Thanks to Danielle Selber for sharing her thoughts about her experiences volunteering with Birthright Israel NEXT’s Harvest to Harvest campaign!

I love to cook. If you’re looking for me, you can usually find me in the kitchen, stirring away at homemade tomato sauce or a big pot of soup, adding ingredients that don’t quite match just for the thrill of it. I often serve Shabbat dinner for twenty, and I really like chopping all those onions. I bake cookies for my Hebrew school students regularly (to the chagrin of their parents), and my boss has nicknamed me “Kugels Lebowski” for my uncanny ability to make a festive kugel for any random occasion. For my last birthday, I received six cookbooks.

On a list of the great loves of my life, volunteering comes in a close second after cooking. For me, volunteering is a uniquely meaningful and uplifting undertaking. I truly enjoy it; I squeeze in every hour I can, whenever I can spare it. In the big picture, I see volunteering as a way to elevate the acts of ordinary individuals to something beautiful and deeply valuable, and to create social consciousness on an active, engaged level.

Volunteering can also be, I’m sorry to say, an overwhelming, frustrating, logistical nightmare. Try typing “volunteering opportunities” plus your city name into Google. I get 1,690,000 hits for my home city of Philadelphia. As a citizen of the world, that’s a heartwarming statistic – it’s wonderful to realize that there are so many local ways to give back. But when I first started as a Fellow for Birthright Israel NEXT in Philadelphia, my excitement for creating service opportunities in my community was quickly quashed by the sheer force of these numbers. How do you weed out the legitimate organizations from the rest, the meaningful opportunities from the mundane? Where do I begin?

So, I thought, start with what you love. I remembered an email I had received from the Birthright Israel NEXT national team, in which they introduced Harvest to Harvest, a program that supports volunteering and community involvement. It also includes a website that allows anyone to access local volunteering opportunities by zip code and keyword. I typed in my zip code and, to narrow down my search, I entered the keyword “hunger.” I figured that, since food and cooking are passions of mine, I could parlay those interests into creating an event that was meaningful to me, and that my community would respond to my excitement and enjoy the experience, too.

Utilizing Harvest to Harvest was so easy that the very first event on which I clicked ended up being the first local volunteering event I organized in Philly Utilizing Harvest to Harvest was so easy for me and I instantly found many opportunities in my hometown. As I got more involved, I decided to organize my own volunteering events through Birthright Israel NEXT Philadelphia. And, on Thanksgiving Day last year, we packed and served lunches for homeless Philadelphians. From there our volunteering calendar filled up and the enthusiasm for local events took off; since then we’ve volunteered to cook and serve a hot lunch for residents of a local shelter, paint an inner city school, and clean up a community center. In a month, we’re having a cupcake-making party to fundraise for Celiac disease research, and right before Passover we’ll be running a chametz can drive to benefit a local food pantry.

Figuring out what my passions are was always simple; it was translating that love into action that was always so hard. Thanks to a great resource, an energized community, and a little bit of creative thinking, that too became as easy as pie!

It is the month of Nissan and spring is in the air. If I was living on a farm here in Colorado, I would be plowing the fields, spreading manure, and getting ready to plant our first spring vegetables. Sadly I do not live in such close proximity with the land. Instead, I live in a house in Metro Denver and would not be able to fit a tractor through the door that leads to my back yard.

No, this time of year is a time when many of us living urban lives do not even stop and appreciate the effort that farmers throughout the country and throughout the northern hemisphere are making to ensure that we in America have delicious food to eat. (In a future post, I will write about the farmer with whom we are contracting to bring fresh local food to camp. She did spend last week preparing her fields. But more on that in a week or two. . . .)

Nissan, or course, is not just about planting, it is also a time to stop and celebrate our redemption. In less than two weeks, Jews all over the world will stop and commemorate the Exodus from Egypt. This story, and the Seder format, has been used by Jews throughout the past decades as an opportunity to draw attention to modern day issues that are enslaving us. In the past 50 years, Jewish communities have celebrated women’s seders (to celebrate the role of women in society), freedom seders (to commemorate struggles of the civil rights movement) and gay and lesbian seders (to illuminate the struggles facing these groups as they live open lives in our modern society).

So it was especially exciting when a few weeks ago, a colleague in Denver, Rabbi Brian Field, told me that he was organizing a Food Seder through his organization called Judaism Your Way, a Denver based Jewish outreach not-for-profit.. The purpose of this seder is to draw attention to our relationship with the food we eat and the way that we interact with food in 21st century America. Rabbi Field and I sat last week to brain storm themes for this seder. While he is doing most of the work to create a full Haggadah based on celebrating healthy connections to food the earth and the Jewish tradition, he asked me to take a stab at creating the “10 plagues” of modern day eating in America. Together (although most of the work was done by Rabbi Field), we also came up with a Dayenu celebrating the advances we have made in reconnecting our lives to the food we eat.

While these will be used at the Judaism Your Way seder in just a few weeks, I hope that at Ramah Outdoor Adventure we will be able to adapt elements of this new seder as an educational program while at the ranch. Clearly, connecting our community to its food is one of the key aspects of Ramah Outdoor Adventure, and the use of a seder as a paradigm for an educational experience works not only on Pesach, but throughout the year as well. Stay tuned for an update this summer about how we have integrated these texts into our camp program.

What follows is a list that speaks to me personally. At your seder this year, perhaps you can try to list your own ten plagues or Dayenus based on your own relationship to the land and food.

And now: Ten Plagues Facing Our Modern Way of Eating and Relating to Food (Please note: I do not mean the following in a condescending way. I wish that I actually avoided all ten of these. I am as guilty as most in being affected by these plagues)

1. Electing politicians who support the status quo of American farm policies that subsidize the growth of corn at the expense of wholesome vegetables
2. Eating a diet that contains too much genetically modified foods
3. Planting and supporting monoculture growing environments that require spraying pesticides that contaminate ground water and harm our bodies
4. Ingesting antibiotics and growth hormones that are routinely given to cows who live in feedlots
5. Eating a diet containing too much processed foods and refined sugars
6. Ignoring the environmental impact of the meat we are eating
7. Eating foods that are shipped from far off places because local foods are not in season
8. Using white flour when whole wheat flour would do
9. Taking the abundance of food in our lives for granted when so many in the world do not have access to the foods we eat
10. Ignoring the labor conditions of workers in the food industry

Dayeinu : It would have been enough

Would it have been enough?

If the Jewish people created kashrut, one of the world’s first systems of conscious value-based eating. Dayenu.

If revolutions in farming technology (green revolution) greatly increased food production around the world and meat became readily available to most residents of first world countries. Dayenu.

If Rabbis Zalman Schachter Shalomi and Arthur Waskow coined the term “eco-kosher” to integrate the Jewish practice of kashrut with other core Jewish values including sustainability, worker justice, health and humane treatment of animals. Dayenu.

If the US government required that food products are labeled with nutrition information and country of origin. Dayenu.

If farmers markets spread across the country, giving more and more people opportunities to buy fresh and local food, and increasing the numbers of people plant vegetable gardens. Dayenu.

If community-supported agriculture (CSA) gave people an opportunity to invest and share the risk in the local farms whose produce-shares they consume. Dayenu.

If major food manufacturers avoided using partially hydrogenated oils in their products. Dayenu.

If books like Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and movies like Food, Inc, raised food consciousness among Americans. Dayenu.

If organic foods are now available at lower cost at mainstream supermarkets and big-box retailers. Dayenu.

If Conservative Judaism created Hechsher Tzedek, an initiative to improve the working conditions of employees, the environmental standards, and the business practices in kosher food-producing businesses. Dayenu.

If Hazon emerged at the forefront of a new Jewish Food Movement, inspiring Jews to think more broadly and deeply about our own food choices. Dayenu.

If curricula about food were becoming a routine part of Jewish education at schools and summer camps, Dayenu.

If, this very year, several Jewish Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives emerged in the Front Range. Dayenu.

Millions of kids every day eat lunch, and sometimes breakfast, at school. Yet the U.S. Department of Agriculture invests only $2.68 on average per day for each student’s school lunch. We are growing a generation of Americans who think healthy food is cheap food, and who don’t have the skills to make better decisions about what they eat. This year, Congress has a chance to transform the way America eats when it reauthorizes the Child Nutrition and WIC Act. You can get involved in asking Congress to help serve healthier meals to kids in schools by clicking here and becoming a “lunch box advocate.” Their “Healthy Tools for All Schools” are very cool and provide many resources that you might find helpful. Happy lunching!

Thanks to Bobbi Rubinstein for sharing this update about the garden at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, CA. Bobbi is a publicist, journalist and green activist. She’s chair of the Valley Beth Shalom Green Team and co-founder of Netiya: The Los Angeles Jewish Coalition on Food and Environmental Justice Issues.

I am excited to share some news with the Hazon kehillah. My shul, Valley Beth Shalom, has broken ground on an urban garden called the Gan Tzedek Initiative. We’re growing food to donate to local food pantries and creating educational opportunities around Torah and environmental study. And perhaps most importantly, we’re building community across all age levels since this is a team effort among all the schools, teachers, parents, administrative staff and clergy.

All these green thumb efforts fall under the VBS Green Team. For almost two years, our mission has been to educate the community about environmental issues and suggest ways the congregation can take what they learn home to shrink their own carbon footprint.

The driving social justice force behind the Green Team is Rabbi Noah Zvi Farkas, a presenter at this year’s amazing Hazon conference. Plus we called on other community resources including Dr. Gabe Goldman, Professor of Experiential and Service Learning at the American Jewish University/Brandeis Bardin Helping Hands Garden, and Bill Kaplan, Executive Director of Shalom Institute, Initiative team leader and third grade day school dad, to help us design and construct the garden. Bill Kabaker, a longtime shul member and irrigation specialist, stepped up to help us keep the veggies well tended.

As Angelenos, we’re lucky to have a climate similar to Israel’s so we decided to put in a biblical garden. These plants will provide us with hands-on opportunities to learn about Israeli ecology, ancient Israeli life and Jewish holiday practices related to Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah and Tu B’Shvat. As we build a curriculum around the garden, students will learn Jewish ecological principles about bal tashchit (prohibition against waste), halachot (laws) related to land care in Israel and the meaning of l’ovdah u’shomrah (to work and protect) through our care of the garden.

The gardens are being implemented in phases with day, Hebrew, ECC and special needs schools each planting their own area. In the Torah garden we have a ‘Garden of the Sages’ where students will learn about the learned Sages of our tradition and the edible and decorative native sages of our region. We also have the Shevat Haminim (Seven Species- wheat, barley, grapevines, figs, pomegranates, olives and honey from dates), and Peah (the portion of the crop that must be left standing for the poor in accordance with Lev. 19:9) where seasonally appropriate crops will be harvested and donated to food pantries.

We’ve planted a container Havdalah Garden in our outdoor chapel that reflects the symbols of the service: spices (herbs), candle/light (olive tree/olive oil), and wine (grapevine). The pizza garden of tomatoes, basil, garlic, and oregano was a personal request from senior Rabbi Ed Feinstein.

We broke ground on all school gardens throughout the week leading up to Tu B’Shvat. On Friday during day school planting, we rotated learning opportunities starting with Rabbi Feinstein’s presentation to third graders and parents. Rabbi Farkas ran study sessions. Bill hosted a seder with dried fruits, nuts and grape juice, and Elana Havusha, the Shalom Institute farmer, supervised the planting.

Our garden launch ended with both family and congregational Tu B’Shvat Seders during Shabbat. The environmental Haggadah written by Rabbi Farkas and Rabbi Paul Steinberg, rabbinic leader of the day school, tied together the issues of climate change, the destruction of trees and Tu B’Shvat bringing our groundbreaking to a fitting close.

I recently toured our plantings and am happy to report that our seeds have not only sprouted but are flourishing. Have any of you started gardens at your synagogues or community centers, either on site or nearby? Please share your experiences.

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:

• Preserved Lemons from Joan Nathan
• The Food Conference

Other posts of interest, especially to Brooklynites like me might include:

• Kombucha the Brooklyn Way
• The Bees and the Bees
• Women in Cheese in NYC

Enjoy! and thanks, Avi, for sharing.

Thanks to Rachael Don for this guest post! Rachael is a Registered Dietitian in training and co-editor of the Jess Schwartz Jewish Community Day School’s Hazon CSA newsletter in Scottsdale, AZ.  A former healthcare administrator, she holds an MBA and a Masters in Health Services Administration. When she’s not cooking organic vegetables, Rachael is caring for her three young sons and husband, David in Phoenix, AZ. She shares these thoughts with the readers of that newsletter and all of you!

They won’t buy healthy food. They don’t have time to cook healthy food. And they don’t want healthy food. Karyn Moskowitz wouldn’t accept those answers from critics who tried to justify the lack of affordable, healthy food in low-income areas of Kentucky. Karyn tried to do something about it. And she has proved the critics wrong. Here’s her story.

I am sharing some ideas of the New Jewish Food Movement, learned from my attendance at the 2009 Hazon Food Conference. There I studied a bit about “Food Deserts.” The term refers to the disparate availability of healthy food between low and middle/upper income neighborhoods. Access to healthy food is taken for granted by many of us in our sea of food options. However, in low income areas there are drastically limited food choices, leading to higher rates of food-related disease among the poor.

Karyn Moskowitz has tackled the problem of a Food Desert in her own community of Louisville, Kentucky. Inspired by her own attendance at an earlier Hazon Food Conference, and her previous organizing experience, Karyn founded New Roots, a nonprofit organization that developed a plan of action and has successfully attacked the assumptions behind the critics’ justifications of the Food Desert.

New Roots program, called the Fresh Stop Project, operates similarly to a CSA and connects farmers with low income communities. Because there is a direct relationship between the farm and the market, the distribution costs are avoided, making it both profitable for the farmer and affordable to the consumer. Karyn and her small organization of volunteers travel each week during the Kentucky growing season (June-October) to Amish farms and produce auctions located between 50 and 100 miles from Louisville. They load a truck with produce and deliver it to various churches where the food is distributed. Members pay on a weekly basis, and are charged on a sliding scale. A share costs $24 per week for a full share and $12 per week for a half share, but may be discounted based on need. What Karyn and others have found is that the operation can still be profitable for the farmer as long as 80% of the members pay the full cost.

New Roots makes no attempt to create their own member communities. Rather, they tap into established resources, such as church ministries, and create partnerships with the church members. Through this simple model, New Roots has brought fresh, healthy produce to places where it would otherwise be unavailable.

Karyn is but one example of how a single person can make a difference, and presents ideas we can ponder to combat the Food Desert problem that exists just miles away from our own community.

Feel free to contact Karyn at Kmoskowitz@sbcglobal.net or (502) 475-8979. New Roots is accepting interns for the 2010 produce season, and would love to be invited to any community to speak about the Fresh Stop Project. Donations and other correspondence can be sent to New Roots, Inc. P.O. Box 4421, Louisville, KY 40204-4421.

Today was the first of the month of Adar. In Hebrew we sing “Mi SheNichnas Adar, Marbim b’Simcha” meaning – “whoever enters the month of Adar, will abound in happiness”. This is the month in which we are encouraged to play and be silly and joyful.

It seems that there is an idea in our consumer society that happiness is something that happens to us… usually later. It may coincide with acquiring new things, or with joyous events, or with some standards of success. It is time to put all thoughts of, or standards for, achieving happiness aside, and practice generating happiness in our bodies right now…and now…and now…

We have the power to create happiness (or any other mood) by declaring it to be so in our being. Practice by remembering a spontaneously happy moment. Where were you? Who was with you? What did it feel like in your body? Where did you feel it? Can you generate that same feeling by remembering that moment? Could you create those sensations in your body now?

The blessing in Adar is our ability to declare, create, and feel the happiness in each moment, to put aside our doubts, and to blur the distinctions between good and bad. Everything is a manifestation of oneness. How awesome! Melinda Ribner, in “Kabbalah Month by Month” says, “When we are privileged to recognize the awesomeness of life, not knowing is often a higher form of knowing” (p. 146-7).

On the 14th of Adar, we will celebrate Purim. It is said that when the Messiah comes, Purim will be the only remaining holiday. In the miraculous story, a Persian Queen, Esther, courageously revealed her Jewish identity to King Achashverosh in order to save the Jews from the decree of death orchestrated by the king’s wicked advisor, Haman. On this holiday we wear costumes and read the story aloud. Whenever the name of Haman is said, we shake our noisemakers and boo loudly to blot out his name.

It is said that Haman came from the line of Amalek- the tribe who is a long standing perpetrator against Jews. The numerical sum of Hebrew letters of this word adds up to the sum of the letters in the Hebrew word “safek”- doubt. So while we are booing Haman, and Amalek, on a deeper level we are also booing our doubts.

In “The Twelve Dimensions of Israel”, Nechama Nadborny tells us, “Today, Amalek is the psychic force which causes us to question our direction, doubt our purpose, to hesitate, to slip and fall. The more we are able to detail and identify our personal Amalek, the faster we can sharpen our flight instinct and free ourselves of those convoluted thoughts which prevent us from joyously running in tune with Divine Will” (p. 205).

One practice that you can try on Purim, is to think and feel your own doubts each time the name “Haman” is said and then use the noise to blot them out. The point of the exercise is to experience the physicality of our doubts. We often think of them as thoughts, and forget to feel them in our bodies. Once we have an embodied experience of our doubts, we can learn from them and choose to hold on, or to let them go.

Let us remember that some of these doubts are really quite valid and worthy. They can be wake up calls. And, we can feel comforted knowing that many of us have similar doubts. It is part of being human. I want to be clear that the point of this exercise is to help us lighten up a little, and to remove ourselves from the good/bad framework.

Ultimately, we want to be free from our suffering from doubt.

What do you feel in your body when you are caught in the grips of unknowing and indecision? As you shout and boo and make noise at your doubts, notice how this resonates in your body. Are there places that feel looser, or tighter? How does it feel when you are able to let go of these doubts? How does it feel in your body when you are resistant to letting go? Can you begin to develop in inner “boo” to change your attitude and your physicality when your thoughts no longer serve? Can you invite joy and levity into this process?

Our task this month is to ask for and receive guidance. The true tension lies in the moments of doubt and indecision. Perhaps we stay there for so long because we think there is a right and wrong decision, when in reality, we have many choices that will lead to more choices, and as we slowly enter spring, it’s time to keep on moving.

Good thing we have another tradition on Purim to help us get out of indecisive stuckness, which is to get drunk until we don’t know the difference between the wicked Haman and Mordechai- Esther’s righteous uncle.

The intention behind this tradition (whether you get drunk or not) is to be in the unknowing about what is good and bad… if there even are such things. It is all a manifestation of Divine will. And from this unknowing, we can ask for guidance and make a choice. Many of us have been exploring this ability to be in the unknowing with the snow accumulation this past month. This snow is our teacher. Other life circumstances can also be our teachers, if we choose to see them as such.

I would like to thank my teachers at Tai Sophia Institute for the healing arts. They have reminded me of the ancient wisdom that in making any choice, there are only two questions to ask: Will this honor the Ancestors- the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents? And, Will it serve the next generations- the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren?

It is common to ask ourselves, “what do I want.” With this new perspective, perhaps we can have more clarity about “how will I be of service”. Blessings on this new month and the unfolding springtime! May we find it in our will to delve deeper into the projects we have already begun. And may we be thoughtful and trusting of our choices and learn to be in our being without thinking too much about doing.

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.

Click here to read the whole story about the Covenant Foundation’s grant-in-action and don’t forget to play the stunning slideshow that accompanies it.

Andrew Udell is a 16 year old student at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York City. Andrew is a co-founder, together with his friends Lizzie Davis and Skyler Siegel, of Veguary. I asked him a few questions about his plan to help save the world one month at a time.

What is Veguary and how did it start?

One day at shul, my Rabbi posed a question to our smaller minyan about our effect on the world.  One thought led to the next, and I just started thinking about how eating meat affects the world.  I decided to do some more research about vegetarianism, and I came across some really daunting facts that were difficult to handle, yet important to know. I wanted to try out being a vegetarian for a little while. I started doing some more thinking, one thing led to the next, and with the help of a few friends, we founded Veguary and built the site in a few months. Veguary refers to the second month of the year, in which those enthusiastic about fighting global warming, improving their health, or making a positive difference in the world commit to reducing or eliminating their meat intake by pledging on our website at www.veguary.org.

Why February? Was it for the name?

I did think Veguary had a nice ring to it, but more importantly, it gave the Veguary team enough time to set up the site and spread the word.  It’s also the shortest month, so for those that just want to learn about reducing their meat intake and the benefits of vegetarianism, it’s not too big of a commitment.

You were recently at the Hazon Food Conference. Tell me something about your experience there as a teen, and has it changed how you feel about food and Jewish life?

Being at the Hazon Food Conference was a remarkable experience – I had never done anything like it.  Being there as a teen was even better – there were so many people at the conference that were really educated about sustainability, I was really able to learn so much from all of them. For me, it added a whole new layer to environmentalism. I struggled on how to connect Judaism to my environmental interests, but with the conference, you realize that these ideas are so intertwined with each other. Whether it was connecting Jewish tradition to my environmental interests, or Jewish teachings, the possibilities are endless.

This isn’t your only environmental project. Tell me about some other green initiatives you’ve been a part of.

With the help of Hazon, I spoke at an NYC community board to lobby for Upper West Side bike lanes.  I continue to work Hazon to make sure that NYC gets these bike lanes. I have been involved with many other projects, but one other current one is the Sustainability Committee at my school, where we focus on greening our high school (and the plans for the new school building for the lower and middle school) as well as educating lower school students about the environment.

What about Varch? Will you be back on the meat next month?

That’s a great question! To be honest, I do think I will be eating meat on Shabbat. However, I really don’t think people have to become vegetarians full year round – the purpose of Veguary is to educate about the harms of our over-consumption of meat. The Veguary team hopes that people will feel compelled to reduce their meat intake (drastically) because of the facts we have presented; however, cutting out meat entirely is not absolutely necessary.

You can learn more and pledge to be a veg at veguary.org

Do you have the next big idea for social change?
And do you have what it takes to start your own groundbreaking organization?

People who have great ideas should not fall through the cracks, and sometimes they need a boost to find their way to execution, and then – impact.

Echoing Green invests in and supports outstanding emerging social entrepreneurs to launch new organizations that deliver bold, high-impact solutions.  Through a two-year fellowship program, we help our network of visionaries develop new solutions to society’s most difficult problems.  These social entrepreneurs and their organizations work to solve deeply-rooted social, environmental, economic, and political inequities to ensure equal access and to help all individuals reach their potential.

The Echoing Green Fellowship provides up to $90,000 in seed funding and support to help you launch the organization you’ve always wanted.  We’ve provided critical support to social entrepreneurs like Wendy Kopp of Teach For America, John Alford of NOLA 180 and Karen Tse of International Bridges to Justice.  Learn more about our fellows here.

Make your dream for social change a reality.

The deadline for submissions is December 2, 2009. Click here to apply.

Find out whether you qualify click here.

Questions?  Contact Deva Jones, Recruitment Associate, at deva@echoinggreen.org