In this article for JTA, Sue Fishkoff discusses the “food justice” track at last week’s Hazon Food Conference. Among the topics in focus: workers’ rights issues, food access in low-income neighborhoods, Fair Trade operations, and community gardens as a tool for empowerment.

My dear friends The Wandering Jew and David Levy over at Jewschool, sick with envy that they couldn’t attend the Hazon Food Conference this year, produced this tongue-in-cheek video to vicariously participate nonetheless. Please enjoy their playful snark as we consider how the hell this product fits into the eco-kashrut movement.

Thanks so much to Sara Rice for this great guest post.  Sara recently attended the Hazon Food Conference and is the Noshin’ columnist at TCJewfolk.com

I didn’t go to Jewish camp. Or Jewish day school — or even regularly attend a shul growing up. As a somewhat-recent convert, I don’t have any of the memories involving particularly eventful Pesach seders or Purim carnivals that many of my Jewish friends do. But it makes me all the more appreciative of my time at Hazon Food Conference 2009. Where else can I sing birkat hamazon with 400 other Jews who I know get “eating and being satisfied” in the same way I do? Where else would I have the opportunity to make havdalah with such exuberance that the floor is visibly reverberating under my feet from the combined force of, at minimum, 200 others? These are now my memories, and these are my people — foodie Jews who care about taste, ethics, the environment, and even just the beauty of a bowl of dried fruit. But to say we were all the same would be absurd; I met people with all different careers — sex therapist, caterer, Jewish educator, math and philosophy student, farmer, botanist, historian, and author; people of all ages, from barely born to octogenarians; nationalities from the U.S. to the U.K., to Israel, and even Argentina.

Thanks so much to Lailah Robertson for this great guest post about her experience and the Hazon Food Conference. Lailah is a San Francisco freelance writer who writes the blog In My Box about her CSA box and all the delicious vegetarian, gluten-free things she makes with it. This post is NOT intended to endorse any particular diet or agenda, e.g. to say that being vegan (abstaining from all animal products) is the only way to live, or that vegetarians are hypocrites. It merely hopes to be an exploration of one of the least considered aspects of our food chain.

Nigel Savage, founder of Hazon, asked us two questions during his keynote speech last night at the Hazon Food Conference. It felt like the beginning of one of those Jewish parables, the ones where the wise rabbi asks or tells us something that means more than it seems on the surface, where you ponder on the teaching and the world opens up in a new way.

“Stand up if you eat meat, but you wouldn’t if you had to kill it yourself,” Nigel called out. A number of people in the packed hall rose from their seats. I applauded them for their self-awareness and honesty, while of course maintaining a certain degree of vegetarian smugness.

Then he asked us another question. “Stand up if you are vegetarian, but would eat meat if you killed it yourself.” This time fewer people stood up, but it was still a significant number.

Then Nigel told us the story of the goat.

Thanks so much to Rita Esquenazi for her great thoughts on the Hazon Food Conference

630 people. Four days. One conference. I am here in the rugged beauty of Asilomar State Park, where the Pacific Ocean meets a rocky beach, to attend the fourth annual Hazon Food Conference. Among the many ideas and emotions running through me, more than anything I feel blessed to be here, being able to exchange knowledge with a wide variety of people from across the country and around the world, from as near as Salinas, CA to as far as South Africa. As a Goldman Young Adult Fellow I am deeply grateful for this opportunity that the Fellowship enabled. Almost 50 other Fellows are here and we are discussing our next steps and how to bring what we’ve learned back to our communities, how to create teachable moments, how to build more sustainable communities.

I am here because I am interested in the nexus of Judaism, eating healthily and sustainably and helping those in need. Many others are focused on environmental issues, bringing down “the Man” of giant agribusinesses, or simply because they enjoy food! But what is this Food Conference all about anyway? Hazon states that they exist to create a sustainable world for Jews and for all people. Clearly, with over 600 people here, that chord resonates.

Thanks to Debs Gardner for this great guest post.  Debs maintains the food blog, Seattle Local Food.

It was Friday morning at the Hazon conference, and we were already deep in weighty conversations about social justice and corporate food production. We’d watched The Garden, a documentary about Latin American immigrant farmers protesting destruction of a gorgeous 14-acre garden they’d built in industrial South Central Los Angeles. I’d participated in a media panel, discussing misleading marketing, the role of blogging in media, and the challenges writers face. Like needing a salad after too much kugel, it was time for something at least a little lighter. So, I went to hear one of my favorite experts on Jewish food tell stories and make nosh.

Joan Nathan was on stage, multitasking. Busily adjusting the top of a food processor, she was demonstrating how to prepare two different dishes, while overseeing an assistant chopping vegetables and simultaneously talking into a microphone, held by another assistant, about the history of Jewish foods in France.

Fresh out of ‘The Vegetable Monologues: Jewish Women Farmers’ it is clear that Jewish women have no hesitation in leading this Jewish Food Movement. This session featured a panel of four Jewish women farmers. Abbe Turner, who yesterday led a session on Do-It-Yourself: Making Mozzarella Cheese, discussed her experiences as a Cheese Farmer in Ohio. Anna Hanau and Elizabeth Giancola of the ADAMAH Farm talked about their transformative experiences which led them out of the office and into the field. And finally, Conference chair, Emily Freed shared her experiences on Jacob’s Farm, which just finished its biggest harvest season yet!

Sitting in sessions all day long, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Asilomar is located right on the Pacific Ocean. However, there was no way to forget that when the entire community walked down the boardwalk to the beach so that we could all say the blessing upon seeing the ocean for the first time. The text goes:

Barukh Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh haOlam Sheh-Asah Et HaYam HaGadol

Which translates to Blessed are you our God, King o the Universe, who made the Great (or Big) Ocean.

The Friday morning session entitled “Food Justice: Tools to Help Organize and Lobby More Effectively” featured Scott Minkow and Eric Schockman. Minkow discussed the amazing work that he has been leading through the LA community Jewish Federation. One project that was really taking off is called “Fed Up With Hunger,” which approaches local city officials such as the County Board of Supervisors, the City Council, and others to incorporate healthy eating and living into neighborhoods around the city. In LA fashion the project enlisted the help of a celebrity person, Debra Messing, though it has also been tweeted by the famoulous Alyssa Milano. As the other panelist, Eric Schockman put it, “Fed Up With Hunger is an example of how a federation turns a battleship around” to make change.

Did you know that McDonald’s is “going green?” In Germany, the red background behind the iconic golden arches is being replaced by green backgrounds. This redesign is just one example of blatant “greenwashing,” explained Denise Garbinski this afternoon at the Hazon Food Conference.

Garbinski, a Registered Dietitian, natural foods industry veteran, and founder of Botanical Nutrition, led a session titled “The Greenwashing of Food: Be an Informed Consumer,” part of the conference’s Food Justice track. Greenwashing, she explained, is the set of efforts a company takes to appear environmentally friendly, when in reality, the majority of their work is not. As “going green” becomes increasingly popular, for companies it means increased cash. And so, more and more food companies claim they are environmentally responsible. It turns out, that’s often not true. They’re simply repainting the background green.

Edible wild plants have been an essential part of the local diet here in the Galilee going back to the stone age hunters and gatherers.  I have learned from neighbors in the nearby Bedouin villages which plants are good to eat, where to find them, and how to prepare them.  One of the staples, which is considered a seasonal delicacy, is wild chicory – known in Arabic as elet, and in Hebrew as olesh.  It can be found around the edges of fields – a low-growing starburst of scalloped leaves.  And it is considered to be extremely healthy – good for “cleaning the blood”, as my Bedouin friends have explained.

Going out and gathering is not as commonly practiced in the traditional Arab cultures of the Galilee as it once was – yet the taste for elet remains.  Now enterprising farmers have started to cultivate elet and other edible wild plants, and sell them in the local Arab green grocers.

The following is the first episode of the Hazon Podcast, capturing the beat of the Jewish Food Movement and Hazon’s work. There will be more episodes in 2010 after we work out the kinks and get it on to iTunes. We will also be covering the Hazon Food Conference next week.

Chanukah in Israel is truly something to behold. The words Chanukah
Sameach or Happy Chanukah can be found printed on food packages, store
windows, and even in pixilated letters on the front of buses. There is
generally a happy festive air about but it is the sufganiyah or the
jelly doughnut that really makes it worth being in this country on
this holiday.

The  Climate Change Bus Tour, a joint project of The Teva Learning Center and Hazon,  is now in its final leg of the their cross-country tour!

It has been an incredible journey so far. Hundreds of Jewish students, teachers, and families have engaged with environmental education programs and activities. Many have also signed the Jewish Climate Change pledge committing themselves to sustainable action and advocacy.

Check out the latest video of the bus tour’s Chanukah out west and the latest press in The Jewish Exponent.