Global Hunger Shabbat is just around the corner! Join AJWS this Shabbat, March 19-20, for a nationwide day of solidarity, education, reflection and activism to raise awareness about global hunger.
Over 100 synagogues, 31 universities and scores of individuals, Moishe Houses and independent minyanim across the country and in Canada, New Zealand, India, Cape Verde, Uganda, Kenya, Cambodia and Thailand have already signed up to host Global Hunger Shabbat events in their communities.
It’s easy to plan a Global Hunger Shabbat event of your own or find an event at a location near you. Please visit www.ajws.org/hungershabbat for more information and to download activities, resources and suggestions for taking action.
By Audrey Sasson, cross-posted on From the Ground–the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)
I recently attended an event promoting Eric Holt-Gimenez’s new book (co-authored by Raj Patel), Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. Eric is the executive director of Food First and a powerful advocate for transforming our broken food system. His presentation unpacked the causes of hunger worldwide and promoted a reinvestment in local food systems as both a just and effective solution.
A couple of times when I was a kid I was able to convince my parents to buy me a school lunch. I still remember the feeling of independence I had when I got those bills from my Mom and Dad, and the amazing taste of that beef taco. That’s right – a public school beef and cheese taco. With iceberg lettuce. A trayf-er thing I cannot remember eating…
Cross-posted on From the Ground–the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)
Never heard of it? Me neither. But for farmers in Assam, India, it’s become a life-saving—and crop-saving—phenomenon. Developed by crossing and refining local rice strains, flood-resistant rice varieties have undergone five years of testing and are intended to boost yields and ensure harvests despite worsening flood problems in the region. Pretty cool, right? According to estimates by the Assam agriculture department, over 5,000 farmers are now using flood-resistant rice, even though commercial-scale production of the seed has not yet started. Check out this article on AlertNet to learn more.
Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS).
“Kitchen gardens in Kenya” is not a phrase we hear often, but for many people, that phrase is the key to survival. In a country of nearly 35 million people, malnutrition and hunger are staggering problems, particularly for Kenyan children, orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS. In the rural, western regions of Kenya, sustaining basic nutrition is a chronic struggle in the face of food insecurity. Too weak to walk long distances or stand in lines waiting for food aid, those who live in rural areas and subsist on less than a dollar a day do not have access to the basics needed to live healthy, dignified lives.
Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS).
The upcoming election in Bolivia is stirring some interesting dynamics between an indigenous plant and a popular president. So, too, it is re-asserting the interconnectedness of politics, agriculture, indigenous culture and economic security in the developing world. A BBC news article reports that as Bolivian President Evo Morales campaigns for re-election, indigenous growers of coca—a leaf used in food, traditional medicine, tea, cosmetics and, most infamously, in cocaine—are backing him financially. Coca unions and “cocaleros” (coca growers) know the coca leaf as an intrinsic part of Bolivia’s indigenous culture and economy. Coca unions are joining forces and taking money out of their harvests to put into Morales’s campaign.
Thanks so much to Rachel Cohen for this great guest post. Rachel is the Senior Legislative Assistant for energy and environmental issues at the Religious Action Center, the Washington office of the Union for Reform Judaism. Rachel works on sustainability and greening issues for the Reform Movement. She holds a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Washington University, and is an avid bike rider and farmers’ marketer. Rachel is staffing the new URJ Shulchan Yarok, Shulchan Tzedek (Green Table, Just Table) Initiative, and can be reached at rbcohen@rac.org or 202-387-2800.
As Jews, we have always cared about the food that we eat. Some of us choose to embrace traditional notions of kashrut – and many of us do not – but we can all agree that our food, and how we get it, plays an important part in our lives.
That’s why Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, opened one section of his 2009 Biennial Shabbat sermon with these words: “Jewish history begins with a Jew – a new Jew, the first Jew – saying to others: come, eat with me. And ever since this first Jewish meal, Jews have believed that eating matters.”
The Jew and The Carrot, Hazon’s blog about Jews, food and contemporary life. The blog has a diverse and inclusive community, where we welcome readers and volunteer writers from across the Jewish denominational spectrum, and from all walks of culinary life. Our aim is to ensure that The Jew and The Carrot community is a platform for vibrant discussion for anyone interested in food issues.
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.
On Sunday morning, as part of the Tikkun Olam Breakfast at Adath Israel Synagogue, I attended a much-anticipated presentation by the President of American Jewish World Service, Ruth Messinger. I knew of Ms. Messinger’s work when she was Manhattan Borough President (1990-1998) and when she lost the mayoral race to the incumbent candidate Rudy Giuliani in 1997. The next year, she shifted professional gears and became the President and CEO of the AJWS and brought it into philantropic maturity and prominence. Now in its 25th year, AJWS funds local grass-roots development projects around the world. In 2005, the New York-based Forward named Ms. Messinger to the top of its annual “Forward 50” list of the most influential American Jews (and re-named to the 2009 list– placing four out of the last five years!).
Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS). This post is authored by Susan Rosenberg, AJWS’s Director of Communications, who is blogging from the field in Thailand.
Greetings from Thailand, where fighting hunger, achieving food security and land ownership are all bound together in a network of landless poor in Surattanee, a province in Southern Thailand. AJWS’s grassroots partner, The Coordination Committee on Natural Resources Management of Surattanee, whose name does not convey the creativity and vision of the farming families of which it’s comprised, brings together the landless poor, indigenous farming and laboring communities along with local human rights lawyers, environmentalists and community activists to reclaim indigenous land that has been unjustly seized by the government. The struggle for land in the face of death threats from corrupt Thai companies and governments that have denied people their right to land is being challenged nationally by the Landless People’s Movement.
Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS).
Imagine waking up one morning to find your crops—the food that keeps you alive—completely submerged in water and entirely destroyed. This is exactly what happened along the Sinú River in northern Colombia, a region that has supported a diverse community of indigenous people for generations. The Zenu and Embera people who live by the Sinú banks depend on the river for fish, irrigation and drinking water. But in 2000, the Urrá Dam, built by a consortium of Colombian, Swedish and Russian companies, submerged over 7,400 hectares of land, crops, homes and sacred sites. The dam displaced 2,800 people and continues to threaten the lives of 70,000 by altering vital food supplies. Areas of severe periodic flooding and drought caused by its flow have stymied traditional farming practices. Compounding this reality is the construction of a new dam—many times the size—by the Colombian government, presenting a constant looming threat over this beleaguered rural community.
Today’s New York Times features several letters to the editor in response to “Experts Worry About Feeding the World as Its Population Grows,” an article published on October 22. The letter writers call attention to several issues: the political realities that perpetuate global food insecurity; the relationship between access to contraception and reduced food demand; and a desire for integrated farming strategies that combine conventional farming practices with agro-ecological approaches. What the letters do not include, however, are examples of grassroots organizations that are implementing many of the creative solutions the authors are seeking.
Did you know that twenty-five thousand people die of malnutrition each day? It’s true and it’s unconscionable. Our world’s so-called “food crisis” is not, in fact, the result of food shortage. Rather, it stems from a deep flaw in our global economy that prevents food from reaching everyone — what we call a food insecurity crisis. How can we fix this?
American Jewish World Service (AJWS) recently launched Fighting Hunger from the Ground Up, a campaignto mobilize the Jewish community to help end global hunger.
The other day my boyfriend and I were enjoying a Sunday walk in Brooklyn when we ran into his friend Ana, her partner and their adorable new baby. Among the introductions and pleasantries she mentioned that she was distributing her film FRESH. “Here, tell me what you think of it,” she said handing me a copy, knowing I was a food writer.
So, one night a while later my boyfriend and I tucked into the sofa and watched FRESH, the new film by Ana Sofia Joanes. As someone who has seen Food Inc and has read a lot of Michael Pollan, the material was not new to me, however I found the material’s presentation (forgive the pun) fresh. I had found Food Inc to be a good film, but heavy on the propaganda. I felt that FRESH got its message across in a far more even-handed way. The film invoked a pretty good discussion, and I was happy to see on their website they had some additional educational materials and even a call for recipes. But you don’t have to be a Jew and the Carrot writer or have chance encounters with the director to see this film. If you live in the New York area there will be a screening this Tuesday.
