Topic: Newsletters

Annuals, Perennials, Rides… Dear All, I’m at Isabella Freedman, which is a winter wonderland right now – the lake is frozen and everything is blanketed with snow. Very beautiful. I’m here for Hazon’s first-ever Rabbis’ Retreat, and it has been a wonderful, fascinating and inspiring experience. We’ve been thinking about shmita – the sabbatical year – in the broadest sense, and it’s led to a series of rich conversations. The shmita year starts in September 2014, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that shmita is both a relatively unexplored and rich part of Jewish tradition. Here’s one thing for you to start to think about, coming out of a tour of the Adamah Farm that Dr. Shamu Sadeh led yesterday: What’s the relationship between annuals and perennials in your diet? (Annuals are wheat, corn, tomatoes – things that have to be planted each year. Most of our grains and vegetables are annuals. Perennials include berries, nuts, and a few other things; at Adamah they’ve recently planted Jersualem artichokes, which are perennials.) The question arises because the shmita prohibition includes harvesting annual crops on a large scale. So it makes sense, in a society that is observing shmita, to eat far […]

Light In The Darkness, 801 Dear All, The words added to the daily prayers during Chanukah celebrate the accomplishments of the few in the face of overwhelming odds. So the end of Chanukah feels like the right moment to share some of the successes of the Jewish Greening Fellowship, which is a determined and successful attempt to take on some very large challenges indeed. JGF was kicked off by UJA-Federation of New York and Isabella Freedman in 2009. It represents the most persistent attempt in the American Jewish community to integrate the “hard” and “soft” sides of sustainability – focusing both on HVAC systems, on the one hand, and Jewish education and leadership development, on the other. UJA has re-upped twice since the program was initially launched, which itself is testament to the work of JGF’s Fellows, and the leadership since inception of Adam Berman (now at Urban Adamah), Rachel Jacoby-Rosenfeld (now at AJWS) and Hazon’s Dr. Mirele Goldsmith. I asked Mirele to say a little more about JGF, below. I would add that JGF shows what is possible through persistent and strategic work of this sort. Over the next few years we hope to extend a version of JGF […]

Dear All, First: thank you to those of you who gave us a donation in response to the launch of our year-end appeal last week. One gift was from someone who phoned and said, “I’ve been supporting Hazon in a small way for several years, I was thinking about my year-end giving, and I realized that I believe really deeply in everything you’re doing – so could I give you a gift of appreciated stock…?” (That would be: yes! huge thanks; and here’s the information you need…). This was someone who had been giving us $360, and increased their gift to $2,400 – a gift in fact worth over $4,000 to Hazon because of the match we have outstanding. We have no reserves, no endowment, and we’re doing work that sometimes takes a little while to explain. But if you believe in what we’re doing, please do support us. And – yes – feel free to make a gift of appreciated stock… Meanwhile, this has been a remarkable week and one which in retrospect I think will turn out to have been historically significant. Last weekend we were at the Pearlstone Retreat Center in Baltimore, at our first-ever Jewish Intentional […]

Dear All, One of the great privileges of leading Hazon is that I get to come to Israel with some regularity. This country is a miracle in so many ways. My ancestors prayed towards Jerusalem yet never had the chance to visit Israel, much less to see a third Jewish commonwealth come into existence. Even as the country changes and evolves, I do not take this miraculousness for granted. But of all the times that I have spent in Israel this trip has been amongst the most remarkable. I have never been so clearly aware of changes in Israel and in the Jewish world as I have these last ten days. Yesterday and today I’ve been at a gathering convened jointly by leaders of Israel’s government (Bibi Netanyahu & Naftali Bennett) and the Jewish Agency for Israel (Natan Sharansky & Alan Hoffman). It’s been a relatively small group – a little over a hundred people – and quite surprisingly (given the historically stodgy reputation of both sponsoring institutions) the best-facilitated gathering of any sort that I have ever attended. The freshness in facilitation was more than matched by the content. The historic Israel/diaspora relationship has been imbalanced and, in certain […]

Dear All, Tomorrow morning 134 riders are due to set out to ride from Jerusalem to Ashkelon, on the 13th Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride. By the time you read this I hope we’ll be nearly at Mitzpeh Ramon. More on the Israel Ride, hopefully, next week. Meanwhile, I was thinking about the first day route. I remember a few years ago doing nearly the same route we’re doing tomorrow, and having Bill Slot – our amazing tour guide, then and now – pointing out that all of the seven species indigenous to Israel and listed in Devarim (Deuteronomy) were growing alongside our route; we passed each one of them in the course of that single day’s Ride. I shall keep my eyes out tomorrow. It seemed therefore a good moment to say something about Jews and gardens; about the process of growing things. I think it’s starting to become clear that really every Jewish community in the world – ideally every single institution – should have its own garden. In communities across America, urban agriculture is taking root as an innovative solution to increase access to healthy food while, at the same time, revitalizing the economic and social health […]

Dear All, I am pleased to introduce Anna Hanau, Hazon’s Associate Director of Food Programs and co-author of “Food for Thought, Hazon’s Sourcebook on Jews, Food and Contemporary Life.” Anna is a 2004 alumna of List College / Barnard College, where she learned how to bring the best of her Jewish and environmental interests together on a personal level. Through her work at Hazon, Anna continues to merge all parts of her identity, and her story below offers a helpful view into how Hazon — through our programs, resources and ongoing work — is aiming to offer the best of both worlds as well. Best wishes, Nigel Savage Executive Director, Hazon Something people tell us frequently at Hazon is a variation on “For the first time, I can combine all the things I’m passionate about! You really brought together all of my interests in one place. Now I really feel like I can be my full self.” They say it with relief: our hyper-specialized world lets us live in micro-communities—these are my Jewish friends, these are my foodie friends—while a nagging feeling emerges that the sum of all these parts might still not quite add up to a unified whole, […]

Dear All, This evening I’m literally home for dinner – back in my parents’ home, eating, for the first time in a while, my mother’s cooking. It feels good to be back, and it’s a reminder not only that food begins with family but that, to a considerable extent, family begins with food. (For my birthday this year Liz bought me a hand-mincer, so that I could make chopped-and-fried fish the way my Grandma did – I was using electric things to mince the fish and it wasn’t coming out right. When I opened the package my face lit up; and it was of course not merely about the thing – the mincer itself – but the immediate emotional associations I had with my Grandma, who died ten years ago.) So this seemed like a particularly good moment to talk about Hazon’s Home For Dinner program, which the amazing Vicky Kelman kicked off in San Francisco a couple of years ago. Vicky is a nationally-beloved Jewish Family Educator, and her thinking about families and our focus on food naturally led us to the Home For Dinner program. Backed by the Covenant Foundation, it’s an initiative designed for 5th graders and […]

Dear All, This week is lech lecha — the start of the journey. At this pivot point of bereishit we learn that the formation of a Jewish family, in this case the first Jewish family, is intertwined with a journey — not only a physical journey, but also a journey of self-exploration, of growing as a child, of becoming one’s own self. And this year, parshat lech lecha coincides with Teva’s 20th birthday, so I wanted especially to say a couple of words about Teva — about how vital Jewish experiential education is, and ways we might engage with it. First of all: I salute those who founded and stewarded Teva, over a great length of time. Teva is very much the product of a process of evolution — people creating, innovating, treasuring, nurturing, in really beautiful ways. Every year I’ve visited the Teva sukkah at Isabella Freedman, and it is the very opposite of a sukkah-in-a-box; it is a sukkah built with love, different every year, infused with song and wine, trembling sometimes in the wind. As Adamah, Teva, and Isabella Freedman become part of the new larger Hazon, going forwards, we are excited by all the possibilities that […]

Dear All, Kudos to Pew Research for their Pew Jewish survey out yesterday. It makes interesting and challenging reading for those of us who believe in non-haredi expressions of serious Jewish life. One of the things that comes through very clearly is that many younger Jews in this country do not take Jewish particularism as self-evident. They — to some extent, we — are choosing to express a sense of Jewishness whilst at the same time engaging very deeply with the wider world. If organized Jewish life offers these things as a choice — to be either Jewish, or engaged with the world — then non-haredi Jewish life will decline, and the overall Jewish commitment to the world will lessen also. Simon Klarfeld wrote well about this in the Jewish Week two weeks ago: A fundamental flaw with much of Jewish education in America is that it forces us to view Jewish identity within a vacuum. The goal of imparting students with as much Judaism as possible often leads teachers and administrators to ignore equally — if not more — discussions about focusing on the challenges of living a Jewish life in a predominantly non-Jewish world. What we ignore is […]

Like many of us, I remember the day very clearly. I was in the Bay Area, due to fly back to NY the next day. (I had a meeting planned for 10 am that morning, to meet with five leaders of the Bay Area Jewish community, to discuss launching a Hazon Ride in California. The meeting never took place, of course; we finally launched the Ride in 2010. It took nearly nine years from inception to first launch. Sometimes things take a while.) I remember the attempted phone calls, the TV footage, the conversations. Being turned back from the airport on Wednesday and Thursday. Finally getting back to NY just before Shabbat – looking out the window, seeing the hole in the skyline. Candles everywhere. A huge line outside BJ. On Shabbat morning we walked as far south as one could go – I think Washington Square. The whole plaza was filled with random circles of New Yorkers, every age, every color, every religion, and in the center of each circle someone with a guitar, playing “Hey Jude” or “Imagine.” It struck me very clearly that those two songs had become the hymns of our age. No conventionally religious song […]

Dear Friends, Rosh Hashanah is quickly approaching. It is the season of reflection, repentance, forgiveness, apples, and honey. And this year, it is the season to think about the bees that made the honey and pollinated the apples. Recently Amichai Lau-Lavie, the founding director of Storahtelling and spiritual leader of Lab/Shul brought to our attention the latest information about the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder. In the last six years, bee populations have plummeted and an estimated 10 million beehives have been abandoned by their bee tenants due to a disease called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). While the cause of CCD has been mysterious to scientists and researchers, evidence is coming together to point to chemicals found in pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Jewish tradition and values treasure all life, including bees, and their loss of life at the hand of dangerous chemicals is tragic in itself. Yet this phenomenon is not occurring in a vacuum. As one of the most-relied on pollinators in the US, the loss of the Western honey bee would have detrimental effects on agricultural cycles. One third of the crops we eat—including foods like broccoli, bell peppers, avocado, and our beloved Rosh Hashanah apples—rely on honey […]

Cultivating Soil and Soul Dear All, I am thrilled and delighted to hand this week’s lead story to Dr. Shamu Sadeh, co-founder and director Adamah. All the Best,   Nigel Savage Executive Director, Hazon PS: A number of you sent nice notes about the piece I wrote last week. I had intended to include a link to a nice piece I had written ten years previously about my Grandma. For those who are interested, here it is. “There’s a wonderful Hebrew saying: ein yirat shamayim, bli r’iyat shamayim — you can’t have Awe of the Heavens, without seeing the heavens. It’s true! Sometimes all it takes to re-awaken to the divinity in our surroundings is to spend but a few moments alive in nature. (To better capture the wordplay, a good English equivalent might be: to feel grounded, feel the ground!) My three months as a Spring Adamahnik were a living fulfillment of this wisdom. I came to Adamah disenchanted with my Judaism, disconnected from my body, and out of touch with my spirit. But in sighting the sky and touching the soil, I was transformed into a spiritually open, intellectually exhilarated, and physically reborn partner with the Heavens. And […]

Dear All, The shofar is blowing; a new year is on its way. And although we know the Jewish world hardly needs another acronym, it does need some form of shorthand to encapsulate a movement that has been quietly transforming individuals and communities across the spectrum of Jewish life.  I’m talking about the world that has bubbled up, to some extent under the radar of organized Jewish life, these last dozen years. It encompasses a growing range of programs spreading steadily across the country. Each year the number of organizations has increased, the number of practitioners has increased, and the number of people being touched by this new field has increased. This is the field that includes organizations like Adventure Rabbi, Amir, Eden Village, The Gan Project, Ganei Beantown, Jewish Farm School, the Jewish Food Justice Fellowship, Pearlstone, Ramah Outdoor Adventures, Shoresh, Wilderness Torah, Yiddish Farm – not to mention pretty much everything that Hazon does, including our CSAs, Food Conferences, Food Festivals, Adamah, Teva, Israel Sustainable Food Tour and Bike Rides. As you think about these organizations and programs, my question is: how might you describe them, as a field, briefly?! That was the question to which the answer […]