Multiple people have raised the idea that schecting goats, as Hazon plans to at the Food Conference next week, doesn’t really expose participants to the true horrors of conventional animal slaughter. What would really be effective, they say, is to show a film that conveys the brutality of factory farming.
They have a point - the way in which the Food Conference schecting will happen is not by any means a mainstream practice. But that’s exactly the reason why we’re doing it and also why showing a film just isn’t enough.
Factory farms are one of the worst and most infuriating things I can think of, and they’re a huge part of the reason I’m a vegetarian. And Hazon has no intention of hiding the realities of the conventional meat industry during the Food Conference. Quite on the contrary, in fact.
But there are people - including a growing number of people in the Jewish community - who are seeking out the ethics and practices of responsible and ethical meat eating. They are certainly not mainstream, at least not yet. But to say that the work they’re doing is not part of the “real world” denies them the potential to - God willing - influence the larger Jewish community to eat less meat and to eat it with more kavvanah (intention) and respect.
Perhaps its time to move beyond our outrage towards factory farms and start ”being the change” we want to see in the Jewish community - or at very least, supporting the people who are.
Below the jump, Adamah Program Director, Shamu Sadeh, talks about the realities of “Animals, Life and Death on the Farm.”
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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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When Jane Goldman founded Chow in 2004, she envisioned a new kind of food magazine: one that eschewed the stodgy, elitest air that typifies the world of gourmet food, and embraced the sense of adventure and joy that can be found baking a pie from scratch, or throwing your first dinner party.
With no formal culinary training herself (but plenty of experience in magazines and media), Goldman knew what her audience of home cooks were looking for: entertaining features, friendly culinary advice, instructional videos, regional restaurant recommendations, and a community board (originally the independent Chowhound) where they could chat with one another about their favorite pastime.
Three years, later, Chow - which more recently converted to an online format - is earning a reputation as the go-to spot for enthusiastic - or simply curious - do-it-yourself foodies.
I spoke with Goldman (who was recently named one of Heeb’s 100 most innovative Jews) about the fun side of food, the emerging community of DIY cooks, and, when it comes to “good chow” - why a good poppyseed hamentashen always trumps a latke.
Read the interview below the jump…
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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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Read “Planning the schecting at the Food Conference - part 1″ here.
Having laid all the burecratic ground work for the shechting, I now needed to actually get my hands on a goat! I didn’t know it, but Hazon was planning to use a goat belonging to ADVA Dairy, run by Aitan Mizrahi, who lives and works at Isabella with the Adamah program. I touched base with Aitan, who told me he has some goats that could be slaughtered, but he was planning on slaughtering them in October. He was fine waiting until December, as long as Hazon covered the extra food the critter would need for those 2 months. Seemed more than fair. We would need a few goats, partly to feed all the people at the Conference at least a taste of goat, but more importantly because there was no guarantee that every goat would be kosher.
Despite everything being done properly, after an animal is shechted, it’s lungs are inspected for sirchot, adhesions, which can render the animal unkosher. In order to try and ensure we’d have at least one usable animal, we arranged to shecht 3. Our friend at the OU told me we’d have an excellent chance of most if not all being kosher due to their young age. Apparently, animals over a year old are more likely to develop these lung blemishes and the younger they are, the less likely we’d find a disqualifying sircha. Since these goats will be all of 8 months old, much younger than the market usually deals with, we could be confident that we’d have meat to eat.
Animals, check.
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For all of the back and forth here about whether to shecht a goat at the upcoming Food Conference (which is certainly a noble and lively debate), very little space has been given to the what of shechting. Or the how, I suppose. While certainly secondary, the technical aspects of what goes/would go into slaughtering a goat at a Jewish retreat center in rural Connecticut with no facility set up for such a thing, and kosher are by no means simple. I was given the debatably enviable task (I loved it) of figuring out the answers to all the whats should we move ahead. Given that I’ve spent the better part of 18 months (2 years if you count my initial pangs of conscience) trying to get my ethical, kosher meat co-op off the ground, I figured I’d know all the pieces by heart and would just smooth them into place- heck, 1 little goat vs. dozens of cows? Piece of cake. Turns out that’s only half true.
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As the logistics (and debate) of schecting a goat at Hazon’s Food Conference next month continue, Alexander Lane over at Chow, describes how he decided to “kill Thanksgiving dinner.” Lane writes:
“Here I am in Maine, having relocated in April after spending my first 34 years around major cities like New York and San Francisco. Strange things happen here, such as wild turkeys wandering out of the woods behind your apartment complex. Even stranger, you develop the desire to shoot and eat them...”
Lane then goes on to describe his choice to forego the shrink-wrapped, store-bought turkey, to have a go at killing and preparing a real live animal.
His food story fits into the newly emerging “do it yourself” genre, which has Brooklyn families running full-scale farms in their backyards, and former supermarket goers jumping at the chance to kill their own animals for meat. These, “how I decided to get in touch with the food system by….” stories seem to be a hybrid of post-Omnivore’s Dilemma” ethics and American’s obsession with reality TV.
Whether DIY foodism will become a mainstay of how American’s source their food, or stay sparse enough to continue being story worthy, remains to be seen. For now, check out Lane’s article, “Gobble, Gobble, Bang,” here.
Walking down the streets of Brooklyn, you will inevitably run into some cobwebs - not the kind actually made by spiders (that’s asking a little much for our concrete jungle). Instead, you’ll find manufactured, cotton candy-like cobwebs that people drape on their bushes and pile on their stoops (along with winking pumpkins and smirking cardboard witches) for Halloween. Before too long, those pumpkins will be replaced by plastic Santas and reindeer dotted with little, white lights.
What does all this have to do with The Jew & The Carrot? It means the holidays (the “high” version) are over and the holiday (Chanukah) is not that far away. Don’t stress - Chanukah isn’t about gifts anyway - it’s about the lights and miracles and delicious fried foods. But, if you’re looking for 1. a great gift 2. that will benefit a great cause 3. and help you stay on track with all the Jewish holidays, look no further.
The Jewish Farm School has created an absolutely gorgeous 5768-5769 Jewish Farms Calendar that pairs food and farm photography with a 16-month (Sept 07-Dec 08) calendar.
The Jewish Farms Calendar features:
• All Jewish holidays
• Intimate photographs of freshly harvested produce and livestock that Jewish hands helped to cultivate (see attached preview)
• Dates for special Jewish food events (e.g. The Hazon Food Conference)
• Jewish/agricultural quotations
• 100% post-consumer recycled paper
How to purchase the calendar
The calendar is $18 dollars ($14 if you purchase 10 or more) and proceeds benefit the educational programs of the Jewish Farm School and Hazon. Each purchased calendar makes a huge difference! To purchase a calendar, email Robert Friedman or visit The Jewish Farm School’s website.
Leonard Felson, you’re our hero. Thank you for writing such a beautiful, thorough article about Hazon’s food work for The Jerusalem Report.
Print the full text here.
The Jerusalem Report
October 15, 2007
By: Leonard Felson
Tuv Ha’Aretz brings together 3,000 years of kashrut, food tradition and the environment.
Winter squash, broccoli, fall lettuce, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and cabbage - all the fall crops are being harvested or about to be these days at Garden of Eve, an organic farm at the eastern end of Long Island. The farm is also part of a new movement that links synagogues and Jewish community centers with a growing number of organic farms across the country.
In what’s believed to be the first project of its kind, Hazon, a New York-based Jewish environmental group, has shepherded the creation of 10 such partnerships in the United States and Israel this year, with plans for up to 18 next year and more in the years ahead Community Supported Agriculture partnerships, or CSAs, have been around for decades to encourage consumers to support local farms. Members or “shareholders” pay a fee at the start of a growing season to meet a farm’s operating expenses; in return, members receive a portion of the farm’s produce each week, throughout the season.
Hazon sponsors annual bike rides from Jerusalem to Eilat each May in order to publicize its mission: to build and create a healthy, sustainable Jewish community by sponsoring cutting-edge educational initiatives, according to Hazon officials. Three years ago, it broached the idea of sponsoring a Jewish CSA as another way of achieving this.
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Thanks to Tuv Ha’Aretz farmer and founder of the Shorashim:Roots program at Chava v’Adam farm in Modi’in, Israel, Yigal Deutscher, for this insider look at the shemita year).
22 days have passed from the moment we celebrated the New Year with the blowing of the shofar until yesterday, when, after hours of dancing, drinking, and singing, we rolled the Sefer Torah back to her beginning and read the story of creation.
This stretch of time has been a stretch out of time, a microcosm of creation itself, mirroring the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the 22 building blocks that God used in creating the world we live in.
Yesterday, we stepped back into time, into the Hebrew year 5767, the seventh year of the seven year cycles that guide the flow of time in the land of Israel. This year itself is an extended dimension out of time, one Shabbat stretching from now until next Rosh Hashana. We are already 22 days into Shemita but only now will we come face to face with this moment.
We cannot make this transition alone. We can only begin our year if the land begins with us. Our awakening, reemerging into the normal flow of time, is hand in hand with the earth itself. We have been in a cocoon, nursing from spiritual banks of forgotten reservoirs. The soil of Israel has been in a cocoon herself, deep in sleep after 5 months of hot sun and barren skies.
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Erev Yom Kippur / 20 / September 2007
Dear All,
I had one of the most astonishing and fascinating conversations of my life over Rosh Hashanah. It was about killing two goats, and I wanted briefly to share it with you ahead of Yom Kippur and Succot.
I spent Rosh Hashanah at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, and – after visiting the goats there – I sat down with Aitan Mizrahi, Freedman’s very own goatherd and the founder of the Adva Goat Dairy and Rachel Gaul, another goatherd friend of Aitan’s. This Yom Kippur will be exactly a month since I posted a piece on The Jew & The Carrot, titled Schechting a goat at the Hazon Food Conference? The conference will be at Freedman, and the key part of the conversation went roughly as follows:
-You know, of course, that if you want to schecht two goats at the Food Conference [in early December], you’ll have to pay to feed them from October till December.
-Why?
-Well, because otherwise they’ll be killed in October – that’s when bucks [male goats] get slaughtered.
-Why’s that?
-Well, goats give birth in the spring. The kids in due course give milk, so they live for a good number of years; but the bucks have no use, so they’re fed during the summer, when food is abundant, and then typically they’re killed in October, ahead of the winter.
-That’s unbelievable! That’s just incredible! You’re telling me that if we schecht two goats at the food conference, we’ll actually be extending their lives by two months – because otherwise they’d be killed in October?
-Yeah, Nige. You know – “no dairy without death.”
-NO DAIRY WITHOUT DEATH??!!
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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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Hazon was recently featured in a podcast series by United Jewish Communities (UJC). The topic? Food, sustainability, and Jewish tradition - natch.
The podcast features: Moderator Nigel Savage, Hazon’s Founder and Director; Lisa Kleinman of UJC, ; Simon Feil, Founder of Kosher Conscience; natural foods chef (and The Jew & The Carrot blogger) Linda Lantos; and me as Editor-in-Chief of The Jew & The Carrot
Want a teaser?
Simon Feil on his shift from “vigorous carnivorism” to more compassionate meat-eating ways
Leah Koenig on growing up eating rampant treyf
Nigel Savage on the 5 brave people who travelled into the Agriprocessors factory
Lisa Kleinman on raising two amazing, foodie kids
Linda Lantos on how food connected her to Jewish tradition, and the natural world
Download the podcast from UJC’s website, or click directly to it here.
