Topic: Detroit

The Bread of Healing

By Lisa Kaplan on June 17, 2019 in Activism, Detroit, Farming, Food

Rabbi Nate DeGroot gave the following sermon at St. John’s Evangelist Temple of Truth in Detroit, MI on Sunday, June 16, 2019, right next to Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, one of Hazon Detroit’s main partners. Jerry Hebron, Executive Director and Founder of Oakland Avenue Farm grew up at this church, as her mom has been the Reverend there for decades. Rabbi DeGroot’s sermon served as an invitation to Hazon Detroit’s Breaking Bread Together program happening Sunday, June 23, and was teaching about the role of bread and breaking bread together within the Jewish tradition. Good morning! And thank you all so much for having me here. My name is Rabbi Nate DeGroot and it is truly an honor to be here with you. Reverend Carter, I want to thank you for welcoming me so warmly into this beautiful community To join with you in praise this morning And to offer some words of Torah, some words of Jewish teaching from my tradition. Jerry, I’d also like to thank you for connecting me with your mom, and for being such a meaningful support and advocate for me this year. I stand here today with you as a representative of Hazon Detroit, […]

Hazon Detroit: Will We Change?

By Hannah Elovitz on June 6, 2019 in Climate Change, Detroit, Shavuot

Pictured above: Rabbi Nate and other food justice leaders from across the country. Dear Friends, Last week, Hazon Detroit’s Rabbi Nate DeGroot presented at the Center for Earth Ethics’ annual clergy conference, focused this year on the intersection of food and climate change. Rabbi Nate taught on our unified connection to nature and the earth as Jews, and on Jewish practices related to gratitude and food justice. Other speakers at the conference included Former Vice President Al Gore, Center for Earth Ethics Director Karenna Gore, world-renowned soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal, and many more. Mr. Gore’s presentation – similar in style and inspiration to An Inconvenient Truth and An Inconvenient Sequel – focused on three main questions in the face of our changing climate: 1) Must we change? 2) Can we change? and 3) Will we change? 1) Must we change? We must. Mr. Gore said he likes to keep his presentations relevant, and so he included images and videos of historically abnormal flooding all around the world that has happened in just the last week alone. We know this is severely impacting the midwest region, including right here at home, where excessive rainfall has led to significant crop losses and delayed planting amongst close partners of Hazon […]

Hazon Detroit: The Wheat Harvest

By Hannah Elovitz on May 9, 2019 in Counting the Omer, Detroit, Reflections, Shavuot, Spirituality

Dear Friends, According to our biblical calendar, we are in the midst of the grain harvest, a season of gladness and growth which lasted seven weeks of seven days. It began with harvesting barley during Passover and ended with harvesting wheat at Shavuot. Forty-nine days the wheat would grow and grow, until it was ready to be cut and harvested just in time for Shavuot, when two loaves of bread would be offered at the Temple. According to our Torah, this honoring and culmination of the growing season is the reason we celebrate Shavuot, and only later did the slightly more mythical aspects of receiving Torah at Mt. Sinai come to coincide with the holiday’s significance. At one time, the flour was the revelation. Nowadays, for each of those forty-nine days, Jews around the world engage in a practice called “Sefirat haOmer/Counting the Omer,” where we verbally bless and count each day that passes. While we may not be carefully watching our wheat crops grow, tending to their needs and supporting their health, we do have an opportunity to do just that for own spirits and souls. We once were slaves and now we’re free. But in order to truly […]

Hazon Detroit: Ethical Meat Buying Club: Deadline to Order 4/7

By Hannah Elovitz on April 5, 2019 in Detroit, Food

Dear friends, At the core of Judaism is the sacred task of aligning our daily actions with our deepest values. And what daily action is more Jewish than eating?! So then what does it do to the joy of our Shabbat dinner or the holiness of our Passover seder, if we sit down to eat chicken that has been raised in a factory farm, or brisket from a cow that never saw the sun? It is hard to live in a world where the most common and readily available meat we can find almost always comes from sources that none of us would objectively support. It makes honoring ourselves, our families, the earth, all living beings, and the Jewish tradition eminently challenging. Luckily, we can take a step in right direction! Join aspirational eaters from across the metro-Detroit Jewish community in the launch of the Kol Foods Hillel Day School meat buying club, offering greater access to higher-welfare kosher meat that is 100% grass-fed, humanely raised on farms using regenerative farming practices, and ethically produced. As you may know, Hillel Day School switched over to this meat for its lunch program earlier this year. Now, the same items are available […]

Hazon Detroit: Of Spirit and of Seed

By Hannah Elovitz on March 20, 2019 in Detroit

Dear Friends, As you know, it’s been gray and rainy since November. Not as much snow as some years, but cold, drizzly, damp, and long. We’ve been cooped up indoors trying to find outlets for excess energy, and yet seasons are seasons and we can only do so much to buck the natural order of things. So for months now, we’ve been waiting around as the days grow darker and the nights grow longer, biding time patiently for the vernal release. And then, just like that we turned the clocks ahead and all of a sudden it’s light at 7:30pm and 32 degrees and sunny feels balmy and 40s and 50s are in the forecast and thank goodness, spring is coming! It’s in the full moon midst of this pent up vitality that Purim comes along with its burlesque theatrics and carnival conviviality, a cure for the common case of spring fever. We dance through distinctions and imbibe in creative intuition, recalling a fantastical and topsy turvy drama of inner-court intrigue and epic reversals of fate and fortune that cunningly parallel the natural world, paving the way for our people’s near-genocide to become our jubilant celebration of national triumph. In […]

Hazon Detroit: Leaping Towards Connection

By Hannah Elovitz on February 15, 2019 in Detroit

Dear Friends, We are now firmly in the month of February, a 28 day month in most years, that becomes 29 days in years that are multiples of four. Of course, this phenomenon is known as a “leap year.” And while 2019 is not a leap year in the Gregorian calendar, it is in the Hebrew calendar. Seven times every 19 years, the Hebrew calendar adds an extra month, known as Adar rishon (the first Adar), that precedes the standard Adar (which becomes Adar sheni, or the second Adar). Thus, Adar, the month that brings with it increased joy and the popular holiday of Purim, gets doubled up for double the joy over double the days. But why all the complicated math? Why do we have leap years in the first place? According to Wikipedia: “A leap year (also known as an intercalary year or bissextile year) is a calendar year containing…in the case of the Hebrew lunisolar calendar, a month added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have the same number of days in each year drift over time with respect to the event that the […]

Hazon Detroit: Growth Ring Blessings

By Hannah Elovitz on January 17, 2019 in Detroit, Education, Holidays, Reflections, Tu B’Shvat

Dear Friends, At sunset this Sunday, January 20th, we will usher in Tu B’Shvat, one of the four new years on the Jewish calendar. Just like our secular calendar has multiple year cycles—think calendar year, fiscal year, school year—so too, our Jewish calendar has multiple year cycles: birth of the world, birth of the Jewish people, the first of Elul, and Tu B’Shvat. Tu B’Shvat, named for its calendrical date – the 15th of Shvat – celebrates the birthday of the trees. Just like our birthdays mark a year of growth for us, in a symbolic way, Tu B’Shvat serves the same purpose for trees, marking another year of their growth. Regardless of when during the year a particular tree was planted in ancient times, its first birthday was always tallied on its first Tu B’Shvat. In this way, Tu B’Shvat might be considered the day when a tree symbolically forms its next ring. We have reached the cold months of winter when, like us, trees actually slow down for a period of internal hibernation. In cold winters, growth within a tree slows to a slogging crawl, before picking back up again when the temperatures rise. In fact, it is […]

Light In The Dark | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog

By Yoshi Silverstein on November 30, 2018 in Climate Change, Detroit, Education, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Partners, Reflections, Resources, Spirituality, Weekly Parsha

Ilana Unger – Pearlstone Center Parshat Vayeishev In parshat Vayeishev (Genesis 37:1-40:23), lands on the third Shabbat of Kislev, we connect deeply to this Jewish month of actualization and revelation. For example: Vayeishev is the Hebrew word for “and he lived” (actualization) and nine out of the ten dreams that we read in the Torah are in this month (revelation). To recap the many things that happen in this parsha: Joseph is exiled and sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. Joseph is then falsely accused of sexually assaulting Potiphar’s wife and is sent to the Pharaoh’s prison where he becomes an overseer in the prison. He is joined in prison by the Pharaoh’s butler and baker. They say they have had vivid dreams and are looking for an interpreter. Joseph interprets their dreams and accurately does so, predicting that the baker be hanged while the butler will be restored to his job duties. As Joseph is literally in a dark place in the prison, he is selfless and wants to hear and listen to how he can help the butler and baker. Kislev, which derives from the Hebrew word kesel (כֶּסֶל), means either “security,” or “trust.” Joseph seems to […]

Detroit Newsletter: Drops of water

By Lisa Kaplan on November 8, 2018 in Detroit

Dear Friends, Last night at sundown, we concluded the Jewish lunar month of Cheshvan, the first month following High Holidays and the only month on our calendar without a Jewish holiday. For this reason, there’s a tradition dating back to the Mishnah(~200 CE) of calling this month Marcheshvan, meaning “bitter Cheshvan” (mar like marror on Passover). This bitterness seems to have been reflected all around us these last thirty days. Here in Michigan, the leaves started turning, and then falling. We turned our clocks back, and all of the sudden it’s dark by 5:30pm. There’s a chill in the air we haven’t felt since the final snow melted late last winter. And most bitter of all, we’ve faced numerous heartbreaking tragedies as a Jewish community and a country. However, there is another interpretation of mar that may provide us some clarity and hope – mar can also mean “drop,” as in a drop of water. During this month, mar is our prayer for rain and the month when Noah’s flood swept through the land. When read with this in mind, we begin to understand that we must act and live with a sense of sacred responsibility, adding our drop to the turbulent waters of this historical moment, trusting that with enough drops comes […]

Hazon Detroit at Interfaith Justice Speak-Out

By Hannah Elovitz on November 6, 2018 in Detroit

Hazon Detroit is proud to have stood alongside so many powerful faith leaders on November 1, 2018 at the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn to denounce white nationalism, show support for the Jewish community, and affirm solidarity for all those who are targets of hate. Praying for a time when these gatherings might be prompted not by hate, but only by love. To see more from the speak-out, click here or here, and read Rabbi Nate DeGroot’s full remarks below. Thank you Imam Elahi and the Islamic House of Wisdom for having me here today. I wish I was here for a different reason – but we’re alive in this moment – And so I am grateful to be here with you this afternoon in heartbreak and solidarity And I am humbled to be up here, amongst such respected colleagues and fellow travelers. — I was asked today to speak on how the Jewish community is feeling in this moment, And I will do my best to articulate some of that. But capturing the sentiments of an entire people is an impossible task – Since I can only truly speak to how I am feeling, And even that […]

Fear and light

By Nigel Savage on November 16, 2017 in Detroit, Newsletters, Nigel

by Nigel Savage Thursday, November 16, 2017 | 27 Cheshvan 5778 Dear All, It’s Rosh Chodesh Kislev this weekend. Light in the darkness. I say: Bring it on. That was my first thought. And my second was: What’s the line between cliché and language that is alive and real? I feel this at the moment. “Light in the darkness” is both incredibly clichéd, and also the most real and vital thing we need to hear right now. The present undercurrent, the theme tune to our lives, stronger each day, is fear. It manifests in all directions. Globalization and technology and jobs at stake, across the western world – thus fear of the future, fear for family finances, fears for retirement, fears for health. Climate change and the environment and all of that. Fears for and about Israel. The fear that an African American parent feels if their teenager gets pulled over by the police, and says the wrong thing. The fears of an Israeli soldier, manning a checkpoint, as a Palestinian comes towards him; and the fears of a Palestinian coming towards the Israeli soldier. The newish fear that we might have a war with or about North Korea. Fears […]

When 6,500 people come together

By Lisa Kaplan on September 7, 2017 in Detroit, Food Festival, Judith, Newsletters

by Judith Belasco September 7th, 2017 | 16 Elul 5777 Dear All, Dreams (and dreamers) are being seemingly pushed aside. Storms are raging wilder and fiercer as the climate changes. Difference is being aligned with fear. We must find ways to open our doors to each other even more widely. We need to create more entry points to connect with each other and with those whom we might think of as other. Last week, when 6,500 people came together in Detroit for the 2nd annual Michigan Jewish Food Festival, we aimed to let the whole community in. Here is more from Sue Salinger, Director of Hazon Detroit, about the festival. — As we do our inner preparations during Elul – our return-to-who-we-are, our repair work between each other – according to our teacher Reb Zalman zt’l, we’re already building the world to come: the world we want to live in. Sometimes if we pay enough attention, we get to catch a glimpse, a hint of that world. August 27, 2017 was the second annual Michigan Jewish Food Festival, and what a delicious taste we got of the world as it could be! An estimated 6,500 people came together from across Metro Detroit […]

Reflection on Returning to Detroit

By Lisa Kaplan on July 10, 2017 in Detroit

by Zoe McCoon, Hazon Detroit Summer 2017 Rabbinic Fellow After finishing my first year of rabbinical school, I had mixed feelings about leaving Jerusalem – a place I found filled with spiritual energy and fervor… and yet, I was counting down the days until I could be back in Detroit. Detroit itself has a special spiritual energy and flavor that I was craving to return to. Detroit, a place I often call “My family’s Jerusalem,” is the place my family settled to when they came from Europe, it is the place both my grandfather and my mom grew up, and it is a place that I keep finding myself returning to when I want to learn, grow, and ground myself. Having been a Hazon Detroit Fellow before entering rabbinical school, I had already fallen in love with the holy work Hazon Detroit does in Detroit and the Metro-Detroit area bringing people together through taking care of the Earth, being outside, and living Jewishly. I was especially enamored with Oakland Avenue Urban Farm – one of our close partner organizations. March 23rd marked one month since returning back to Hazon Detroit, and I continue to be excited about the work I […]

Recycling at Adat Shalom

By Rachel Aronson on May 22, 2017 in Detroit, Hazon Seal of Sustainability, Hazon Seal Spotlights

During their first year, Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, MI has proven itself to be a real asset to the Hazon Seal of Sustainability Cohort 2016! From their efforts towards implementing better recycling policies, to using only recyclable paper products at events, we’re excited to continue supporting their progress over the next year. Much of Adat Shalom’s sustainability work focuses on community participation and awareness. “Our focus is to make members more aware of the importance of taking care of the environment in which we all share,” says Susan Shevrin, Congregation Liason. Increasing awareness of recycling and improving recycling procedures throughout the entire building was not just a sustainable practice itself, but it provided learning opportunities for members of Adat Shalom. During Adat Shalom’s Annual Volunteer Day in December 2016, the synagogue hosted Hazon representatives who worked with youth to create recycling boxes for every classroom. In addition to their exceptional recycling work, Adat Shalom is updating their lighting to run more efficiently, and they are hoping to replace all fluorescents and CFL lighting with LED and/ or energy cost saving lighting. Kol HaKavod to Susan Shevrin and the rest of the Green Team at Adat Shalom for their […]

Green Kiddush at Shaarey Tzedek

By Rachel Aronson on May 17, 2017 in Detroit, Hazon Seal of Sustainability, Hazon Seal Spotlights

Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, MI is setting the bar for sustainability high with their excellent work as a member of the Hazon Seal of Sustainability Cohort 2016! Between planning their first Green Kiddush, to using only glass mugs and recyclable paper products at events, there seems to be no limit on what they can achieve. After completing the Hazon Seal Audit, the Green Team at Shaarey Zedek immediately replaced all Styrofoam cups in the Berman Center of Education with glass cups that the congregation had in storage. They also made sure that the congregation’s clergy team spoke about the Green Team and its work during a Shabbat sermon, to get everyone excited about greening and increase awareness of the important work the Green Team does. Shaarey Zedek’s Green Kiddush and Tu B’shvat Seder on the Shabbat of Tu B’shvat was also well-received. Wren Beaulieu-Hack – Director of the Berman Center for Jewish Education at Shaarey Zedek – says that “The day we spent celebrating Tu B’Shvat, as a community was the most successful project we’ve completed thus far. It was wonderful to see our congregants talking with each other about environmental issues through a Jewish lens and to see […]

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