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Omer, Shmita, Fair Food, Sabbatical

By on May 31, 2011 in Nigel, Shmita

The period of counting the omer is drawing to a close. It’s one of the many times that Jewish tradition uses cycles of seven to encourage a balance of work and rest. The most famous, by far, is shabbat itself. I love that the Italian word for Saturday is “sabato.” One of the online Italian-English dictionaries has this: “Saturday is considered the last day of the week in some countries.” By “some countries” I think they mean the State of Israel. It was the Jewish Sabbath, on Saturday, that first marked the day of rest, and as Christianity and then Islam spread across the world, shabbat moved to Sunday or Friday. The lexicographical evidence of its origins has its own charm. I think it’s impossible for most of us to understand how radical the idea of shabbat must have been. We grow up with two-day weekends (a day and a half in Israel, depending on your age), plus public holidays, school vacations, summer vacations, parental leave, disability. None of these existed in the first 100,000 years of biological humanity. Each of them has undergone the arc of a new idea: introduced by someone; considered crazy, ridiculous, impossible; gradually people argued […]

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TheFourWorlds

Beyond “The Four Worlds”: Creating Meaning in Your Tu B’Shvat Seder

By on January 14, 2011 in Nigel, Tu B’Shvat

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…)

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Thank You – a Great End to the Year

By on December 30, 2010 in Nigel, Recommended Reading

This is a personal note, amidst the blizzard of year-end emails, to thank you for supporting Hazon in 2010. This was our 10th year, and it’s been a fairly remarkable one. Our new tagline says “Jewish inspiration. Sustainable communities.” That’s as succinct as we can get it – that’s what we’re about. In practice, we effect change in three ways: through transformational experiences; thought-leadership and capacity-building. This has been quite a year for all three. (more…)

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Compare and Contrast

By on September 2, 2010 in Holidays, New York Ride, Nigel

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 […]

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10 Years Ago in Postville, Iowa / Shabbat Hazon

By on July 14, 2010 in Cross-USA Ride, Nigel, Reflections, Rides

14th July 2010 Dear All, Hazon is ten years old this year. We’re working hard in multiple ways to bring forth our vision – a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, and a healthier and more sustainable world for all. We’re proud that our 45 Hazon CSAs (Community-Supported Agriculture programs) are now the largest faith-based system of CSAs in the country. This fall, as well as our 10th NY Ride and our 10th Israel Ride, we’re launching a new CSA Conference (at Isabella Freedman) and a Food Leadership Forum (at Walker Creek, in CA). We’re developing Makom Hadash, our shared-space for second-stage Jewish non-profits. We’re planning our second CA Ride – and a second Israel Food Tour, with the Heschel Center. Meantime, New York’s DOT is planning the protected bike lane in the Upper West Side that we organized for. The Alliance for Religions & Conservation is working on a Sacred Cities initiative that grew out of our Jewish delegation last year. And we’re proud of the extraordinary success of Wilderness Torah and Jewish Farm School, the two organizations that we’re fiscal sponsor to. JFS has established a new home at Eden Village Camp, one of the most remarkable new […]

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Isaiah Berlin, Shavuot and the Rides

By on May 17, 2010 in Holidays, Nigel, 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 […]

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Hazon Launches Makom Hadash

By on May 7, 2010 in Nigel

We are pleased to announce that this week we signed a lease to create Makom Hadash, a shared office space and communal resource center for second-stage Jewish nonprofit organizations. This new multi-tenant nonprofit center will enable member nonprofits to focus more on their missions, develop more sophisticated organizational infrastructure, and collaborate more effectively together. The goals of Makom Hadash are to strengthen the capacity of innovative Jewish nonprofits, especially at the second stage of growth, to facilitate collaboration and creativity amongst both resident and non-resident organizations, and to reduce operating costs for individual participating nonprofits. We’re tremendously excited about this project becoming a reality. (more…)

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An End and a Beginning

By on December 21, 2009 in Nigel, Reflections

Dear Friend , I had a marvelous morning tromping in the snow in Central Park yesterday, marred only somewhat by the knowledge that at about the same time I was meant to have been on a flight to San Francisco. The snow giveth, and the snow taketh away… But it was a good morning to look back and look forwards. Chanukah has just ended; also the Copenhagen Climate Conference. We’re now 10 days from the end of the year and the end of the decade. Hazon began with the decade. Our first Ride was in the summer of 2000. Next year sees our 10th New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride and our 10th Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride, not to mention our sixth season of Hazon CSAs (now 40 of them, around the country). Two days from now more than 600 people will be at the largest event in our history, our fourth Hazon Food Conference. (more…)

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A Bishop, an Imam and a Jew Walk into a Room

By on November 20, 2009 in Events, Nigel

Opening panel –  The speakers are: Grand Mufti of Egypt Kusum Vyas- Hindu environmentalist from India Rev Sally Bingham, founder of Interfaith Power and Light Master Yang, Daoist, China Bishop Walter Thomas, New Psalmist Baptist Church, Baltimore, US Bishop of London, Richard Chartres Windsor, 4th November Dear All, I’m writing from the end of a remarkable conference, at which the Secretary-General of the United Nations and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh met with religious leaders from more faiths than I knew existed, ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Change conference next month. There were two main goals: to make clear to governments that religious communities support strong action next month; and to try to catalyze deeper and more substantive change, within and between religious communities, over the next seven years and beyond. (more…)

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Four Weeks and Six Years

By on November 20, 2009 in Events, Nigel

New York / 20th Nov 2009, 3 Kislev 5670 Dear All, If one can speak of a tipping point for the Jewish environmental movement, and for Hazon’s work, these last four weeks have surely crystallized it – an absolutely extraordinary series of events. I challenge you to read to the end of this email and not be astonished at quite how much has happened in the last four weeks – and how good it is, and how inspirational, and how much hope it creates for the future. October 23rd: Jewish Climate Campaign at the UN. Representatives from Hazon and Teva and others were at the UN for the launch of the Jewish Climate Campaign. The Campaign is significant in its own right, and the launch received significant press, as well as the endorsement of senior staffers at the UN. (more…)

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The World Turned Upside Down

By on March 10, 2009 in Holidays, Nigel, Reflections

(A slightly different take on Tom Friedman, the meltdown, quantitative easing, the Age of Awareness, Jewish history, Purim, Pesach, Zipcar and birkat hachamah.) Dear All, Tom Friedman’s piece in the New York Times this week (The Inflection Is Near?) provides a clear summation of how most environmentalists understand our current financial crisis, and if you haven’t yet read it I recommend it – You can read the article here. My one sentence precis: we’ve been overconsuming the world, and our behaviors are no more sustainable, in aggregate, than Bernie Madoff’s investment strategy. I want to argue that he’s right, but that we’re not properly following what should be the policy implications of what he argues; and, further, that Jewish history provides a particularly cautionary note on some of where we now might be headed. (more…)

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Second Thoughts on the New Millennium

By on January 2, 2009 in Holidays, Nigel, Reflections

We entered the new millennium as planned, hosting a shabbat dinner in Jerusalem. We went to synagogue – in black tie – and afterwards had eighteen friends for a more-lavish-than-usual but nevertheless recognizable Friday night dinner. We made kiddush over the wine (champagne, in this case) and the traditional blessing over the bread. We had a great dinner, looked back, looked forwards, played one or two games, sang songs. At midnight we began the traditional bensching, the grace after meals, to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, and included a prayer for peace in the future. All in all it was a great evening. The following morning the house was devastated. We had plates and debris everywhere; streamers and balloons, leftover pudding, candlesticks, washing-up stacked in heaps. We had wine glasses and champagne flutes and little shot glasses from those important impromptu l’chaims. By contrast with how beautiful it had looked when we first returned from synagogue, it indeed seemed like terrorists had wandered in during the night and done their worst. (more…)

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Ba Midbar – In the Wilderness…

By on June 20, 2008 in Israel, Jewish Texts, Nigel

Leviticus 26:3-27:34 A few years ago I went hiking with friends and with a Bedouin guide in the area around and behind Santa Katerina, in southern Sinai. Sinai is an extraordinary place, raw and grand. The peaks are majestic and whistling cold. The wadis are full of hidden crevices, shade and light, little crawly things, small shrubs and unlikely greennesses. On a hot day, moving slowly, we rounded a corner and came upon a pool, translucent blue, still in the windless day, ice-cold despite the heat. As we read parashat Be-Midbar, and begin the book of Be-Midbar, that hike and that natural pool provide insights into two important questions: why was it necessary for the children of Israel to spend so long in the wilderness? And what message should we learn from that today? (more…)

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Judaism and the Environment 101

By on March 9, 2008 in Education, Jewish Texts, Nigel

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” – Rabbi Hillel, Mishneh Avot, first century CE Like all peoples and faith communities, the Jewish people has had an evolving relationship with the physical world. Because we have traveled through time and place for more than thirty centuries, ours is a rich and diverse tradition. Right now we’re at an interesting moment in history. There is, on the one hand, a growing awareness of the need to manage our planet’s resources more carefully, and an intuition that as well as acting as individuals and as citizens, we also have the resources of Judaism and the Jewish people to draw upon. On the other hand, our postmodern perspective is a different one than a biblical one, and in its contemporary form, the conversation between Judaism and environmentalism is young – all sorts of issues, open questions and problems abound. (more…)

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Tu B’Shvat 2007

By on February 3, 2007 in Climate Change, Holidays, Nigel

Friday, February 3, 2007 / 14 Shevat 5767 Dear All, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just issued a report which is front page news in nearly every paper in the world today. The Guardian’s summary is typical: The report predicts a rise of between 18 cm and 58 cm in sea levels by the end of this century, a figure that could increase by as much as 20cm if the recent melting of polar ice sheets continues. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level,” the summary said. (more…)

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