Thursday, October 8 at 3:00 pm the New York City Health Department visited the fruit stand on 89th and Broadway in Manhattan.  Apparently his fruit stand was too big, extending a foot or so outside the designated area.  The police were summoned  as was a New York City garbage truck.   The police proceeded to deposit crates of fruit and vegetables into the garbage truck.  They threw perfectly good fruits and vegetables away! A homeless woman literally kneeled down begging for the food.  The officers ignored her request. The bystanders were astounded.  As  pedestrians called various state and local officials, as well as news reporters,  the garbage truck closed and the police ceased to haul any more crates of food into the garbage truck for fear of negative publicity.  The supervising police officer said, “We are just following health department protocol.”

Yeah, I know, as Jews we’re supposed to rest from our weekday labors on Shabbat. Jews who observe Shabbat more traditionally than I do tend to refrain from social action on Shabbat, including the practice of tikkun olam, repairing the world. However, there is a ruling in Talmudic law (isn’t there always?) that allows us to sidestep Shabbat prohibitions against typical activities, called pikuach nefesh, saving a life (soul). Here’s a more complete explanation of the concept.

So why am I violating Shabbat by posting on The Jew and the Carrot today?

(Story excerpted from Tablet Magazine)

On the occasional Friday afternoon, a makeshift farmers market appears inside the popular soup shop Marakiya in Jerusalem’s city center. Israelis peruse the goods: dried figs, almonds, creamy labaneh, bottles of grape honey, and briny stuffed olives. It’s a familiar scene in a country known for its fresh produce and sumptuous food markets. But this souk aims to produce more than a good meal.

Behind one of the tables, Yahav Zohar, a 29-year-old tour guide and translator, chats with a customer about a bottle of organic olive oil. While his deep tan and scruffy beard might suggest otherwise, Zohar is not a farmer. Rather, he is something of an altruistic middleman—traveling once a week to the West Bank in search of growers and small-scale food producers whose products he buys and resells at a small markup. “The other day, I bought 500 eggs from a farmer at a shekel apiece,” he said. “In some cases, our purchases end up being a big share of a family’s income.”

Last night I went to hear Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farms in Virginia, speak at a benefit for the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, one of my favorite farmer’s markets here in Portland. Salatin is featured in Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and more recently in the film Food, Inc. (BTW, if you haven’t seen the film, go, this minute, and take everyone you know, even if you have to drag them kicking and screaming).

The other day, I met a gardener who used to ply the same community garden as I do. He had recently stopped by the old growing grounds, and noticed that many more of the plots were in use this year than last.

I could think of quite a few explanations for more folks growing their own veggies—from the economy to greater awareness about local foods—but this guy believed we owe the rapid increase primarily to one cause. “It’s Michelle Obama,” he said.

It seems my earlier pessimism about the threatened value added tax (VAT) on fruits and vegetables was premature. For now, fruit and vegetables will remain tax-free commodities in Israel.

 Was it concern for our health or the state of Israeli agriculture that prompted this turn-around? Not exactly. The Byzantine ins and outs of coalition politics are what saved the day. The Shas religious party, a member of the governing coalition, decided to press the issue, and they refused to accept the offered compromise in which the tax would start low and gradually increase over several years. 

It’s pretty easy to eat local food in New York City.  Scattered throughout the five boroughs are farmers markets and CSAs are plentiful.  Since I moved to Brooklyn I’ve joined the Park Slope Co-op that displays a map of its farms and suppliers on its website.  There are also plenty of restaurants that feature local and season foods on its menu (I recently went to Nick and Toni’s Café, which I highly recommend)

And for those desiring to gather and produce their own local fare, we have illicit urban agrarian societies in New York that go foraging or keep bees.  But as it turns out, not all local foods are created equally.

This Friday night, I’m thinking of serving gundi, or gondi, the dumplings that are a Shabbat dinner mainstay for Iranian Jews.  What are Jewish Iranians experiencing right now?  I know that some Jewish Iranian ex-patriots are siding with the uprising, and that no matter what, this moment is meaningful to Iranians of all religions. It is also significant for Israel. Especially when words may fail us, there is nothing like sharing a meal together.  Here is one recipe, and another. L’Chaim.

Well it seems like the only bees making the news these days are the bees that go missing (apparently they were in Argentina and not hiking the Application Trail) or banned bees.  Unlike several other major cities around the United States such as Chicago and San Francisco, beekeeping is legal.  But, in New York City beekeeping is illegal.  This isn’t really breaking news (we’ve written about this before) but earlier this week a “Beekeepers Ball” was held in order to bring attention to the issue that some people want to make NYC beekeeping a legit activity.   According to the New York Times,

In attendance [on Monday] were New York City beekeepers, aspiring New York City beekeepers, beekeepers not from New York City, friends of beekeepers, friends of bees, people who like to dress as bees, people who like to dress their children as bees, bee-dressed children, one cross-dressing beekeeper, a couple of guys who spend much of their time dressed in armor, fans of honey, fans of local food and a team of French videographers.

In an era where just about everyone is counting pennies as well as calories, Berkeley-based husband and wife filmmaking duo Shira and Yoav Potash recently embarked on the “Food Stamp Challenge” where they ate on roughly one dollar per meal and a documented their low-budget food adventure in the film Food Stamped.  The film was screened last year at the Hazon Food Conference.  But you can catch the film this weekend at the JCC in Berkeley, CA.

This is the final installment of a three part series. Click here to learn how to win her new book There Shall Be No Needy.

In my childhood, Shabbat never felt complete without Stella D’Oro cookies. For the uninitiated, these are dry cookies whose chief (or only) advantage is that they are parve (dairy free) and therefore can be eaten for dessert after a meat meal. I was especially partial to the Swiss Fudge flavor, which featured a dollop of chewy fudge in the middle of an otherwise-bland cookie �if you nibbled away the outside first, you could enjoy a few bites of pure fudge at the end.

I have since stopped eating meat and have learned to bake, thereby eliminating the need for parve supermarket cookies, but still have a soft place in my heart for Stella D’Oro. I was therefore upset to hear recently that workers at the cookie-maker’s Bronx factory went on strike this past summer, and even more upset that this strike has attracted (as far as I can tell) virtually no notice in the Jewish community.

In 2006, Brynwood Partners bought Stella D’Oro from Kraft Foods. As soon as the contract of the existing 136 workers ran out in the summer of 2008, the new management demanded that the workers accept pay cuts of up to 26% and begin contributing to their health insurance plan. The workers scheduled to bear the brunt of this pay cut would be the women who package the cookies. (Brynwood has classified certain jobs – mostly those held by men as “skilled”
and subject to smaller paycuts) The workers walked out in August.

Now that my Tuv Ha’Aretz (Hazon CSA) has started this year, I’m starting to get into a pleasant routine of planning meals around my weekly bounty (and my boyfriend’s kitchen).  The last two weeks we have seen beautiful fresh spring greens perfect for fun and interesting salads that I’ve dressed with (in various combinations) grated raw beets, honey and almond oil, crushed raw cashews, whole grain mustard and balsamic vinegar.

We’ve enjoyed the meals, and fortuitously there always seems to be enough salad left over for a hearty lunch the next day.  Each time I carefully put the salad in a container to take to work with me – and each time I promptly leave it on the kitchen counter.  A practice that leaves me both without a lunch that day and a wilted salad back at my boyfriend’s place.

Getting beyond my feelings of guilt that I’ve wasted otherwise very good food, it did get me thinking.  Is it more economical to buy a salad out than packing my own?

Thanks to Richard H. Schwartz Ph.D. for his latest guest post.  His previous post on not eating meat can be found here.   For a long time, Richard has been trying to start a respectful dialogue in the Jewish community about his views on vegetarianism, but has had very little success.  Below is a fictional dialogue that he hopes readers will use it as the basis of similar dialogues with local rabbis, educators, and community leaders.  Richard would also welcome an actual dialog with a rabbi.

Jewish Vegetarian Activist: Shalom rabbi.

Rabbi: Shalom. Good to see you.

JVA: Rabbi, I have been meaning to speak to you for some time about an issue, but I have hesitated because I know how busy you are, but I think this issue is very important.

Rabbi: Well, that sounds interesting. I am never too busy to consider important issues. What do you have in mind?

JVA: I have been reading a lot recently about the impacts of our diets on our health and the environment and about Jewish teachings related to our diets. I wonder if I can discuss the issues with you and perhaps it can be put on the synagogue’s agenda for further consideration.

In the daily inundation of political scandal, violence, government infighting and general economic and social mayhem that we Israelis can’t seem to live without (judging by our consumption of news media), a proposed new tax on fruits and vegetables has garnered little public outcry. 

Until now, fruits and vegetables have been exempt from the 16.5% value-added tax (v.a.t.) placed on nearly every other consumer item. But foods like tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and eggplant had been considered basic daily necessities, like bread and milk (both of which are still price-controlled).