This morning, The Jewish Vegetarians of North America put out a press release that condemns the goat schecting at Hazon’s food conference.  As a Jew and a vegetarian, I support this statement.  Or rather, I support the legitimate concern for animal welfare and environmental integrity at the foundation of the statement.  Still, I think that unless the JVNA plans to condemn ALL the simchas, events, and conferences in the Jewish community that serve meat - then perhaps Hazon’s Food Conference is the one meat-serving conference they should endorse. 

Like the majority of Jewish events, The Hazon Food Conference will not promote mindless or wasteful meat consumption, nor will it violate tsa’ar ba’alei chaim by promoting animal mistreatment.  On the contrary, the schecting and consumption of the goats at the Food Conference will encourage participants to take responsibility for their food choices.

More importantly, the schecting will not happen in a vaccuum.  It will be one of several sessions throughout the weekend that get participants thinking about meat consumption (ethical, kosher, industrial, abstinence from and otherwise).  Regardless of whether or not participants attend the schecting or eat the goat meat, they will be surrounded by thoughtful conversations about JVNA’s central question, ”Should Jews be Vegetarians?”  For some participants the answer will be no - but if JVNA is serious about the question, they ought to support the Food Conference’s serious engagement with it.

I’ve been a committed Jewish vegetarian for 8 years, but I realized a long while ago that the day I once hoped for (the one where all Jews renounce meat forever) was simply never going to come.  And in the meantime, there is a lot of work to be done to ensure that the Jews who do decide to eat meat are doing it in a way that respects the land, the animal, and themselves.

Read the JVNA’s full Press Release below the jump.

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This year, Black Friday was significantly lightened by more news on the ethical, kosher meat front (and more shoutouts to Hazon, Kosher Conscience, and The Jew & The Carrot) - this time in the Wall Street Journal by long-time Hazon friend and journalist-extraordinaire, Julie Wiener.  Read the article below and find the original text here.

Wall Street Journal
How Kosher Was Your Turkey?
Some Jews demand better treatment for birds.
BY JULIE WIENER
Friday, November 23, 2007

Yesterday, 24 New York City households served turkeys that were not only free-range, organic and raised on a nearby family farm–but also 100% kosher. For that, their guests can give thanks to Simon Feil, a 31-year-old actor who has devoted the past 1 1/2 years to starting Kosher Conscience, a “kosher ethical meat co-op.” The co-op, which 90 people have expressed interest in joining when it begins regular poultry and beef deliveries in a few months, will offer kosher meat that has been treated humanely “at every stage,” he says.

Judaism’s taboos on pork and shellfish, as well as the requirement to separate meat and dairy products, are well known even among gentiles. Yet for many contemporary American Jews the taboos can feel arbitrary, cumbersome and devoid of meaning (only 17% say they keep kosher homes). At the same time, some Jews who do find spiritual meaning in the dietary laws have become frustrated that kosher food production does not always reflect their values.

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YehuditBrachah reports on Jewschool about a new Nathan Cummings Foundation grant for Hechsher Tzedek. The budding Conservative movement initiative started by Rabbi Morris Allen. According to Allen’s blog, a group of Rabbis and lay leaders who have been working on the project will be presenting at the upcoming Conservative movement biennial convention in Orlando. Both the grant and the increasing momentum within the Conservative movement around the important issue of food justice in Kashrut should be exciting for both observers of kashrut and those concerned about food justice alike! (even better for those of us who fall into both categories!)

The beginnings of the Hechsher Tzedek originated with Allen’s first trip to the Agriprocessors’ kosher meat plant in Postville, IA–which produces meat under the label Rubashkin’s. Now a variety of potential ethical issues around the Agriprocessors’ plant have been coming to light– including the newest, which is a potential violation of precautions to prevent the spread of BSE, or Mad Cow Disease.

The Daily Forward continues its coverage of the UFCW campaign to bring Agriprocessors’ violations into the public eye. In conjunction with the Jewish Labor Committee, UFCW orchestrated a leafletting action outside Trader Joe’s that source Agriprocessors’ kosher meat last Wednesday. The UFCW leaflet included claims about violations of mad cow safety rules, a claim that was subsequently disputed by Sholom Rubashkin on the Agriprocessors’ website and in Yeshiva World News.

Also from Yeshiva World News: Osem has reportedly “recalled tens of thousands of bags of Bamba, Bissli, and Dubonim snacks” because of a small toy prize inside the package with 3.5 times the allowable level of lead. Maybe babies shouldn’t be fed Bamba anymore…

Stay tuned for updates on the UFCW campaign.

11.26.07 Update: The Jewish Advocate reports on last week’s leafletting action outside Trader Joe’s in Brookline, MA, organized by the Jewish Labor Committee.

My friend (and The Jew & The Carrot contributor) Simon spent his day pulling feathers out of turkeys.  While I clicked away at a keyboard in my office, he plucked - getting these just-slaughtered birds ready for their Thanksgiving debut.

Simon is the founder of Kosher Conscience, an ethical kosher meat coop in NYC.  Don’t let the word ethical fool you.  A self described “vigorous carnivore,” he is about the farthest thing from a. a vegetarian or b. a hippie as one can possibly get.  He also has a seriously learned Jewish background on which he bases his ethical grounding - which is more than can be said for many Jews out there who wax zealous about ”eco-kashrut,” (ahem, myself included). 

Kosher Conscience has no intention of surreptitiously convincing Jews to eat less meat - you can leave that to PETA.  Instead, it answers the question: how do you enjoy the simcha of meat” without being soulless about it? 

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Margaret Hathaway’s new book, The Year of the Goat, tells the story of the 40,000 miles she and her partner (now husband), Karl Schatz, traveled in search of the perfect goat cheese - and a new way of life.

Before embarking on their year-long journey, Hathaway was a freelance writer who managed Magnolia Bakery in New York City, and Schatz worked as a photo editor for Time Magazine’s website. Together, they lived in Brooklyn, shopped at the Greenmarkets, and generally enjoyed city life - but they craved something more than the five boroughs could offer. So, they set off on a year-long journey to discover if farming - and particularly working with goats - held the secrets of the next chapter of their lives.

Along the way, Hathaway and Schatz met what they call, a “vivid cast of characters,” including a myriad of goat cheese and meat enthusiasts, a Texas-born Muslim living in Maine and helping the local Somali community in Lewiston acquire fitting goats for their religious festivals, and a Messianic Jew who keeps Shabbat as well as a herd of goats.

I spoke with Margaret and Karl last week about goats (naturally), their adventures in homesteading, the connection between farming and Jewish tradition, and their upcoming event in NYC, the Goatstravaganza (Nov. 8).

Interview continues below the jump…

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Ever wondered what eco-Judaism sounds like from a woman’s perspective? Think it’s all a bunch of spiritual, hippy-dippy hoo hah? Okay, that might be part of it - but it turns out, there’s a wider world of female, Jewish environmentalists out there than you may have expected.

Lilith Magazine’s latest issue features a section called “Women take on the Environment.” Hear first hand from seven women: “Leagle Eagle” Tzipi Iser Itzik, “Frying-Pan Bodhisattva” Betsy Teutsch, “Veggie Pioneer” Dr. Roberta Kalechofsky, “Outdoor Educator” Nili Simhai, “Activist/Executive” Barbara Lerman-Golomb, me as the offical “Blogmesiter,” and The Jew & The Carrot’s very own hard core “truck farmer,” Esther Mandelheim, as they discuss their own journeys - as Jews, as women, and as guardians of the earth.

Read the Lilith article here.

On UJC’s podcasts web page, Nigel moderates a panel discussion about the new jewish food movement featuring Simon Feil, Leah Koenig, Linda Lantos, and Lisa Kleinman. Download it here!

Thanks to Hazon’s friend, Lindsey Paige Savoie, for this guest post.

I eat meat. When I first said those three little words to Sabrina, her response was, ‘whoa.’ She didn’t gasp because I eat meat. She could hear the fear in my voice when I said it. Why should I be ashamed to eat meat?

I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska – land of cows. We ate meat daily. Friday night was especially noteworthy as we gathered at my grandparents for the rarest of all meats. I don’t mean hard to find. I mean purple, raw, rare. Now I know why my dad preferred the end cuts.

Summer camp and youth group conventions opened my eyes to new ideas including the notion of becoming a vegetarian. I went through a teenage phase (as my parents called it) of not eating meat or fish. After a few years, I slowly and at times secretly went back to eating meat.

Years later, I still struggle with how, when and where to eat meat. Due to my work in Jewish environmental education and my petsitting business, eating meat is a challenge both socially and mentally. How do I preach environmental values and eat a hamburger? How do I care for animals on a daily basis and then prepare a different type of animal for dinner?

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You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops…It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Although these words by the late A. Bartlett Giamatti, former Major League Baseball commissioner and poet describe perfectly how I feel this week as a disgusted Mets fan, they could also, like the scroll of Kohelet, describe the bittersweet reality of Sukkot. We celebrate the harvest, even as the falling leaves remind us that soon winter will be here. Of course, the sukkah is the most obvious symbol of impermanence connected with this fall holiday. But the etrog offers its own lessons as well.

My most vivid Jewish memory as a child was kiddush in our synagogue sukkah. Our elderly rabbi would show us his etrog, and implore us to marvel at its luxuriant, citrusy ripeness. Then he took a dry, brown oval out of his pocket, which he revealed was last year’s model. Then he produced a third etrog - this one from five years earlier - a dark caramel brown sphere. Finally, he displayed an etrog from twenty years ago - a pitch-black, shriveled hunk. As he dexterously held all four between his fingers, it was like catching a glimpse of eternity: Each etrog would soon become the next one, and so on down the line - and there between his wrinkled fingers lie our fate as well. Pretty heady stuff for a nine year old to fathom.

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In a pinch, I call myself a vegetarian. Over the years, I have found the term socially useful–simpler to explain than my complex eating habits–and accurately describing my diet without meat. But am I a vegetarian? Rebecca, a teen on an Israel trip I staffed this summer, wondered just this. And while at the time I responded in the affirmative, I realized that I wasn’t being entirely honest. There is an asterisk that I hadn’t thought much of: I eat fish.

What I’ve come to realize is that, to some degree, my categorization of fish as not-so-meatish is an internalization of the laws of kashruth. According to traditional Jewish law, fish is neither here nor there–it is neutral. And though there are restrictions on eating fish and meat on the same plate, this tends to be irrelevant outside the observant Jewish community. Any list of cultural Jewish foods surely includes: a) tuna melt with American cheese; b) lox and cream cheese; and c) gefilte fish neighboring brisket. As far as kashruth is concerned, fish is less of an animal than cattle or chickens.

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The Jewish Week published an article this week that examines: The Yom Kippur tradition of kaporot, the Jewish ethical food movement. Hazon and The Jew & The Carrot both get significant shout-outs. Read the full article here (or below).

Swinging No More
Kaporos and the new eco-kosher movement.
Steve Lipman - Staff Writer

Growing up out of town, in a non-Orthodox household, I never knew from kaporos.

It’s a post-Talmudic, pre-Yom Kippur custom in some traditional circles that involves swinging a live chicken three times over your head, reciting some verses that symbolically transfer your sins to the fowl — a rooster for a man, a hen for a woman — then leaving it behind to be slaughtered, in a kosher manner of course, and given to a needy family.

Kaporos is Hebrew for “atonements.” The custom is supposed to teach sensitivity for God’s creatures and awareness of one’s own transgressions. Orthodox, but a rationalist, I wasn’t interested. Then Tami called.

“Do you want to do kaporos with me?” she asked.

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As we sit down to our Rosh Hashana meals, all eyes go to the challah/apple ceremoniously (or should I say unceremoniously?) dipped in honey. The kids begin to sing that lifeless ditty to the tune of Oh My Darlin’ Clementine “dip the apple in the honey, make a bracha loud and clear. . . . “ (I can’t recall the rest because we banned that song from our house more than a decade ago). Much ink has been spilled (mostly by the honey lobby) perpetuating this custom of dubious and suspect origin in the name of sweetness for the upcoming year. In keeping with the spirit of the New Jewish Food Movement, perhaps we should critically re-examine this custom and explore alternatives. As a maple syrup producer, may I humbly suggest using maple syrup. Read more »

The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery ended this past Sunday and I’ll share some highlights that I think will particularly interest our readers.

• “Ecotarian/Ecotarianism” - What do we call ourselves? “Ecotarian” was proposed as a catchall term for most perspectives basically against industrial food, but which vary in emphasis: locavore, vegetarian, sustainable, organic, committed to humane conditions and slaughter of animals for meat - i.e., that diverse group that is us. But is it precise and universally understood enough let’s say to become a meal option on a plane flight, asked Jessica Lee, who proposed the term?
• “Conscientious Production” - another pair of speakers attempted to categorize eco-friendly values as “conscientious production” (in contrast to conspicuous consumption).

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In preparation for Rosh Hashanah I have been thinking about what I always seem to be thinking about …. namely food. This year I will be preparing meals for a yet to be determined number of family and friends (quite a feat in my tiny only semi-functional kitchen with a mini stove that has not worked properly in 2 years and burners that seem to go on strike every few weeks). As this New Year approaches, I’ve been mulling over the significance and symbolism of food in our tradition. For much of our collective history, Jews were an agricultural people, maintaining the delicate balance of give and take with the earth. They nurtured the land that sustained them and directly reaped the benefits of their labor. Even if you yourself were not a farmer, you likely knew your neighbor who was. Nothing was taken for granted, the rainfall, the fertility of the soil, the well preserved seeds passed down from generation to generation, the livestock, the fruit trees, and the grain - it was all very real to the Jews who came together to celebrate their feast days. Simply put, food was holy.

Needless to say, today our relationship with food is very different. We are much farther removed from our food sources. Even when we try to support local agriculture, we are not dependent upon it. We are part of a thriving global economy that makes almost anything available to us at anytime (at a price of course). So if there is a hailstorm in northern New York, or Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, and crops are decimated - most New Yorkers would not even notice. We have been conditioned to associate food with hermetically sealed plastic packaging instead of the soil, plants, and aimals that are the true sources of our sustenance (which is why I believe that so many people who do eat meat are sqeemish about witnessing an animal being slaughtered ala hazon’s schitah debate - or even making the mental association that their “cutlet” in all of its skinless boneless glory was once a living breathing bird)

What I have decided to do this Rosh Hashanah is to focus on the local and seasonal bounty and blend in the traditional foods symbolic of the goodness, sweetness, and fruitfulness we hope to be blessed with in the year to come. Read more »