The Jew & The Carrot is going through a really exciting transition and we wanted to let you know about it. On September 1, Hazon and the Forward will partner on The Jew & The Carrot in order to strengthen the depth and expand the breadth of the blog as THE site for Jews, food, contemporary life and the Jewish Food Movement.  The Jew and the Carrot will migrate to the Forward’s website and will join its team of blogs, which are read by tens of thousands of readers each month.

When JCarrot was launched in November 2006, we had no idea the number of writers, readers, and range of topics that would be brought together on this blog. While the blog will have a new look, it will remain, as it has been, the epicenter of Jews, food, and sustainability on the web. It will continue to bring together 3,000 years of Jewish thought and food tradition with contemporary issues like sustainability, organic eating, nutrition, food politics, and healthy, delicious cooking.

Thank you for reading the blog during its inaugural years. As our community of readers expands, please continue to post comments, send emails, offer up your own original posts and be a part of the conversation.

We look forward to you continuing to visit jcarrot.org in our new online home.

Judith Belasco

Director of Food Programs, Hazon

Mara Friedman

Hazon Editor-in-Chief

Photo from Earth’s Promise community garden at the Kalisher Absorption Center.

The World Zionist Organization took major steps to green Israel by approving four resolutions put forth by the Green Zionist Alliance at the World Zionist Congress. The resolutions address a wide swath of environmental concerns, including water, energy and food justice. All of the votes were near unanimous, uniting all religious and political streams of Zionism for the cause of Israel’s environment.

“The resolutions will play a major role in helping shift an environmentally imperiled Israel onto a sustainable path, and provide a greener Israel for future generations,” said Dr. Richard Schwartz, a GZA delegate to the Congress.

The resolutions call for the WZO and its subsidiaries — Keren Kayemet L’Yisrael (KKL / Jewish National Fund in Israel) and the Jewish Agency For Israel (JAFI) — to install energy-generating solar panels and rainwater-savings systems on their buildings’ rooftops and to transition to energy-efficient lighting and fuel-efficient vehicles.

Additionally, JAFI is instructed to incorporate environmental education into the immigrant experience at absorption centers, and to develop community gardens at absorption centers for immigrants’ use.

“Growing food from the land is an incredibly potent way of connecting to the land,” said GZA President David Krantz, head of the GZA delegation to the Congress. “For the first time in the history of the Congress, we have brought the issue of food justice to the Zionist table.”

The resolutions will green the Congress itself by requiring the WZO to offset the carbon released into the atmosphere by the event and by the transportation of its delegates to Jerusalem. They also call for at least half of the food at the Congress to be procured from local and organic producers.

“Ensuring that we serve food that comes from locally grown and organic sources helps ensure sustainability for Israel,” said GZA delegate Aviva Melissa Frank.

The GZA resolutions were written by a team of environmentalists from Israel and North America.

“Because of the resolutions approved today, we will be helping to protect Israel’s land, water and air. This may be the best Congress for Israel’s environment since the KKL was founded in 1901,” Krantz said. “One of the resolutions declares that Jewish environmental education and support for local agriculture are globally important values within the Jewish community. It’s an amazing statement — and we’re backing it up with action.”

The iridescent colors reflected off an oil slick are like a twisted and distorted rainbow.

There is a special correlation between this week�s Torah portion and the rainbow covenant of Noah�s time. And there is a foreboding contrast between the rainbow covenant and what�s happened in the Gulf of Mexico. The tension between these dynamic relationships in many ways defines the predicament of our time.

Just as this week is the week we read about the central covenant of the Torah encoded in the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, it is also the week when the anniversary of the rainbow covenant falls. It is no random happenstance: the covenant represented by the Jubilee is in many ways a response to the covenant with Noah and the animals.

How so? The covenant of Noah�s time�the first covenant recorded in the Torah�includes the land and the animals as covenant partners with God alongside the human family. This is also the case with the Jubilee covenant: the land is promised her Sabbaths as a condition for the Israelites to settle upon the land, while the people are required in the Sabbatical year, when the land is resting, to open their fences to allow the wild animals in to eat their fill.

The first condition�to let the land rest�is a fulfillment of the promise in the rainbow covenant that God will no longer destroy the land because of humanity: here God promises to exile humanity in order to save the land from being destroyed. The second condition�allowing the wild animals into the fields�is a tikkun for what happened after the rainbow covenant: even though the animals were partners in God�s covenantal promise not to destroy the earth, they afterwards became fodder for the humans (�like green plants I give you them all�).

Instead, here, in the Sabbatical year, the humans are required to allow their agriculture to go wild and to invite the wild animals to share what grows. This is not only a tikkun for the permission granted to human beings to eat animals. It is also a return to the Garden of Eden, where animals and human beings shared the same food.

And the Gulf of Mexico? In the rainbow covenant God promised not to destroy the Earth because of us, but God did not promise that we wouldn�t destroy the Earth. As the oil laps at the shore and threatens vast ecosystems, important food sources, and endangered species, we must realize that God�s covenant is not enough to save us. The iridescent colors reflected off an oil slick are like a twisted and distorted rainbow. The tragedy and horror of this accident remind us that we have reached a point where we can undo God�s rainbow covenant at the expense of our own lives and the lives of other creatures.

These are the worst of times, because the threat is that close and that enormous. And these are the best of times, because we can wake up to our potential for love and righteousness and create a sustainable world, a world that reflects the rainbow covenant as it was meant to be: a promise to honor and cherish all beings, as God does, and so to act in God�s image.

Then, to quote a medieval prayer (from Pri Eitz Hadar), may we be privileged to see �the whole return to its original strength�and to see the rainbow, joyful and beautified with his colors.� Yashuv hakol l�eitano ha rishon, v�niratah hakeshet, sas umitpa�er b�govanin.

David Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org and a teacher of Judaism and ecology.

The affects of our crazy winter weather are not passed us yet. Generally, we think of bad weather as leading to increases in the prices of food.  Examples include, damaged oranges when the temperatures drop below freezing or farmers having to charge more since, they had to remove 3 feet of snow from their potato crops. But this time, the cold winter is going to make your produce cheaper.

Florida’s cold weather caused a delay in the harvest date for Florida’s strawberries. The delay caused Florida and California to strawberries to hit the markets at the same time. Last week, 80 million pounds of strawberries were picked – a new record for this time of year. In 2009, a pound of strawberries cost $3.49, while this year strawberries will go for $1.25 per pound.

I don’t have any go to strawberry recipes, but since the high is over 90 degrees in Washington, D.C. today, I have been researching frozen fruit cup recipes. I think I am going to make this one from Cooks Recipes.

1 (6-ounce) can frozen concentrated lemonade
1 (6-ounce) can frozen concentrated orange juice
2 1/2 cups water
1 cup granulated sugar
8 ounces fresh or frozen strawberries
3 bananas, peeled and sliced
1 (8-ounce) can pineapple chunks

Combine lemonade, orange juice, water and sugar in a large bowl. Add strawberries, bananas and pineapple.
Spoon into individual serving dishes.
Freeze for at least 1 hour before serving.

Hazon has been invited to join a group of Faith-based and Community organizations to support Michelle Obama’s recently launched Let’s Move campaign. The meeting in DC tomorrow will provide organizations with tools and information to help combat childhood obesity in their communities. Judith Belasco, Director of Food Programs, is headed to the Capitol to represent Hazon!

According to� Judith, “Hazon is always looking to expand our support of healthier lifestyles as meaningfully as we can. Already North America’s largest faith-based supporter of CSA‘s, we provide healthy living education through our Jewish Food Education Network (JFEN) and annual Food Conference. We look forward to engaging the Jewish community and beyond in support of Let’s Move.”

According to Joshua DuBois, White House Director of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Parnerships, The Let’s Move campaign will combat the epidemic of childhood obesity through a comprehensive approach that builds on effective strategies, and mobilizes public and private sector resources. Let’s Move will engage every sector impacting the health of children to achieve this national goal, and will provide schools, families and communities simple tools to help kids be more active, eat better, and get healthy.

“This is the first time we’ve been invited to the White House, and being able to speak directly to Michelle Obama’s staff and a diverse group of other faith-based organizations will provide us new ways of celebrating and promoting healthful lifestyles,” said Judith.

The faith-based and community groups will learn about Let’s Move and the resources made available by the Department of Agriculture, Department of Education, Department of Heath and Human Services, and the Corporation for National and Community Service. Hazon and other attending organizations will be encouraged to share their input on the materials intended to promote Let’s Move within faith-based and community organizations.

Stay tuned for updates from Judith’s experience at the White House by following us on the Hazon Twitter!

Lovers of local honey and urban beekeepers rejoice!  This morning the New York City Board of Health lifted the ban on beekeeping in the City!  Lots of good folks like Just Food and the New York City Beekeepers Association have been putting a lot of great effort into making this happen!

The ordinance will now say:

(12) All venomous insects, including, but not limited to, [bee,] bees other than non-aggressive honey bees (Apis mellifera), hornet and wasp. Persons keeping honey bees shall file a notice with the Department, on a form provided or approved by the Department, containing the beekeeper’s name, address, telephone, e-mail and fax numbers, emergency contact information, and location of the hive, and they shall notify the Department within ten business days of any changes to such information. Beekeepers shall adhere to appropriate beekeeping practices including maintaining bee colonies in moveable-frame hives that are kept in sound and usable condition; providing a constant and adequate water source; locating hives so that the movement of bees does not become an animal nuisance, as defined in §161.02 of this Article; and shall be able to respond immediately to control bee swarms and to remediate nuisance conditions.

The genetically modified alfalfa seed at the heart of the dispute has been engineered to be immune to Monsanto’s flagship herbicide Roundup. Monsanto intervened in a 2007 federal district court ruling that the Department of Agriculture’s approval of GE alfalfa was illegal. The Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a 2006 lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of non-profits and farmers who wished to retain the choice to plant non-GE alfalfa. CFS was victorious in this case – in addition CFS has won two appeals by Monsanto in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit: in 2008 and again in 2009. Now, upon Monsanto’s insistence, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.

Our struggle here at CFS is a struggle for organic and sustainable farrmers everywhere. This is truly a ‘David versus Goliath’ struggle, between the farmers we represent and Monsanto, a chemical company turned seed company that appears to have control of our food supply as its ultimate goal. Here are the words of my boss, Andrew Kimbrell: “That Monsanto has pushed this case all the way to the Supreme Court, even though USDA’s court-ordered analysis is now complete, and the U.S. government actively opposed further litigation in this matter, underscores the great lengths that Monsanto will go to further its mission of patent control of our food system and selling more pesticides.”

The federal district court required the Department of Agriculture to undertake an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) assessing the impacts of the crop on the environment and on farmers; the first time the U.S. government had ever undertaken such analysis for any GE crop. The court permitted farmers that had already planted to continue, but halted any further planting pending the agency’s re-assessment. That the EIS was required is not in dispute; the legal issue is only the scope of relief while USDA analyzed the impacts of the crop for the first time.

In October 2009 Monsanto asked the Supreme Court to hear further arguments. In response, the Center and the U.S. government separately opposed that request the following December. USDA completed the first draft of the EIS in December 2009.

Alfalfa is the fourth most widely grown crop in the U.S. and a key source of dairy forage. It is the first perennial crop to be genetically engineered. It is open-pollinated by bees, which can cross-pollinate at distances of several miles, spreading the patented, foreign DNA to conventional and organic crops. Such biological contamination threatens the livelihood of organic farmers and dairies, since the U.S. Organic standard prohibits genetic engineering, and alfalfa exporters, since most overseas governments also reject GE-contaminated crops.

Here are the worlds of Phil Geertson who we represent: “We trust the Supreme Court will uphold farmers right to choose their crop of choice and protect us from the constant fear of contamination from GE crops.”

This struggle that we are engaged in is all of our struggle – centered on the right to eat food without GMOs and farmers to grow GMOs. Please stay tuned to this important case, consider a donation to the Center For Food Safety, and please – Submit comments to the USDA on their profoundly disappointing EIS, recently issues.

Onward
zelig

Hazon staff love granola. We’re blessed to often get home-made batches from our colleagues, but when we need granola for 600+, we turn to Udi’s Granola. Udi and his team have been supporters of the Hazon Food Conference for years. And, if that wasn’t enough to convince us that we like them, Udi’s Granola was a winner in the  San Francisco Chronicle’s granola reviews. Here’s what they said in the article:

Panelists described the first-place Udi’s ($4.99/13 ounces at Whole Foods) as “toasty and nutty,” with “a mild honey flavor” and “nice small flakes.” They liked the “oaty-ness” and “simple flavor” and thought it had an “old-fashioned taste.” Two would buy this brand, two might and one would not.

Read the rest of the review by clicking here.

Udi’s will also host a special gathering of Hazon foodies in a few weeks. Nigel Savage, Hazon’s Founder and Executive Director will teach and then we’ll get to go on a bakery tour! Click here to learn more about Hazon’s visit to Colorado, Feb. 18-20.

Sales and Operations Manager

KOL Foods, LLC puts kosher meat and ethics on the same plate so consumers can feel good about the meat they eat. KOL Foods sources and sells grass-fed, non-industrial, healthy lamb and beef and pastured poultry directly to individuals. Since its foundation in 2007, the interest in KOL Foods’ products has grown rapidly, and, consequently, they are now available in the East Coast and the Midwest primarily through our website. As demand is increasing KOL Foods is seeking to expand in the Eastern United States and, in the near future, nationwide.

KOL Foods is unique as it operates differently from industrial kosher meat businesses. As a values-based business, our mission is to produce food that is in harmony with nature, neighbors and tradition – all the way from farm to fork.   For further information on KOL Foods, please go to:  www.kolfoods.com .

KOL Foods is seeking a dynamic, results-oriented Sales and Operations Manager who will be responsible for leading sales, customer service and fulfillment as well as supply chain management. This exciting opportunity requires a generalist with experience in hands-on business development in the food industry. The Sales and Operations Manager will report to the CEO/Founder.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Deliver sales of our premium products by confidently, enthusiastically and passionately educating current and prospective clients about the exceptional value of our beef, lamb and poultry products.
• Manage the day-to-day operations including movement of goods into and out of production facilities as well as shipping operations.
• Drive sales through exceptional customer service from initial contact through repeat orders.
• Develop a database of qualified leads through referrals, B2B direct sales, direct mail, email, networking, and participation in educational events.
• In partnership with the CEO/Founder, play a key role in the development of KOL Foods’ long-term growth strategy, including strengthening our infrastructure and product excellence.
• Monitor production facilities and agencies to ensure that they efficiently and consistently provide needed services while staying within budgetary limits.
• Partner with the CEO/Founder and Bookkeeper to develop and implement a system to conduct data-based, continual analysis, evaluation and reporting of strategic information (revenue, product mix, margins, inventory, freight cost, cost of production facilities, and supply).
• Partner with the CEO/Founder to develop product marketing strategies including advertising campaigns.
• Lead the implementation of the marketing strategy and sales promotions based on knowledge of KOL Foods’ competitive advantage, market and product characteristics, and cost and markup factors.
• Partner with the CEO/Founder to manage pricing models, balancing exceptional quality, costs, and customer satisfaction.
• Supervise interns when needed.

KEY REQUIREMENTS:

• Bachelor’s Degree.
• -5 years of sales and operations experience.
• Food industry experience preferred. Experience with kosher food products a plus.
• A strong track record of successful new business development.
• Outstanding interpersonal and influencing skills.
• Customer focused, responsive, timely and accurate in follow-through.
• Excellent in project management.
• Analytical, fast learning with excellent judgment.
• Knowledge of social media platforms.
• Well organized, flexible, hands-on and results-oriented.
• Knowledgeable of the sustainable food movement.
• •High integrity.
• Outstanding ability to prioritize and handle multiple projects simultaneously.
• Understanding of kashrut.
• Outstanding proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite with special emphasis on Word and Excel.
• Residing in the Washington/Baltimore area is preferred. NYC residents will be considered.
• Willingness to travel – estimated 10-20%.

There are many great benefits to a career at KOL Foods. As a start-up company with proven growth, a strong brand and high potential, KOL Foods offers a competitive salary and benefits, including an annual bonus. Join the team of our excellent, values based, growth company. Feel good about your work and become part of our success.

Qualified candidates are encouraged to apply by submitting a cover letter, including salary requirements, and resume to:  info@kolfoods.com.  KOL Foods requires background checks, computer literacy tests, and writing samples for this position.

KOL Foods is an equal opportunity employer.

On Tuesday November 3, His Royal Highness Prince Philip will host over 200 guests for lunch at Windsor Castle, the 900-year-old palace that serves as an official residence of his and Queen Elizabeth’s. But this lunch will be noticeably different from the roasted quail and crème fraîche typical of castle meals. Instead, the menu is entirely vegan and centered on seasonal, regionally sourced ingredients.

For full article click here