Hazon Educational Library
Curricula, sourcebooks, and other educational resources from and for the field of Jewish Outdoor, Food, Farming & Environmental Education
This open source collection includes resources produced by individuals and organizations throughout the JOFEE field. Our Educational Library, like our community, celebrates the diversity of religious observance and thought and we make every effort to accommodate the breadth and diversity of the Jewish community in our programs and curricula. We hope you will take and use what is appropriate for you and invite others to do the same.
While this resource will continue to grow and evolve, it currently includes:
• Hazon’s Publications (available online and in print)
• Curricula produced by JOFEE Fellows during their Fellowship year
• Curricula and resources shared from partner JOFEE organizations
All materials are available for free download. Most are available for use and adaptation under creative commons license. Please cite authors and organizations on any materials used or adapted from these resources.
Use the filters in the bar below to narrow your search.
Beyond Horseradish: Exploring Maror
This program helps us explore and expand our relationship to Maror. After learning through a text study that the definition of Maror is different and also more expansive than we might have thought, participants will get to taste and then plant a wide variety of bitter leaves that could grow in their region in time for Passover.
Rosh Chodesh Av: Devastation and Redemption – Rosh Chodesh Women’s gathering for the month of Av
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.
Category: Ritual-Making, Shabbat and Holidays
Age(s): Adults, Young Adult
Matzah Making
Students will learn how to make flour from wheat and make matzah from the flour.
Age(s): B'nai Mitzvah
Shabbat, Melachot, and Challah-cover making
This lesson introduces students to traditional Jewish understandings of work and rest. They will understand that ?work? traditionally meant interacting with the environment, and the connection between melachot and shabbat. They will also create challah covers and learn about Shabbat symbols like challah and challah covers.
Age(s): B'nai Mitzvah
From the Earth, Back to the Earth: Natural Building with Cob
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.
Make-Your-Own-Gelt: Chocolate-making from Scratch
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.
Shmita with Acorns
This program can be incorporated into holiday programs for a harvest holiday (Sukkot, Passover, or Shavuot) especially during a Shmita year. It provides an interactive introduction to Shmita, including the basis of Shmita in Jewish text and the connection between Shmita and sustainable agriculture.
Category: Food Systems & Food Justice, Group-building, Hebrew Calendar, Jewish Agricultural Traditions
Age(s): Elementary
We are Shepherds like our Fathers Before Us (Meet the Goats)
Through this activity, campers will be able to walk goats to pasture, learn a melody to Psalm 23, and relate shepherding goats to shepherding humans (through social norms).
Purim Party: An Eden Village All-Camp Program
The idea behind this program was to bring Purim to life in the middle of summer- a completely unexpected and ridiculously silly idea.The main goal for camp programming is always have fun, but just beneath that is our responsibility to educate our campers and create connections between Judaism, social justice, environmentalism and help them discover who they are (and who they want to be) in this big wild world. This program offers space for all of this! Campers will be split into small groups and have to overcome challenges placed before them, just like Esther did many years ago and begin to think about how they honor themselves, how they care for those around them, and how they stand up for what they believe in.
Shmita Wild Edibles Cards
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.
Taking Root
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.
Age(s): Adults
Pedagogy in Power
The participants will reflect on their personal experiences with 'good' and 'bad' education. Participants will practice learning by making their own personal connections to things and by allowing themselves to notice without making assumptions or conclusions. The participants will read texts about Jewish laws, practice making their own connections, and in teams will create short experiential programs about the texts for each other. Participants will express when and how to apply these methods in educational settings and casual settings.
Category: Group-building
Age(s): B'nai Mitzvah, Teens
Etz Chaim: An Exploration
This program is meant to open up participants to Torah of the forest and the farm, to see where the materials come from and to connect to the beauty and awe of a physical Torah. In the fall on the east coast, the forest comes alive with color, as the trees turn and drop their leaves and their seeds. By exploring and examining a few of the elements that make up our physical Torah, participants will walk away with an altered view and understanding of our most central text.
Farmer Michael’s Wagon Garden
Children planted seeds in a soil-filled wagon, which could easily be transported from classroom to classroom, and watched them grow over the course of four weeks. The culmination of the program was to bring the children and wagon out to the J's main garden to see how their plants fit into a larger picture and to allow them to sample many of the things they helped grow. The program also touched on topics such as where food comes from, Hebrew vocabulary, composting, using the five senses, and making observations.
Age(s): Early Childhood
Lag b’Omer Fire and Forest Festival
Invite the magic of the forest into your life! Celebrate Lag B'Omer, an ancient Jewish festival about survival and spirituality, by rejoicing with our Eden Village community. Explore new forest skills, learn about kabbalah, and of course eat yummy snacks around the fire. With new eyes learn these time tested wilderness survival skills, such as shelter and fire building, making bows and arrows, wild edible walks among others.
