Hazon Educational Library: Adults

In this session we will connect ecology with the ritual of tashlich. We will look at evidence of this year's drought on the farm and the impact that water deprivation has on the land. Connections will be made between our observations to Jewish text about the cycle of rain as a reflection of our relationship with God. Together, we will create a ritual for internal healing at the bank of Lake Miriam.

Celebrate Tu B'Svhat, the Jewish New Year of the Trees, at our PJCC staff Lunch & Learn. In honor of this year's Tu B'Svhat, we will be learning more about our relationship with nature through a Tu B'Svhat seder. The seder is divided into four sections, each representing one of the four worlds of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. Join us as we explore each of these worlds through traditional Jewish fruits and nuts, ?wine' (aka grape juice), activities and more! Bring your lunch and learn more about the Jewish New Year of Trees in this engaging seder.

This program is a physically active introduction to The Stones text from the Talmud Bavli, Masekbet Bava Kama, which raises many questions about land, responsibility, and ownership using text and soccer cones.

The month of Av is steeped in rich agricultural, spiritual, and feminine energy. Often the month is not explored beyond the holiday of Tisha B'av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. However, Av represents the importance of reflection, mourning, redemption and love as well as a key moment in the Jewish agricultural calendar, the beginning of the grape harvest. This program aims to connect stories, texts, and symbols to bring together a full understanding of Av.

This program is an informational and hands-on dive into artisanal/DIY chocolate making. Participants will learn all of the steps in the process--from how cacao trees were first cultivated in ancient mesoamerica, to how to wrap their gelt in foil. Taste, touch, history, mysticism, and science are all called upon to make coherent the relationship between chocolate, ecology, and Judaism.

Cob is a structural composite of earth-based materials: clay, sand, straw and water. People all over the world have used cob for centuries to sculpt buildings by hand. Learning to build with earth-based materials can broaden participants' understandings of how the earth provides everything that humans need to live. Mixing cob, making cob bricks, or applying cob directly to a larger structure is an embodied means for empowering participants to make things on their own and to source materials sustainably. This lesson also touches on the importance of place in natural building, with a map exploration about how different cultures build with different things based on their environments.

This program is a unique, interactive activity for a festival-style event that combines knowledge of local wild edible plants and the Jewish tradition of Shmita. For this program, the educator creates four unique "trading cards" to pass out at the event, and two examples of local, foraged food. The trading cards serve as a way to get participants interested in the connections between wild edible plants and Shmita, and the food samples demonstrate the ease and accessibility of foraging.

This event is Shoresh?s 4th annual fundraiser celebrating our ten year anniversary. We gathered over 400 people to learn about our organization and our impact while enjoying delicious food in community. Our internal goal was to raise money to support our efforts, introduce new community members to our organization, and honour the many people who have been involved over the years.

This is a program that is intended to serve a large audience with a wide age range and little or no experience in the natural world or with nature-based Judaism. It is a stations-based program in which small groups (in this case, groups of 4-8) travel from activity to activity on a rotation, spending about twenty minutes at each station. In order to serve such a wide age range and interest/experience level, the stations are diverse in topic and activity, with the intention that all participants will find themselves challenged and engaged in at least a few of the activities, if not all.

Understanding pollinators is an hour-long educational program that teaches about the importance of pollinators in our habitat. This program uses honeybees as a 'gateway pollinator' to teach not only the wonder of honeybees but also that their story is part of a much larger ecological phenomenon.