As Hazon’s New York Ride approaches, everyone here at Adamah is excited. For one, we’ve been training for the Ride and it so happens that our program culminates with the awesome shabbaton followed by the Ride itself. That means Anna’s in the kitchen baking bread to help us load up on carbs this week and we’re all making pancakes with goat’s milk every morning. We’re also doing last minute maintenance and repairs on our bikes and scrounging around for extra bike shorts. In two days we look forward to welcoming hundreds of riders to our community and showing off our three months of work. Can’t wait for you all to get here.

Isabella Freedman is also gearing up for the 400+ people who will help make the New York ride the largest retreat to be held at the center. We’ve stocked up on new items, such as silverware, plates, wine glasses, as well as new pots and pans. In order for these items to be used in our kosher kitchen, we need to do a whole lot of toiveling. Toiveling is the practice of dipping kitchen accessories in a mikveh (ritual bath) to purify them and make them kosher before permanent cooking use.

The entire fork, glass or plate must be touched by the water. We chose to use the lake as our mikveh, which is where many of us will be ritually purifying ourselves at the New York Ride. It took a surprisingly long time to dunk each utensil individually. After spending time all summer working in the kitchen and often serving as a washer of vegetables and a bodek (one who checks for bugs on produce) for retreats of a hundred people or more, I have a deep understanding for how hard kosher on a large-scale can be. I actually enjoyed spending time on the lake doing spiritual preparation for the Ride. Toiveling may be one of those hard-to-explain-sound-a-little-strange aspects of Kashrut, but there’s something neat about noticing the macro and micro levels at work: even when we’re serving 400+ people and food is moving through in ways that might feel *somewhat* impersonal, in fact, every single dish has had its own mikveh in the lake, its own touch with the serenity and holiness of nature. I also know that the hard work will pay off — can’t wait till you all get here!