Even as an adult I get a thrill out of receiving mishloach manot. The moment when I return home and view my doorstep with lots of little packages is exhilarating. I like to see who they are from and what’s inside. I like to taste a few things and then panic when I’ve realized that I’ve forgotten someone. But I’ve also become more environmentally and socially conscious as I’ve aged and realized that there are obstacles cluttering the way to my total mishloach manot happiness buzz. I think to myself, why is there so much in each package? How are we going to consume it all before Passover which arrives in a month? Look at all the wrappers and plastic and candy and junk.
Over the past few years I’ve seen people do so some pretty original and creative things that appeal to my innate mishloach manot excitement and were eco-friendly too. One time I received a package that came in a small tera cotta pot with goodies and a package of seeds. Another time someone filled a reusable cup with treats and I used the cup
Thanks to Hanniel Levenson for this guest post. Hanniel is the Environmental Rabbinic Intern at The Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs. Hanniel majored in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and was awarded a Master of Science degree in environmental policy at Bard College. A self-described post-denominational Jew, Hanniel sees a strong connection between the environment and Judaism and plans to pursue this avenue in his Rabbinical studies at The Academy for Jewish Religion. He is also a painter, a competitive gymnast, who has competed on the national level, as well as a recently Registered Yoga Teacher.
The Federation for Jewish Men’s Clubs (FJMC), one of the main pillars of Conservative Judaism, under the direction of its Executive Director, Rabbi Charles Simon, has taken the initiative to realize Conservative Judaism’s denominational- wide commitment to create a sustainable future. And it begins in the synagogue.
Jewish tradition is filled with environmentally conscious laws, stories, and leaders. Couple this with strong social action and you have Shomrei Ha’aretz – “Stewards of the Land.”
It may have passed under the radar for those who missed the Hazon Food Conference, but Hekhsher Tzedek, the ethical certification seal for the kosher food industry, has now evolved into Magen Tzedek. The name change serves a number of purposes. Aside from easing arguments over spelling, dropping the term hekhsher would better enable the seal to be applied to products that aren’t food. The main motivation behind the name change however, is to allow the seal to coexist with other rabbinic kosher seals. Orthodox supervision organizations such as the OU were none to happy at the thought of a rival Conservative hekhsher telling them that their meat was kosher. In the meantime, it seemed like the founder of Hekhsher Tzedek, Rabbi Morris Allen, was spending half of his time explaining that the new seal was not intended to be a rival kashrut certification but an ethical seal. Thankfully, after discussions with the OU the parties have agreed on a new name. You can read more about Magen Tzedek in the official press release, or in this article from the JTA.
Last week the New Yorker published a longish piece (registration required) about Orthodox rabbis who criss-cross China certifying that various food manufacturing companies are adhering by all the rules of kashrut. It’s a fascinating little piece about what it really means to be a mashgiach, or a person who checks that food is kosher. Here’s a part that caught my eye:
How does the process of kosher certification inspection work? Here’s a composite scenario, as I witnessed it.
The Schmooze: This takes place in the conference room, which is perhaps adorned with a wood-and-brass captain’s wheel from a ship. On the wall, there might be a framed certificate for “High Tech Enterprise 2006″ or a large painted sign with an adage in English. “Only Faulty Product, No Captious Customer” and “People and Products Working Together” were two that I saw. Among those in attendance could be a plant supervisor, an engineer, an export manager, a sales representative, and a factory-hired translator. There is always a lot of chuckling–about what, I don’t think anyone present ever has a clue. Finally, the mashgiach turns on his laptop, signaling that it is time for…
The Review of the Raw Materials… More
(Emphasis mine.)
What struck me is this whole issue of everyone laughing for no reason, a point that is picked up again later in the article. To me, that’s a little microcosm of everything that’s going on in the kashrut industry. Everyone is smiling and chuckling and looking jolly and pious, but no one really knows what’s happening.
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.
A few months back on The Jew & The Carrot, we posted about an amazing Israeli social justice organization called Bema’aglei Tzedek, which created an ethical seal for restaurants called Tav Chevrati (social seal). The seal ensures that the restaurant provides basic rights to workers and also basic accessibility to customers with physical disabilities. Started only a few years ago, the Tav Chevrati seal is now on a third of all restaurants in Jerusalem, and is expanding to Tel Aviv and other cities.
I recently had a chance to speak with Bema’aglei Tzedek’s Executive Director, Dyonna Ginsburg (pictured at left) and here her thoughts on the socio-economic gaps in Israeli society, the power of public pressure on the Israeli government, and why she only eats in restaurants with the Tav Chevrati seal.
Enjoy the interview, below the jump!
In today’s j. weekly, the Jewish weekly of Northern California, the upcoming Hazon Food Conference is the cover story. Co-chair of the conference, Zelig Golden, tends his backyard garden in Oakland in the cover photo. While the article focuses mainly on the conference, reporter Stacey Palevsky does an excellent job working Tuv Ha’Aretz and Adamah into the story too. Thank you Stacey!
I’ve always believed that keeping kosher was not just a way of creating Jewish identity, but also a way to create a society attuned to the earth. After years of wondering why some animals are kosher and others are not, I found an ecological explanation for these rules (see section VI). I’m sharing it with the hope of getting some feedback.
I. Why do we keep kosher? I want to open up this question by taking a look back to parshat Noach. Usually when we think of the Noah story, we think about how Noah’s family was given permission to eat animals (read more about this on neohasid.org and on jcarrot. ) But parshat Noach is also the first place where we (that is, all humanity) are given laws restricting how and what we eat.[1]
Even though the laws about keeping kosher, kashrut, may seem like the most specifically Jewish of practices, they have their origins in this “Noachide covenant”, where the first restrictions on eating are described. Those restrictions are to not eat a limb from a living animal and to not eat the blood of an animal. Both are the basis of many kashrut rules.
The Noah story is also the first time the distinction between ‘pure’ and ‘unclean’ animals is mentioned (Noah is told to bring seven of the pure (tahor) animals, which are the ones we call kosher.) So even the least universal aspect of kashrut, the “cloven hoof and cud-chewing mouth” requirement, has its roots in one of the Torah’s most universal stories.
That’s a good jumping off point for searching out the universal meaning of these culturally-specific, arguably parochial laws.
Mark Bittman’s Saturday Article in the New York Times exposed fish farms as rife with unbalanced feed to food ratios, environmentally degrading practices and negative effects on biodiversity (not to mention palate diversity). He also says that farmed fish tastes bad. I guess it turns out that CAFOs and Fish Farms have more in common than a penchant for scandalous kashrut practices.
Thanks to Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster for this guest post. Rabbi Kahn-Troster is Director of Education and Outreach for Rabbis for Human Rights North America.
In Judaism, confession is a group experience. On Yom Kippur, we stand together as a community and in one voice confess our collective sins before God. Amidst the various lists of transgressions, the Al Chet prayer contains a line that deals with sustenance: Al chet she chatanu liphanecha b’ma’achal u’mishteh, literally: “For the sin we have sinned before You through food and drink.” “Food and drink” is often translated as “gluttony,” which narrows the sin to the idea that we are confessing to having eaten more than our share, wantonly, without thinking. I think the original translation is helpful—we have committed sins through all kinds of acts of eating and drinking, but also through the way our food is produced, distributed, and wasted.
Headache, fatigue and a metaphysical hunger for chocolate: the sure signs of sugar withdrawal, and during Pesach 2002, in post-industrial Wisconsin, I had to settle for potato chips and jelly.
Potato chips and jelly. Yep, you heard me. Picture an 18 year old New York-Jewish co-ed with a history of cookie eating and a mom who’s not so good at the whole care package thing. Now combine that with a supermarket kosher section that could fit 80,000 times in the space of this period. I needed something, man, and the matzoh I’d horded from the Madison supermarket one hour’s drive away just wasn’t cutting it anymore.
Over the next four weeks, Jews will be sitting down to together to more celebratory meals in succession than they likely do the entire rest of the year. Many of those meals will be kosher, and many more will include meat as either a main or side course – or both. Meanwhile, Jewish people around the country are also beginning to think differently about the meat that they eat, in light of the immigration raid on the kosher meat plant, Agriprocessors earlier this year, and of all the transgressions related to the conventional meat industry (CAFOs, hormones and antibiotics, worker abuse, etc). For some people, the easiest response is to go vegetarian. But for people who choose not to go the veggie route, what are the options?
We asked some of the leading voices of the New Jewish food movement to answer the question: “If I choose to eat meat over the high holidays, what is the number one thing I should consider?”
Read their responses below – and share your own.
If you read The Jew & The Carrot frequently, you have likely read about the crop of sustainable, kosher meat coops sprouting up in communities across the country. But what about other faith traditions? As it turns out, one organization in Chicago is on a different religious path, but entirely the same wave length when it comes to ethical meat consumption.
In 2001, a Chicago-based interfaith educational organization, Faith in Place, created Taqwa, an Eco-Food Cooperative that offers meat that satisfies religious dietary requirements of the Muslim community (halal – or lawful), while simultaneously meeting fair labor and ecological standards. Today Taqwa serves organic pastured beef, lamb, and chicken to about 80 families, about half who are Muslim. All the animals are humanly raised by local Illinois farmers, and slaughtered solely by qualified Muslims. According to their website:
dhabiha (the Islamic procedure for slaughtering that is comparable to kashrut) meat is considered the only type of meat that is deemed lawful for consumption by many Muslims. For others, it is the preferred mode of slaughter. For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, it is important to note that research has proven that severing the four major blood vessels of the neck and draining the blood is the most healthful manner of slaughtering animals.
Last week, I spoke with Faith in Place’s Executive Director and Taqwa co-founder, Reverend Dr. Clare Butterfield who shares in the desire to eat humanely raised animals with other members of her home congregation Unity Temple in Oak Park (the Unitarian Universalist congregation). She told me about the inspiration behind Taqwa, why the model of Muslim meat coops cannot exist on a larger scale, and why that’s okay.
Read the interview after the jump…
New Yorkers crammed into the street at today’s eighth annual NYC International Pickle Day like so many Kirby cukes in a barrel. Pickle-makers from Essex Street to South Korea came to sample and sell their wares to an eager audience of thousands.
Where was I last year on pickle day? you might be wondering, but in fact, you were probably here, on Orchard Street, biting into one of Guss’ famous three-quarter sours with it’s crisp, salty bite that’s more refreshing than a gulp of Gatorade. According to the folks at Guss’, the festival has been packed every year since the New York Food Museum began sponsoring it in 2001.
