by Ryan Kaplan, Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta Parshat Chukat “Moses made a copper serpent and mounted it on a standard; and when anyone was bitten by a serpent, they would look at the copper serpent and recover.” Numbers 21:9 As I write this post, I sit in my office in Atlanta with the threat of rain clouds to my left and blueberry waffles, coffee, and a coworker’s copy of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) to my right. Georgia’s summer has been very wet thus far, and the promise of the coming downpour outside my window sets a looming melancholic tone for this week’s cinematic Torah portion: Chukat (Numbers 19:1-22:1). Much happens in the chapters of Chukat. In the interest of brevity: The wandering Israelites are taught in “the ways of the red heifer” (that is to say, they’re told how to purify themselves after coming into contact with a human corpse); Miriam dies and water becomes scarce; Moses and Aaron fall out of G-d’s good graces after striking a rock in search of water instead of speaking to it; Aaron follows Miriam in death and a 30 day period of mourning begins (up from the normal 7 days of Shiva); […]
Topic: Reflections
Walking Behind Kindness: Parashat Naso | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog
By Hazon on June 9, 2017 in Education, Events, Farming, Food, Food Justice, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Reflections, Shavuot, Shmita, Spirituality, Tzedek/Justice, Weekly Parsha
by Jaclyn Kellner – Coastal Roots Farm; Encinitas, CA “I’d like to go to the fields and glean among the ears of grain behind someone who may show me kindness.” This statement, from Ruth to Naomi in the Book of Ruth, holds so many aspects of what a Jewish Community Farm can provide. This week’s parsha, Naso, spells out the different functions distinct groups and structures had while traveling in the desert. Naso begins by taking census of and detailing the specific duties assigned to each family line of Levites and ends by listing each tribe’s offering for the inauguration of the alter in the Mishkan. This past Sunday, I had the pleasure of co-organizing a Shavuot Festival at Coastal Roots Farm. Over 300 people attended, of all ages, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It was incredible to see an event have such strong Jewish content and influence while remaining a welcoming and accessible festival to all. The festival focused on exploring the story of Ruth and on Shavuot’s agricultural roots celebrating the start of the summer harvest. Participants danced to live klezmer music; learned how to make cheese and tend to their tomato plants; and painted, created, and wore exquisite flower crowns in celebration of […]
Old Stones, New Ripples – Reflections on the Close of JOFEE Fellowship Cohort 1 | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog
By Yoshi Silverstein on May 18, 2017 in Climate Change, Education, Events, Farming, Food, Food Conference, Food Festival, Food Justice, Hazon Seal of Sustainability, Holidays, Institutional Food Values, Jewish Greening Fellowship, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Newsletters, Opportunities, Reflections, Resources, Spirituality, Sukkot, Teens, Topsy Turvy Bus Tour
by Yoshi Silverstein – JOFEE Fellowship Director May 18th, 2017 | 22nd Iyar 5777 | 37th day of the omer | gevurah she’b’yesod 16 Organizations. 17 Fellows. Over 500 programs. An estimated 37,000 participants in Jewish Outdoor, Food, Farming & Environmental Education (JOFEE) programs across the country. These are some of the incredible numbers emerging as we look back at our first JOFEE Fellowship cohort, who completed their closing seminar and siyum last week at our sister JOFEE organization, the Pearlstone Center outside Baltimore, MD. Behind those numbers are thousands of people encountering – many for the first time – the incredible power of a Jewish tradition steeped in deep cultural and spiritual connection with the earth, with place, with human communities and our surrounding ecosystems, with our food, and with each other. A Jewish tradition that recognizes both the limits and abundance of the resources our home planet provides for us. A tradition that says this world is amazing – there is so much magnificence – and yet we have work to do – not to complete by ourselves, but neither to desist from doing our part. And wow did our JOFEE Fellows do their part! Here are a […]
Halachah and Aggadah
From Nigel Savage May 4th, 2017 | 23rd day of the omer; gevurah she’b’netzach | 8th Iyyar 5777 Halachah and Aggadah Dear All, Let me start at the end. Shavuot this year falls midweek. It is one of the most glorious times of the year at Isabella Freedman. The sun, we hope, will shine; the goats will parade; much Torah will be learned; and much cheesecake consumed. We have a truly remarkable group of teachers and leaders for this year’s Shavuot Retreat, including Shir Yaakov Feit, Rabbi Dr. Jill Hammer, Rebbetzin Eve Ilsen, Rabbi David Ingber, Shoshana Jedwab, Yael Kornfeld-Mlotek, Rabbi David Evan Markus, Rabbi Avram Mlotek, Rabbi Mike Moscowitz, and Arna Poupko-Fisher. I was thinking about when JFK hosted a group of Nobel laureates for dinner and began with the famous line – “this is the most extraordinary collection of talent that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone…” I say that because we will miss Reb Zalman, z”l, who for so many years led the Shavuot retreat, and his spirit and his memory and his teachings will be with us. And/but this really is a quite […]
This Passover, Take Action for the Climate – D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog
By Rachel Aronson on April 13, 2017 in Activism, Climate Change, Counting the Omer, Education, Events, Holidays, Jewish Greening Fellowship, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Reflections, Resources, Spirituality
by Rachel Aronson – JOFEE / Sustainability and Community Engagement Fellow, Hazon Jews across the world this week commemorated leaving Egypt to become free people for the holiday of Passover. Friends and family sit around the table together for the seder, celebrating freedom with comfy pillows to recline on and lots of kosher wine. Unfortunately, Passover can also represent something else: the holiday of waste. Those who keep kosher for Pesach (Passover) deep-clean our kitchens before the holiday, rooting out bread, tortillas, muffins, crackers, and every other kind of chametz (leavened or yeasted products) that’s sitting around the house. And to ensure that everything is kosher, we switch out our regular sets of dishes with a special set of only-for-Passover dishes. But who wants to keep an extra set of dishes around the house? It takes up storage space. It’s inconvenient. Understandably, many of us – out of convenience, or out of necessity – use disposable plates, cutlery, cups, and more. Ironically, many of us end up celebrating this holiday of freedom and liberation with trash bags full of styrofoam. Thankfully, Passover is also a holiday that reminds us of our ability to make change — as individuals and as a society. […]
Inspiration, aspiration, respiration…
From Nigel Savage Dear All, In December we had a board meeting and took part of the time to discuss the election. One of our older and wiser board members said, people are moving too fast, right now. We need to let this administration get started, and see what happens. Well, here we are: six days into this administration, with 1,455 still to go. (0.4% of the time has passed, and 99.6% still remains.) Buckle your seat belts. Hazon’s task is not to lose focus, in relation to the vital and good things we are doing, things which at their heart are about helping us to be the people we aspire to be, helping the Jewish community to be the community that it aspires to be. So: a few suggestions and requests: The Hazon Seal of Sustainability. We’re patient. This is messianic. From 2007 to 2014 we did systemic work on the Farm Bill. And we worked to grow Jewish CSAs. And we were persistent in helping to bring shmita back to life. And now we’re in year two of a new seven-year cycle in Jewish life, and the Hazon Seal pilot we launched last year – in year […]
Transitions & beginnings / a first-ever joint email…
Dear All, This past Shabbat, we read the last chapter of Bereishit, the book of Genesis. On Sunday and Monday, we celebrated MLK weekend. And this coming Shabbat, we start the book of Shmot, the book of Exodus. Bereishit is a story of individuals – a person, a family, a heritage. With Shmot, we begin the story of a people. We make this journey – from an individual to a family to a community – every year. It’s core to the Jewish narrative and to the human process – born into a family, individuating and figuring out our own unique journeys, then binding our own lives with those of others, in multiple ways. It’s the journey of our organizations, also, and that’s why this is the first email ever that is being sent out jointly by Hazon, Pearlstone Center, Urban Adamah, and Wilderness Torah. Each of our organizations has its own history, its own foundation myth, its own mission and vision. We have separate boards and staffs and CEOs. Yet we support each other in multiple ways, and we share many common values. We’re each involved in one or more of the elements that in acronym we summarize as JOFEE – Jewish Outdoor, Food, Farming, […]
Gratitude & practice
From Nigel Savage Dear All, It’s a hundred years since 1917. Technological change was accelerating. The promise of human-powered flight had turned into bombs raining down on the miserable soldiers in the trenches of the First World War. (One of them was my Zaydie, who took a bullet through his finger. It probably, in retrospect, saved his life.) The world was uncertain and scary. One of the books people were reading, a hundred years ago, was Walter Lippmann’s Drift and Mastery. Here’s a taste of it: “We are unsettled to the very roots of our being… We have changed our environment more quickly than we know how to change ourselves… We live in great cities without knowing our neighbors, the loyalties of place have broken down… We have to prepare children to face the unexpected, for their problems will not be the same as their fathers’ [sic]…” There is much in this vein, many pages of it, and of course I share it now because his observations, true then, have never in human history been more true than today. Over the holidays I read Andy Stern’s Raising The Floor. Andy joined the SEIU in 1977, and led it from 1995 […]
New light, new ideas, new collaboration
From Nigel Savage Dear All, We’re going strong into 2017. Hazon has had the best year in our history, and we have big ambitions for 2017 and beyond. A huge thank you to everyone who has supported us this year (including the many of you who have given recent year-end gifts). Our work happens only because of the stakeholders who enable it. Huge thanks. Huge thanks. And as the dust begins to settle on some of the changes in this country this year, some things are getting clearer. For Hazon, in 2017, we’ll aim to do all that we’re doing now – and then some. We’re going to strengthen our Isabella Freedman campus. It’s a unique resource in American Jewish life, it’s an especially vital resource for the tri-state area, and it’s a place where magic happens. Coming up soon, we hope and intend: fresh investments in our staff and in our campus, and a master-planning process to imagine a renewed and rebuilt Freedman increasing its impact for the next two or three generations; We’re deepening our work on the ground – in New York, in Detroit, in Colorado, in San Diego. We’re genuinely thinking globally and acting locally. Coming […]
What’s Mine is Yours, and What’s Yours is Yours | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog
By Hazon on November 17, 2016 in Animals, Climate Change, Education, Farming, Food, Food Justice, Holidays, Institutional Food Values, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, Reflections, Resources, Spirituality, Tzedek/Justice, Weekly Parsha
by Michael Fraade, Jewish Community of Louisville, Louisville, KY Parashat Vayera Editor’s Note: Welcome to D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog! Most weeks throughout the year, you’ll be hearing from the JOFEE Fellows: reflections on their experiences, successful programs they’ve planned and implemented, gleanings from the field, and connections to the weekly Torah portion and what they’ve learned from their experiences with place in their host communities for the year. Views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily represent Hazon. Be sure to check back weekly! P.S. Interested in being or hosting a JOFEE Fellow? Applications for cohort two are now open for both prospective fellows and prospective host institutions and will continue to be reviewed as positions are available. Parashat Vayera opens with Abraham rushing to greet three guests who appear near his tent while he is sitting under a terebinth. “My lords,” he insists, “Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under the tree. And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves.” He and Sarah prepare bread, milk, and a freshly slaughtered calf for their guests, who soon reveal themselves as angels and inform Abraham that Sarah will soon give birth […]
Going Forth | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog
By Hazon on November 11, 2016 in Animals, Climate Change, Education, Farming, Food, Food Justice, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, Reflections, Spirituality, Weekly Parsha
by Eli Goldstein, Shimon and Sara Birnbaum JCC, Bridgewater, NJ Parashat Lech Lecha Editor’s Note: Welcome to D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog! Most weeks throughout the year, you’ll be hearing from the JOFEE Fellows: reflections on their experiences, successful programs they’ve planned and implemented, gleanings from the field, and connections to the weekly Torah portion and what they’ve learned from their experiences with place in their host communities for the year. Views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily represent Hazon. Be sure to check back weekly! P.S. Interested in being or hosting a JOFEE Fellow? Applications for cohort two are now open for both prospective fellows and prospective host institutions and will continue to be reviewed as positions are available. There is an entire world around us if we just open our eyes, ears, and mouths. In our new enrichment nature class here at the Shimon and Sara Birnbaum JCC, we are working on using the learning cycle shared by our BEETLES Instructors during JOFEE Fellow training – Invitation, Exploration, Concept Invention, Application, and Reflection – to do just that. This is a class challenging on many levels for me and the students. When you think of nature you may […]
The day after the election
From Nigel Savage I had a very strange day today: I rode out of Jerusalem, on the first day of our Israel Ride, with our largest ever group of participants, on a beautiful day. The day went smoothly and easily. The sun shone – but not too much. No accidents. Our crew – Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and American alumni of the Arava Institute – were amazing. They’re an inspiration to everyone who spends time with them. They give of themselves in all sorts of ways because they believe that when people engage across difference they can create a better world for all. So: a wonderful day. And somewhere between our ride launch and our first rest stop, it was confirmed that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States. As you know, we’re a non-profit, and we don’t endorse candidates for office. But I wanted to say a few words to everyone. First: there are many thousands of people on this list, so by definition there must be some of you who are delighted at the outcome of the election. To you I send congratulations and mazal tov. Those of you who did not vote for Donald […]
To See and Be Seen | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog
By Hazon on October 20, 2016 in Education, Events, Farming, Food, Food Justice, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Reflections, Spirituality, Sukkot, Tzedek/Justice, Weekly Parsha
by Liora Lebowitz, Jewish Farm School, Philadelphia, PA Parashat V’zot Haberachah + Sukkot & Simchat Torah Editor’s Note: Welcome to D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog! Most weeks throughout the year, you’ll be hearing from the JOFEE Fellows: reflections on their experiences, successful programs they’ve planned and implemented, gleanings from the field, and connections to the weekly Torah portion and what they’ve learned from their experiences with place in their host communities for the year. Views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily represent Hazon. Be sure to check back weekly! P.S. Interested in being or hosting a JOFEE Fellow? Applications for cohort two are now open for both prospective fellows and prospective host institutions! Priority Deadline is October 31! Together with the holiday of Simchat Torah, V’zot Haberacha, the final parsha of the Torah, marks the transition from the end of a cycle to beginning anew. From beginning to end, the readings of Torah follow the Jewish calendar, and there are strong parallels between the cycle of the Jewish calendar and the corresponding seasonal and agricultural cycles of the year. During Simchat Torah, we ready ourselves to read the final parsha of the Torah – to celebrate our accumulated knowledge and […]
Choosing Life | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog
By Yoshi Silverstein on September 30, 2016 in Climate Change, Elul, Farming, Food, Food Justice, Holidays, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, Reflections, Spirituality, Sukkot, Tzedek/Justice, Weekly Parsha
by Yoshi Silverstein Parashat Nitzavim & Rosh Hashanah Editor’s Note: Welcome to D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog! Most weeks throughout the year, you’ll be hearing from the JOFEE Fellows (and staff): reflections on their experiences, successful programs they’ve planned and implemented, gleanings from the field, and connections to the weekly Torah portion or Holidays and what they’ve learned from their experiences with place in their host communities for the year. This one is from me, Yoshi, Director of the JOFEE Fellowship. Views expressed are the mine and do not necessarily represent Hazon. Be sure to check back next week for Zach Goldberg’s post on JOFEE and Yom Kippur! P.S. Interested in being or hosting a JOFEE Fellow? Applications for cohort two are now open for both prospective fellows and prospective host institutions! You all know the big one coming up this week: Rosh Hashanah. The Head of the Year, when we begin the High Holiday season full of heart-beatings and introspection, good food, wine, and cheer followed by the Yom Kippur fast. This week is also Parshat Nitzavim – the Torah portion from my Bar Mitzvah. Much of that weekend is a blur at this point, twenty years later (wow, that just sunk in […]
Upside Down and Open Hearted | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog
By Hazon on September 8, 2016 in Climate Change, Detroit, Education, Food Justice, Holidays, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, Reflections, Spirituality, Topsy Turvy Bus Tour, Tzedek/Justice, Weekly Parsha
by Emily Glick, Teva, Hazon, Falls Village, CT Parashat Shoftim Editor’s Note: Welcome to D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog! Most weeks throughout the year, you’ll be hearing from the JOFEE Fellows: reflections on their experiences, successful programs they’ve planned and implemented, gleanings from the field, and connections to the weekly Torah portion and what they’ve learned from their experiences with place in their host communities for the year. Be sure to check back weekly! P.S. Interested in being or hosting a JOFEE Fellow? Applications for cohort two are now open for both prospective fellows and prospective host institutions! My debut expedition as Teva’s first JOFEE Fellow began in a transformational grease machine / holy mobile space most commonly known to the greater world as the Topsy Turvy Bus. Having just completed a three-week JOFEE Fellowship orientation and training intensive seminar, I was leading our seven-week Mayim l’Mayim themed bus tour fueled on used cooking oil, holy vibes, and Torah – not to mention the passion of our 5 radiantly unique bus educators, all of whom brought skills and essential senses of humor that our tour would not have succeeded without. Our team performed in camp talent shows; saw shooting stars; wrote […]
