Roger Studley Co-Chair, Food Conference West December 24, 2010 Dear Hazon-niks, friends, and fellow Jewish food activists — Roger Studley here, co-chair — along with Rabbi Marc Soloway — of this year’s Hazon Food Conference. I’m thrilled that all of you are here to join in the work of the New Jewish Food Movement. Unfortunately, I’m not able be here myself, but I have a very good excuse ….. a two week-old son! His name is Ezra Meir and he’s absolutely beautiful. My wife Chai and I are in awe and in love, and all three of us are getting used to the new rhythms of our life together at home in nearby Berkeley. Having a child makes the future more real, more immediate. It reminds you forcefully of the absolute necessity of living sustainably on a healthy planet. It makes us ask… Will our child inherit a world in which food policy is driven by corporate greed or by the goals of health and sustainability? Will our child inherit a world in which food is a just distant commodity or one in which it is a source of nourishment and connection with which he is intimately familiar? Will our […]
Topic: Food
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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 […]
Hazon Food Conference: Take 2. The Next Step in the Right Direction
Originally posted on Raw-9 January 12, 2011 by Julie Auerbach, 2009 and 2010 Hazon Food Conference Alumna After attending the Hazon Food Conference in Asilomar, CA December of 2009, my life had changed. I became inspired, enlightened, and awe-struck by the amazing New Jewish Food Movement. After last year’s conference, I packed up my bags in Denver, CO., closed my meat business, (the Denver Kosher Shuk), and drove out to Los Angeles, the city I pictured with a large, vibrant, colorful Jewish Community, and a more health conscious environment. I am beyond happy to say, I have found everything I was searching for. Most people like to look at Rosh Hashanah, or New Years as their reference of time, and while I love using Rosh Hashanah as a time for reflection and decision making, I enjoy using the Hazon Food Conference as my marker for direction. For a multitude of reasons, which I will explain further, Hazon has inspired me to dream big, have faith, and believe. Prior to attending my first Hazon Food Conference, my life had taken a turn. I learned I had alopecia, (an auto-immune disease that causes one’s body to have an allergic reaction to their […]
Eat, Ride, Love – How It All Connects
Rabbi Marc Soloway recently completed the 300 mile bike ride from Jerusalem to Eilat as a participant in the 2010 Arava Institute & Hazon Israel Ride this past October. This year, he also serves as co-chair of the 2010 Hazon Food Conference West in December. He explains how they are both part of a greater movement and how that movement ties to our community. The exhilaration of riding 300 miles on a bike through the dramatically changing landscape of Israel, a region so full of depth, beauty, history, complexity and instability, has been one of the richest and most challenging experiences of my life. I have recently completed my second Hazon-Arava Israel Ride and the impact of this great adventure continues to stir me in so many ways. Beyond the physical demand and sense of achievement that comes with pedaling an average of 60 miles a day for five days, there is such a sense of awe and elation to being a participant in this tremendous partnership between two such inspirational institutions – Hazon and The Arava Institute. The magnificently managed ride is run by a combination of Hazon’s staff, and students, alumni and faculty from the Arava Institute. The […]
Teshuvah and My Year of Eating Sacredly
By Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster Last year, one of my first posts for the Jew and the Carrot was giving up drinking Diet Coke as a way of eating more sacredly and doing a kind of food teshuvah (repentance). After all, Diet Coke does not exactly fit into my overall food values of eating locally and sustainably. It’s essentially water with coloring and caffeine, it creates wasteful packaging, and drinking enough of it each year has the carbon footprint of flying roundtrip from New York to Cleveland. In my attempt to eat mindfully, aware of God’s blessing present in the food before me, Diet Coke seemed like an easy target. Teshuvah comes from the Hebrew word meaning to return. Repentance is a chance to start over. But part of the teshuvah process is also reviewing how we are doing. We are told by the rabbis that we can’t repent knowing in advance that will plan to do our misdeed again, and yet, we are also human. Despite our best efforts, we slip backwards. We stumble, and once again, as Elul and the season of repentance arrive, we have to ask for forgiveness yet again. (more…)
Hazon Food Programs: What’s Happening?
“Does every Jewish institution need a farmer?” The question struck me a few weeks ago when I was at the Long Island Hazon Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) site for a “Meet the Farmer” night. Rabbis, cantors, and educators are usually seen as necessary staff in a Jewish organization; and in this room full of CSA members, some new and some returning, it seemed that a farmer should be considered essential as well. For the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens and the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore in Long Island, Maggie, from Golden Earthworm Farm, is their farmer. Maggie spoke about the time, attention, and thought that went into building each member’s box of vegetables each week. In addition, she felt privileged that through the support of these institutions, she was able to live her life as a farmer. Since 2004, when Hazon launched the first CSA site in the Jewish community, Hazon has been on the forefront of the new Jewish Food Movement. In 2008, when 560 farmers, rabbis, educators, students, chefs, and foodies attended the Food Conference, Hazon became the home of this movement. The Food Conference, like all of Hazon’s Food Programs, examines food through the […]
The True Cost of Food
Barbara Lerman-Golomb, Director of Education and Outreach, Hazon From PresenTense Magazine – February 2009 Last winter I was at a retreat hosted by a Jewish organization when on the buffet table I spotted something white. It was watermelon, in February in Upstate New York, which was literally unnatural and tasteless. I thought about our unsustainable demand for food and all the energy it took to get that watermelon from farm to fork and wondered, what is the true cost of our food? Like all our lifestyle choices, our food choices increase our carbon footprint and therefore affect our health and the health and sustainability of our planet. According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, around eighty percent of the energy used in the US food system can be attributed to processing, packaging, transporting, storing, and preparing food. In fact, after transportation, the food sector uses more fossil fuels than any other sector of our economy. (more…)
Agriprocessors Statement
CONSORTIUM OF JEWISH GROUPS RESPOND TO PLIGHT OF IMMIGRANT WORKERS IN POSTVILLE IN WAKE OF FEDERAL RAID ON AGRIPROCESSORS ENDORSE HEKHSHER TZEDEK NEW ETHICAL CERTIFICATION INITIATIVE OF THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT:Heather Wolfson hwolfson@mazon.org New York, NY (June 27, 2008) – In the wake of last month’s federal raid on the Agriprocessors meat processing facility in Postville, Iowa, where hundreds of illegal immigrants were arrested, a consortium of Jewish groups devoted to social justice have issued a statement calling for a response to the “human tragedy” of the raid and urging cooperation to work towards a “long term structural change,” within the kosher meat industry. (more…)
The Health Benefits of Fasting
By Will Carroll Originally posted on Serendip There has been much contention in the scientific field about whether or not fasting is beneficial to one’s health. Fasting is an integral part of many of the major religions including Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Many are dubious as to whether the physiological effects are as beneficial as the spiritual promoted by these religions. There is a significant community of alternative healers who believe that fasting can do wonders for the human body. This paper will look at the arguments presented by these healers in an attempt to raise awareness of the possible physiological benefits that may result from fasting. Fasting technically commences within the first twelve to twenty-four hours of the fast. A fast does not chemically begin until the carbohydrate stores in the body begin to be used as an energy source. The fast will continue as long as fat and carbohydrate stores are used for energy, as opposed to protein stores. Once protein stores begin to be depleted for energy (resulting in loss of muscle mass) a person is technically starving. (1) (more…)
The Jew and the Carrot in the News
Of Church and Steak: Farming for the SoulNew York Times By: Joan NathanHow Kosher Was Your Turkey? Wall Street Journal By: Julie Weiner The Central Role of Food in Jewish Life The Jerusalem Report By: Leonard Felson Can You Be a Kosher Locavore? The NY Jewish Week By: Sandee Brawarsky Yom Kippur Food & Fasting Express Night Out (Washington Post) By: Stefanie Gans Noted. Keeping Kosher The Nation By: Naomi Sobel A Sustainable Passover The Daily Green Thinking Outside the Bun New Jersey Jewish News By: Jeffery Yoskowitz Advice from Modern Jewish Mom Modern Jewish Mom Interview: Leah Koenig Profile: Midtown Lunch’er Midtown Lunch Blog Nagila Goes Kosher Star News Online By: Liz Biro Garden Feast Hadassah Magazine By: Adeena Sussman It’s Not Easy Being Green World Jewish Digest By: Rachel Burstyn Culinary Corner: Green Cuisine American Jewish Living By: Lilit Marcus Holy Kale New York Jewish Week By: Elicia Brown Eco-Ushpizin: Women Take on the Environment Lilith Magazine Ed. Rabbi Susan Schnur Greening of Passover Augusta Chronicle By: Kelly Jasper
