A Miracle of Healthy, Sustainable Feasting, December 4th, Denver
Topic: Holidays
Talking turkey
New York November 17th / 20th Cheshvan Dear All, This is the period of giving thanks. Thank you: to all the people who commented on (and re-circulated) the piece I wrote last week on Federations. There are various comments on our website, and also on Facebook and elsewhere. We welcome your further feedback. Thank you: to the 17 participants in our second Israel Sustainable Food Tour, and to our partners on that tour at The Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership. We’re really psyched to be playing a role not only in developing more sustainable food systems in the US, but also in directly and indirectly both learning from and supporting some of the amazing work that’s starting to happen in Israel. You can see photos here. (And if you’re looking for an interesting Thanksgiving or Chanukah gift for someone – check out Negev Nectars.) (more…)
Care to Share Gathers Over One Ton of Food
Originally posted in UJA Federation’s news. Try to picture 3.3 million grains of rice. If that’s too challenging, you could also visualize 200,000 grapes, 35,000 eggs, 4,000 pomegranates, 440 watermelons, or 220 pumpkins. Each of these quantities of food weighs a solid ton, which is the amount of fresh produce collected during UJA-Federation’s first annual Care to Share fresh food drive in conjunction with Met Council, Hazon, and AmeriCorps. (more…)
Minyan Na’aleh in the Denver Post
Hazon in Colorado partnered with several other local organizations to hold a wonderful sukkot event for young families on a local organic farm. The kids harvested their own gourds, learned about the sukkot-water connection, took a hay ride, made sukkah decorations and shook the lulav. Read more about the event in the Longmont Times-Call.
Closed for Sukkot
The Hazon offices will be closed through October 21st for the holiday of Sukkot. Staff will return to the office on Monday, October 24th. We’d like to wish everyone a chag sameach and happy holiday. Please check out our Healthy, Sustainable Sukkot Resources. What’s Sukkot? MyJewishLearning.com has a Sukkot 101 that covers the basics. If you live in New York City, Westchester, or Long Island, we invite you to learn about Care to Share, our first annual citywide and volunteer fresh produce drive running through October 18th (The Jew and the Carrot has a few words about Care to Share, too). Check out Repair the World’s Sukkot round-up of blog post about “homelessness, poverty and hunger, as well as sustainable agriculture and the environment.” Read Pursue’s round up of resources to “help raise your awareness of the justice issues associated with Sukkot.” The Jew and the Carrot discusses “a few reasons why it is especially important to eat locally and sustainably during Sukkot” and has a complete menu for a meatless Sukkot feast. How are you making your Sukkot more healthy and sustainable? Share your tips in the comments below! Photo by Flavio@Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.
Sukkot Mishpacha
October 11, 4-6 PM Red Wagon Organic Farm, 7694 N 63rd St, Longmont, CO $10 for children, adults are free. Celebrate the harvest festival of Sukkot at Red Wagon Organic Farm. We will enjoy a hay ride and will learn about Sukkot with Rabbi Rose from Congregation Har HaShem. We will also make a special project and then meet for a Sukkot celebration and picnic dinner. Please pack dinner for your family and bring a can or box of food to donate to EFAA (Emergency Family Assistance Association)! (more…)
Crowning God King
By Rabbi Steve Greenberg, Hazon Board Member Originally posted on Siach: An Environment and Social Justice Conversation Every year, as the summer winds down I begin to look forward to the high holidays. While I surely enjoy the family and the food, for me it’s the chill in the morning air, the haunting music and the power of the liturgy that excite me. My partner and I seek out singing-communities on the high holidays. I can’t wait to be carried away by the once-a-year melodies and from the beginning of September they waft through my brain in anticipation. The music expresses ecstatic joy, longing and dread and this mix of emotions is reflected in the poetry of the liturgy. (more…)
Care to Share
UJA-Federation of New York — in collaboration with Met Council, AmeriCorps, and Hazon — invite you to participate in our first annual Care to Share citywide and volunteer fresh produce drive. Care to Share will take place from Monday, October 3 – Tuesday, October 18, 2011, encouraging volunteers to symbolically fulfill the Jewish custom of gleaning, a custom tied to the harvest season and the Sukkot period. Traditionally, farmers leave the four corners of their fields unharvested so the needy can glean from the fields with dignity. (more…)
Sukkot Fall Harvest Festival at Ekar Farm
October 16th, 12:30-3pm 6825 E. Alameda, Denver, CO FREE ! Pumpkin Picking, Farm Tours, Live Music, Vegetarian Potluck, Sukkah Decorating, Apple Pie Contest, and many Family Fun Activities sponsored by Wacky Apple (more…)
Nigel Savage Teaches How to Create a Great Tu B’Shvat Seder
In this video, Nigel Savage, Executive Director of Hazon, teaches a session on “How to Create a Great Tu B’Shvat Seder” at the 2010 Food Conference West. Learn more about Tu B’Shvat and download Hazon’s free resources.
Uri L’Tzedek’s Food and Justice Haggadah Supplement
In a quest to introduce discussion of food, social justice, and ethical consumption to the Passover Seder, Uri L’Tzedek has created the Food and Justice Haggadah Supplement. Along with the Uri L’Tzedek team, 26 collaborators contributed essays that make up the supplement, among them Nigel Savage, Hazon’s Executive Director. Uri L’Tzedek is an Orthodox social justice organization whose mission is to fight suffering and oppression. Through their work in community based education, leadership development and action, they aim to create discourse, inspire leaders, and empower the Jewish community towards creating a more just world. In the Food and Justice Haggadah Supplement, they have created a thought-provoking collection of short reflections on topics including hunger, labor and exploitation, responsibility to the poor, ethical consumption, ethics of eating, and redemption, all of which build from the structure and story of the Seder. Scattered throughout the supplement are various “ACT” suggestions, featuring easy ways that readers can transform all of these ideas into action. In his contribution, Nigel explains that Passover teaches consciousness, restraint, and the responsibility to share with others, and urges the reader to apply these lessons to all meals during the rest of the year. He ends by reminding Seder-goers, […]
Beyond “The Four Worlds”: Creating Meaning in Your Tu B’Shvat Seder
by Nigel Savage January 14, 2011 Next Wednesday night, January 19th, there’ll be a full moon in the sky: the full moon of Shvat. The indigenous Israelites from whom we descend celebrated this as the start of the year for the natural world. Like lots of elements of Jewish tradition, we never forgot it, even as its meaning has changed over time. Skip forward to 5771, aka 2011. Tu B’Shvat’s a great holiday, and there’s every likelihood there will be a record number of Tu B’Shvat seders this year. But here’s a question: what’s all this stuff about the four worlds? (more…)
Tu B’Shvat: From the 1600s to Today
As the largest Jewish environmental organization in the country, Hazon hopes you will celebrate the holiday of Tu B’Shvat as a Jewish Earth Day and use our website resources to rekindle or deepen your feelings of gratitude for the bounty of the earth and take more steps towards preserving our world. Tu B’Shvat begins sundown January 19th and we encourage you to hold a seder! In the Middle Ages, Tu B’Shvat was celebrated with a feast of fruits in keeping with the Mishnaic description of the holiday as a “New Year.” In the 1600s, the mystic kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria of Tzfat and his disciples instituted a Tu B’Shvat seder in which the fruits and trees of Israel were given symbolic meaning. The main idea was that eating ten specific fruits and drinking four cups of wine in a specific order while reciting the appropriate blessings would bring human beings, and the world, closer to spiritual perfection. The mystical kabbalistic Tu B’Shvat seder has been revived and is now celebrated by many Jews, religious and secular. Special haggadot have been written for this purpose, including our own. (more…)
Compare and Contrast
Dear All, This year, Hazon’s New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride ends late Monday afternoon, and just two days later, Rosh Hashanah begins. The Hazon 10th Anniversary NY Ride will end at Riverside Park at 79th Street on Monday, September 6th at 3 PM with a group ride up Riverside Drive to the The JCC in Manhattan at 76th and Amsterdam. In addition to dancing and singing at the JCC, the Adamah Fellows will have a farm stand inside of the JCC with fresh produce, pickles and dairy products. The closing ceremony will start at 4 PM on the roof of the JCC. The NY Ride is one of Hazon’s largest fundraisers for the year, allowing us to continue our important work. Please consider sponsoring a Rider this year in celebration of Hazon’s 10th anniversary. The close conjunction in time prompted me to think about them in relation to each other… This year they’re about the same length in time. They’re both marathons, of sorts. They both involve pushing ourselves: even if you ride a bike – or go to shul on Shabbat – you don’t normally ride 120+ miles in two days, or spend 10+ hours in shul. (And […]
Isaiah Berlin, Shavuot and the Rides
San Francisco, CA Monday 17th May 2010 48th day of the omer, 5770 Dear All, There is a notion in Jewish tradition of “hiddur mitzvah” – beautifying the mitzvah. It means something like “going above and beyond.” Hiddur mitzvah is the beautiful table cloth for Shabbat, the flowers, the fine china; also the freshest produce from your farmer’s market or your CSA, and the time spent cooking from first principles, rather than just buying something pre-cooked. The omer is a sort of rorschach process, in which we see in each day some reflection of our own life in the sefirot, and vice versa Hiddur mitzvah in relation to counting the omer means not merely counting – actually saying the bracha and counting each day, on the evening of the omer – but, coming back to it through the day; having a real sense of each day of the omer as distinct from each other day, and being conscious of it, and reflecting on it. (I’d add that there is a relationship, in some sense, with the evolution of the first 49 years of your life; each is distinct and, just as the omer culminates in Shavuot, I’d argue that the first 49 years of one’s life […]
Hazon means vision and Hazon’s vision is to create a vibrant, healthy Jewish community in which to be Jewish is to help create a more sustainable world for all. So what is your vision for how we can repair the earth and how do you play a role in that?