As concerns mount over the environmental and public health consequences of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, Jewish groups are coalescing around a strategy that supports efforts to extract natural gas from shale rock while seeking to mitigate its worst effects.

In May, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), the community’s main public policy umbrella group, will consider a draft resolution on fracking that in its current form acknowledges the potential benefits of a major new source of natural gas while urging greater oversight and government regulation of the practice.

From Bibles to novels, English-language Judaica from Israel accounts for much of the inventory on American Jewish bookstore shelves.

A case in point: For the first time in his 27-book run, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has chosen to work with an Israeli publisher: Gefen will produce the Englewood writer’s forthcoming book, “Kosher Jesus.”

Shoppers at the Feb. 5-26 Seforim Sale at Yeshiva University, the largest Jewish book sale in North America (see sidebar), will find Israeli publishers well represented.

Rabbi Yaacov Haber, a former Monsey pulpit rabbi and co-founder of the year-old Mosaica Press in Jerusalem, says there are practical and emotional reasons for this trend.

When Maccabi came a-courtin’ last year, Steve Rosner bounced into action.

The American affiliate of Maccabi, the global Jewish sports organization, was looking for someone to help coach the men’s basketball team competing in the 12th quadrennial Pan American Maccabi games, held in São Paulo, Brazil, from Dec. 26 to Jan. 2. The games brought together 2,000 athletes from 16 countries.

“I didn’t really have to think twice about it,” said Rosner of the invitation to coach. “It was something that I jumped at,” said the Closter resident.

Henry Goldberg loves this country. The businessman’s Polish-Jewish parents escaped Nazi Germany and made their home in South Carolina. His father began work as a janitor and eventually became a business owner. These were the opportunities that America offered, and not a moment went by when the elder Goldberg was not thankful for his survival.

This is the background that shaped Goldberg’s Republican views. As the years went by, he and his brother expanded their father’s company, Palmetto Tile Distributors, in Columbia. In the 1950s and 1960s, this was a truly wonderful country, Goldberg said. Doors were left open at night, keys were left in the car, the country was strong militarily, and it was not in debt. Since then, he has seen the country decline into what he views as a welfare state that gives too much of its dollars to such programs as Medicare and Medicaid.