What is it to be a Jew these days, and not have a little guilt, or a little dilemma, or a little identity crisis? We have an amazing 3000 year old history. We live in all places of the world. We’re strugling with a tradition that is at times grounding, liberating, shackling, horribly out of date, incredibly meaningful and powerful. Writing as The Jew on this blog, is essentially a conversation between tradition and post-modernity.

So — let me tell you about dinner. This evening we ate amazing food — starting off with pumpkin snacks, grown here by the Adamahniks; and lasagne and kale and salad for dinner — and writing it simply doesn’t let you know how great it was. And then bensching — introduced by Rabbi Beccy Joseph, and Tali Weinberg, the farm manager here at Freedman. How often do you get to bless the food you’ve eaten with a rabbi and a farmer — and Beccy introduced bensching, but Tali actually led it. An amazing sense of kavannah, of shleimut, of coming home.

There are three interwoven conversations — at least three! — that thread through this conference, and this blog. One is “the wandering Jew” — all the countries we’ve traveled through, all the foods, all the traditions. Different recipes for charoset — from Yemen, Egypt, Venice - America today. All the history, all the recipe books. Bagels, chopped liver.

The second is the land of Israel. That we arose as an indiginous people, in relation to land and place — and food. The sheva minim — the seven indiginous species that grow in Israel; named in the Torah — and in May this year a bunch of Jews (and Palestinians and Jordanians, both Moslem and Christian) cycled from Jerusalem to Ashkelon — and in that one day, we passed all seven species growing. What’s our relationship to Israel — especially if we don’t live there?

And the third is the contemporary conversation about where food comes from, and local food, and eating sustainably. Omnivore’s Dilemma; Fast Food Nation; Wendell Berry; Chez Panisse.

And here’s where The Jew is at: how do these three conversations fit together? How do they shed light on each other? What happens if eating local is a key value - how then do you eat traditional Jewish food? Or vice versa?

What if you eat kosher meat — and it’s a value to eat grass-feed beef, like at Polyface Farm? I know of two couples who in the last year switched from eating kosher meat, even if not organic, to organic meat, even if not kosher? (We’ll introduce them to Simon Feil, who’s here, who wants to create grass-fed kosher organic beef).

For more questions, about why this night, and this Jew, are different… stay tuned.