What I see is, people are hungry. I see it in their eyes and feel it in my heart. We are hungry at the permaculture session, hungry at the shechting, hungry at the sustainable ranching session, hungry at the GMO session, hungry at the raw vegan session, hungry at the Torah text study, hungry at EVERY session–and we are really hungry for neither meat nor milk nor millet nor maca. We are all Jewish foodies hungry for G-d.

There is so much energy in “Vision,” in “Hazon,” and I choose to dwell in the thoughts that will help this powerful energy go towards aligned divine service, united.

We know that we get to feel connected to G-d through God’s givingness, and living a lifestyle of Torah themes such as sheirut (service), l’hitpalel (prayer and meditation), holy sheket (silence), devotion…and dietarily there is a part of it.

I know, for me, and for the people of all ages who overflowed Toyon Hall for our live (raw) plant-based eating session, live food plant-based nutrition can be a supportive foundation towards stoking that divine fire within us, and finding satisfaction within that divine yearning. Once we are eating closest to sunlight, chlorophyll as a basis of nutrition, and doing it in a balanced way for our physiological constitution, many people have little care nor taste for the stepped-down, converted, re-metabolized calories that come from animals. Our vessel is emptied of what feels as sludge. I feel the difference, and thousands of people surveyed who have been eating live-vegan for years attest, they feel the difference and don’t want the stepped down flesh energy getting in the way. I have an intensely present, abundant, not-”bambi-ized” relationship with animals while they are alive. Two wild animals came to the window of a room I was in on Shabbat morning – did you notice the two buck deer in a modest territorial duel? That connection to living beings while they are alive helps us turn our spiritual energy towards filling the world with more blessing and helping the Earth turn green again. Jews so much respect this lifetime we are given, not a path for the lost in the afterlife; yet I’ve been intrigued by our feeling of a spiritual connection coming with animals after their lives.

Live-food, plant based nutrition is jet fuel, and flying jet engines takes jet fuel flying training. That is why there is a forest of things to learn for life as raw vegans. It is funny, I see as many raw vegans gain bulk as I see become thinner, at first. They there is a return to generally optimal weight. After an initial weight loss, I stayed stepping forward and I now have the same weight I had when I was a daily meat-eating iron-pumping university varsity athlete.

What really matters is opening to connecting with what we are very hungry for, and that is the Divine. As far as the spiritual experience during a shechting, and the spiritual experience of living closest to the sunlight for nourishment, only each of us can know what really happens spiritually within us. Yet, I can address a narrow question: Is it possible for something else to masquerade as a holy spiritual experience? I do know there are stimulations and agitations that do come out of an animal, as well as out of the sun. So again, it’s personal: what creates the conditions that bring us closer to G-d? What fills the body-mind with light and inspires lightness of energy and pure focus on service? If there is “raising the sparks” in eating a kosher animal, how much more intimately and close we can access the Force of Shefa/Ruach/Shekhinah in being filled with the light and purity of an organic, live-food, high-water, bloodless, high mineral, plant-sourced only diet. I feel some people were touched to explore the Jewish chlorophyll-for-sustenance-energy approach.

Let’s just be honest with ourselves, all of us, all around. For us an any diet, if some manner of agitation in life is mistaken for a spiritual passion for the dietary lifestyle we are choosing, then simply don’t let anything, including the arguments in books, your livelihood or income, your past, other people, or anything, get in the way of going for what our soul really yearns for: G-d and to live on the mountain of G-d in G-d’s presence.

That’s what’s coming through. Thank you all for everything that made this Hazon conference a blessing.

At a time when the world is rapidly approaching an unprecedented climate catastrophe, I think we can best respond by increasing awareness of the inconvenient truth that even Al Gore has been generally ignoring: the major impact that animal-based agriculture has on global warming, A UN FAO 2006 report indicated that animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars, planes and other means of transportation worldwide combined. And a recent cover article by two environmentalists in World Watch magazine argues that the livestock’ sector is responsible at least 51% of the human-caused greenhouse gases. Hence to avoid the impending climate disaster and shift our imperiled world to a sustainable path, a major societal shift to plant-based diets is essential.
Such a shift would reduce the many other negative effects of animal-based diets: disease, increased hunger, water pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, rapid species extinction, desertification and many others.

As to global climate change naysayers, we should ask them to please explain why the glaciers and polar ice caps are melting faster than climate scientists’ worst scenarios, why so many areas are experiencing such severe droughts, why there are more and larger wild fires, why this decade is the warmest on record and much more.

In summary, by promoting plant-based diets we can do the most to help shift our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.

For further information, please visit JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, where I have over 140 articles and 25 podcasts of my talks and interviews and ASacredDuty.com, to see our acclaimed documentary “A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World.”