I’m reporting from the Hazon staff “cleanse” on a comfortable couch on Fire Island.  A ten minute walk in one direction leads to the Atlantic Ocean.  A ten minute walk in the other direction leads to the Long Island Sound.  The garden outside boasts beans, tomatoes, kale, and strawberries so red they almost look cartoonish.

Yesterday, our “advance crew” (5 hearty Hazon staff members) met on the Upper West Side with 20 boxes of mostly organic vegetables and sundry supplies from Fresh Direct, the farmers’ market, and Trader Joes.  We loaded the food onto the freight ferry and followed along on a passenger ferry where we picked it up and – if you can believe it – hauled it by wagon (no cars allowed on the Island) to Phyllis and Marco’s wonderful home.  The next several hours were consumed by organizing the explosion of vegetables (a veritable living room shuk) and kashering the kitchen for the weekend.  After all the questions and researching and debating from the last few weeks about kashering, I thought the actual process would be a nightmare.  But aside from the toxic Easy-Off sprayed into the oven to remove any essence of food from the metal walls, it was fairly straight forward.  Keep your eyes peeled for pictures next week of our adventures in boiling siverware and dipping the blade of our juicer in the Long Island Sound, which ritually kashers it.  For those of you into food porn, we’ll also post an amazingly sexy shot of our fridge, filled to overflowing with miso and green, leafy vegetables.

As Leah, one of my colleagues, posted last week, our staff is getting ready for our Food Cleanse which will be this weekend. Not only do we have to prepare the logistics of getting all of us and our food out to Fire Island, we have to adjust our eating habits and wean ourselves off of certain foods this week so as not to shock our systems when we start eating “Cleanse” meals. The main items that pose as a personal challenge include caffeine… carbs… and sugar. When our staff was informed of this information, some of us were afraid to react vocally and were a tad surprised. While it makes sense to engage in these changes, no one said the process will be easy!

I was not raised kosher, in fact I wasn’t even raised Jewish. I grew up eating everything. I chose to become a Jew out of love, and I have never stopped loving this people that I chose. But sometimes they drive me crazy.

I love food, and I love to cook. I could not, cannot, and will not limit myself to those food groups permissible in Leviticus. As a friend of mine says, “Halacha is not my thing.”

My kitchen is clean and organized, like my mother’s. I have attachments to many implements and cooking utensils, e.g. my grandmother’s spatula, my father’s cherry cutting board, the patina on a vintage 8-inch cast iron frying pan. I could go on.

Next week, Hazon’s staff is heading out to Fire Island with a van full of organic vegetables.  Those readers who are familiar with Hazon might not be too surprised by this statement.  But the circumstances of this particular trip are pretty extraordinary.  What are we doing?

We’re going cleansing. 

Over the last two years, Hazon’s ED, Nigel, has attended two “nourishment cleanses” – both held on the beautiful Mediterranean shores of Turkey and led by nourishment consultant and educator, Hale Sofia Schatz. 

Okay, I know that last sentence might have been a lot to swallow.  But I promise it will make more sense as you keep reading…

(Thanks to Nigel for co-writing this with me)

Most of us have a sense of the distinct identities of different Jewish holidays. We eat latkes and light candles on Chanukah; we fast and talk of forgiveness on Yom Kippur. But what we often don’t recognize is the larger framework of the holidays, the way that they connect to each other in an annual cycle of harvest and history. Purim is perhaps the most extreme instance of a holiday which is well-understood in its own terms, but little understood in relation to the season of the year that it inaugurates. Now that the revelry of Purim is behind us, let’s look at the key motifs and traditions of Purim, and place them in the longer time frame that helps us understand their deeper purpose.