This week, as Earth Day came and went and I attended a fair here or an Earth celebration there, it also donned on me that Spring is here!

So, beyond my environmental excursions, I also attended of variety of events held on my very own Columbia University. Yet, what I found was an inability to fully appreciate some of the events due to the ubiquity of plastic water bottles. Some may laugh, but I find myself becoming more and more annoyed with these obnoxious bottles that I suddenly see everywhere. As I have previously written about bottled water, my awakening began when seeing the movie “Blue Gold: World Water War’s” on instant play on Netflix. Then, I really became irked when seeing “The Story of Bottled Water,” which I posted on this blog.

Last week though, I attended another water documentary screening, this one a full length feature exclusively focused on the water bottle industry. Now, the movie does a lot of pointing fingers. Most obviously, the manufacturers, NESTLE, Coca-cola, and Pepsi Co., bear a large portion of the blame.

Yet, beyond these stormtroopers, the film also criticizes the manufacturing of plastic bottles, or specifically the type of plastic used for water bottles. Called “PET” or “PETE”, this plastic has traces of all sorts of toxins linked to all kinds of health hazards. The most common and perhaps scariest is the link between the toxins in the plastics and fetal development. You would think the Right-to-Life community would be all over this one?

We remember the BPA discovery that destroyed Nalgene and made SIGGs cooler than Uranus, but what we don’t realize is that much of the plastic in your “Poland Spring” “Dasani” “Deer Park” or “Aquafina” contains some trace of BPA, benzene, or some other kind of harmful toxins. Though it seems impossible to escape simply breathing in toxins because of the pollution we all breathe daily, it is more distressing that we choose (most of the time out of ignorance) to put these poisons in our body.

And just to reiterate, Dasani and Aquafina are JUST PURIFIED TAP WATER. It is exactly what you drink out of the sink! Only it’s less healthy because there are some other salts and chemicals in it, as well as, whatever has mixed into the water from the plastic bottles.

And this is the danger. We don’t know why and how these poisons leak into the water contained in the bottle. Now, we know not to drink a bottle if it has been sitting in your car in the heat, yet none of us know where that bottle came from before we bought in the store. Perhaps it was sitting in a heated area. Or perhaps, simply long liquid exposure with the plastic releases some of the toxins into the water. I don’t know, but either way, tests (from the film) found that the water in plastic water bottles is often highly polluted and/or toxic.

So, take all this information and then attend some University events I did this past weekend. Every event had an assortment of drinks, including plastic water bottles. The BBQ on Saturday Afternoon on the South Lawns, in the middle of the heat of the day, had plastic water bottles to drink.

Forget everything I have just written about the health dangers of bottled water. Consider this:

Imagine the price of a 6-pack of .5 L bottled water to be about $6 (let’s say 1 dollar for every bottle)
Multiply that by however many people are coming to your event (let’s say 50 ppl): $300

Already you have spent several hundreds of dollars on something you can get essentially FREE:
84 oz pitcher (from wal-mart.com): around $20
Igloo 10 gallon water cooler: Around $80

So it is obviously much cheaper to have someone refilling the water at your event, then buying bottled water for “convenience” (I’m sure your constituents won’t mind the poison you serve with that “convenient” bottled water).

One good thing about Tapped: The Movie was contact it made with another organization – Food and Water Watch – about how to “get off the bottle” and reclaim the TAP. The produced a brochure about how public events can easily be ran without plastic bottled water. The more we refuse to serve it in our public events, the more people will stop using it.

Please, if you are reading this and you are organizing an event soon, DON’T BUY PLASTIC BOTTLED WATER. There are other, healthier ways of keeping your peeps refreshed.

To read more astonishing facts, here is the No Impact Man’s opinion.

Late on Friday we received the following letter from Pete Cohon, founder and moderator of VeggieJews, an international, real-world and online, Jewish, vegetarian organization.  He has been a vegan and animal rights activist for 22 years and a vegetarian for 27 years.  A former San Francisco trial lawyer, Pete now lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Below his letter is the response from Hazon.  We encourage a vibrant debate, but please ask commentators to refrain from personal attacks on any views.  We reserve the right to remove  any comments that violate our Community Guidelines.

An open letter to Nigel Savage, Executive Director of Hazon, and the groups members:

The Hazon group claims that it works to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, fight climate change and promote a more sustainable world for all.  I understand that the group even hosts vegetarian meals at which it promotes its programs.

That sounds great.  But I’m concerned that Hazon is not living up to the promise.

Three years ago, during your group’s 2007 Jewish Food Conference, Hazon publicly slaughtered three goats despite numerous appeals that the cruel demonstration of shechita be canceled.  I am disappointed that Hazon remains unapologetic for its cruel and unnecessary slaughter.  But I am truly offended that you are planning a similar demonstration again at this year’s Jewish Food Conference which will begin on December 24 near Monterey, California.

According to Hazon’s Web site, this year’s conference will include:

Chicken Shechita at Green Oaks Creek Farm:

We will meet on the farm early in the morning on Wednesday, December 23 to observe the shechita (ritual slaughter) and to help pluck, clean, soak, and salt pasture-raised chickens.  If you are old enough to be a bar or bat mitzvah, you are old enough to volunteer.  No experience is necessary.  Wear warm work clothes and be prepared to get your hands dirty.

In other words, Hazon is again promoting unnecessary animal cruelty in the name of Jewish environmentalism.

It looks like, contrary to its claims, Hazon is not really a Jewish environmental group at all.

While claiming to fight climate change and support a more sustainable environment, Hazon completely ignores the 2006 report of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization that found animal agriculture responsible for almost 1/5 of all global warming.

Hazon also continues to ignore the 2009 report of the NGO World Watch, which found that the UN’s figures were incorrectly tabulated and that the actual contribution of animal agriculture to global warming is 51%.

But, apparently, Hazon doesn’t care about the facts.  Your group continues to pretend to be a Jewish environmental organization  and even hosts misleading vegetarian events to promote itself while also continuing to promote cruel and environmentally unsustainable lifestyles.  If Hazon believes that a few chickens running around freely on small, sustainable farms can feed the demand of billions and billions of people living mostly in urban areas on this planet, then Hazon is truly living in a dream world.  As long as people eat animals, mass production of animal foods will require massive operations that cannot  possibly be environmentally sustainable.

Please be advised that your planned slaughter of chickens at this year’s Jewish Food Conference is unacceptable.  The conference will only encourage the continuation of a meat-based diet despite the negative health, environmental and ethical consequences.  I urge you to stop the bloodletting and start healing the planet by promoting to the Jewish community a diet based solely on plant-based foods.  It’s time for Hazon to include compassion for animals in its mission as well as real-world environmental sanity.

- – -

Dear Pete,

Thank you for your thoughtful response to our work.  Nigel is out of town this weekend, but he wanted to make sure we responded to you.

Before I go into Hazon’s pedagogy, I want to comment on your climate change comments.  As you note, animal husbandry is a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.  We know that data and have used it to guide aspects of our Jewish Climate Change Campaign.  In this campaign, we ask Jews to reduce their meat intake by 50% within the next shmita cycle – September 2015.

But we go past the concerns of climate change.  Hazon engages on the issues that arise from the industrialization of our food – period.  We examine how we eat all foods and what we’re eating.  Through the Hazon CSA (community supported agriculture) program, hundreds of Jewish families across the US are sourcing their weekly vegetables from local organic farmers.  Countless people have been inspired by Hazon to shop at their local farmer’s market.

Now, to address the issue of shechting animals at the Food Conference.  I am not going to address whether shechita is cruel – that is a conversation on Jewish tradition that I will not address here.  But I will address how participating in the shechita process impacts the community that has become the Food Conference participants.  Hazon does not tell people how to be Jews, let alone how to be environmentalists.  We do provide the richness of education and experience that enables and empowers personal decision.  For too many people, animal consumption is disguised by neat packaging and the neutral term “meat.” By shechting animals at the Food Conference, we provide the space for people to engage with the intimate reality of eating animal flesh. And that experience has proven, time and time again, to do more to influence long-term changes in personal consumption behavior.

Again, thank you for taking the time to engage us on this important issue.

All the best,

Liore
Assistant to the Executive Director
Hazon

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Yosh and I got a worm composter for our wedding – it’s true, we are just that dorky!  For the last week or so (yes, we got married in November, but the composter arrived in mid-February, and I finally got around to getting the worms last week), I’ve been the proud mom of a brood of about 1,000 wriggling, very hungry worms.

They live in the Worm Factory, pictured above (p.s. definitely not our kitchen), and  I couldn’t be more excited.  Yosh on the other hand, is a bit more squeamish about the whole thing, though I can’t blame him.  He suffered through a bit of worm trauma when his last roommate neglected to properly feed worms, and the bin quickly self destructed.

But aside from the nachas I feel over the little munchies - which was a definitely surprise – I was certainly not counting on our compost bin bringing up halachic (Jewish law) questions.  Then Passover entered the horizon.

Inspired by Arlyn’s recent post, “Can You Be Chametz-Free in 29 Days?” I started raiding the kitchen for old ends of challah,  bagel halves, and loaves of stale bread that I shoved in the freezer instead of throwing them away.  According to the Worm Factory guidebook, worms like to eat fruits and vegetables, starches of all kinds – pasta, doughnuts, rice, cereal, stale bread, etc. – and what they call “healthy snacks” – coffee grounds (a standout favorite among our worm crew), crushed egg shells, and tea bags.  What better way to slowly rid the house of chametz that we aren’t going to eat, then feed them to the compost bin?

But what happens if, when Passover begins next month, there is still some starchy debris hanging out in the pile that has not yet been converted to soil?  Do we own that chametz?  Are we benefiting from it because our worms are happy and healthy?  Do we need to, gulp, sell our bin to the neighbors?  Like any Jewish mother, I’m reluctant to let go and entrust them in someone else’s care.

I thought about consulting The Shmethicist on this one (and I’d definitely love to hear her thoughts), but I think we’re in need of a rabbinic opinion here – or three – on this one.  Help a worm-loving sister out!

Photo Credit: BWCN Farms

The JTA reported yesterday about a pair of kosher butcher brothers in Long Island who are causing a peculiar controversy: by petitioning the state of New York to stop enforcing its kosher laws.

The brothers’ shop, Commack Deli and Market, adheres to a Conservative definition of kashrut, which holds that some foods (like frozen vegetables) are inherently kosher, and therefore do not need kosher certification. But according to the JTA: “Under New York law, only products labeled as kosher can be sold as kosher. The store’s kosher supervisor – a Conservative Rabbi named William Berman – submitted an affidavit with a different point of view: “the state is infringing upon the religious freedom of the non-Orthodox denomination/sects of Judaism by compelling [them] to adhere to the law requiring labels on all kosher food products.”

On the one hand, I sympathize with the Yarmeisch brothers. I consider myself Orthodox, and I do purchase some foods without heksherim, beer, certain rice products (rice wine, vinegar in some cases), and frozen veggies. But I feel a bit like a hidden Jew – “If anyone finds out!”

BUT from the Ortho P.O.V. I can say as follows: I used to be amazed (okay I still am) at the level of craziness that people went through on Passover. Once a friend mentioned that when he was younger (the sixties) his parents would buy frozen carrots without certification even on passover. Then this year I was reading a Passover kosher manual and found an interesting issue: sometimes the machinery that is used to package, sort, etc regular frozen veggies also is used to make those frozen mixes that include pasta, fish or meat. Imagine dumping a bag of carrots into your Kosher-for-Passover-Chicken-Soup and having a bow-tie noodle jump in as well.

Imagine dumping a bag of carrots into your Kosher-for-Passover-Chicken-Soup and having a bow-tie noodle jump in as well.

What is the moral of the story? Food processing is so complicated these days that there is often significant cause for concern even in what appears to be the simplest of foods. All this notwithstanding, the constitutional questions are fascinating and the Jewish legal questions are equally or even more important: Why is there no significant ‘lenient’ or liberal hashgacha in the U.S.?

Read the JTA’s story here.
Read another account of the story in Vos Iz Neias here

On the Friday night of last year’s Hazon Food Conference I said, “put your hands up if you eat meat – but would not do so if you had to kill it yourself.” And a good number of hands went up.

Then I said: “put your hands up if you’re vegetarian – but you would eat meat if you killed it yourself.” And a different group of hands went up. And after a brief pause, everyone laughed.

They laughed because the two responses revealed what a self-selected group we were – and how fascinating our different distinctions. The first group were essentially saying, “I do like eating meat – but I know the process of killing it is awful – it’s actually so awful that if I had to kill it myself, I just wouldn’t eat meat.”

The second group were essentially saying “I’m vegetarian because I hate everything about how animals are raised and killed in our industrial food economy. But if I actually took responsibility for killing an animal myself, I would feel I was acting with integrity, and in accordance with my beliefs – and therefore, in that instance, I potentially would eat meat.”

And my response, when the laughter died down, was to say “Great: next year we’re going to shecht (slaughter according to kosher law) an animal here at the Food Conference..”

And people went: “Oooohhhhhh..”

So now we’re planning the 2nd Annual Hazon Food Conference, and started to get into this. How do we do it? Is it legal? Where do we do it? Who does it? How do we get it certified as kosher?

The first thing we found out (and this surprised me): meat has to be hung up for a few days before you can eat it. So we couldn’t, for instance, shecht a goat on Friday afternoon and then eat it for Friday night dinner. (Or a lamb either, of course). The solution to that is: we’ll shecht two animals: one on Friday afternoon, and anyone who wants to see an animal being killed will be able to see that. But we’ll also shecht one a week before, and that’ll be the one we’ll eat on Friday night.

So that’s the current plan. We haven’t figured out the other details yet. Adam Berman, the Executive Director of The Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center (where the Food Conference is held), told me that they’d already shechted one goat earlier in the year – but although it was a kosher animal, killed by a shochet in the appropriate manner, they couldn’t get it certified for the dining room.

Meantime: as we started discussing this with the Executive Committee Food Conference, we had at least one member say that he thought the idea was disgusting and didn’t want to go to the conference if we went through with it. But the whole point is precisely that it’s disgusting. If we do it, no-one who doesn’t want to see it will have to go. But those who do eat meat, and haven’t seen an animal killed, will have the opportunity to do so.

What do you think?!

(The picture in this post was taken at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center of Aitan Mizrahi with a lamb from a neighbor’s flock.)

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.

So, now my kitchen on Fire Island is being kashered for a weekend. The trouble is, everyone’s rules are different. The latest rules are pretty strict. What got me the most was my grill. It seems that the group can’t use my grill. The “essence” of the treif meat cannot be gotten rid of without painstaking brillo-pad scouring and then heating to 1000 degrees F, which everyone agrees would be dangerous.

Why should I care? Barbecued food isn’t even healthy, especially the blackened part. They’re not eating any meat. But grilled vegetables can be so delectable, with extra-virgin olive oil and sea salt. My grill is a charcoal kettle grill. So you really cook on fire. It is an amazing experience. Lately I’ve been cooking paella on a real paella pan from Spain. It fits perfectly onto our grill. You can make paella without shellfish, even without meat. I’m sure it would be incredibly delicious.

Oh well. The Hazon group will not know this taste. They will not know the feeling of their hands cooking outside over a live, hot fire. Why should I care? Somehow it just gets to me. What about the people who don’t keep such strict kashrut? Why does it seem like the most frum rules always trump?

One more thing. Women are usually doing all this work. They are even the most strict enforcers. But isn’t it the male orthodox rabbis who interpret the rules? My dishwasher on Fire Island is plastic-lined. I have a feeling that means every dish for the entire weekend must be hand washed.

On a more spiritual note, I could imagine taking the dishes, pans and silverware to the ocean afterwards, carting them in the wagon for immersion in the ultimate mikvah, the ocean. And getting pretty-well doused in the process. That would be a rather amazing thing to do. And solidifying for the group. A bonding experience.

We decided to go to a family reunion the weekend of the cleanse, so we won’t be at the house. In analyzing this, I probably felt safer being away. It has always seemed to me that the rules of kashrut serve mostly to divide and separate people. This time, I’m the one who ends up excluded, by my own choice. Perhaps I can learn, with time, to let go of this frustration I seem to harbor regarding all the laws and issues surrounding kashrut. That would be a good thing.