Someone made a comment at the Food Conference that ‘ethnic foods’ were unhealthy; take your pick between Italian (heavy sauces), Indian (full of butter), Chinese (high fat & sugar content), and nobody’s national dish is particularly good for you. Nigel countered this with an important distinction: what we think of as “typical” cuisine from other countries is often, in that country, reserved for special occasions, whereas we eat it any (and sometimes every) night of the week. Couple that with the fact that when we eat out we’re likely to eat more than we are hungry for, and still have dessert–and yes, eating special occasion food all the time IS bad for you. It’s the equivalent of having a Thanksgiving-type meal four or five nights a week.I hadn’t really thought about this before. Our culture assigns different kinds of foods and meals to different kinds of occasions, and more and more, the category of ’simple sustenance’ is giving way. Food plays a lot of different roles in our lives, and its importance for feasts, festivals, gatherings, important occasions cannot be understated. But in terms of what we need to stay healthy, our bodies require much less than society would like to feed it. We risk numbing ourselves by excess (not to mention getting fat, encouraging overproduction of our farmland, and increasing the disparity between this country and most of the rest of the world).

I do it all the time — I ‘treat’ myself. If I’m feeling sad, or stressed, or I woke up late, or even if I just happen to be biking past the bakery that gives a 50% discount on all its pastries if you arrive by bicycle (how do you turn that down!?)–I buy something yummy to get me through the day. But when I stop to tally up the week– the ‘treat’ hot chocolate, muffin, pastry, carrot cake… I’ve eaten something like that nearly every day.

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To Blog or Not To Blog (on Shabbat) - that is the question.

The traditional halachic answer would have been “of course not” - end of subject.

The pluralist answer would be “why not?” - different Jewish people observe (and don’t observe) shabbat in myriad different ways. If someone wants to blog as part of their celebration of shabbat - or because they don’t keep shabbat at all, then why on earth not?

Here’s a third view. We respect tradition - but we’re not _not_ blogging because of a traditional understanding of shabbat. And we do respect the myriad ways that Jews keep or don’t keep shabbat.

But here’s the scoop - we’re not gonna blog on shabbat - but from a different place.

Not because we believe in a traditional sense that it’s against halacha.
But because in a postmodern sense, we still see the Jewish people as being against paganism; and the paganism of this generation isn’t  Wiccans and  witches, it’s the world of 24/7. It’s bad for the world, and it’s bad for people - and as Jews, we’re the people who introduced into human history the idea of shabbat, and the related ideas of shmitta and yovel. Resting reminds us that we inherit this earth, we don’t own it. Resting is good for us, good for our families, good for our communities.

So we respect the ways that you keep or don’t keep shabbat. We actively defend your right to fly to Vegas and buy a bacon breakfast - on Shabbat. But we nevertheless, for ourselves, aren’t blogging on Shabbat, because we choose to rest and celebrate - and we invite you to consider doing likewise. Including switching off that fine computer you’re using right now…

Shabbat shalom - and chanukah sameach. May this year’s candles see miracles and happiness for all…

:-)

The Jew !

I had an amazing morning. Here was just the first little bit:

I went for a walk with Marco and Talia (aged 3) to find the goats and the hens. The goats are just roaming around, doing hen-like things, and looking pretty happy. The difference between how they live and the pictures one sees of hens in cages is pretty dramatic. Last year some of the Adamahniks gave me eggs from here - they were like eggs I’d never eaten before; kind of like the eggs that Michael Pollan describes in Omnivore’s Dilemma — dark and rich and strong. The eggs of happy hens.

So then we wanted to find the goats; and en route bumped into Eitan, Freedman’s very own Jewish goat herd. Standing there with a big shovel, a load of old food, and four big bins of compost. Here’s the conversation, roughly:

Marco (who’s a Wall St guy — and an interesting one): You’re composting that?

Eitan: yeah. I let the hens eat the leftover food from Freedman for about a day, but then I compost it, because you don’t wanna let mold grow on it, or too much bacteria — the hen feces is good for compost, but not good for the hens to eat.

Marco: Yeah. And great compost.

Eitan: Yeah — do you compost?

Marco: Yeah — we have a place at the beach and we compost and grow stuff — asparagus, tomatoes, cucumbers.

Eitan: What kind of cucumbers?

Marco: The Amira ones, the little Israeli ones.

Eitan: Oh yeah, Persian, they’re really great.What do you use for mulch?

Marco: We harvest seaweed, at the seashore…

Eitan: That’s really cool

Marco: …And we have great raised beds; a few years ago this guy from the circus gave us some tiger feces, it was really good

Eitan: Wow, that’s really cool — carnivore feces just has totally different bacteria. Great compost…

And I’m stood there and I’m thinking: I’m an urban Jew. I’ve never grown a cucumber. I don’t know what an amira cucumber is — and maybe I’ve eaten one, and maybe not. And I’ve never composted. And tiger feces — and it’s relative merits in composting — who knew??

And how cool for Talia and her sisters to grow up like this.

And then a different question: Eitan makes goat cheese. It’s great cheese - I’ve eaten it. But it’s not being served at this conference. How come — because it’s not hechshered.

Has to have a hechsher, otherwise we can’t serve it. So it’s not kosher, right?
Wrong! Ridiculously wrong!!

Eitan’s cheese is the most kosher cheese you could meet in the whole world.
The goat is called Zilpah! She’s milked by a Jewish guy — called Eitan. He makes cheese, very simply. Kosher rennet — hechshered kosher rennet. And gives it to me, who eats it. I know the goat, and the guy who made the cheese, and what went in it - how often is that true of the cheese you eat?

And then I went to a great session Arlin Wasserman did — “What’s In A Symbol?” - all about this stuff. The kosher market in the US is now $140 billion a year — hot dogs alone, $30bn. People choose it, according to his data, 35% on taste, 16% because they like the guidelines, 5% because it’s safe or healthier, 8% because they’re observant, 4% because they can’t get halal, and 8% because they’re veggie or for other reasons.

Well: I want the market to be $140,000,001,000 — because I think we should buy $1,000 of Eitan’s cheese this year — at least — and I want someone to be able to certify in a really simple way that it’s kosher…

– The Jew

What is it to be a Jew these days, and not have a little guilt, or a little dilemma, or a little identity crisis? We have an amazing 3000 year old history. We live in all places of the world. We’re strugling with a tradition that is at times grounding, liberating, shackling, horribly out of date, incredibly meaningful and powerful. Writing as The Jew on this blog, is essentially a conversation between tradition and post-modernity.

So — let me tell you about dinner. This evening we ate amazing food — starting off with pumpkin snacks, grown here by the Adamahniks; and lasagne and kale and salad for dinner — and writing it simply doesn’t let you know how great it was. And then bensching — introduced by Rabbi Beccy Joseph, and Tali Weinberg, the farm manager here at Freedman. How often do you get to bless the food you’ve eaten with a rabbi and a farmer — and Beccy introduced bensching, but Tali actually led it. An amazing sense of kavannah, of shleimut, of coming home.

There are three interwoven conversations — at least three! — that thread through this conference, and this blog. One is “the wandering Jew” — all the countries we’ve traveled through, all the foods, all the traditions. Different recipes for charoset — from Yemen, Egypt, Venice - America today. All the history, all the recipe books. Bagels, chopped liver.

The second is the land of Israel. That we arose as an indiginous people, in relation to land and place — and food. The sheva minim — the seven indiginous species that grow in Israel; named in the Torah — and in May this year a bunch of Jews (and Palestinians and Jordanians, both Moslem and Christian) cycled from Jerusalem to Ashkelon — and in that one day, we passed all seven species growing. What’s our relationship to Israel — especially if we don’t live there?

And the third is the contemporary conversation about where food comes from, and local food, and eating sustainably. Omnivore’s Dilemma; Fast Food Nation; Wendell Berry; Chez Panisse.

And here’s where The Jew is at: how do these three conversations fit together? How do they shed light on each other? What happens if eating local is a key value - how then do you eat traditional Jewish food? Or vice versa?

What if you eat kosher meat — and it’s a value to eat grass-feed beef, like at Polyface Farm? I know of two couples who in the last year switched from eating kosher meat, even if not organic, to organic meat, even if not kosher? (We’ll introduce them to Simon Feil, who’s here, who wants to create grass-fed kosher organic beef).

For more questions, about why this night, and this Jew, are different… stay tuned.