Passover is a natural time to take an “environmental inventory” of the chametz in our world and to be mindful of the simple lives our ancestors led in the desert in their pursuit of freedom. Chametz is the Hebrew term for any of the five basic biblical grains which traditionally observant Jews remove from their homes. These include wheat, rye, oats, barley, and spelt—that have been mixed with water and allowed to ferment.

When our ancestors were dwelling in the desert, they had no choice but to live simply. In our day, simplicity has come to mean conservation, not using more than you need, and not being wasteful. Jewish law prohibits wasteful consumption. When we waste resources, we are violating the law of bal tashchit—Do not destroy. (Deuteronomy 20: 19-20).

Matzah itself is a symbol of simplicity and humility, and is a metaphor for getting back to basics and our natural selves. It is in contrast to our leavened or puffed up, over-inflated selves caught up in accumulation and over-consumption.

Yosh and I got a worm composter for our wedding – it’s true, we are just that dorky!  For the last week or so (yes, we got married in November, but the composter arrived in mid-February, and I finally got around to getting the worms last week), I’ve been the proud mom of a brood of about 1,000 wriggling, very hungry worms.

They live in the Worm Factory, pictured above (p.s. definitely not our kitchen), and  I couldn’t be more excited.  Yosh on the other hand, is a bit more squeamish about the whole thing, though I can’t blame him.  He suffered through a bit of worm trauma when his last roommate neglected to properly feed worms, and the bin quickly self destructed.

But aside from the nachas I feel over the little munchies - which was a definitely surprise – I was certainly not counting on our compost bin bringing up halachic (Jewish law) questions.  Then Passover entered the horizon.

This week’s Scientific American online has an excellent article on sustainability, what it is and isn’t. No scientific background is needed, and those looking for connections to Jewish ethics will find plenty to think about. While you’re on the Sciam site, check out the article on what artificial sweeteners do to the environment once they’ve passed through your body.

Now that Purim has passed (unless you live in Yerushalaim or another walled city and celebrate Shushan Purim),the countdown begins. There is a full lunar month between Purim (the 14th of Adar) and Pesach (the 14th of Nissan). Which really isn’t very much time at all, especially when you’ve just been inundated with major chametz! Prior to Pesach, a Jewish home must be free of chametz. So, ideally that means you get rid of all your chametz. Uh-oh. Couldn’t resist that humungous tub of pretzels that was on sale at Costco the week before Pesach? Rest assured, the Rabbis have you covered. You can “sell” your chametz to a non-Jew for the duration of the holiday, keep it in a cabinet labeled “off limits” and “buy it back” when the holiday is over. I realize that sounds extraordinarily strange, but it saves you from say, having to toss a whole bunch of cookies. (Click here to learn more about selling your chametz-on line!)

I have a new post on The New Republic’s eco-blog, The Vine, on the state of recycling in the recession.  As we open our Mishloach Manot this Purim, most likely filled with foods packaged in cardboard, glass and plastic, we will no doubt add our share of wastes to the recycling.  In this economy, though, even recycling is taking a hit.  The prices of recycled aluminum and cardboard have dropped precipitously, and big manufacturers like China have had to slow down their purchasing because of their own slow down in manufacturing.

If you’re reading the Jew And The Carrot, it’s highly likely that you’re interested in food and sustainability. So, when you’re making your mishloach manot you’re probably thinking about the health and quality of the food you’re giving your friends and making efforts to minimize waste as well. You may even be making hamantashen from scratch with homemade local jam canned from last spring’s berry harvest. (Kol HaKavod to Lisa Fine-decidedly impressive!)

Even as an adult I get a thrill out of receiving mishloach manot. The moment when I return home and view my doorstep with lots of little packages is exhilarating. I like to see who they are from and what’s inside. I like to taste a few things and then panic when I’ve realized that I’ve forgotten someone. But I’ve also become more environmentally and socially conscious as I’ve aged and realized that there are obstacles cluttering the way to my total mishloach manot happiness buzz. I think to myself, why is there so much in each package? How are we going to consume it all before Passover which arrives in a month? Look at all the wrappers and plastic and candy and junk.

Over the past few years I’ve seen people do so some pretty original and creative things that appeal to my innate mishloach manot excitement and were eco-friendly too. One time I received a package that came in a small tera cotta pot with goodies and a package of seeds. Another time someone filled a reusable cup with treats and I used the cup

A short reminder about an event tonight that many of our readers might find interesting:

Colin Beavan, aka “No Impact Man”, who spent a year trying to live “a zero impact lifestyle in New York City“ and Rabbi Steven Greenberg, currently scholar-in-residence at Hazon, will be speaking tonight, February 10th at  6pm [note corrected time], at a forum organized by the Sustainability and Practice Network on the topic of Everyday Sustainability: Personal Responsibility and the Planet at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. The panel will focus on how individuals can make a difference:

Blogger Jonathan Bloom of wastedfood.com spoke on NPR on Yesterday. He talked about the amount of food American families waste every week, the lack of research in this area, and how to cut down on waste. You can listen to the segment, which aired on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate show, below.

There’s no food without water, and some people love to talk about how the destruction of our watersheds will lead us all to perdition before our teeth even fall out. It’s the kind of doom-saying that makes a lot of folks want to crawl under a rock instead of thinking about change.  But saving enormous amounts of water is actually pretty easy and, to a large degree, can be accomplished with a time investment instead of a monetary one. In the spirit of the new year, here are some tips and resources on how to change your kitchen for the better (world-wise and wallet-wise).

Start with your Sink.

To repair the world, you can start by repairing your sink.  Fixing leaking faucets can save 20 gallons of water a day. Just spend a couple of bucks and a few minutes screwing on an aerator and watch your water bill go down. If you need one, you can also get a water filtration system for your tap instead of drinking bottled water, which uses lots of water in production and pollutes the world with plastic. Finally, unlike quails and manna, water still falls from the sky – so you can harvest rainwater for your garden using a rain barrel. The Florida Extension teaches you how to build one here.

Or, you could get fancy.

As a kid, anything edible held my attention. Sukkahs, charged with dappled light and dedicated to the harvest, seemed to combine all of my interests into one sacred space. I’ll never forget the excitement I felt, standing alone in the autumn-smelling sukkah, under a ceiling hung with fresh, growing foods; and I’ll never forget my disappointment, year after year, at the sight of apples, squash and blue corn wizening and rotting on their strings.

Now that I’m a full grown canner, it occurs to me that the sukkah, with it’s commandments for good air circulation, more shade than light, and it’s tradition of hanging edibles, is a perfect place to preserve for the cold months. After all, turning sukkot decorations into food is already a tradition—Etrogs make it into wine or brandy after the celebration’s over.

Below, you can find some tips and recipes for celebrating God’s gift of food and shelter through the year.

(Cross-posted at Mixed Multitudes)

I love sukkot, but one of the things that has always frustrated me about my favorite holiday is how wasteful and totally un-green it usually is.  Here’s a holiday where we’re commanded to live outside, to experience the outdoors in a personal and spiritual way, and we celebrate it with pounds of paper plates, plastic utensils and tablecloths, and even food decorations that basically amount to wasted food.

I would think that during sukkot we’d all be making an extra effort to be environmentally friendly, to leave a small footprint and all that, but in reality, I rarely see that happening.

I have some tips and ideas for those who want to try to re-green their sukkot, but I have to add the sad personal disclaimer that I won’t be able to employ most of these strategies myself this year.  Because of other things that have been going on in my life I haven’t been able to commit myself to making these changes right now.  I’m even ::cringe:: flying home for the first part of the holiday, which means that I’m feeling extreme guilt about my favorite Jewish holiday (and also buying a TerraPass to try assuage some of that guilt) and all of the carbon emissions I’ll be causing for my celebrations.  But for next year, here are some of my plans:
Tips after the jump!

Thanks to Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster for this guest post. Rabbi Kahn-Troster is Director of Education and Outreach for Rabbis for Human Rights North America.

In Judaism, confession is a group experience. On Yom Kippur, we stand together as a community and in one voice confess our collective sins before God. Amidst the various lists of transgressions, the Al Chet prayer contains a line that deals with sustenance: Al chet she chatanu liphanecha b’ma’achal u’mishteh, literally: “For the sin we have sinned before You through food and drink.” “Food and drink” is often translated as “gluttony,” which narrows the sin to the idea that we are confessing to having eaten more than our share, wantonly, without thinking. I think the original translation is helpful—we have committed sins through all kinds of acts of eating and drinking, but also through the way our food is produced, distributed, and wasted.

A few months ago I wrote some tips on appropriate and helpful ways to bring food to someone who’s ill or grieving.  At the time, my mother (that’s her in the picture, with me at our dining room table in happier times) was in treatment for terminal cancer, and though we were grateful to have an amazing community providing food for us during such a difficult time, I often found myself guiltily throwing out some leftovers that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge to make room for new offerings.  I suggested that people try to bring smaller portions.

Then, on September 9th, my mother passed away, and what had been a slight excess of food transformed into a mountain of baked goods, stacks of trays from kosher restaurants, and Tupperware as far as the eye could see.  From the very first day of shiva we were completely overwhelmed with food, and the same women who were coordinating people to bring us meals were having to sort through the fridge and toss or freeze the obscene amount of casseroles, cakes and random snacks that people were bringing when they came to visit with us.

One of the rules of sitting shiva is that the mourners should not prepare their own food, so we had expected to have meals for the week made and prepared by others, but we were not prepared for the sheer quantity of what we ended up with.  Among other things, we ended the week with an ant problem in our kitchen because there was so much food sitting out all the time.

Over all, I found shiva to be a difficult but incredibly healing week, and it was wonderful to have so many people showing us their support in so many ways.  Still, it frustrates me to see so much food go to waste, and some of the craziness that resulted from having other people run my kitchen for a week was no fun at all.  So, here’s some new tips and thoughts on bringing food to a shiva house.

Tips after the jump!