Daniella Cheslow is a 22-year-old East Brunswick woman whose roots in the Israeli soil go deep.

Cheslow — born in Israel to an American father, Jerry, and a South African mother, Michelle — came to the United States with her parents at age two.

She has returned to the place of her birth twice in the last year in the hope of fostering peace between Jews and Arabs while bettering the environment.

Cheslow, a recent graduate of Northwestern University, now plans to spend at least a year in Israel working with the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership. The Tel Aviv-based think-tank looks to build a sustainable future for Israeli society through education and social, economic, and environmental activism.

"I know I want to work with some element of Jewish-Arab dialogue," said Cheslow in a phone interview two days before her departure. "There may also be some organizing of Jewish and Arab children for environmental causes."

Cheslow is receiving a monthly stipend through a SHATIL/New Israel Fund social justice fellowship.

Working with Arabs and Palestinians is nothing new to Cheslow, who spent the summer of 2006 on an internship in the Amman office of Friends of the Earth Middle East, living with a Jordanian roommate and working with both Israeli and Jordanian farmers.

"I did research in the region of Ghore al-Safi at the southern tip of the Dead Sea in Jordan," said Cheslow. "In Safi, farmers use chicken manure to fertilize their fields. I did research on why these farmers continued using chicken manure when they knew it bred flies that spread disease. Moreover, the flies cross into Israel in the region of Ein Tamar and drive the Israelis crazy because they use processed chemical fertilizer that doesn"t breed flies."

Negotiations between the two sides included "a lot of back and forth" between Israelis and Jordanians, visits by Jordanian farmers, and a conference that was set up as Cheslow was leaving Jordan.

"It was really a good building block for my identity as a Jewish person to see what the world looked like through Jordanian eyes," said Cheslow, who graduated Northwestern with a degree in journalism and geography and is considering a career in environmental journalism.

Cheslow spent some time this summer on a Jewish heritage tour of Turkey with her grandmother, Beatrice Cheslow of Monroe.

"I wanted to do a Jewish heritage trip," said Beatrice Cheslow. "But, I didn"t want to go to Europe because then we would spend three days touring concentration camps, and I wanted her to come home happy."

With a Muslim tour guide and a driver, the two visited such sites as Canakkale — where they met some of the town"s six remaining Jews — synagogues, Jewish museums, and ancient ruins.

"If anyone else is thinking of traveling with an 80-year-old grandmother, an air-conditioned car with a paid driver to pick up the bags is the way to go," said the younger Cheslow. "It"s a cushy life, but it makes it very easy on old people."

And although she is not sure of the specifics of her current Middle East assignment, Cheslow e-mailed NJJN from Israel more than two weeks after her arrival: "I may spend one or two days in a Palestinian community in Israel. I have been traveling around the country — Ramla, Nazareth, Sakhnin — to see where I might fit in, but I haven"t decided yet."