Many people complain that it’s difficult to find a synagogue to join in New York City. There are just so many options, that none of them feel exactly right - you might call it The Shul-Goers Dilemma. These days, however, I’m feeling pretty good at Temple Bet Pollan.

Michael Pollan gets his fair share of love on this blog, and his new book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto has already joined its predecessor, The Omnivore’s Dilemma as a New York Times Best Seller. Pollan is in the middle of his second whirlwind book tour in two years (I guess he sleeps on the plane) – and I hear the same account every where he goes. Huge venue, sold out show, knockout performance.

Like any effective leader - Martin Luther King included - he’s charismatic and big on the big ideas that change the way we think - or in this case how we eat. But as I devoured (pun intented) Pollan’s new book on my subway commute, I wondered what, if anything, does his worldview offer to the Jewish community? And, perhaps more interestingly, what wisdom does the tribe have to offer back to him?

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The recent controversy regarding the custom of Kapparot (see article in the Forward) made me realize that Kapparot is virtually the only remaining ritual that uses an animal sacrifice as an atonement for human sin. In Temple times, any inadvertent sin had a corresponding animal sacrifice that was intended to cause the sinner to contemplate the nature of sin and how this animal is now losing its life instead of the sinner. pretty powerful stuff, if your environment is agrarian and animals are preciously traded commodities. Today however, things are much different. Read more »

Two long months with hardly any rain. That is the dire situation we have been facing this season. Our CSA provides shares to 85 families in the Washington, DC area.  Long ago this past April, we missed a month’s worth of rain, kicking off a season of high and dry windy weather. This has been tough on everything and everyone around.  During this season’s severe extended drought we’ve been dealing with a 2-pronged “war”. On one hand, we must keep every new seedling and translant happy and moist, on the other, we must keep the deer at bay.

The deer come out around mid-August every year as their food runs out in the forest. This season, they were here in July. Entire plantings of green beans, sweet potatoes and edemame, were gone. Badly eaten were the new and still tender tomato and cucumber plants.

Earlier in the season we cought 6 groundhogs over the course of a month and a half, and safely transported them to a wooded area a few miles away. Now we have an early deer problem, and a drought like we’ve never seen before.

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This Friday, DC’s rockin’ progressive havurah is taking on Jewish food issues!

Tikkun Leil Shabbat is a songful, soulful, Friday evening services featuring a teaching about a social justice issue and followed by a potluck vegetarian dinner. This Friday July 13, the “dvar tikkun” will be introduced by Hazon’s very own Laura Bellows and feature:

Aliza Wasserman (also one of our fabulous “The Jew & the Carrot” bloggers!), from Community Food Security Coalition, will talk about a progressive Jewish take on national food policy and the pending Farm Bill.

Melissa Byrne will talk about the benefits of eating locally grown food, and provide information about the DC-area farmers’ markets (and maybe a sweet taste-test of local berries!)

Services begin at 6:45 at the Religious Action Center at 2027 Massachusetts Ave NW (21st & P) near the Dupont Circle metro, North exit. Services will be accompanied by instruments; please bring a vegetarian entree or salad to share, and a percussion instrument if you’d like.

More information about how they’ve “greened” their potlucks, and other details about this metro-fabulous havurah, at www.tikkunleilshabbat.org.

(Thanks to Jo for this tip.)

Written for Kol Zimrah’s Feb 2nd, 2007, Tu’Bishvat minyan:

Last week’s parsha featured the ten miracles and the ten doubts of the Israelites as they flee Egypt for the Holy Land. Ten times, the Israelites lose faith in Moses and God and ten times they return to God and Moses’ leadership after an appropriate miracle.

The people say to Moses, “Dude, we’re gonna die!” So Moses says to God, “Dude, gimme a trick!” And God says to Moses, “Here, try this.” Moses then turns to the people and displays a miracle, “Ta dah!” And the people say, “Whew, Moses that was close. We almost lost faith in you there. Thanks for the manna/water/victory/pillar of fire.”

Can I say that this is really stupid? We can all see it. This level of faith endurance is pretty shallow, this reliance on miracles. And I want to say that I don’t need miracles to be faithful. As a post-modern, post-Enlightenment, seriously spiritual but definitely down to earth guy, I’m not a fan of big miracles. When I set out to write this d’var, I was ready to be very condemnatory. But when I sat down to write this d’var, recent live events prevented me from being so:

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Hello from the Food Conference!

I’ve just been to two sessions, and eaten so much amazing food, and tasted raw milk for the first time, and heard about the combination of different bacteria that are involved in making miso, in a process that takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 years.

And this only the first day!

It’s interesting, though, that the things that have grabbed me and pulled me out of my seat with “Wait! What about…!” thoughts are the same things that I’ve already heard about before, or ostensibly already studied, or were so ubiquitous to have never merited a second glance. The most recent session was about the Birkat Hamazon.

We learned (or realized again, upon closer consideration, with several “oh yeah”s) that the birkat hamazon mirrors the amidah in its sections: praise, thanks, petition. That it is, in that regard, actually a mini-service. That, even if we don’t say the amidah or any other regular prayer, the offering some kind of thanks after we eat is in fact praying three times a day.

And we talked about the words. What do you do with a pile of archaic Hebrew - whether it is sung to a singsong tune (which always gets stuck in my head) or mumbled, high speed? Do we prefer the newer ones, the ones that use words like ’spirit’ and ’sustainability’? Do we sort of like the newer ones in sentiment, but cling to the words and tunes we learned at Hebrew school? I kind of do - although we learned that before the printing press solidified the texts, the ‘harachaman’ section was in fact an ‘insert your prayers for the community here’. And interesting that these prayers are said in the plural, not the singular - we pray for what we hope for the community. Does that make it easier? Weirder to put into actual words? More universal?

I enjoyed realizing - again - that Oseh Shalom is part of the birkat as well. I knew this, I’ve sung it. But thinking about it again, inthe context of what’s going on in Iraq, and what’s going on in meatpacking houses and on the Mexican border, and all the other places of strive and violence in the world right now — the fact that a prayer for peace is integral not only to our whole tradition, but that we think to include it in our prayers after FOOD - every meal! That we’ve been saying Oseh Shalom as part of the Birkat for 2000 years. We’ve been praying for peace since we began praying. There has been a need to pray for peace since we began praying. And that Judaism is all about that…

I enjoyed that. Because you often don’t have to look very far to see something new or shocking. And I guess, starting with food (which we eat daily, automatically!) is a pretty good place to get these thoughts going…

– Anna

Greetings from the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center!

Over 150 Jewish food, farm, health, sustainability and spiritual learners are gathered here for the next four days to share our stories about food, connect Jewishly to contemporary issues, and celebrate innovative approaches to our heritage.

Said Nigel Savage during one of tonight’s sessions, as we innovate Jewish tradition in light of contemporary life, we also “vote with our feet” and determine which innovations have traction, which innovative ideas “stick.” That is precisely the purpose of Latkes to Lattes — innovating Jewishly, exchanging ideas, and ultimately broadening what it means to eat kosher with what “sticks.”

Over these days, we will bring the conference to you virtually through JCarrot.org! We encourage you to post your comments and let this fantastic beginning continue beyond Isabella Freedman into our everyday lives.

– Ben Murane, JCarrot Blog Team