Many of us are familiar with the ritual blessings surrounding the eating of fruit. We bless borei pri ha’etz, ‘creator of fruit of the tree,’ before biting an apple, borei pri ha’adamah, ‘creater of fruit of the earth,’ on a watermelon. There is, however, a lesser known blessing that we recite not on the fruit but on the trees themselves. Birkat Ha’ilanot, blessing of the trees, has its origins in the Talmud. The Babylonian tractate of Blessings (Brachot 33:B) quotes Rav Yehuda saying:

“A person who goes out during the days of [the month of] Nisan and sees the blossom of [fruit] trees recites [the following blessing]:

“Blessed are You Hashem, our God, King of the universe, who did not allow anything to lack in His world and [who] created within it good creatures and good trees to give pleasure to mankind through them.”

At Pesach we drink a lot of wine. Why is it called the symbol of our joy?

In an arid environment, wine can be seen a method of preservation. If you do not live or work near a well or a spring or some other source of fresh water you need to have something else to drink during the day.

• Milk does not last without refrigeration; actually we can think of cheese as a form of dried milk (that is a form of preserving milk).
• Crushing olives obtains oil, which while highly useful, does not quench thirst.
• Squashing pomegranates produces a very tart juice, but it doesn’t last long at room temperature.
• Squeezing dates creates a very sweet paste our ancestors called “dvash“.
• And figs don’t produce much in the manner of a drinkable juice either.

The Grape

But, that other fruit mentioned among the seven species, the grape, undergoes an amazing transformation when it is crushed, squashed and squeezed. With just the right amount of exposure to oxygen it becomes a drink that, like a good person, becomes more distinguished as it ages.

There is a deep yearning within me and within so many souls to reconnect with the very fabric of creation. We hear the call and many of us are taking steps to move closer to her. We see this in the Jewish back-to-the-land movement, manifest in a growing number of Jewish farm education projects, in the New Jewish Food Movement fueled by Hazon, and in the blossoming of a Jewish consciousness seeking to rediscover the ancient earth-based roots of our tradition. With the world moving through a period of deep economic transformation and environmental uncertainty, now is the time for us to respond to this yearning.

The 14th of Nisan 5769 (Wednesday April 8th, 2009) is a profoundly auspicious moment to heed this call. Sunrise on the 14th of Nisan is Birkhat HaChama, the Blessing of the Sun, the once-in-a-generation opportunity to celebrate the birthday of the sun and the birthday of all of creation. As the Babylonian Talmud instructs, each person who witnesses the sun “in its season” – meaning when the sun arrives at the place where it was at the beginning of creation – shall bless Hashem, “Blessed is the Maker of Creation.” (Babylon Talmud, Berakhot 59b). Birkat HaChama is not simply a rare moment to celebrate creation, however. It is the deepest moment of renewal, rebirth, and new beginning for our generation.

I baked bread for the first time a few weeks ago, and it was a life-changing moment. Not just because it was some of the best bread I had ever tasted, but because it also made me think seriously about what bread means. In an age when we have all kinds of grain products at our disposal (rice, noodles, couscous), many a meal can pass without bread. And yet bread is one of the most basic foods.

In Judaism, a meal is often defined as one in which you eat bread. There are many brachot (blessings), each one for specific food, but if you recite the motzi, the blessing for bread, it covers the entire meal. This brings up some interesting questions, such as whether pizza counts as bread (thus requiring motzi and birkat mazon, the Grace After Meals.) Bread is life-sustaining, and deeply embedded in our culture. It links us to our times of celebration. On Passover, it is through bread–matzah, the bread of affliction–that we invite the poor to partake of our freedom. On Shabbat, bread is a reminder of God’s gift of manna, which fed the Jewish people in the dessert, and on Rosh Hashanah, we eat round, sweet bread. Challah itself solves an interesting Jewish dilemma: it is an enriched bread, meant to be celebratory, and most enriched breads (like brioche) are made with milk. Since Shabbat meals often include meat, Jews needed to create a parve loaf.

Tu Bish’vat is here, along with the delightful hunt in the market for new fruits, some exotic, some uneaten since Rosh Hashanah, and the chance to sit around the table and have a seder that is truly free-form and creative, without any rules about what we are supposed to do or say.

One element of the seder is this exuberance of fruit, all of its colors, smells, and textures. There’s even a special blessing to say for the sweet smell of fruit! Tu Bish’vat is not generally a “locavore’s” holiday, especially here in Western Massachussetts, where only a few of the fruits we can buy are local. (Back in Berkeley it was quite different, not only because you can get so many fruits grown locally in mid-winter, but also because you can go to the Berkeley Bowl and experience the most diverse, exuberant and orgasmic produce section that most human beings will every see.)

There is, however, an order to the seder (seder after all means “order”), something to structure this exuberance, moving from the hard shelled fruits (mostly nuts) to the ones with pits to the ones whose seeds and peels can be swallowed and eaten. This brings up some interesting botanical and culinary questions.

From our friends at the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life:

On April 8, 2009 the Jewish community will rejoice the Sun’s return to its original place in the heavens at the precise time and day of its creation. This event, called Birkat HaHammah – Blessing of the Sun – is commemorated every 28 years. This year the Sun will be completing its 205^th cycle. Though it’s great to appreciate the gifts of the sun every day, during Birkat HaHammah we join as a community to raise our heads to the skies and give thanks for this wonderful gift, the eternal light that does not only mark out time, but also makes possible all life on earth.

Today, 18 heritage turkeys were schected (slaughtered in accordance to kosher law), plucked, salted, soaked and prepped by volunteers to feed Hazon Food Conference participants on Friday night.  One volunteer, who attended the goat schecting at last year’s  conference, commented that the two experiences felt significantly different.

She noted that last year, many of the participants personally knew or had helped to raise the goats, whereas the turkeys slaughtered today were sourced from a nearby farm – and that the resulting emotional impact seemed less immediate.  Perhaps it also had something to do with the fact that last year’s schecting was incorporated as an educational part of the conference and therefore an integral aspect of the overall conference.  Alternatively, today’s shecting occured before most particpants even arrived and was primarily conducted as a way to provide ethical, kosher meat for the event.

As my time at Adamah (the Jewish farming fellowship) fellow came to a close, I felt like our season as farmers also came full circle.  For me personally, the experience on the farm also marked my transformation from an Artistic Administrator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (a fancy-clothes wearing, stress filled employee) to a pickler, meditator, Carhartt-wearing farmer and much more chill person as well.

At the beginning of Adamah in September, when the weather was still warm (though it’s hard to remember back that far!), we went to our field, the Sadeh, on a Monday morning to take part in the shechting (kosher slaughter) of nine of our male goats. It was an incredibly challenging day, to say the least – and even more surreal because just one day before we’d hosted “Feast in the Field,” a beautiful brunch complete with fancy food from the Sadeh and celebration, all in the same location. That said, the shechting took place with intention and with respect, not unlike the experience I had almost one year earlier at the Hazon Food Conference, where we shechted three goats.

Text and recipes: Nina Budabin-McQuown
Text and below-jump photos: Leah Koenig

Ah, Thanksgiving.  All across the country, families are gearing up to tuck into nearly identical plates of turkey (or a vegetarian alternative), mashed potatoes, green beans, and creamy yam casserole dotted with little white marshmallows.  But in this era of local-foods awareness, should all Thanksgiving dinner tables really look and taste the same from sea to shining sea?

The Jew & The Carrot set out to find out what a truly local holiday meal looks like, in three diverse parts of the country: New York, Florida, and California’s Bay Area.  We found that New York’s Thanksgiving dinner plate looked the most iconic and familiar, since it is geographically closest to the holiday’s colonial beginnings.  But we got the biggest thrill out of introducing new fruits like figs, grapes – and even avocados! – into a holiday meal that is second only to Passover in its insistence on standard repertoire fare.

Below the jump: find a delicious collection of recipes and ideas for three very different, very local Thanksgiving dinners.  And if you’re daring enough to stray from the delicious same old, same old – we’d love to hear how it turns out!

Hello from wintry Alaska!  That’s where I currently am, celebrating my honeymoon with this wonderful person.  While I’ve been having a blast with all this wedding stuff, I definitely miss you all at The Jew & The Carrot!  Until I get back next week, I thought I’d share a scene from our wedding table in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  The whole celebration was beyond amazing, and I think this photo of our chatan and kallah (bride & groom) table captures a small part of why.

Jewish tradition loves to bless food (or rather to bless God for food).  We bless bread, we bless wine – we bless snacks as well as meals.  We have different blessings for fruit grown on trees vs. fruit grown in the ground and, remarkably, when we’re done eating and feeling satisfied, we bless again!  But for some reason, despite all this food blessing, there is no Jewish blessing for cooking.

This fact struck me and Anna as a bit odd.  The act of standing in a kitchen – coaxing raw ingredients into a nourishing meal through heat, patience and wisdom, seems pretty holy.  The mere fact that the ingredients are there to cook is, in itself, no small miracle!  So a couple of years ago, in conjunction with Hazon’s Beit Midrash on (what else?!) Jews, food, and contemporary life, we wrote a cooking bracha.  It’s a blessing to be said just before: before turning the stove on under a pot of water, before dipping one’s hands into the flour, before the flurry of activity that, God willing, will create a delicious meal worthy of its own blessing.

Find the Cooking Bracha below the jump…

Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it. – Mishna Avot 5:22 A beautiful idea for the Torah, but one also worth considering when it comes to composting! (This is a Jewish food blog, after all…)

Have a joyous and sweet Simchat Torah! Love, The Jew & The Carrot

Thanks to David Elcott for this guest post, in conjunction with COEJL’s blog, To Till & To Tend.  David boldly ripped up his lawn last spring to make room for a small farm in his suburban front yard.  This is his third and final post of the season, where he takes stock in the experience.  For the back story, check out his first and second post.

Who would have imagined that from June until the middle of October, we would only be eating vegetables from our own garden: multi-colored summer squash souflee and barbecued okra, leeks and parsnips and carrots in a cabbage soup, eggplants in abundance, stuffed Napa cabbage, baby spinach and enough spicy greens and snap peas to feed an army, a cherry tomato tartine in gold, red, yellow and orange, a banquet of roasted fingerling potatoes, beans that never stopped giving, all flavored with garden herbs.

I prepared cold sweet cucumber soups with the added tartness of rhubarb and ate beets for the first time as part of a root vegetable medley. We decorated our salads with nasturtium and zucchini flowers. And corn, corn, corn – much of which never made it to the kitchen but eaten fresh off the stalk. A time for rejoicing indeed!

Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.“ - Benjamin Franklin, July 1779

Jeff Morgan is a man with a mission. As if being an author, winemaker and wine educator (not to mention a former professional musician) doesn’t keep him busy enough, he is also on a quest to change the way the Jewish community thinks about – and drinks – wine.

He and his business partner, Leslie Rudd, are the creators of Covenant Wines, a kosher wine company that strives to “harness quality commensurate with the rich and profound story of the Jewish people.” That might sound like a lot to swallow, especially considering that Jews tend to be linked with a legacy of barely drinkable kosher wines (ahem, Manischewitz). But the former West Coast editor of Wine Spectator magazine is on to something sweet.

I spoke with Jeff right before Yom Kippur to hear more about his vino-philosophy. He shared his thoughts on the current state of kosher wine, where it’s headed, and why consumers should think twice before reaching for a Mevushal bottle.

Want to WIN Jeff’s amazing kosher wine? Tell us your favorite wine memory to be entered into a drawing to win two bottles of Covenant’s Red C Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006. This wine is made from grapes grown on a 2-acre parcel of land in Napa Valley and aged for 18 months in French oak barrels. Total retail value, $84. (Only one comment per person will be entered into the drawing – please comment by Sunday, October 19.