Below is the full text of Friday night’s keynote at The Hazon Food Conference.  The keynote was given by Nati Passow, co-founder of The Jewish Farm School.  It’s a long post, but definitely worth the read - even if you have to print it out (on recycled paper of course!) and take it home.

(Nati’s on the right, next to Simcha Schwartz.  Photo by Sabrina Malach.)

Hazon Food Conference
December 6-9, 2007
Keynote Address: Nati Passow 

Thank you Nigel. Shabbat Shalom and Chanukah Sameach. It is a great honor to be here with you all tonight. Nigel suggested that I begin by sharing my story with you, my connection and relationship to food, which I think is a great way to begin this talk, because one of the things I like most about food is that sitting down to a meal is a great excuse to spend time with friends and listen to each other’s stories. So here is a little bit of mine.

Seven years ago I took a Sabbatical. I left university for the year and traveled in Israel. I studied in yeshiva, toured the country and then settled into an apartment in Jerusalem. After having little success finding a job, I decided to enjoy my sabbatical for what it was time to just be present. This was when I discovered good coffee, which for any honorable coffee drinker is a moment you never forget. An older friend of mine sat me down and said that if I was going to drink coffee everyday, I should make it good. Buy whole beans, grind them myself and brew something delicious.

The coffee was my gateway drug to the world of slow food.

Read more »

Before I left for Israel my doctor told me I had a major gluten sensitivity. This is not the news anybody wants to hear before they go off to a country whose 7/11’s carry rolls and pastries on par with some of the best shops in New York. This is also not the news you want to hear if you want to indulge in the unhealthy treats that Israel has to offer: i.e. Shawarma in a lafa, rugelach from Machane Yehuda, malawach, jachnun, schnitzel, and much more. The list of glutenous foods goes on, and tragically, the corner falafel joints I once frequented (and ocasionally still do) don’t offer rice and corn flour alternatives to wheat-flour pita.

For the most part, this new food restriction has actually forced me to eat healthier. Meals in my apartment are rice and quinoa based, and they are made without that delightful greasiness that most falafel joints offer. Snacking has been especially tough, though. I bought packaged roasted almonds and found that they were preserved with gluten. I went to a Mexican restaurant and ordered nachos, naturally expecting gluten-free corn tortillas. Instead, since Israel is not known for its Mexican food, there were wheat pita chips that were deep-fried for a Mexican-like effect. Even most chocolate bars have wafers inside them which are filled with gluten.

Last night I was hungry and craving something both sweet and salty. Read more »

Today’s New York Times reported:

As Israel’s Jews start a new year, the country finds itself in the middle of a fierce religious dispute about the sanctity of fruits and vegetables.”

Indeed.

As Yigal’s article mentioned, the ancient, Torah-mandated practice of shmita leaves the contemporary land of Israel, its farmers - and also its eaters - in a peculiar bind.  The problem is, unsuprisingly, religious.  Israel’s chief rabbinate condones the loophole practice of heter mechira, or growing food on Israeli soil if it is temporarily sold to non-Jews.  Still, it allows rabbis of local cities to decide for themselves whether heter mechira will rule, which opens the “two Jews, three opinions” floodgates.

Read more »

Thanks to Tuv Ha’Aretz farmer and founder of the Shorashim:Roots program at Chava v’Adam farm in Modi’in, Israel, Yigal Deutscher, for this insider look at the shemita year). 

22 days have passed from the moment we celebrated the New Year with the blowing of the shofar until yesterday, when, after hours of dancing, drinking, and singing, we rolled the Sefer Torah back to her beginning and read the story of creation.

This stretch of time has been a stretch out of time, a microcosm of creation itself, mirroring the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the 22 building blocks that God used in creating the world we live in.

Yesterday, we stepped back into time, into the Hebrew year 5767, the seventh year of the seven year cycles that guide the flow of time in the land of Israel. This year itself is an extended dimension out of time, one Shabbat stretching from now until next Rosh Hashana. We are already 22 days into Shemita but only now will we come face to face with this moment.

We cannot make this transition alone. We can only begin our year if the land begins with us. Our awakening, reemerging into the normal flow of time, is hand in hand with the earth itself. We have been in a cocoon, nursing from spiritual banks of forgotten reservoirs. The soil of Israel has been in a cocoon herself, deep in sleep after 5 months of hot sun and barren skies.

Read more »

Days after Yom Kippur and it is already happening again: another pork establishment in Israel was set on fire.  Ynet reported the news, though they have yet to report for sure whether or not the arsonist was an ultra-Orthodox Jew; nevertheless, this is just one of many recent related attacks and one more part of the ongoing battle over pork in Israel (see Ben Murane’s post on such battles in Netanya).

I just arrived in Israel one day before Yom Kippur and will be here for the year exclusively researching pork in Israel.  I am specifically analyzing the tension between religious and secular Israelis, and am interested in how certain Israelis raise and eat pork as a form of political and cultural protest.  It is still illegal to raise pigs on Jewish land, though through a series of loopholes, a few kibbutzim have emerged as major producers of Israel-raised pork products.  I’ve been following this topic very closely and when attacks like this most recent one occur, I take notice . . . and feel surprisingly conflicted.    Read more »

Sukkot is coming up next week. As a self-described natural Jew, I love this harvest holiday. I love decorating a sukkah with gourds and juicy apples (or in the case of my friend Julie’s sukkah two years ago, Jackson Pollack-style splash paint). I love that it’s a time of year when Jews unabashedly sniff citrus fruit and beat palm fronds on the ground. I love that we pray for rain.

It’s also a time of year when I start to think about gleaning - which, as a non-farmer I admit feels a little weird, but actually couldn’t be more relevant. As we learn from Ruth’s story (which is read on another Jewish harvest holiday, Shavuot), the Jewish mitzvah of pe’ah commands that farmers leave the corners of their field to the poor.

Read more »

Congratulations to Shahar Peer, who became the first Israeli woman to reach the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open by defeating Agnieszka Radwanska last night in the fourth round.

Unfortunately, the reporting of Peer’s accomplishment in the Times threatened to incite an international food-incident, when reporter Karen Crouse referred to Peer being “as at home as pastrami between two slices of rye bread” amongst all the Israeli fans at Flushing Meadows.

As an article in New York Magazine correctly (if snarkily) noted, Katz’s Deli is not the official cuisine of the Jewish people - especially not Sabras!! Now, if she had written that Shahar had felt as at home as a fried chickpea surrounded by tahini sauce, well, it still would have been ridiculous, but at least more culinarily accurate.

Best of luck to Peer, and if she drinks enough Kaballah Energy Drink, I’m sure she’ll do great in her match against Anna Chakvetadze tomorrow.

I read the other day that consumption of fresh mozzarella vastly goes up when it’s tomato season. OK, guilty. Who can resist that all-time summer favorite combo, with fresh basil?

But our Jewish Film Festival caused me to think about a long forgotten dish that is especially good for tomato season. In a scene from the Israeli film, “Aviva, My Love,” that I just saw last weekend, the main character, Aviva, was at her professor’s house. He apologized he had nothing in the fridge. She looked inside, and found eggs and a handful of tomatoes (I guess no one told those Israelis that tomatoes aren’t supposed to be refrigerated.) In the next scene, the professor is chowing down on shakshuka.

Shakshuka’s origins are up for debate. I always thought it was Yemenite, but some argue that it’s Ashkenazi in origin. And how you make it is up for debate, too. All I know is that on my third trip to Israel, when I arrived tired and hungry from over 20 hours in transit, my Israeli aunt made me this dish. I had never had it before, but I never forgot it. It was some of the best eggs I had ever had. Call it Israeli comfort food. Read more »

As reported by KosherToday and Ynet, the city council of Netanya, Israel, has banned the sale of pork, despite the likelihood that the law will be overturned by the High Court of Justice as against Israel’s equivelent of the Bill of Rights. Allegedly, 70 stores support 2,000 families with non-kosher products including pig products.

Fifty-percent of the city council are religious or traditional, although only 3 of 25 council members opposed the bill. Reports Ynet, “Up until now, the residents remained silent on the subject, but the opening of a new pork-selling supermarket in the city center [see photo] sparked protests by haredim, who chained themselves to the supermarket’s doors on Sunday.” [emphasis added]

Meanwhile, Netanya Mayor Miriam Fierberg is urging the Knesset to pass a bill to prohibit the sale of pork products in Israel.

(X-posted to Jewschool.)

Israel’s first Master Chef program opens at Hebrew U! Now perhaps we’ll have an answer to the Jewish culinary conundrum which has evaded us ever since the founding of the Jewish State!

I, like many of us I’m sure, have often been frustrated, confused and heart-broken by the discrepancy between American and Israeli culinary specialties, despite their both hailing from the same gene pool, particularly on the bagel-falafel front. Many a New York, Chicago and LA bagelry produce soft, fluffly and blessed with that slightly crispy crust in a perfect “O” in which the hole is really an afterthought. And many a Tel Aviv and Jerusalem falafel stand can likewise fry with ease bodiful, caramel-colored husks of green-tinted chickpea interiors that, even for this meat-eater, could stand in for a burger patty any day.

Read more »

The summer season is marked in a special way here in New York.  I’m not talking about blooming trees or free concerts in the park (although both of these things are pretty great).  Summer in New York officially arrives when everyone starts drinking iced coffee.

It’s especially visible on my daily commute.  For most of the year, sleepy subway riders nurse a blue paper cup (or, too infrequently, reusable thermos) of steaming coffee as they rumble towards work.  Sometime around June, however, a switch occurs, and these same commuters begin toting plastic cups of milky iced coffee, gleaming with condensation. 

Read more »

I’d like to give a hearty hand of appreciation to the fresh fig.  Although their dried counterparts usually rule in America, there is nothing like slippery sweet seeds of a fig bursting through its soft purple skin. 

Figs generally grow in steamy climates, which is perhaps why biting into a fresh fig immediately evokes the warm, ancient air and sweet soil of the Mediterranean - and why these gems are one of the seven species of Israel:

Read more »

(Posted on behalf of Yigal Deustcher -the farmer at Chava V’Adam Farm in Israel, one of Tuv Ha’Aretz’s partner communities. He is also the founder of the Shorashim:Roots program. Photos taken by Tuv Ha’Aretz member, Naomi Marcus.)

I awoke at 5:30 AM and headed to the kitchen where I found Eitan, one of our Shorashim apprentices, dicing the root of Ashwaganda (aka Middle Eastern Ginseng) to make a medicinal tincture.

Eitan has just finished the pilot season of Shorashim:Roots - 5 month intensive housed by Chava v’Adam, an ecological education center outside Modi’in. Our apprentices live and work in a rustic setting, secluded by the rocky, sparsely forested hills hugging our little valley. Much of the work is agriculturally-based, cultivating 5 bio-diverse plots for the needs of our CSA community. All of the buildings are built with stone or mud. The water from our showers & sinks are cleansed by our greywater wetland system. The sounds from the farm can be hectic at times, with busloads of schoolchildren coming to learn about the wonders of plants, animals & mud.

Read more »

(posted on behalf of Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder PhD)

My husband recently returned from a trip to Warsaw. After nearly 9 months living in Israel it was quite a culture shock. There were many meaningful moments but also some funny ones. He took this photo with an ad for the Warsaw-Jerusalem restaurant. According to the ad this is the world’s only Israeli-Jewish-Polish eatery and I don’t doubt it. This unlikely mixing of cuisines has resulted in serving gefilte fish and shwarma side by side with a slice of klezmer on the side. The English script makes it clear that the potential customers are tourists not locals. While I’m guessing they are hoping for Jewish traffic the main drawing is of the Muslim not the Jewish view of Jerusalem. Apparently this restaurant is Kosher and Food is also available. As odd as all this seems, perhaps the most unbelievable piece of the ad is the chef in the white cloak serving falafel. Anyone who has ever had falafel at an authentic Israeli dive knows it is impossible to fill a pita with hot sauce, onions, salad, hummus, techina, garlic paste, pickles and falafel without getting at least a bit down your front!