Author Archive | Hazon

by Yigal Deutscher This past week, the Urban Adamah farm in Berkeley installed an aquaponics gardening system in their greenhouse. Aquaponics is a soil-free farming system that combines hydroponics (growing in a medium of water and dissolved nutrients) and aquaculture (fish farming). In the combined system, the fish add nutrients to the water that is used to grow the food (their waste is high in nitrogen, a much needed plant growth stimulant), and the overall holistic system provides a harvest of both mature veggies and fish. Read more about Urban Adamah’s system here: http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/179511/when-fish-are-farmers-not-food/   This method has become a highly productive farming system in areas where soil quality is low and where land access is limited. It has also become a permaculture technique utilized on farms trying to reduce waste, and create more closed-loop systems. The interesting aspect in regards to Shmita is that aquaponics, at least on the surface level, seems like it can be practiced without alteration during the Shmita year. The agricultural implications during the Shmita year is that no soil can be tilled and no seeds can be sown. Obviously this raises a question of where the food will come from during this year. One stance we are taking at […]

New from the SOVA blog by Rabbi Ebn Leader and Rabbi Margie Klein. Original post can be found at http://sovaproject.org/2013/07/08/the-land-shall-rest-exploring-shmita-in-the-diaspora/ In the Jewish calendar, the next Shmita year will commence in 2014, and Jews around the world are beginning to think about it. In North America for example through the Shmita Project and other efforts, Hazon, the Jewish Farm School, and other groups are embracing Shmita as an opportunity to explore Jewish values around land, food, and sustainability. The Shmita Project encourages people not only to hold study groups, but to plant “Shmita gardens” that follow the Shmita laws in our own backyards and practice alternate economic models that promote collaboration and sharing. The Torah’s mandate to let the land lie fallow for a year raises many serious questions. What would it mean to forgo agricultural activity and the economic structures that follow from it? What would it mean to spend a year treating the fruit that then grows of its own accord as ownerless, so that everyone has the same right to resources of the land? (more…)

New from the SOVA blog by Judith Rosenbaum Original post can be found at http://sovaproject.org/2013/06/21/leaning-in-to-work-and-rest/ Like most people following the news over the past few months, I’ve been thinking about what it means to “lean in” (and its counterpoint, “opt out”) and the assumptions and judgments inherent in the term. Sheryl Sandberg, an executive at Facebook, coined “lean in” to encourage women to make a more passionate commitment to career ambition and leadership; it’s meant to carry a positive connotation (though in my experience is referenced dryly and with some cynicism/resentment by many women). And opting out, of course, refers to women choosing to leave the workplace to become stay-at-home mothers. Both place work at the center, with action defined by one’s orientation toward career (and notably placing all the agency in the individual with little to no regard for the social context for these actions). But as someone in the midst of career transition, I find myself wondering why this debate is necessarily framed around work. I’ve recently left my job of more than a decade in order to invest time and energy in figuring out what I want to do next, and to catch up on the self-care I’ve […]