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This Book Might Change Your Life

By on June 7, 2011 in Education, Events, Food, Recommended Reading

By Judith Belasco, Director of Food Programs, Hazon My first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) pick up of fresh, local, organic veggies is a few days away. In mid-winter, I plunked down $550, signed up for my volunteer slots, and felt good that I was voting with my fork for a healthier, more sustainable food system. During the 2011 growing season, I’m joined by a network of 56 Hazon CSAs and thousands more CSAs in communities across the country. While I am excited for the East Coast season to begin, I’m aware of the many people who are unable to access CSA shares and those who are unable to access healthy food at all. Our food system is broken.  Joining a CSA is a great first step, and there is more we can do in order to fix it. Enter Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All, a practical guide to changing not only what we eat, but how our food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed and sold. Author and founder of the Fair Food Network, Oran B. Hesterman, shows how our food system’s dysfunctions are the unintended consequences of our emphasis on efficiency, centralization, higher yields, profit, […]

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The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

By on March 9, 2011 in Food

By Michael Pollan – Penguin Press, 2006 Reviewed by Natan Margalit From Tikkun Magazine, August 2006 Ben Zoma used to say, “What labors Adam had to carry out before he obtained bread to eat! He ploughed, he sowed, he reaped, he bound the sheaves, he threshed and winnowed and selected the grains, he ground and sifted the flour, he kneaded and baked and then at last he ate. Whereas I get up in the morning and find all these things done for me.” –Babylonian Talmud, Brakhot 58b Claude Levi-Strauss once said that food is not only good to eat, but also good to think. Our meals are statements that help us to understand ourselves and our world. Of course, the Bible makes this connection between food and thought with Adam and Eve’s fateful meal from the Tree of Knowledge. In today’s world of complex, industrial food chains, however, that connection is broken. Food seems to come from the supermarket, manufactured and packaged. Ignorance, not knowledge, characterizes modern eating. Even more disturbing is the fact that food categories that we might imagine are more transparent, more ethical, such as organic food – and kosher food — are increasingly involved in this […]

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Pollution in the Promised Land

By on May 6, 2009 in Climate Change, Israel

By Rabbi Julian Sinclair, Hazon Rabbinic Fellow Yom Haat’zmaut. Here in Israel we celebrated Yom Ha’atzma’ut last week; fireworks, barbecues, mutual congratulations on how much we’ve achieved in 61 years (absorbing millions of immigrants, sustaining a vibrant democracy, building a dynamic economy, etc.), and a certain amount of soul-searching about how much we still haven’t: (peace, intra-Jewish harmony, a national soccer team that qualifies for the World Cup finals etc etc.). In honor of Yom Haatzmaut, I read a brilliant 500 page book; (rather sad, I know, but that’s the kind of kid I’ve always been…). Professor Alon Tal’s “Pollution in the Promised Land: an Environmental History of Israel” is the definitive work on the subject. In retrospect it was also the perfect read for the day. Tal’s book does much more than its subtitle claims. As you would expect it tells the story of how Israel’s rapid economic development has come at a high environmental price; it traces the roots of Israel’s current water crisis to bad planning and short sightedness in the early years of the State; one chapter relates the staggering success, or disastrous stupidity (depending on your perspective) of the JNF’s forestry policies. (The JNF planted […]

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