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

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!

Thanks so much to Rachel Kriger for this terrific meditation on the month of Adar.  Rachel was raised on organic food and in Jewish dayschool. After college, in the Adamah fellowship, she was able to merge her love of small scale farming and Judaism, and she became the farm manager for the following year.  The Calendar Garden at Kayam farm at Pearlstone, is a place to cultivate plants and their connection to seasons, Jewish wisdom and body awareness. Please feel free to join this Rosh Chodesh group in the garden each month.

Check out this amazing article about our first ever Jewish Food Education Network  pre-conference track from Hazon’s supporters at The Covenant Foundation.

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.

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?

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.

From our friends at Birthright Israel Next:

Sukkot is the Jewish harvest holiday, where we remember our ancestors and the time they spent wandering in the desert. They were nomads, living in tents and farming their food. To celebrate this holiday, many of us build tents in our own backyards. We eat meals in them, and some even sleep in these structures for eight whole days. So, if the holiday gets eight straight days of celebration, there must be something more to it then just putting up tents and eating food. Right?

I did!

I love to host the holidays. Nothing gives me more pleasure than planning, marketing, preparing, and entertaining for these special times, and I have established a tradition of going a little over the top for the occasion.

I also loved the books Julie and Julia as well as My Life in France. Both inspired me to swipe my mom’s old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and happily start practicing. That was 2 or 3 years ago, and my appetite was rewet when I heard the film was coming out this summer. It inspired me to begin planning Le Marais, or an all Julia Child tribute to Rosh Hashanah.

Everyone has a different method for thinking up their best ideas. Some people have epiphanies in the shower, others prefer a quiet library, but Yoni Stadlin and Vivian Lehrer favor washing dishes. A few years ago, while elbows deep in dirty dishes, Stadlin and Lehrer came up with the idea of a camp based on environmentalism, social justice and spirituality, and POW! Camp Eden Village was born.

Well, as we all know, creating a camp is not as easy as just POW! It took the help of the Foundation for Jewish Camp, major funding from the Jim Joseph Foundation and other community support, to help make Camp Eden Village possible. The camp found a home on 248 acres, about an hour and fifteen minutes outside of New York City, near the town of Cold Spring.

Thanks to the Scottsdale Tuv Ha’Aretz Hazon CSA at the King David Jewish Community Day School for sharing these Beet Haikus! Look for a new contest soon!

Lower School Division

First Place (Tie)
Avery Polster (4th Grade):

Beets are delicious
Full of deep purples and reds
Great with jicama!

Food writer Michael Ruhlman has issued a very intriguing summertime challenge: make a BLT from scratch. No, really from scratch. This means curing your own “bacon,” (more on the airquotes in a minute), baking your own bread, growing your own lettuce and tomato, and making your own homemade mayo!

The level of commitment and self-sufficiency required to produce a single sandwich would be compelling enough, but Michael takes it one step further by opening the contest up to foodies of every stripe. To quote from the writer’s own rules:

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!

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.