Happy Rosh Hashanah from The Jew & The Carrot!
Or, as my friend, Sabrina Malach, perfectly put it: “Wishing you a sweet year filled with the abundance of fresh apples and raw honey. Blessings to you, your family and all the farmers and pollinators who make our rituals possible.”
The Associated Press reported that in response to the raid on Agriprocessors kosher meat plant last May (and the legal fallout surrounding it): “an organization of Orthodox Jewish rabbis announced that it was forming a task force to devise Jewish principles and ethical guidelines on the kosher food industry.”
According to the story, published in the NY Times:
The group, the Rabbinical Council of America, said it would publish the results in a guide. Rabbi Asher Meir, an author and expert in Jewish business ethics, will lead the task force.
On the one hand this is great news - and Rabbi Meir et al deserve advance praise for their efforts. But I’m left feeling disappointed that the Orthodox task force has, it seems, chosen to work in isolation rather than reaching out beyond denominational lines to the Hekhsher Tzedek project, which is currently endorsed by both the Conservative and Reform movements. While working together would certainly be more difficult, the opportunity to build ties across “party lines” on such an important issue seems a shame to miss. And in the end, the creation of a implementable, cross-denominational Jewish ethical certification has much more potential to make real change than a published guide.
Doing something special to green your Rosh Hashanah dinner table? Let us know about it and win great cookbook prizes! A few snaps of your camera and a few supporting words is all it takes.
Enter The Jew & The Carrot’s Rosh Hashanah Dinner Challenge and your New Year might just get a little sweeter. Details and enter here.
Hazon’s Executive Director, Nigel, likes to quote Reb Shlomo Carlebach with the idea that the Jewish holidays come around to remind us of the things we should be doing all year. For example - in theory, we should always work to clear out the spiritual “chametz” from our lives, but if we don’t then Passover arrives to remind us. And we should always remember to connect to the land and the seasons, but if we forget then Sukkot’s lulav and etrog jog our memories.
Tomorrow night, Rosh Hashanah begins - ushering in with it the reminder to reflect and find ways to return to the best possible version of ourselves. To welcome in such a special time, we’ve rounded up a number of great Rosh Hashanah stories, ideas, and recipes from the Jewish food blogosphere. The creativity coming out of these bloggers minds and kitchens is truly inspiring - feel free to share more resources below.
Rosh Hashanah round up below the jump… Read more »
On a recent Hazon Food Conference Executive Committee phone call, we started talking about the conference menu (which is going to be amazing, by the way). We got into a discussion about whether or not to serve the requisite tomatoes at the conference with our bagel brunch. After all, can one really have bagels and cream cheese without tomatoes and cucumber? On the other hand, if all of the other produce is local and organic, then why should we make this one exception? On yet the other hand, we could potentially use this conundrum as an opportunity to educate the community about seasonal and local food (the tomatoes would have to be flown in from Mexico), and talk about methods of food preservation. Bingo. Read more »
Headache, fatigue and a metaphysical hunger for chocolate: the sure signs of sugar withdrawal, and during Pesach 2002, in post-industrial
Potato chips and jelly. Yep, you heard me. Picture an 18 year old New York-Jewish co-ed with a history of cookie eating and a mom who’s not so good at the whole care package thing. Now combine that with a supermarket kosher section that could fit 80,000 times in the space of this period. I needed something, man, and the matzoh I’d horded from the
Oh friends, I feel a rant coming on. Animal rights organization, PETA, has gone and done it again. And by “it” I mean advocate for animal welfare, while simultaneously being entirely offensive to women.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently mailed a letter to Ben & Jerry’s, suggesting that they replace the cow’s milk dairy in their ice cream products with human breast milk. They got the idea from a Swiss restaurant owner who plans to replace 75% of the cows milk at his restaurant with milk from nursing mothers.
According to a letter sent by PETA’s Executive Vice President, Tracy Reiman: “Using cow’s milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer’s health…[insert some cruel facts about the conventional milk industry here]…Won’t you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow’s milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.”
PETA absolutely and frighteningly misses the point.
Agriprocessors, Animal Care, Eco-Kashrut, Featured, Food Justice, Food Safety, Grocery, Health, Interview, Kosher, Meat, Seasonality, Sustainability
Over the next four weeks, Jews will be sitting down to together to more celebratory meals in succession than they likely do the entire rest of the year. Many of those meals will be kosher, and many more will include meat as either a main or side course - or both. Meanwhile, Jewish people around the country are also beginning to think differently about the meat that they eat, in light of the immigration raid on the kosher meat plant, Agriprocessors earlier this year, and of all the transgressions related to the conventional meat industry (CAFOs, hormones and antibiotics, worker abuse, etc). For some people, the easiest response is to go vegetarian. But for people who choose not to go the veggie route, what are the options?
We asked some of the leading voices of the New Jewish food movement to answer the question: “If I choose to eat meat over the high holidays, what is the number one thing I should consider?”
Read their responses below - and share your own.
You’ve heard about an orange on the seder plate, but what about a floating orange God head that teaches you about Rosh Hashanah? My Jewish Learning has taken the custom of “eating a new fruit on Rosh Hashanah” to the next level, with this wacky video. Enjoy!
Here is part 2 of Chef Laura’s Italian Rosh Hashanah menu. Find part one - an apple cake with apple cider honey zabaglione - here. Yes, yes, we’re featuring two soup recipes in a row on The Jew & The Carrot - but what is fall without an abundance of warm, creamy soups?!
Autumn in Tuscany looks a lot like the neighborhood pumpkin patch I remember visiting when I was a kid - with pumpkins of all shapes, sizes and colors piled high. This versatile vegetable stores well for winter, is easily canned and is frequently featured in savory dishes. And this luxuriously textured soup is a perfect example of cucina povera, which is the practice of using what is readily available and seasonal.
Btai Avon!
This morning, Google let me know that it was fall - with the second “g” and “l” in Google turned into gracefully falling red leaves. I felt a bit stunned, and a bit embarrassed that I had to rely on the computer to remind me of the changing season. Then again, unlike spring which teases and flirts for weeks before settling into place, fall has a way of sneaking up and surprising me - in the sudden smell of crisp leaves and crackling fires in the air, and in the way the high holidays suddenly appear on the calendar even though I already knew they were coming.
Sometimes this suddenness feels unsettling - as if I am Philippe Petit tiptoeing across a tight rope when suddenly the wind picks up. But because of this sudden energy, fall also has a way of sweeping me off my feet in a more metaphorical (and significantly more pleasant) way. There’s a certain rapture that rushes in, clearing the stagnant summer air and demanding that I pay attention and enjoy. I think I actually tend to feel most alive during the early weeks of fall. Knowing that winter is slowly lumbering near, I get all the more energized to actively soak up the last rays of warm sunshine, eat the last red tomatoes, and enjoy the last few days of sandal weather before I shroud my feet, once again, in socks and shoes.
I also feel a renewed urge to cook! And with a whole new palate of flavors to choose from at the farmers’ market, how can I resist? Below, find a recipe for Delicata Squash Soup with Apple Croutons - the perfect celebration of fall, and a lovely alternative to Rosh Hashanah chicken soup. Read more »
America, Animal Care, Farming, Fruit, GMO, Holidays, Honey, Israel, Participate!, Sustainability, gardening
You won’t notice it on the supermarket shelves or the tables of Jewish America this autumn, but both apples and honey are embattled, and by the same mysterious foe. I’m talking Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and if you think that name sounds like it’s describing a symptom more than a disease, you’re right. CCD, like the similarly vague Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Restless Leg Syndrome in humans, are all named for their symptoms because we don’t know their cause. All we know is that bees are disappearing, abandoning their hives and scattering to the winds, not making honey, not pollinating the flowers and trees, and those minute defectors could cost us far out of proportion with their size.
If you read The Jew & The Carrot frequently, you have likely read about the crop of sustainable, kosher meat coops sprouting up in communities across the country. But what about other faith traditions? As it turns out, one organization in Chicago is on a different religious path, but entirely the same wave length when it comes to ethical meat consumption.
In 2001, a Chicago-based interfaith educational organization, Faith in Place, created Taqwa, an Eco-Food Cooperative that offers meat that satisfies religious dietary requirements of the Muslim community (halal - or lawful), while simultaneously meeting fair labor and ecological standards. Today Taqwa serves organic pastured beef, lamb, and chicken to about 80 families, about half who are Muslim. All the animals are humanly raised by local Illinois farmers, and slaughtered solely by qualified Muslims. According to their website:
dhabiha (the Islamic procedure for slaughtering that is comparable to kashrut) meat is considered the only type of meat that is deemed lawful for consumption by many Muslims. For others, it is the preferred mode of slaughter. For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, it is important to note that research has proven that severing the four major blood vessels of the neck and draining the blood is the most healthful manner of slaughtering animals.
Last week, I spoke with Faith in Place’s Executive Director and Taqwa co-founder, Reverend Dr. Clare Butterfield who shares in the desire to eat humanely raised animals with other members of her home congregation Unity Temple in Oak Park (the Unitarian Universalist congregation). She told me about the inspiration behind Taqwa, why the model of Muslim meat coops cannot exist on a larger scale, and why that’s okay.
Read the interview after the jump…
Rosh Hashana is all about prayer for the New Year; we sing it, we say it, we blow it and of course we eat it. The apples and honey aren’t just seasonal and don’t just taste good, they embody our hopes and wishes for the New Year. The blessing recited over this tasty combo gives focuses our attention towards a sweet new year “May it be Your will, our God and God of our ancestors, that we be renewed for a good and sweet year.” This approach to eating is what I like to think of as culinary prayer, a form of you pray what you eat whereby imbibing sweet foods will help fill you body and soul with that same quality.
In my menu plan for Rosh Hashana there is a carrot salad with pomegranate seeds and pomegranate molasses, a honey nut cake (somewhat controversial but you have to read on to find out why), stuffed dates, pumpkin pastries and a bean salad. Not merely culinary fancy – though I’m hoping it will taste good - my menu is based on an ancient series of food omens that women have cooked through the ages. It’s true, long before your grandmother was making brisket, the rabbis of the Talmud were already making menu suggestions.
