An interview with Eran Doron of the Environmental Fellows Program
He's a nature lover in the original, purist sense. "We're a dying breed, I know that, but I am still into hiking," he says. "I have a basic affinity to nature. I also understand the economic and social implications of environmental issues - that fascinating aspect hit me over the head like a ton of bricks when it sunk ins. But in the end - everyone wants to go back to nature." His personal preference is the open and stark kind: the desert.
His name is Eran Doron, he's 32 years old, one of 15 fellows in the 2004-2005 program, on average the youngest group to date. He comes from the Sde Boker field school in the Negev desert, where he lives and works. His ideological roots run deep in the historical environmental movement, embodied by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. His BA is in Geomorphology - landscape design, and his MA in landscape rehabilitation, geography and ecology from the Ben Gurion University in the Negev. Unlike the more prevalent Environmental Fellow profile, of an urban professional with limited existing environmental knowledge, Eran is familiar with a lot of the text but deeply impressed by the people and their commitment. "There's a very high level of activism here," he says. "These people go to demonstrations like I go to the supermarket!"
"The variety is tremendous," he describes the group. "It's not what we're always called: 'the environmentalists' (called 'the greens', 'hayerukim', in Hebrew) - it's a great variety of people - some from institutions like the IDF and the Ministry of the Environment, others super militant, anti-institutional, intellectuals. And all with a very deep sense of personal integrity."
 Why did you apply to the Program?
"The environmental discourse in Israel stems from the Fellows Program. The Heschel Center has long been a pilgrimage destination for me, in my attempt to burst out of the warm Negev bubble and realize that there are other issues to consider. It deals with the texts and the material that made me get involved with environmental issues in the first place. It also gives me a chance to get updated, to learn and to network."
 Where do you see problem areas?
"The environmental movement can talk itself to death… We can talk about flowers, the occupation, the Fence, bicycles - we chew each other's ears off. But in the end - we're convincing the convinced. We have not been able to penetrate into the mainstream Israeli public. Not as individuals, and not as organizations."

Eran is single, and has two brothers - one an ultra-orthodox rabbinical student in Jerusalem, the other a graphic designer in Tel Aviv. The Washtenaw County Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the US, has adopted him through a contribution to the Heschel Center, and Eran asked to take the opportunity to thank the community. "I hope we can turn this philanthropic connection into a partnership," he says with his particular combination of a boyish and deeply serious smile.

Eran's parents were among the founders of the city of Karmiel in 1964, and he grew up in the Western Galilee. "It got too crowded there for me," he says of the sparsely populated Galilee. "Development was much too accelerated. Here in the desert, we get one new gas station in four years. That's a little too slow. But in the Galilee - the fast pace of construction changed the scenery and the population in a way I didn't like." He followed a woman he loved to Sde Boker eight years ago, and although they are no longer together, he never left the place since.

"The Midrasha (the Hebrew name for the school) is a special place, with lots of vision and creativity," he says, "and at the same time it's disconnected from everything that happens in Israel and abroad." He sees the Negev as a microcosmos of all of Israel: "It has urban and rural settlements, rich and poor, dramatic socio-economic gaps, social justice issues, nuclear waste, quarrys and open spaces, bedouins and Jews, disenfranchised and social recluses, nomads and artists, tribes and clans. It has everything, in black and white, in your face, and you can learn a lot from it. I, for example, think that individual settlement is good for the Negev, and that the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel fought a wrong battle on this issue".
  How do you make a living from loving nature?
He managed the field school for five years ("there's another big field school in Ramat Hanadiv, but they have Rothchild buried on their grounds. We have Ben Gurion. That makes a big difference."), but gave it up in order to develop comprehensive projects and resources for the whole complex he works and lives in. One of the many projects he's working on is trying to connect the entire school system, from elementary school until university master's level classes ("if it can't be done here - it can't be done anywhere"). Some may wonder what could possibly be the advantage, but Eran talks of a different breed who lives in the desert: "some excellent, brilliant people, who gave up Central Israel for another quality of life. That includes riding your bike everywhere you go".

Another project Eran is promoting is called "The Israeli Bridge" - a large-scale attempt to bring every Jew in the world to Israel to spend at least one year of their life here.

In addition, Eran is working on establishing a publishing house at the school, and he dreams of a publishing company for books about the desert. He's also trying to build an environmental guesthouse alongside the regular Sde Boker B&B, which will incorporate environmentally-sound preservation and recycling practices.
 What do you see as your challenges in the Fellows program?
"To remain critical of the theories we learn. The material is fascinating, but I don't want to accept it as holy and sacred ideas. I must be able to maintain a critical point of view. There are many shades of gray. I don't buy this dichotomy of real estate sharks vs. justice, for example - a view that some people in the program hold. Things are not that simple."

Neither are his hobbies: "this is the only activity in which I reach a maximum concentration level," he says of his skydiving hobby. "I fall from a height of 4 km (close to 12,000 feet) to a height of 1 km (3,000 feet) in one minute, at up to 270 km/hr," he explains calmly. Then I have to open the parachute. And if I'm not concentrated enough to do that right - the consequences can be severe. I love using my body as an aviation vehicle. You have to be in a Superman position, but not with your arms forward, like we used to do as kids, but with your arms back, so you can accelerate..."
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