“We learned about what we put in our mouths, why we put it in our mouths; we questioned the ethics and health of good eating. The conference really raised awareness and started conversations,” Carson muses. Back at home in suburban Marion, PA, she suggested that her synagogue start a CSA. At first, the idea was a tough sell.

“We didn’t have a lot of eating local and organic, people didn’t cook a lot, and ‘CSA’ wasn’t a familiar term,” Carson explains of her community. “People weren’t aware of a growing season—at first, they were complaining that there were no tomatoes in their CSA box in May,” Carson remembers. “[CSA members] are now eating chard, beets, parsnips, turnips fresh from the farm—food they’ve never eaten before.”

Click here to read the full story!

Check out this Cleveland Jewish News article about the new community garden just starting out at Beth El Congregation in Akron. Ellen Botnick and her friends were, in part, inspired by their connection to Hazon on the Israel Food Tour that we cosponsored with Heschel last Novemeber.  As Ellen says “Food connects us to the earth, to each other, and to something much larger than ourselves. We are building community through this garden.”

Mazal tov to everyone in Cleveland who will have the chance to get to get their hands dirty in the garden, harvest the veggies, feed neighbors at Good Samaritan Hunger Center, and eat the food grown from this new garden! We wish you a bountiful harvest.

Click here to read the full story.

PS – Ellen told me there will be plant markers for all the plants, made from wood that was recycled from the jungle gym they converted to a tool shed.  A volunteer routed the names of the vegetables in the wood, and Bonnie Cohen calligraphed the Hebrew names. The Hebrew School children painted Jewish symbols on the markers. Very sweet and sustainable!

Sam Kass, White House assistant chef and Food Initiative Coordinator, wore a green tie – it was appropriate since the meeting was on St. Patrick’s Day. Twenty-eight community and faith-based organizations (CFBO) from around the country, including Hazon represented by yours truly, had gathered for a one-day meeting to discuss First Lady Michelle Obama’s ambitious initiative, Let’s Move, to combat childhood obesity in one generation. Kass and Jocelyn Frye, the First Lady’s Policy Director started the day by talking about the meaningful role that faith-based organizations play in their communities. The White House is seeking a comprehensive strategy to tackle the dual problem of hunger and obesity and they see faith-based organizations as uniquely positioned to do this work by allowing children to connect body, mind and spirit. Kass spoke of the need for simple ways for people to transform their lives and to then become leaders for others to make healthy changes, too.

I learned that the Let’s Move Initiative is based on four pillars: Healthy Choices; Healthier Schools; Physical Activity; and Affordable & Accessible Healthy Food. The day focused around two main questions: What actions can CFBO take to implement these pillars? What CFBOs already run successful programs addressing this pillar? Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships directors lead the program – they included Joshua DuBois from the White House, Alexia Kelley from Health and Human Services (HHS), Max Finberg from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Peter Groff from US Department of Education (DoED), and John Kelly Senior Advisory for the Partnership. Organizations shared success storied – check out the work that the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon and Come to the Table are doing – and challenges. The Partnership was seeking input from the people on the ground about what ideas are most relevant, what resources are most needed, and what partnerships can be created to help make this happen.

What is amazing is that this was the first time Hazon sat at the table while government officials sought direction and input for a national policy campaign. As the only Jewish organization at the table that is already engaged in this work, Hazon is uniquely positioned to continue to be a resource and an ally in the mission to eradicate childhood obesity in a generation. It is inspiring — and I look forward to keeping you all updated.

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.

“This is the first time we’ve been invited to the White House, and being able to speak directly to Michelle Obama’s staff and a diverse group of other faith-based organizations will provide us new ways of celebrating and promoting healthful lifestyles,” said Judith.

The faith-based and community groups will learn about Let’s Move and the resources made available by the Department of Agriculture, Department of Education, Department of Heath and Human Services, and the Corporation for National and Community Service. Hazon and other attending organizations will be encouraged to share their input on the materials intended to promote Let’s Move within faith-based and community organizations.

Stay tuned for updates from Judith’s experience at the White House by following us on the Hazon Twitter!

You’re A What? from Anthony-Masterson on Vimeo.

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

Just over a month after the earthquake, conditions for Haitians remain dire even as relief work, recovery and reconstruction efforts begin. Starvation and malnutrition persist in ways unimaginable. The situation is so bad that the country’s poorest people have been subsisting on mudcakes or gato te in Creole. Made with a little salt, margarine and dried yellow mud from the country’s central plateau, the cakes are baked in the sun and are a major income generator in Cite Soleil. How awful. Check out this article.

Thanks to Rachael Don for this guest post! Rachael is a Registered Dietitian in training and co-editor of the Jess Schwartz Jewish Community Day School’s Hazon CSA newsletter in Scottsdale, AZ.  A former healthcare administrator, she holds an MBA and a Masters in Health Services Administration. When she’s not cooking organic vegetables, Rachael is caring for her three young sons and husband, David in Phoenix, AZ. She shares these thoughts with the readers of that newsletter and all of you!

They won’t buy healthy food. They don’t have time to cook healthy food. And they don’t want healthy food. Karyn Moskowitz wouldn’t accept those answers from critics who tried to justify the lack of affordable, healthy food in low-income areas of Kentucky. Karyn tried to do something about it. And she has proved the critics wrong. Here’s her story.

I am sharing some ideas of the New Jewish Food Movement, learned from my attendance at the 2009 Hazon Food Conference. There I studied a bit about “Food Deserts.” The term refers to the disparate availability of healthy food between low and middle/upper income neighborhoods. Access to healthy food is taken for granted by many of us in our sea of food options. However, in low income areas there are drastically limited food choices, leading to higher rates of food-related disease among the poor.

Karyn Moskowitz has tackled the problem of a Food Desert in her own community of Louisville, Kentucky. Inspired by her own attendance at an earlier Hazon Food Conference, and her previous organizing experience, Karyn founded New Roots, a nonprofit organization that developed a plan of action and has successfully attacked the assumptions behind the critics’ justifications of the Food Desert.

New Roots program, called the Fresh Stop Project, operates similarly to a CSA and connects farmers with low income communities. Because there is a direct relationship between the farm and the market, the distribution costs are avoided, making it both profitable for the farmer and affordable to the consumer. Karyn and her small organization of volunteers travel each week during the Kentucky growing season (June-October) to Amish farms and produce auctions located between 50 and 100 miles from Louisville. They load a truck with produce and deliver it to various churches where the food is distributed. Members pay on a weekly basis, and are charged on a sliding scale. A share costs $24 per week for a full share and $12 per week for a half share, but may be discounted based on need. What Karyn and others have found is that the operation can still be profitable for the farmer as long as 80% of the members pay the full cost.

New Roots makes no attempt to create their own member communities. Rather, they tap into established resources, such as church ministries, and create partnerships with the church members. Through this simple model, New Roots has brought fresh, healthy produce to places where it would otherwise be unavailable.

Karyn is but one example of how a single person can make a difference, and presents ideas we can ponder to combat the Food Desert problem that exists just miles away from our own community.

Feel free to contact Karyn at Kmoskowitz@sbcglobal.net or (502) 475-8979. New Roots is accepting interns for the 2010 produce season, and would love to be invited to any community to speak about the Fresh Stop Project. Donations and other correspondence can be sent to New Roots, Inc. P.O. Box 4421, Louisville, KY 40204-4421.

Today was the first of the month of Adar. In Hebrew we sing “Mi SheNichnas Adar, Marbim b’Simcha” meaning – “whoever enters the month of Adar, will abound in happiness”. This is the month in which we are encouraged to play and be silly and joyful.

It seems that there is an idea in our consumer society that happiness is something that happens to us… usually later. It may coincide with acquiring new things, or with joyous events, or with some standards of success. It is time to put all thoughts of, or standards for, achieving happiness aside, and practice generating happiness in our bodies right now…and now…and now…

We have the power to create happiness (or any other mood) by declaring it to be so in our being. Practice by remembering a spontaneously happy moment. Where were you? Who was with you? What did it feel like in your body? Where did you feel it? Can you generate that same feeling by remembering that moment? Could you create those sensations in your body now?

The blessing in Adar is our ability to declare, create, and feel the happiness in each moment, to put aside our doubts, and to blur the distinctions between good and bad. Everything is a manifestation of oneness. How awesome! Melinda Ribner, in “Kabbalah Month by Month” says, “When we are privileged to recognize the awesomeness of life, not knowing is often a higher form of knowing” (p. 146-7).

On the 14th of Adar, we will celebrate Purim. It is said that when the Messiah comes, Purim will be the only remaining holiday. In the miraculous story, a Persian Queen, Esther, courageously revealed her Jewish identity to King Achashverosh in order to save the Jews from the decree of death orchestrated by the king’s wicked advisor, Haman. On this holiday we wear costumes and read the story aloud. Whenever the name of Haman is said, we shake our noisemakers and boo loudly to blot out his name.

It is said that Haman came from the line of Amalek- the tribe who is a long standing perpetrator against Jews. The numerical sum of Hebrew letters of this word adds up to the sum of the letters in the Hebrew word “safek”- doubt. So while we are booing Haman, and Amalek, on a deeper level we are also booing our doubts.

In “The Twelve Dimensions of Israel”, Nechama Nadborny tells us, “Today, Amalek is the psychic force which causes us to question our direction, doubt our purpose, to hesitate, to slip and fall. The more we are able to detail and identify our personal Amalek, the faster we can sharpen our flight instinct and free ourselves of those convoluted thoughts which prevent us from joyously running in tune with Divine Will” (p. 205).

One practice that you can try on Purim, is to think and feel your own doubts each time the name “Haman” is said and then use the noise to blot them out. The point of the exercise is to experience the physicality of our doubts. We often think of them as thoughts, and forget to feel them in our bodies. Once we have an embodied experience of our doubts, we can learn from them and choose to hold on, or to let them go.

Let us remember that some of these doubts are really quite valid and worthy. They can be wake up calls. And, we can feel comforted knowing that many of us have similar doubts. It is part of being human. I want to be clear that the point of this exercise is to help us lighten up a little, and to remove ourselves from the good/bad framework.

Ultimately, we want to be free from our suffering from doubt.

What do you feel in your body when you are caught in the grips of unknowing and indecision? As you shout and boo and make noise at your doubts, notice how this resonates in your body. Are there places that feel looser, or tighter? How does it feel when you are able to let go of these doubts? How does it feel in your body when you are resistant to letting go? Can you begin to develop in inner “boo” to change your attitude and your physicality when your thoughts no longer serve? Can you invite joy and levity into this process?

Our task this month is to ask for and receive guidance. The true tension lies in the moments of doubt and indecision. Perhaps we stay there for so long because we think there is a right and wrong decision, when in reality, we have many choices that will lead to more choices, and as we slowly enter spring, it’s time to keep on moving.

Good thing we have another tradition on Purim to help us get out of indecisive stuckness, which is to get drunk until we don’t know the difference between the wicked Haman and Mordechai- Esther’s righteous uncle.

The intention behind this tradition (whether you get drunk or not) is to be in the unknowing about what is good and bad… if there even are such things. It is all a manifestation of Divine will. And from this unknowing, we can ask for guidance and make a choice. Many of us have been exploring this ability to be in the unknowing with the snow accumulation this past month. This snow is our teacher. Other life circumstances can also be our teachers, if we choose to see them as such.

I would like to thank my teachers at Tai Sophia Institute for the healing arts. They have reminded me of the ancient wisdom that in making any choice, there are only two questions to ask: Will this honor the Ancestors- the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents? And, Will it serve the next generations- the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren?

It is common to ask ourselves, “what do I want.” With this new perspective, perhaps we can have more clarity about “how will I be of service”. Blessings on this new month and the unfolding springtime! May we find it in our will to delve deeper into the projects we have already begun. And may we be thoughtful and trusting of our choices and learn to be in our being without thinking too much about doing.

This year The Covenant Foundation made it possible for all members of our Jewish Food Education Network, JFEN, to attend the entire Food Conference, including a special pre-conference track designed specifically for those involved and  interested in the field of Jewish Food Education.

“I feel really positive about the energy and engagement here,” said [star educator Vicky] Kelman, who presented a session on the centrality of family mealtime in Jewish culture and consciousness. “There is tremendous commitment and passion around JFEN and Jewish food education.

Click here to read the whole story about the Covenant Foundation’s grant-in-action and don’t forget to play the stunning slideshow that accompanies it.

Today’s New York Times features several letters to the editor in response to “Experts Worry About Feeding the World as Its Population Grows,” an article published on October 22. The letter writers call attention to several issues: the political realities that perpetuate global food insecurity; the relationship between access to contraception and reduced food demand; and a desire for integrated farming strategies that combine conventional farming practices with agro-ecological approaches. What the letters do not include, however, are examples of grassroots organizations that are implementing many of the creative solutions the authors are seeking.

For the past decade, a community-based organization called GREEN Senegal has been helping rural populations reverse the hunger cycle by promoting small-scale farming. AJWS funds its Techno-Agriculture Innovation for Poverty Alleviation (TIPA) project, which trains farmers in “market gardening,” a unique method for making small family farms profitable. Farmers learn how to use simple, inexpensive techniques like crop rotation and Israeli-style drip-irrigation, maximizing output on formerly overtaxed or arid land.

The Lambi Fund of Haiti, a long-time AJWS grantee, is donating high-quality seeds to two women’s peasant organizations to help them build seed banks for their farming communities. After the initial input by Lambi Fund, from which the first harvest will be planted, farmers will replenish the banks each year with home-grown seeds. The annual crops will dramatically improve farmers’ ability to feed their families directly, and the surplus will be sold at the marketplace, generating capital to increase the community’s self-sufficiency. Paired with this project, Lambi Fund is holding a series of regional trainings to further empower rural communities to overcome stigma and discrimination, to fight for their rights and use their skills to change discriminatory government policies.

Visit Fighting Hunger from the Ground Up to learn more about the Lambi Fund, GREEN Senegal and other grassroots organizations that are developing sustainable solutions to food insecurity.