FROM THE BAY TO THE GULF – Do you live in the California Bay area, are in your 20′s or 30′s and interested in important food issues?  Take your social justice passion down to New Orleans.  Join Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ) and the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) for a week of service, learning, and activism.

You will travel to New Orleans from Jan. 13-18, 2010 to work with The School at Blair Grocery.  Participants will learn about issues around food and sustainability and explore the connection between local Bay Area concerns and local New Orleans concerns.

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 campaign to mobilize the Jewish community to help end global hunger.

The other night we had a most unusual guest in our sukkah — a three-inch-long praying mantis.  We didn’t know they even thrived in our eastern part of the United States.  It landed on the cornucopia my husband had placed on the table and it was moving its mouth like it was praying (or most likely, chewing its prey).  It was very appropriate for our Chinese sukkah, as the praying mantis is prominent in Chinese folklore and martial arts.  For us, the praying mantis and the Biblical Yitzhak were among the ushpizin (guests) for the second night of Sukkot.

Before the onset of Sukkot, I’d attended the Pennsylvania HIAS’s annual luncheon billed, “A Matter of Faith: Embracing Immigrants and Refugees.”  HIAS was established over 126 years ago as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and it has an illustrious history of assisting Jewish refugees from all over the world.   In recent years, HIAS has merged with the Council Migration Services and their clients are now refugees fleeing political or religious persecution from places such as Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and Eritrea.

Hazon’s friends and partners in Food Justice, Uri L’Tzedek, have been busy. They’ve just  launched a new website Utzedek.org. You can find Torah sources and articles, activist resources, hundreds of volunteer and campaign opportunities, social justice events, opportunities to contribute, and much more!

Among Uri L’Tzedek’s important work is the Tav HaYosher (ethical seal) – a local, grassroots initiative to bring workers, restaurant owners and community members together to create just workplaces in kosher restaurants.

What if you knew that the organic vanilla that you were using in your recipe was not only kosher, but was grown by farmers who would not, under any circumstances, work in their gardens, harvest their trees or deliver their crop from 18 minutes before sundown on Friday until tzeit hakochavim (the appearance of three stars in the sky) on Saturday—with the same applying to all Jewish Festivals.

What if you knew that these farmers live in the deepest regions of  sub-Saharan East Africa in the area Mbale, Uganda, and that their farming cooperative consisted of Jewish, Muslim and Christian members called Peace Kawomera?

What if you knew that these farmers were being paid two and a half times the fair trade price for their beans, because a volunteer organization run by a hazzan (cantor) in Los Angeles removes the middle-man and makes every attempt to allow the farmer to receive the most that he/she can?

What if you knew that this organization, Uniting Jewish Communities and Products, UJCP, is attempting to do this for as many communities as possible throughout the world, helping them become self sufficient, providing clothes, housing, health care and education.

UJC/The Jewish Federations of North America, collectively among the top 10 charities on the continent, announced last week the launch of the First Annual Jewish Community Hero Awards, which celebrates the selflessness and courage of individuals who are bettering their communities through service and outreach.

The initiative — to-date the largest-ever Jewish social-networking effort — will honor one Jewish Community Hero of the Year, who will receive $25,000 to put towards his or her work, and also recognize four additional finalists. About 50 partner organizations are supporting the initiative, in addition to Jewish Federations across North America.

Any individual or group can nominate a hero through an open, online submission process. After screening, each nominee is posted on the Jewish Community Heroes Web site, where people can vote for their favorite Jewish heroes.

Thanks Nina for posting the trailor of Food, Inc. last month and for folk’s comments.

I recently had the fortune to join a group of community members from Boston’s Moishe/Kavod House Food Justice Campaign for a screening of the film. Here’s my review of the film–the good, the bad, and the ugly:

• I was first struck that the film would make an excellent education tool for students in grades 5-12 and beyond. Robert Kenner divides the film into chapters that do a nice job framing and connecting the dots on the key industries in our current food system–livestock issues, genetically modified organisms (GMO), the hidden costs of food and the ubiquity of corn. Showing this in health, science, political science or other classes would be a great way to provide students with a primer on where food comes from as well as a powerful, if at times graphic, illustration of what’s wrong with it.

A reminder to all who have not done so to please participate in the food poll to aid The Jewish Museum of Maryland in their research for a Jewish food exhibit!

The traveling exhibit is tentatively titled “Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture and American Jewish Identity.” The exhibit will be accompanied by a catalog and an exhibit-related website, all of which will look at a huge range of questions about Jews and food, including the type of issues that the Jew and the Carrot and Hazon are interested in.

Yeah, so we talk about our vegetables a lot.  Last week after I picked up my CSA share I thought about blogging about taking my veggies out on the town (I had participated in the New Israel Fund’s event Love, Hate, and the Jewish State – vegetables in tow). I ultimately decided against it.  But others have been more forthcoming with their CSA adventures.

Each week Rebecca Tanen, one of the Jew and the Carrot Associate Editors, has been sharing her weekly adventures in her CSA box as a “CSA Newbie.”  And the Hazon CSA in Chicago (Tuv Ha’Aretz Chicago) has even started their own blog.   Anyone else have any more stories to share?

You are invited to apply (by June 15!) for a highly subsidized five-day Tour of Israel (November 15-19, 2009), from the unique perspective of: food!

What social justice issues do you care about?  Being a Jew and the Carrot reader one would imagine you might think about food justice, hunger, fair trade or local and sustainable food systems – and often through a Jewish lens.  So if we care about food issues, but how do we share that with others?  Over the next three weeks, we are very fortunate to have Jill Jacobs, the Rabbi-in-Residence for Jewish Funds for Justice offering her insight and thoughts on contentious challenges facing America today.

Not only that, but Jew and the Carrot readers will have the opportunity to share their experiences in tzedakah (financial support for the poor) and chesed (acts of loving-kindness) to enter to win a copy of Rabbi Jacobs’ book There Shall Be No Needy.   Simply leave us a comment about how you have given tzedakah or performed chesed. Did you intentionally give your CSA share to someone in need?  Have you volunteered at a soup kitchen? Tell us about it.

Are you looking to live the land?  Dine on organic food that you grow yourself?

Bake in a thermal mass oven?  Build durable mud buildings? Recycle EVERYTHING??

Want to do all of this in ISRAEL?

ECO-ISRAEL, based on the Hava & Adam eco-educational farm between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel,   offers English-speaking Jewish young adults, ages 18-30, a 5 month professional apprenticeship and coursework in permaculture and sustainable living.  Upon completion of the program, participants will receive an internationally recognized certificate in Permaculture Design.

This is my first of a series of posts chronicling my family’s first experience with community-supported agriculture. My mother and her friend, who happens to be a nutritionist, have decided to split a CSA box every week this summer.

Now this is not your ordinary CSA, since it is actually a Tuv Ha’Aretz – one of Hazon’s Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) Project, located at Tikvat Israel, a nearby synagogue.  This means that one should not be surprised when the woman coordinating the CSA explains in her weekly email that she will not be checking her email between 8pm on Friday and 9pm on Saturday…

This week’s CSA box included asparagus, rhubarb, spinach, head lettuce, mint (which we just put in the freezer to be used in future cups of tea), spring onions, salad mix and radishes. All the vegetables arrived in such an incredibly fresh condition that my mother was worried they would go bad quickly, so she hastily used them all in one or two meals. In addition, we went to the farmer’s market in Dupont Circle for mother’s day, where we purchased baby turnips and smoked mozzarella. Check out the meals we made with these goodies after the jump!