My boyfriend is really into good podcasts and came home the other night insisting that I watch this.  And he was right, Dan Barber gives a charming and very insightful talk about sustainable fishing.  Check it out:

Global Hunger Shabbat is just around the corner! Join AJWS this Shabbat, March 19-20, for a nationwide day of solidarity, education, reflection and activism to raise awareness about global hunger.

Over 100 synagogues, 31 universities and scores of individuals, Moishe Houses and independent minyanim across the country and in Canada, New Zealand, India, Cape Verde, Uganda, Kenya, Cambodia and Thailand have already signed up to host Global Hunger Shabbat events in their communities.

It’s easy to plan a Global Hunger Shabbat event of your own or find an event at a location near you. Please visit www.ajws.org/hungershabbat for more information and to download activities, resources and suggestions for taking action.

By Audrey Sasson, cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)

I recently attended an event promoting Eric Holt-Giménez’s new book (co-authored by Raj Patel), Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. Eric is the executive director of Food First and a powerful advocate for transforming our broken food system. His presentation unpacked the causes of hunger worldwide and promoted a reinvestment in local food systems as both a just and effective solution.

These days, it seems everyone is talking about “going green.” Never has such a simple sounding term had so much meaning.  For nonprofit overnight Jewish camps, their staff and lay leaders, this means changing old habits, teaching campers about how and why to make changes, and ensuring a vibrant future for their camps.

Many camps have begun to implement green practices, taking action to decrease their carbon footprint, and impart a positive environmental message to their campers.  Steps have included forgoing paper, plastic, and Styrofoam in favor of using reusable tableware and reducing non-biodegradable waste, using solar power for heating, providing campers and staff with environmentally friendly water bottles, changing light bulbs to reduce carbon emissions, and more!  Several camps have also planted gardens and are teaching their campers about healthy cooking and organics.

Director, Jewish Greening Fellowship

Check out the newest installment of the Hazon Podcast by clicking the link below. Please forward to your friends and let me know any thoughts you have on it.

Also, NEW is that now you can SUBSCRIBE to HAZON Podcasts straight on iTunes. Just Search “Hazon” in your iTunes Store and SUBSCRIBE to our podcast. It is absolutely FREE!

New Podcast Episode with Jewish Greening Fellowship Director

Highlights of this episode:

• What is the Jewish Greening Fellowship?
• Sign up for Bay Area and NY Rides
• See Nigel in Colorado!

Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize Wish – Teach Every Child About Food from David Bryfman on Vimeo.

David Bryfman, currently the Director of the New Center for Collaborative Leadership at the  Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York-SAJES, got inspired by Jamie Oliver’s passion for healthy eating.  He’s thinking about how to bring Jaime’s suggestions for education into the Jewish community:

Every year in our household, the same question comes up: splurge  and join a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), or buy local items week to week from the farmers’ markets and farm stands. And every year, we wait…until it’s too late. The same excuses come up each time: it costs a lot of money up front, we might be traveling for a week or two, we have to drive at least twenty minutes to pick up the share, I like the choice of vegetables at the markets.

I’ve heard a lot of us Hazon-niks refer to Michael Pollan as Reb Pollan. Yet, as far as I know, he’s never spoken publicly in a Jewish context.
Until Tuesday night, that is. Pollan appeared on a panel in Berkeley, just blocks from his home. He was invited not only for the food guru that he is, but as a regular customer of Saul’s Deli, the only Jewish deli in Berkeley.
Saul’s is perhaps the only Jewish deli in the country to serve grass-fed meat (at least according to its owners Karen Adelman and Peter Levitt.) Adelman and Levitt talked about how hard it can be to please the old-timers who don’t necessarily care about where their meat comes from, and trying to change with the times. This being the Bay Area, kashrut hardly figured into the conversation, not surprising, since Saul’s isn’t kosher.
The event was going to be held at the deli itself, but had to be moved to the JCC to accomodate the overflow crowd. You can read more about the conversation here.

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?

Sitting in sessions all day long, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Asilomar is located right on the Pacific Ocean. However, there was no way to forget that when the entire community walked down the boardwalk to the beach so that we could all say the blessing upon seeing the ocean for the first time. The text goes:

Barukh Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh haOlam Sheh-Asah Et HaYam HaGadol

Which translates to Blessed are you our God, King o the Universe, who made the Great (or Big) Ocean.

The Friday morning session entitled “Food Justice: Tools to Help Organize and Lobby More Effectively” featured Scott Minkow and Eric Schockman. Minkow discussed the amazing work that he has been leading through the LA community Jewish Federation. One project that was really taking off is called “Fed Up With Hunger,” which approaches local city officials such as the County Board of Supervisors, the City Council, and others to incorporate healthy eating and living into neighborhoods around the city. In LA fashion the project enlisted the help of a celebrity person, Debra Messing, though it has also been tweeted by the famoulous Alyssa Milano. As the other panelist, Eric Schockman put it, “Fed Up With Hunger is an example of how a federation turns a battleship around” to make change.

Photos by Phil Mansfield

Every once in a while I feel sorry for myself because my kids won’t eat my lovingly prepared meals; for comfort, I seek out one of my fellow mom’s, specifically those with teen-agers. Invariably they look at me with a withering ‘well let me get you the violins and a stiff drink fast, your poor thing’ stare, reminding me that I am a mere amateur at kitchen rejection. When I hear their tales of trying to feed their teens, my load somehow seems lighter, more manageable. Snarky, picky, and sometimes downright nasty, it is no easy task to manage teens at the table.

Enter Rozanne Gold and her new book, Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs. I sat down with the author and discovered that the book’s appeal to teens is as organic as its recipes. Gold recently adopted a teen-ager and for the past few years they have been coming together as a family, in and out of the kitchen. Her daughter was one of five teen chefs engaged to prepare and test each recipe. Their collective industry and obvious enjoyment is evidenced throughout the book with hands-on pictures depicting their efforts.

Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)

Back in October, I attended a permaculture workshop at a retreat center in upstate New York. I learned all about food forests, grafting, sheet mulching and many other agro-ecological farming techniques about which I knew little. I was surprised—and delighted!—to learn that many of these techniques are being implemented in the developing world, too.

Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS).

“Kitchen gardens in Kenya” is not a phrase we hear often, but for many people, that phrase is the key to survival. In a country of nearly 35 million people, malnutrition and hunger are staggering problems, particularly for Kenyan children, orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS. In the rural, western regions of Kenya, sustaining basic nutrition is a chronic struggle in the face of food insecurity. Too weak to walk long distances or stand in lines waiting for food aid, those who live in rural areas and subsist on less than a dollar a day do not have access to the basics needed to live healthy, dignified lives.