Thanks to Rabbi Eliav Bock, Director of Ramah Outdoor Adventure (Ramah Outdoors) for sharing these thoughts related to Passover, his community in Colorado and the work of the Jewish Food Movement. Read on for his Ten Plagues Facing Our Modern Way of Eating and Relating to Food and the complimentary Dayenu that you can adapt for your own seders…
It is the month of Nissan and spring is in the air. If I was living on a farm here in Colorado, I would be plowing the fields, spreading manure, and getting ready to plant our first spring vegetables. Sadly I do not live in such close proximity with the land. Instead, I live in a house in Metro Denver and would not be able to fit a tractor through the door that leads to my back yard.
No, this time of year is a time when many of us living urban lives do not even stop and appreciate the effort that farmers throughout the country and throughout the northern hemisphere are making to ensure that we in America have delicious food to eat. (In a future post, I will write about the farmer with whom we are contracting to bring fresh local food to camp. She did spend last week preparing her fields. But more on that in a week or two. . . .)
On March 22nd, you’ll have an opportunity to meet Fred and Karen Lee of Sang Lee Farms, who will be providing the new Brooklyn Bridge CSA members with fresh, certified organic, local produce starting June 8, 2010. It will also be an opportunity to learn more about the CSA, how to become a member, and how you can take on a more active leadership role.
Meet the Farmer!
Monday, March 22 at 7:30pm
Congregation Mt. Sinai
250 Cadman Plaza West, Brooklyn
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.”
The Hazon CSA community in Elkins Park (Philadelpha, PA) hosted another outstanding Tu Bishvat seder this year. (Click here to see photos from their seder last year.) Their organizers shared this list of individual commitments that folks wrote down for the year, to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, a healthier and more sustainable world for all. May they serve as an inspiration for all of us in the coming season!
Thanks so much to Aaron Lerman for this great guest post. Aaron is the Vice-President of Bet My Life Charities, which seeks to educate and train athletes for races ranging from the casual 5k to Ironman Triathlon…and to raise money for some worthy causes. When he’s not working with the charity he can be found eating falafel, traveling the world, riding bikes or learning more about health. At home in Chicago, he designs and develops window treatments and other home products for retail stores…so if you’re in the market for some curtain rods, this is the guy to talk to! This next spring Aaron is looking to get down and dirty by creating his own backyard garden which has been a long awaited (and delayed) project.
Upon walking into the Birthright Israel NEXT salon at Hazon, I could feel the excitement and energy in the room. Dozens of people were talking, laughing, re-connecting and of course eating on this first night of the conference. This high-energy atmosphere permeated every event I attended during the conference… and did I mention there was lots of eating?
Now, looking back on my time at the Hazon Food Conference in Monterey, California, I wanted to share what the conference meant to me, and how the energy of the event has continued to stay with me.
Thanks so much to Rachel Cohen for this great guest post. Rachel is the Senior Legislative Assistant for energy and environmental issues at the Religious Action Center, the Washington office of the Union for Reform Judaism. Rachel works on sustainability and greening issues for the Reform Movement. She holds a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Washington University, and is an avid bike rider and farmers’ marketer. Rachel is staffing the new URJ Shulchan Yarok, Shulchan Tzedek (Green Table, Just Table) Initiative, and can be reached at rbcohen@rac.org or 202-387-2800.
As Jews, we have always cared about the food that we eat. Some of us choose to embrace traditional notions of kashrut – and many of us do not – but we can all agree that our food, and how we get it, plays an important part in our lives.
That’s why Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, opened one section of his 2009 Biennial Shabbat sermon with these words: “Jewish history begins with a Jew – a new Jew, the first Jew – saying to others: come, eat with me. And ever since this first Jewish meal, Jews have believed that eating matters.”
The Hazon CSA communities in Seattle shared this video with me. I hope you enjoy their creative, videographic account of how Hazon CSAs share and preserve local sustainable farming resources.
In their words, this is an account of community supporting agriculture and agriculture supporting community.
The story is told through a compilation of photographs and text set to “Todos Bajo la Misma Luna” by Ottmar Liebert. The pictures were taken during the 2009 season and text that conveys what we did in the year past and what we will do in the year ahead.
Do you love your CSA (or Tuv Ha’Haretz) but also want sustainable products that are not found locally where you live? Things like olive oil and dates are local to the Mediterranean Sea – not New England. But for folks in the greater New York area committed to sustainable agriculture, some of our CSAs have recently partnered with a new company that supports small-scale farming and economic development in the Negev Region of Israel.
Negev Nectars, a new business that launched last week, will be bringing gourmet, sustainably produced foods to CSAs (and Tuv Ha’Haretz) to the United States. Negev Nectars members will be sent olive oil, jams, chutneys, honey, dried herbs and other unique products (check them out here) three times a year just before Hanukkah, Passover and Rosh Hashanah. Negev Nectars can be shipped all over the U.S., although your share can be picked up at participating sites. Currently Negev Nectars can be picked up at the Tuv Ha’Haretz in White Plains, NY and Forest Hills, NY with additional sites coming soon in New York and New Jersey.
Author’s note: The following is a drash I gave at my shul two days ago. My shul, Havurah Shalom in Portland, Oregon, is a participatory congregation.
We are in the final days of Sukkot, one of Judaism’s three harvest festivals, and one of my favorite times of year. The traditional observance of Sukkot: building a booth, decorating it with greens and seasonal fruits and veggies, eating and sleeping under its roof through which we must be able to see the stars, all highlight and make holy things we do every day: living in our homes, eating meals together, even sleeping. Perhaps this is why I look forward to Sukkot so much, or perhaps that it often coincides with my birthday (I’m still young enough to enjoy rather than dread it), or perhaps simply that it happens during the autumn, my favorite season of the year.
Judaism is particularly connected to food, and Sukkot especially to the bounty of our fall harvest. Now is the time for the first apples of the season, in all their amazing varieties, for winter squashes, for root vegetables, and for the last of summer’s abundance: the tomatoes, the zucchini, the pesto made from homemade basil. It is a time to celebrate the simple pleasure of growing and cooking and eating.
I miss the sukkot of my childhood. In my grown-up life, which now has two poles between Brooklyn and Midtown, when I want a meal in a sukkah (sleeping in one? you can fuggedaboutit) I have to go to a sukkah on a truck or in a park — and today the one in the park was closed for renovations or something. Those sukkot certainly feel like they won’t be around forever, they’re heavy, protected structures with solid walls that let in no natural light. The sukkah I grew up with had sheets for walls that billowed in the wind and bamboo that would occasionally drop leaves on us toward the end of the week. That felt temporary!
Lori Braunstein, executive director of “Sustainable Cherry Hill,” and Tuv Ha’Aretz Member at Temple Beth Shalom in Cherry Hill wrote the following post about her visit to Honey Brook Farm. Read all about it here.
Hazon partners with synagogues, JCCs, and other Jewish institutions across North America and Israel to create Jewish Community-Supported Agriculture programs. Hazon CSAs runs like any other CSA (weekly vegetable pickups from a local farm, delivered to a central location), but also uses the CSA model as a platform for inspiring Jewish education and community building. The program started in 2004, and has grown to 32 communities in 2009. Hazon CSAs run out of synagogues (reform to orthodox; large congregation to a small havurah), JCCs, day schools, Hillels, and other Jewish institutions.
This blog is not the right place for it, but still, Roger Cohen has really gotten on my nerves over the last year or so. His ranting about how wonderful Iran is and how great it is for the Jews there made me question my devotion to the New York Times. His piece “Advantage France,” in Sunday’s paper, about some of the differences between the French diet and the American diet, may have me beginning to change my mind. I’ve only spent a few days in France, and only in Paris, but I’m guessing he’s exaggerating somewhat. Nevertheless, the idea of Americans adopting any diet (or lifestyle, really) that required not only combining the ingredients and cooking them, but processing them to begin with (filleting the fish, making the pasta, etc) does sound beautiful and absurd. The idea of connecting to food on a “gut” level and a geographic one far predates the terroir of which Cohen writes, at least in Jewish tradition.
My love affair with kale actually began in the winter when, desperate for a fresh vegetable I began searching for something in season. When we began to thaw out admittedly my head was turned by the fresh younger spring vegetables, and I nearly forgot about the deep green leafy goodness I had been putting in my winter soups until one week my CSA box said “one pound baby kale.”
Um, how interesting. What does one do with baby kale? I asked the all-knowing conduit of helpful hints, recipes and if nothing else good suggestions – Google. The search results mostly suggested I put it into salads but then came recipes for braised baby kale – which basically sounded like tossing the little guys in some olive oil then baking them.
Like many other people, this summer has been full of summer squash! It almost seems to be falling from the sky. I have made zucchini bread (and muffins), I also made these zucchini fritters (really just a summer latke). I just got some more zucchini and yellow squash in my CSA box and I really have no idea what to do with it. To be honest, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I opened the box yesterday and saw more summer squash! Our CSA gives us the ability to check online a few days prior to delivery to see what we’re going to get. So usually by the time we get our box I feel inspired to cook with the ingredients. I was out of town earlier this week so I didn’t have a chance to look at what was coming. My boyfriend pulled the unwelcome squashes out of the box and asked what my plans were for them. I told him I didn’t know and to put them away for now. We then gave each other a look of “more summer squash? You can’t be serious.” As a side note, while out of town for business I had dinner with my family who was vacationing at the beach in Southern California. My dad made zucchini stuffed with his amazing mushroom risotto (you’ve heard my talk about my dad and his risotto). He got the zucchinis from a friend who grows them in her garden and was desperate to get rid of them. These were literally the largest zucchinis I’d ever seen
