaging, no food from farther than 250 miles (goodbye, olive oil, coffee, chocolate, and black tea—and goodbye to nonlocal wheat, rice, and most other grains—though there is a small amount of wheat being grown here in Western Massachusetts, well within Colin’s 250-mile limit), no vehicles that had a carbon impact (so long, buses, cars, taxis, and even the subway), no elevator to their 9th-floor apartment, even no toilet paper (using washable cloth, instead). Eventually, no electricity in their apartment, except for a solar panel that charged Colin’s laptop. And somehow, he managed to convince Michelle, a self-described nature-loathing fast-food, designer fashion, and television addict, to go along.

What Happened

Colin and Michelle (and their toddler, Isabella), changed pretty abruptly from total immersion to near-total withdrawal from the conveniences associated with the yuppie New York City professional lifestyle. But they didn’t withdraw from society. They still had their old friends—and made new friends through the farmers market, a community garden, and Colin’s volunteer work. And they got tons of press, with major features and appearances from the New York Times to Good Morning America and the Colbert Report. More importantly, they both found a deeper connection with the world around them, and to their daughter. The lifestyle that at first felt like a hardship actually became liberating—even to skeptical Michelle. And both noticed a health improvement, moving from a sedentary lifestyle to one involving a lot of walking and bicycling, and changing from processed industrial foods to a locavore vegetarian diet. Michelle even reversed a prediabetic condition, while Colin joked that the New York Times article, with its headline about giving up toilet paper, should have been called “How I Lost 20 Pounds Without Going to the Gym.”

My Bi-Cultural Perspective on the Experiment

I promised you that I’d bring my mixed NYC and rural perspective to analyzing this movie. And I will do so in Part 3, tomorrow, and actually conclude this series.

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

I’d been wanting to see “No Impact Man” since it came out a few years ago. It’s a documentary of a family who tries to live for a year with zero net impact on the environment, phasing down gradually from the conveniences we take for granted.

Last night, we watched the movie. What I had never realized is that Colin and his at-first-skeptical wife Michelle are doing this in New York City—in the capital of consumerism, in the belly of the beast. And Michelle in particular came from a superconsumerist lifestyle, a self-identified shopping addict who purchased lots of designer clothes and either ate out or got take-out almost every night.

The Bicultural Perspective

Dina and I were both raised in New York City; we were both living in Brooklyn when we met. But 32 years ago, we moved from Philadelphia (we’d lived there for nine months) to Greenfield, Massachusetts, population 20,000 and the hub town for farmy Franklin County.

Six months later, when Dina got a job 40 miles south of us, we moved 20 miles south to Northampton, a hip, urbane small college/arts town of 30,000, also surrounded by farmland.

And then, after 17 years in Northampton, we moved across the river 15 years ago to Hockanum, a tiny village of about 200 souls. We live on a working farm that’s been in our neighbors’ family since 1806; they raise 400 cows as well as hay and corn to support the cattle.

Our farm neighbors sold us a house that was built in 1743, and they were only the second family to own it. Mount Holyoke (the mountain, not the college) is literally right behind our house; Mount Tom is just across the Connecticut River.

It’s pretty darn different from the 26-storey apartment building in a 35-high-rise complex where I lived during high school, or from the noisy urban melting pot neighborhoods of my earlier childhood and Dina’s entire upbringing.

For many years, we’ve called ourselves “bicultural.” We can still function well in the fast-paced, loud, crowded setting of New York. But after 32 years in the Pioneer Valley, we’re actually more at home with our country neighbors—talking about our gardens, hiking the hills, and sharing an ethic that values the land. Frugality and green choices have always been a part of our lifestyle, even before we left the city.

With this history, our viewing of “No Impact Man” reflects both our urban past and our rural present: two very different worlds. (to be continued tomorrow)

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

My 19-year-old niece, Miriam Clayman, made aliyah yesterday. In other words, she emigrated to Israel and as a Jew, instantly became a citizen.

Unlike the US, which seems to be hostile to immigrants these days, Israel actively recruits and encourages Jews from around the world to make aliyah, and honors them when they arrive. Unlike the US, where immigrants must find their own community and must struggle silently with homesickness and unfamiliar customs, in Israel they get language immersion and the resources of a grateful government.

As a marketer watching part of the welcome ceremony in Israel (on replay), I was struck by how well Israel does its marketing and branding for this project.

Instant Community

It’s quite remarkable to me that this group of 127 olim (people who have made aliyah)—strangers when they arrived at the departure ceremony in New York just a day earlier—had clearly formed a community as they flew through the night to their new lives. And this was deliberate.

Israel’s government and business community joined to make sure the olim felt welcome; you could see it in a dozen little touches, such as:

  • The special “aliyah plane” with its festive logos
  • The super-symbolic disembarkation on to an old-fashioned stairway to the tarmac, instead of a soulless mechanical jetway to an anywhere airport lounge
  • The ceremony with numerous dignitaries, including the minister in charge of resettling immigrants
  • The video feed of the entire event, plus commentary, footage from inside the plane, footage as the olim stepped off the plane, etc.—broadcast live to the eager family and friends around the world, and available for replay as a powerful persuasion tool

The two olim selected to represent the group and receive their certificates in front of everybody, shake hands with and hug the dignitaries, etc. happened to be my niece and  her boyfriend, Ben Yablon, who met  as gap-year-in-Israel students last year. Their love story is apparently quite appealing to the media; they had already been featured in a big article in a major Israeli newspaper and a radio interview last week.miriam and ben Yediot Achronot

Imagine starting life in a new country as an honored and welcomed community member whose new country is excited to receive you—imagine your own perception, and the perception of your friends and family back home, that you’ve finally “come home.”

Marketing by forming communities is certainly nothing new. Companies like Harley-Davidson and Apple  have built their whole brands around it. It’s part of why social media marketing has taken off. It’s part of why smart marketers often stage events. But rarely does a whole country say, “we’re so glad to have you as part of our community.”

The Wider Context

Of course, Israel’s welcoming committee has a lot of the groundwork already done. The new immigrants have already embraced Israel and the idea of an ancient Jewish homeland that has risen again. Diaspora Jews of European origin often feel a stronger pull to Israel than to the actual country where their parents or grandparents grew up. Jews in the US, at least, are often raised with intense loyalty to Israel; the idea of being pioneers building a new country is very strong even among American Jews who have no intention of actually moving. Even the Passover seder ends with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

And let’s not forget the wider regional context. Israel is not popular with its neighbors. Many in the region and around the world consider it a pariah state. And unfortunately, acts of violence and oppression on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have fanned the flames of this hatred. Both sides have rejected real opportunities for peace over and over again. Israel was founded in 1948, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, as an almost utopian society, full of rhetoric of optimism and equality—and some of the people who were present at its founding are still alive. But the reality has not always lived up to the rhetoric.

It is worth asking what kind of reception do non-Jewish immigrants receive in Tel Aviv. But it’s also worth looking at the whole concept of building community, not just for a brand, but for a nation, as some of the most powerful marketing possible.

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