For some reason, I get stopped all the time in the produce section at Whole Foods. I don’t know what it is about me that suggests why I would be able to explain the difference between lacinato and regular kale, or whether golden beets are as sweet as red ones (especially since neither of these vegetables were part of my diet as recently as a year ago), but there must be something.

However, I’ve had an encounter that I can’t shake. I was standing by the grape tomatoes, trying to decide between the organic ones from Florida (but were they the product of slave labor?) and the local greenhouse tomatoes from Connecticut (fewer food miles, but what about pesticides?), when a woman about my grandmother’s age began talking to me out of the blue. You could tell she was in a bit of sticker shock at the Whole Paycheck prices, and she said to me, “You know how much these are at Shoprite? 99 cents.”

Many thanks to Richard Lederman for this guest post. Dr. Lederman studied Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Bible, but has spent the last 30 years in Jewish communal service. His latest position was as Director of Public Policy and Social Action for United Synagogue and also worked with Hekhsher Tzedek. Dr. Lederman is currently working as an independent consultant and educator. He has been thinking for some time about the connection between the mitzvot pertaining to the production, consumption and distribution of food, as well as the ownership and distribution of land and how these relate to the contemporary movement for ethical and sustainable processes for food production and distribution.

Who would have thought 100 years ago, 50 years ago, that early 21st century Jews would be joining an organization focused in part on the mitzvah of shmita, a mitzvah that technically only applies to the land of Israel, where the most urgent topic of discussion is discovering the possible loopholes around it.

Jewish Food Movement?

Over the past few years, a growing number of Jewish foodies, farmers, rabbis, chefs, teachers, students, families and many others have brought meaning to those words, asking why and how one can eat in a way that is both deeply Jewish and deeply sustainable.

It is time to ask a new question: where will this movement be in 7 years? Last Rosh Hashanah ended the last shmita (sabbatical year) cycle, and we’ve begun the countdown to the end of the next shmita cycle in September 2015.  Using the shmita cycle, with its wisdom about our relationship to the land as a guide, what should be the goals of the Jewish food movement? How do you envision that the Jewish community (in the United States, Israel, the entire world) will look and act differently in its relationship to food by September, 2015?

Check out the great new press in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on a new breed of Jewish farmers.  “Farming the land, Torah in Hand“  explains how our friends at Adamah, Jewish Farm School, Kayam and others are more than just farmers who happen to be Jewish, but are actually farming Jewishly. Click here to check it out.

One correction to the article: Kilayim is incorrectly translated as ‘holding back’ – a better translation would be ‘mixtures’ or ‘mixed species.’

I’m still fired up from the Food Conference, with a million thoughts about the steps we should be taking as individuals, as a Jewish community, and as a nation to bring about a more sustainable food system and environmental renewal. The Shmita Project sessions at Asilomar were the first steps in a 7 year plan to change the Jewish communal discussion about food, farming, and a Jewishly-informed Farm Bill, and we’ll be reporting on them soon. Thank you to everyone who attended.

In today’s fast-paced world, with the emphasis on immediate, tangible results, even a 7 year plan can seem like a long time. As we’ve written about before, the shmita ideally meant that you had to relinquish your focus on the immediate to keep an eye on the long-term concerns of every member of your society, especially the less fortunate. In addition to the Shmita, the Torah has laws for the Yovel, the 50-year Jubilee cycle, which also worked to prevent entrenched poverty (the modern Jubilee Movement has focused on debt relief to developing countries). Can we as a Jewish community think 50 years ahead on issues of food sustainability and environmentalism? What would that project look like?

Wow,
The conference was something incredible. I feel so blessed to be a part of this growing community and movement, and I thank those of you who joined us at Asilomar and contributed in a myriad ways to the 3rd annual Food conference. I truly look forward to witness how we all take the next steps forward, through personal choices, communal activity, public policy outreach, the development of new educational opportunities, and ….

At the conference, I was given the honor of sharing my vision for the New Jewish Food Movement, and I thought I would also share it here. So, I have shared those words below. I hope you might get some inspiration from my vision, but more importantly, I hope you will be inspired to think of how your vision fits into Hazon’s work, and even share your vision here on JCarrot.

Happy New Year
zelig

——– (more below the jump) ——–

“Six years you shall sow your land, and you shall gather in its produce.  And the seventh year you shall release it from work and abandon it, and the poor among your people will eat.” (Exodus 23:10-11)

What would you do if you had seven years to prepare for a major event? Would you plan out each year carefully, with set goals for each step along the way leading up to the big day? Would you ignore the future despite your impending sense of doom, and hope for the best? Can you even think that far ahead? Seven years are the blink of an eye and an eternity, depending on your perspective.

This year, we began another cycle of the Shmita, a biblical agricultural cycle that mandate that the land lie fallow every seven years. No crops could be planted, and that which did grow was open to everyone. One had to plan for the Shmita for years in advance, so that you didn’t starve. The Shmita today is an odd commandment: since it only applies to Israel, it has a very significant impact on the lives of everyone who lives there. Every seven years, it creates agricultural chaos. But those of us in the Diaspora are free to ignore it. Why should we plan for the next seven years?

(Written last night as the election results poured in…)

As I sit here watching the returns with guarded optimism, I consider the role food plays in politics. In 2004 John Kerry came to south Philly and ordered a cheese steak with provolone. You don’t do that, and Kerry was mocked on the local news. While he still won Pennsylvania, he lost the election, and I think the cheese steak gaffe was a turning point for many voters. It showed that his food choices that day were a gesture, an attempt to make a connection with a certain type of voter, and he failed miserably.

That we feel such a cultural connection to what we eat allows food to play a part in our political sphere. Food is an entry point for politicians. When they eat your sandwich, drink your beer, slurp your soup, they convey their humanness, and their ability to relate to you, your needs and concerns in the world.

Rabbi Julian Sinclair is an author, educator, and economist. He is also the co-founder and Director of Education for Jewish Climate Initiative, a Jerusalem based NGO that is articulating and mobilizing a Jewish response to climate change.  Before starting JCI, Julian worked as an economist advising the UK Government and for a British political think tank.  Meanwhile, he authored the book Lets Schmooze: Jewish Words Today and is working on completing a Phd in the mystical thought of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.  Phew!

Sinclair lives in Jerusalem and has been featured on NPR and interviewed for the New York Times by our own Leah Koenig.  Hazon is delighted to invite Rabbi Sinclair as a presenter at this year’s Hazon Food Conference, December 25-28, 2008.

Get a sneak peek at what Julian has to say below the jump.  And find out more/ register for Hazon’s Food Conference, here!

In this week’s parsha Be-Har (“on the mountain”) we are given the agricultural law of Shemita, a Sabbath for the land. “Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest.” (Lev. 25:2-4). In lieu of working the land, we are told to eat what the land produces without effort, and give freely of the bounty to all who are hungry.

Parsha Be-Har also gives us the jubilee – a complete release of all land ownership and release of all slaves every fifty years. (Lev. 25:8-10). “Seven times seven years—so that the period of seven weeks of years gives you a total of forty-nine years… and you shall hallow the fiftieth year…You shall proclaim release throughout the land for all its inhabitants.” (Lev. 25:8-10).

It’s no coincidence that we are given Shemittah and jubilee during this holy time of counting the Omer.

While planning tonight’s Tu Bishvat Seder at the Moishe House Boston: Kavod Jewish Social Justice House,  I’ve been scouring Jewish environmental resources and looking around for the most sustainable way to purchase fruits and nuts which are most certainly not locally grown in New England. A friend also planning the Seder has been looking around for seeds for the traditional American Tu Bishvat parsley planting. While I was certainly aware of the current Shmitta year in Israel, it has only recently come to our attention that this could create a potential question around whether or not to plant parsley at our Seder.

Below is the full text of Friday night’s keynote at The Hazon Food Conference.  The keynote was given by Nati Passow, co-founder of The Jewish Farm School.  It’s a long post, but definitely worth the read – even if you have to print it out (on recycled paper of course!) and take it home.

(Nati’s on the right, next to Simcha Schwartz.  Photo by Sabrina Malach.)

Hazon Food Conference
December 6-9, 2007
Keynote Address: Nati Passow

Thank you Nigel. Shabbat Shalom and Chanukah Sameach. It is a great honor to be here with you all tonight. Nigel suggested that I begin by sharing my story with you, my connection and relationship to food, which I think is a great way to begin this talk, because one of the things I like most about food is that sitting down to a meal is a great excuse to spend time with friends and listen to each other’s stories. So here is a little bit of mine.

Seven years ago I took a Sabbatical. I left university for the year and traveled in Israel. I studied in yeshiva, toured the country and then settled into an apartment in Jerusalem. After having little success finding a job, I decided to enjoy my sabbatical for what it was time to just be present. This was when I discovered good coffee, which for any honorable coffee drinker is a moment you never forget. An older friend of mine sat me down and said that if I was going to drink coffee everyday, I should make it good. Buy whole beans, grind them myself and brew something delicious.

The coffee was my gateway drug to the world of slow food.

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.