Sam Kass, White House assistant chef and Food Initiative Coordinator, wore a green tie – it was appropriate since the meeting was on St. Patrick’s Day. Twenty-eight community and faith-based organizations (CFBO) from around the country, including Hazon represented by yours truly, had gathered for a one-day meeting to discuss First Lady Michelle Obama’s ambitious initiative, Let’s Move, to combat childhood obesity in one generation. Kass and Jocelyn Frye, the First Lady’s Policy Director started the day by talking about the meaningful role that faith-based organizations play in their communities. The White House is seeking a comprehensive strategy to tackle the dual problem of hunger and obesity and they see faith-based organizations as uniquely positioned to do this work by allowing children to connect body, mind and spirit. Kass spoke of the need for simple ways for people to transform their lives and to then become leaders for others to make healthy changes, too.
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.”
Many people are using Passover as a chance to think about hunger and food security.
Just this week activists gathered in Jerusalem to protest the government’s failure to provide thousands of children who live below the poverty line with hot school lunches or ensuring ‘food security’ for all its citizens. Click here to read the whole story.
In Los Angeles, many of Hazon’s friends are involved with a Hunger Seder on March 24th. The community seder will take place at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino.
Avi Rubel is the North American Director of Masa Israel Journey, the umbrella organization for immersion programs in Israel for young adults (18-30). When not sending people to Israel, Avi can be found making cheese, bread, kombucha or fermenting or pickling all kinds of goodies in his Brooklyn apartment and recording his adventures on his food blog, Make Cheese Not War. In the weeks after the Hazon Food Conference, he shared some of his thoughts about his experience with Hazon in California.
Click below to read his posts:
Learn with Hazon’s Executive Director and Founder, Nigel Savage, get updates about our work to build a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community and a healthier and more sustainable world for all. Participate in the conversation as we explore the dynamic interplay of food, Jewish tradition and contemporary life.
Check out this amazing article about our first ever Jewish Food Education Network pre-conference track from Hazon’s supporters at The Covenant Foundation.
This year The Covenant Foundation made it possible for all members of our Jewish Food Education Network, JFEN, to attend the entire Food Conference, including a special pre-conference track designed specifically for those involved and interested in the field of Jewish Food Education.
“I feel really positive about the energy and engagement here,” said [star educator Vicky] Kelman, who presented a session on the centrality of family mealtime in Jewish culture and consciousness. “There is tremendous commitment and passion around JFEN and Jewish food education.
The Hazon CSA community in Elkins Park (Philadelpha, PA) hosted another outstanding Tu Bishvat seder this year. (Click here to see photos from their seder last year.) Their organizers shared this list of individual commitments that folks wrote down for the year, to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, a healthier and more sustainable world for all. May they serve as an inspiration for all of us in the coming season!
Leave your own resolutions in the comments.
- Go outside more
- Take shorter showers
Be sure to check out this article written by Nigel Savage, Hazon’s founder and executive director, published in Sh’ma this month. The piece is a good summary of the lay of the land of the Jewish Food Movement and is sure to give folks some “food for thought.”
Hazon staff love granola. We’re blessed to often get home-made batches from our colleagues, but when we need granola for 600+, we turn to Udi’s Granola. Udi and his team have been supporters of the Hazon Food Conference for years. And, if that wasn’t enough to convince us that we like them, Udi’s Granola was a winner in the San Francisco Chronicle’s granola reviews. Here’s what they said in the article:
Panelists described the first-place Udi’s ($4.99/13 ounces at Whole Foods) as “toasty and nutty,” with “a mild honey flavor” and “nice small flakes.” They liked the “oaty-ness” and “simple flavor” and thought it had an “old-fashioned taste.” Two would buy this brand, two might and one would not.
Thanks so much to Aaron Lerman for this great guest post. Aaron is the Vice-President of Bet My Life Charities, which seeks to educate and train athletes for races ranging from the casual 5k to Ironman Triathlon…and to raise money for some worthy causes. When he’s not working with the charity he can be found eating falafel, traveling the world, riding bikes or learning more about health. At home in Chicago, he designs and develops window treatments and other home products for retail stores…so if you’re in the market for some curtain rods, this is the guy to talk to! This next spring Aaron is looking to get down and dirty by creating his own backyard garden which has been a long awaited (and delayed) project.
Upon walking into the Birthright Israel NEXT salon at Hazon, I could feel the excitement and energy in the room. Dozens of people were talking, laughing, re-connecting and of course eating on this first night of the conference. This high-energy atmosphere permeated every event I attended during the conference… and did I mention there was lots of eating?
Now, looking back on my time at the Hazon Food Conference in Monterey, California, I wanted to share what the conference meant to me, and how the energy of the event has continued to stay with me.
People love to cook for intimate gatherings, but they also have a fascination with mass-producing food. I, for one, am guilty of an obsession with the Food Network show Unwrapped and immediately join the line for any tour of a cheese-, chocolate-, or bourbon-making operation. I’ll also tune into any show that gives chefs a ridiculously short amount of time to cook for an outrageous number of people—preferably with some kind of added challenge, like making dinner for a cruise ship filled half with gluten-sensitive diners and half with people who subsist entirely on whole wheat bread… while the boat heads directly for a storm on the high seas.
Last week, The Washington Post’s On Faith blog published a piece of mine inspired by the Hazon Food Conference. Specifically, I was inspired by the session “What Would Moses Drive?”
Entitled “Can Judaism save the planet?”, this piece presents one perspective that answers the question with a resounding “Yes!” We at least have the tools to do it. Judging from the number of people at the conference, and their passion and dynamic visions, we have the resources as well.
(This post originally appeared on Jewcy.com and is reprinted with permission)
What would Moses drive? This was the title of a session on climate change at the Hazon Food Conference, held December 24 to 27 in Pacific Grove, Calif. Indeed, this is a question for the ages. Or for right now.
The conference came just a few days after the close of the United Nations’ climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference also marked the end of a journey by a very wacky school bus, which cruised across the country on used vegetable oil to raise awareness about the Jewish Climate Change Campaign [read more about that here and here]. So it made sense for Jewish educator and environmental visionary Adam Berman to ask the question.
As it turns out, it didn’t really matter when this conference on a Jewish food movement that emphasizes sustainability took place. Really, Jews should be asking themselves what the quintessential member of the Tribe would do about climate change every day, and modeling solutions themselves. Luckily, Jewish practices translate beautifully into concrete tactics.
Thanks so much to Lailah Robertson for this great guest post about her experience and the Hazon Food Conference. Lailah is a San Francisco freelance writer who writes the blog In My Box about her CSA box and all the delicious vegetarian, gluten-free things she makes with it. This post is NOT intended to endorse any particular diet or agenda, e.g. to say that being vegan (abstaining from all animal products) is the only way to live, or that vegetarians are hypocrites. It merely hopes to be an exploration of one of the least considered aspects of our food chain.
Nigel Savage, founder of Hazon, asked us two questions during his keynote speech last night at the Hazon Food Conference. It felt like the beginning of one of those Jewish parables, the ones where the wise rabbi asks or tells us something that means more than it seems on the surface, where you ponder on the teaching and the world opens up in a new way.
“Stand up if you eat meat, but you wouldn’t if you had to kill it yourself,” Nigel called out. A number of people in the packed hall rose from their seats. I applauded them for their self-awareness and honesty, while of course maintaining a certain degree of vegetarian smugness.
Then he asked us another question. “Stand up if you are vegetarian, but would eat meat if you killed it yourself.” This time fewer people stood up, but it was still a significant number.
Then Nigel told us the story of the goat.
