On March 22nd, you’ll have an opportunity to meet Fred and Karen Lee of Sang Lee Farms, who will be providing the new Brooklyn Bridge CSA members with fresh, certified organic, local produce starting June 8, 2010. It will also be an opportunity to learn more about the CSA, how to become a member, and how you can take on a more active leadership role.

Meet the Farmer!
Monday, March 22 at 7:30pm
Congregation Mt. Sinai
250 Cadman Plaza West, Brooklyn

Hazon has been invited to join a group of Faith-based and Community organizations to support Michelle Obama’s recently launched Let’s Move campaign. The meeting in DC tomorrow will provide organizations with tools and information to help combat childhood obesity in their communities. Judith Belasco, Director of Food Programs, is headed to the Capitol to represent Hazon!

According to  Judith, “Hazon is always looking to expand our support of healthier lifestyles as meaningfully as we can. Already North America’s largest faith-based supporter of CSA’s, we provide healthy living education through our Jewish Food Education Network (JFEN) and annual Food Conference. We look forward to engaging the Jewish community and beyond in support of Let’s Move.”

According to Joshua DuBois, White House Director of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Parnerships, “The Let’s Move campaign will combat the epidemic of childhood obesity through a comprehensive approach that builds on effective strategies, and mobilizes public and private sector resources. Let’s Move will engage every sector impacting the health of children to achieve this national goal, and will provide schools, families and communities simple tools to help kids be more active, eat better, and get healthy.”

By Audrey Sasson, cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)

I recently attended an event promoting Eric Holt-Giménez’s new book (co-authored by Raj Patel), Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. Eric is the executive director of Food First and a powerful advocate for transforming our broken food system. His presentation unpacked the causes of hunger worldwide and promoted a reinvestment in local food systems as both a just and effective solution.

These days, it seems everyone is talking about “going green.” Never has such a simple sounding term had so much meaning.  For nonprofit overnight Jewish camps, their staff and lay leaders, this means changing old habits, teaching campers about how and why to make changes, and ensuring a vibrant future for their camps.

Many camps have begun to implement green practices, taking action to decrease their carbon footprint, and impart a positive environmental message to their campers.  Steps have included forgoing paper, plastic, and Styrofoam in favor of using reusable tableware and reducing non-biodegradable waste, using solar power for heating, providing campers and staff with environmentally friendly water bottles, changing light bulbs to reduce carbon emissions, and more!  Several camps have also planted gardens and are teaching their campers about healthy cooking and organics.

Director, Jewish Greening Fellowship

Check out the newest installment of the Hazon Podcast by clicking the link below. Please forward to your friends and let me know any thoughts you have on it.

Also, NEW is that now you can SUBSCRIBE to HAZON Podcasts straight on iTunes. Just Search “Hazon” in your iTunes Store and SUBSCRIBE to our podcast. It is absolutely FREE!

New Podcast Episode with Jewish Greening Fellowship Director

Highlights of this episode:

• What is the Jewish Greening Fellowship?
• Sign up for Bay Area and NY Rides
• See Nigel in Colorado!

Thanks to Rachael Don for this guest post! Rachael is a Registered Dietitian in training and co-editor of the Jess Schwartz Jewish Community Day School’s Hazon CSA newsletter in Scottsdale, AZ.  A former healthcare administrator, she holds an MBA and a Masters in Health Services Administration. When she’s not cooking organic vegetables, Rachael is caring for her three young sons and husband, David in Phoenix, AZ. She shares these thoughts with the readers of that newsletter and all of you!

Every year in our household, the same question comes up: splurge  and join a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), or buy local items week to week from the farmers’ markets and farm stands. And every year, we wait…until it’s too late. The same excuses come up each time: it costs a lot of money up front, we might be traveling for a week or two, we have to drive at least twenty minutes to pick up the share, I like the choice of vegetables at the markets.

Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)

Imagine being chronically hungry, and then, after finally receiving a long-awaited plate of food, eating just one bean. According to The New York Times, this is precisely what happened to Maxi Extralien, a starving Haitian boy who received food from a Haitian civic group in the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake. In the face of extreme food insecurity, thousands of other children like Maxi face the same dire situation: rationing one bean at a time to make food last as long as it possibly can.

Image courtesy of vitasamb2001

As I have watched the horrors of Haiti unfold from my safe and comfortable living room, I am continually saddened by a sense of ineffectiveness, of wanting to do more than write another check or say another prayer. I wish I could have an impact, do something to directly improve their lot, participate in a more meaningful way. I started to do some research to see if I could purchase goods from Haiti, and subsequently and came across information that was as familiar as it is disturbing. Despite adequate natural resources, Haiti cannot feed itself, much less produce many exports to support their own trade.

Okay, so the job market is pretty lousy right now, but I got this job posting via email and though I’d pass it along.

Sales and Operations Manager

KOL Foods, LLC puts kosher meat and ethics on the same plate so consumers can feel good about the meat they eat. KOL Foods sources and sells grass-fed, non-industrial, healthy lamb and beef and pastured poultry directly to individuals. Since its foundation in 2007, the interest in KOL Foods’ products has grown rapidly, and, consequently, they are now available in the East Coast and the Midwest primarily through our website. As demand is increasing KOL Foods is seeking to expand in the Eastern United States and, in the near future, nationwide.

KOL Foods is unique as it operates differently from industrial kosher meat businesses. As a values-based business, our mission is to produce food that is in harmony with nature, neighbors and tradition – all the way from farm to fork.   For further information on KOL Foods, please go to:  www.kolfoods.com .

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.

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!

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.

Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)

Back in October, I attended a permaculture workshop at a retreat center in upstate New York. I learned all about food forests, grafting, sheet mulching and many other agro-ecological farming techniques about which I knew little. I was surprised—and delighted!—to learn that many of these techniques are being implemented in the developing world, too.