Author Archive | Nigel Savage

Dear All, One of the great privileges of leading Hazon is that I get to come to Israel with some regularity. This country is a miracle in so many ways. My ancestors prayed towards Jerusalem yet never had the chance to visit Israel, much less to see a third Jewish commonwealth come into existence. Even as the country changes and evolves, I do not take this miraculousness for granted. But of all the times that I have spent in Israel this trip has been amongst the most remarkable. I have never been so clearly aware of changes in Israel and in the Jewish world as I have these last ten days. Yesterday and today I’ve been at a gathering convened jointly by leaders of Israel’s government (Bibi Netanyahu & Naftali Bennett) and the Jewish Agency for Israel (Natan Sharansky & Alan Hoffman). It’s been a relatively small group – a little over a hundred people – and quite surprisingly (given the historically stodgy reputation of both sponsoring institutions) the best-facilitated gathering of any sort that I have ever attended. The freshness in facilitation was more than matched by the content. The historic Israel/diaspora relationship has been imbalanced and, in certain […]

Dear All, Tomorrow morning 134 riders are due to set out to ride from Jerusalem to Ashkelon, on the 13th Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride. By the time you read this I hope we’ll be nearly at Mitzpeh Ramon. More on the Israel Ride, hopefully, next week. Meanwhile, I was thinking about the first day route. I remember a few years ago doing nearly the same route we’re doing tomorrow, and having Bill Slot – our amazing tour guide, then and now – pointing out that all of the seven species indigenous to Israel and listed in Devarim (Deuteronomy) were growing alongside our route; we passed each one of them in the course of that single day’s Ride. I shall keep my eyes out tomorrow. It seemed therefore a good moment to say something about Jews and gardens; about the process of growing things. I think it’s starting to become clear that really every Jewish community in the world – ideally every single institution – should have its own garden. In communities across America, urban agriculture is taking root as an innovative solution to increase access to healthy food while, at the same time, revitalizing the economic and social health […]

Dear All, I am pleased to introduce Anna Hanau, Hazon’s Associate Director of Food Programs and co-author of “Food for Thought, Hazon’s Sourcebook on Jews, Food and Contemporary Life.” Anna is a 2004 alumna of List College / Barnard College, where she learned how to bring the best of her Jewish and environmental interests together on a personal level. Through her work at Hazon, Anna continues to merge all parts of her identity, and her story below offers a helpful view into how Hazon — through our programs, resources and ongoing work — is aiming to offer the best of both worlds as well. Best wishes, Nigel Savage Executive Director, Hazon Something people tell us frequently at Hazon is a variation on “For the first time, I can combine all the things I’m passionate about! You really brought together all of my interests in one place. Now I really feel like I can be my full self.” They say it with relief: our hyper-specialized world lets us live in micro-communities—these are my Jewish friends, these are my foodie friends—while a nagging feeling emerges that the sum of all these parts might still not quite add up to a unified whole, […]

Dear All, This evening I’m literally home for dinner – back in my parents’ home, eating, for the first time in a while, my mother’s cooking. It feels good to be back, and it’s a reminder not only that food begins with family but that, to a considerable extent, family begins with food. (For my birthday this year Liz bought me a hand-mincer, so that I could make chopped-and-fried fish the way my Grandma did – I was using electric things to mince the fish and it wasn’t coming out right. When I opened the package my face lit up; and it was of course not merely about the thing – the mincer itself – but the immediate emotional associations I had with my Grandma, who died ten years ago.) So this seemed like a particularly good moment to talk about Hazon’s Home For Dinner program, which the amazing Vicky Kelman kicked off in San Francisco a couple of years ago. Vicky is a nationally-beloved Jewish Family Educator, and her thinking about families and our focus on food naturally led us to the Home For Dinner program. Backed by the Covenant Foundation, it’s an initiative designed for 5th graders and […]

Dear All, This week is lech lecha — the start of the journey. At this pivot point of bereishit we learn that the formation of a Jewish family, in this case the first Jewish family, is intertwined with a journey — not only a physical journey, but also a journey of self-exploration, of growing as a child, of becoming one’s own self. And this year, parshat lech lecha coincides with Teva’s 20th birthday, so I wanted especially to say a couple of words about Teva — about how vital Jewish experiential education is, and ways we might engage with it. First of all: I salute those who founded and stewarded Teva, over a great length of time. Teva is very much the product of a process of evolution — people creating, innovating, treasuring, nurturing, in really beautiful ways. Every year I’ve visited the Teva sukkah at Isabella Freedman, and it is the very opposite of a sukkah-in-a-box; it is a sukkah built with love, different every year, infused with song and wine, trembling sometimes in the wind. As Adamah, Teva, and Isabella Freedman become part of the new larger Hazon, going forwards, we are excited by all the possibilities that […]

Dear All, Kudos to Pew Research for their Pew Jewish survey out yesterday. It makes interesting and challenging reading for those of us who believe in non-haredi expressions of serious Jewish life. One of the things that comes through very clearly is that many younger Jews in this country do not take Jewish particularism as self-evident. They — to some extent, we — are choosing to express a sense of Jewishness whilst at the same time engaging very deeply with the wider world. If organized Jewish life offers these things as a choice — to be either Jewish, or engaged with the world — then non-haredi Jewish life will decline, and the overall Jewish commitment to the world will lessen also. Simon Klarfeld wrote well about this in the Jewish Week two weeks ago: A fundamental flaw with much of Jewish education in America is that it forces us to view Jewish identity within a vacuum. The goal of imparting students with as much Judaism as possible often leads teachers and administrators to ignore equally — if not more — discussions about focusing on the challenges of living a Jewish life in a predominantly non-Jewish world. What we ignore is […]

Like many of us, I remember the day very clearly. I was in the Bay Area, due to fly back to NY the next day. (I had a meeting planned for 10 am that morning, to meet with five leaders of the Bay Area Jewish community, to discuss launching a Hazon Ride in California. The meeting never took place, of course; we finally launched the Ride in 2010. It took nearly nine years from inception to first launch. Sometimes things take a while.) I remember the attempted phone calls, the TV footage, the conversations. Being turned back from the airport on Wednesday and Thursday. Finally getting back to NY just before Shabbat – looking out the window, seeing the hole in the skyline. Candles everywhere. A huge line outside BJ. On Shabbat morning we walked as far south as one could go – I think Washington Square. The whole plaza was filled with random circles of New Yorkers, every age, every color, every religion, and in the center of each circle someone with a guitar, playing “Hey Jude” or “Imagine.” It struck me very clearly that those two songs had become the hymns of our age. No conventionally religious song […]

Dear Friends, Rosh Hashanah is quickly approaching. It is the season of reflection, repentance, forgiveness, apples, and honey. And this year, it is the season to think about the bees that made the honey and pollinated the apples. Recently Amichai Lau-Lavie, the founding director of Storahtelling and spiritual leader of Lab/Shul brought to our attention the latest information about the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder. In the last six years, bee populations have plummeted and an estimated 10 million beehives have been abandoned by their bee tenants due to a disease called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). While the cause of CCD has been mysterious to scientists and researchers, evidence is coming together to point to chemicals found in pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Jewish tradition and values treasure all life, including bees, and their loss of life at the hand of dangerous chemicals is tragic in itself. Yet this phenomenon is not occurring in a vacuum. As one of the most-relied on pollinators in the US, the loss of the Western honey bee would have detrimental effects on agricultural cycles. One third of the crops we eat—including foods like broccoli, bell peppers, avocado, and our beloved Rosh Hashanah apples—rely on honey […]

Dear All, The shofar is blowing; a new year is on its way. And although we know the Jewish world hardly needs another acronym, it does need some form of shorthand to encapsulate a movement that has been quietly transforming individuals and communities across the spectrum of Jewish life.  I’m talking about the world that has bubbled up, to some extent under the radar of organized Jewish life, these last dozen years. It encompasses a growing range of programs spreading steadily across the country. Each year the number of organizations has increased, the number of practitioners has increased, and the number of people being touched by this new field has increased. This is the field that includes organizations like Adventure Rabbi, Amir, Eden Village, The Gan Project, Ganei Beantown, Jewish Farm School, the Jewish Food Justice Fellowship, Pearlstone, Ramah Outdoor Adventures, Shoresh, Wilderness Torah, Yiddish Farm – not to mention pretty much everything that Hazon does, including our CSAs, Food Conferences, Food Festivals, Adamah, Teva, Israel Sustainable Food Tour and Bike Rides. As you think about these organizations and programs, my question is: how might you describe them, as a field, briefly?! That was the question to which the answer […]

Dear All, It’s great to be at Isabella Freedman. Adamah Farm Vacation is underway – parents and kids hanging out here and having a whale of a time. I picked some of the last of the raspberries. I learned about the minimum temperature for a compost pile to legally be certified as safe to use (over 130 degrees, for at least two weeks). And I saw a tomato hornworm for the first time and learned about the wasp larvae that eat the hornworms – and thus enable the tomatoes to grow without having pesticides sprayed on them to kill the hornworms. And meanwhile, even as it’s the start of August and the middle of summer, it’s also about to be the start of the Hebrew month of Elul. I’m particularly conscious of the timing because my Grandma died – ten years ago this month – on the last day of Av. Confusingly the last day of Av is the first day of Rosh Chodesh Elul; ie the day before the second day of Rosh Chodesh Elul, which is in fact the first day of Elul. That in turn is the first day we blow shofar, and thus the official start […]

Announcing the first-ever Conference on Jewish Intentional Communities Dear All, We’re delighted to announce that the Pearlstone Center, Hazon, and the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center are launching a Jewish Intentional Communities Initiative. Together we share a vision that over the next 3-10 years, new Jewish intentional communities will bloom across the country—from urban kibbutzim to rural moshavim, suburban co-ops, and more—and that these dynamic and vibrant new Jewish communities will become inspiring catalysts in an ongoing renaissance in American Jewish life. To launch the initiative, we are convening a national conference on Jewish Intentional Communities at Pearlstone, November 14-17th, 2013. We anticipate participants from across the country, including people who are already members of intentional communities as well as folks who are just curious and excited by the idea. We hope to learn from and share with each other, vision together, and plant seeds for communities to come. Learn about the Jewish historical and cultural roots of intentional communal living Build relationships through learning, prayer, meals, and rituals Learn from successful communities – urban and rural, Jewish and diverse Learn tools and gain skills for your own communal application Join an international network cultivating Jewish intentional community Build skills […]

Dear All, Those of you who know me well, know that I have ADD. That is to say I often struggle to get things done, to do them on time, or in some instances to remember them at all. And yet perhaps because of that, I find that in at least some respects, I’m planning further and further ahead. With that in mind, and with Tisha B’Av now behind us, here are a mixed few things to think about and plan ahead for: some from the calendar, some from Hazon’s work. In chronological order this short-ish list runs from this Shabbat to Rosh Hashanah in 2022. This Shabbat. It’s actually not just this Shabbat (which is Shabbat Nachamu), it’s actually any Shabbat. I’ve just been thinking about going to shul a lot recently: when I go, when I don’t go, why I go, (why I don’t go), all that stuff. This is worthy of a longer essay, but for now I simply want to say that a) I think shuls are under some pressure these days, and that when we go (and when we join, even if we don’t go), the act of doing so is a mitzvah. And to […]

Dear All, In 1980, when the first Jewish Film Festival debuted in San Francisco, no one had ever heard of a Jewish film festival, let alone imagined that it would become a staple of Jewish culture across the United States. But today every major – and many minor – Jewish communities have Jewish Film Festivals that have become a significant part of the annual life of the community. Then, in 2004 we launched the first CSA – Community-Supported Agriculture – in Jewish life. Today there are nearly 70 CSAs in Hazon’s network, and they’re having a remarkable impact across the country. We’re proud and delighted that last month, our first inter-faith CSA kicked off in Boulder, CO (a partnership between Bonai Shalom and St Aidan’s Episcopal Church). We hope and intend there will be others. And in 2006, we launched the first multi-day Jewish Food Conference, which has grown steadily since. Next up: Jewish Food Festivals!! The idea is to take the content of our Food Conferences, but develop them within individual communities. The first Jewish Food Festival, to my knowledge, was Michael Leventhal’s Gefiltefest in London. (I like that I got the idea of a Jewish Food Festival from […]

Dear All, I’m looking forward to July 4th—but I’m thinking about Labor Day. That’s the weekend of Hazon’s New York Ride. It’s our 13th New York Ride, and it will be the first one since our merger with Isabella Freedman. It’s the Ride that has anchored all of Hazon’s work. This year we have new routes, an expedited registration process; new low-cost options for first-time riders; and a special discount for those who register between now and midnight on Sunday July 7th. Please join me on the Ride! People historically have really loved the Ride. For some people the Ride has been the first time they’ve ridden a century (100 miles); for others the achievement has been to ride 30 miles, or to ride with a sibling or a parent or a child. We’ve had teens and 70-somethings and everyone in between. A good number of couples have met on the Ride; one year we had a marriage proposal at a rest stop. Another year one of our interns secretly arranged for the Columbia Marching Band to welcome us when we rode into the city. And the Shabbat services, and the yoga, and cocktails by the pool… are all rather […]