Dear All,

Seder is one night – in Israel.
In chutz la’aretz – ie, outside of Israel – it’s two nights, so next Thursday night is the second night of seder.

And for most of the Jewish world, as we know, these two nights are indeed going to be different nights, as we figure out how to do seders by Zoom, or in small (very small) groups, and so on. It will be weird. And there will be lots of riffs on plagues, lots of haggadah supplements to download, and so on.

Hazon’s gift to you is a frame for the second night, for Thursday night.

Normally, at the end of the evening – with kids running wild, the table in chaos, the meal just finishing, various people conked out because it is so late or they’ve eaten so much or drank so much – right then, we count the omer. No wonder we don’t properly pay attention to it.

So our gift to you this year is – don’t bury it. Make it a conceptual focus of your second night seder.

The first night – celebrate that you’re alive.
That your family made it to America or Italy or England or wherever you are.
That – hopefully – you’ve survived this plague, so far.
That our doctors and health care workers are acting courageously, under impossible conditions; and that our legislators, for once, came together and quickly passed important legislation.

All this is freedom from. It’s freedom from want and oppression; from the absences our ancestors lived with their whole lives, just a century or two ago – without dentists or antibiotics or health systems, perhaps without democracy, without fast roads or clean water or… Zoom. Indeed.
So Wednesday night, as we celebrate the seder, this is an important part.

But Thursday night is different. It’s a riff on the seder. Much we did the night before, we may or may not do again, or in the same way. But the second night we count the omer.

Here’s a quick frame for this – and then some questions for your table… or your Zoom.

The frame
An “omer” is an agricultural measure. The barley harvest and the wheat harvest were growing, from Pesach to Shavuot, and we were an agrarian people – even, indeed, an indigenous people. So we counted up the days, one by one, until the harvest. That’s why Shavuot (and the word means “weeks,” as in the seven weeks from Pesach to Shavuot) is also chag ha’asif, the festival of gathering (the harvest.)

But then there was a second thing. Because Shavuot is zman matan torateinu, the time of the giving of the Torah. So the rabbis – and certainly the more mystical amongst them – gave a second overlay. This was the sefirot. Seven aspects of “the divine”; or, if you like, seven aspects of human behavior or character – kindness or openness; discipline, boundaries; balance and beauty, and so on.
(Click here for an explanation of the sefirot and here for the website of R Simon Jacobson, who has a beautiful book and kavanah and mailing list for counting the sefirot.)

And the count from Pesach to Shavuot – counting the omer, starting on Thursday night – is about moving from freedom from to freedom to. We’ve left Egypt. We’ve left slavery. Now we’re in the wilderness. No rules, no Torah, radical freedom. We learn that this is hard – we don’t like it – we miss, indeed, Egypt (a kind of Stockholm Syndrome on the part of the entire Jewish people.)

We learn the hard way that we can’t live with radical freedom, we actually need boundaries and limitation, to create a good society, to live a good life. And hence Shavuot, and the giving of the Torah.

What this means for Thursday night.

A few ideas:

• Make it thematically central to your evening. Introduce it at the start.
  Explain you’ll end with counting the omer – but that you’ll begin, for instance, by having everyone go around and share one freedom that they have, that they shouldn’t take for granted (or that one of their ancestors may not have been able to enjoy); and then, what’s one freedom that you personally have, or the world has, that you think is doing us some damage? 
  And this alone – and in this moment – may turn into a rich opening for your seder and a rich conversation during the evening;
• As you go through the seder – think about the different riffs on freedom that come up, the tension between freedom and order, the way that Pesach creativity itself arises from the structure, from the order of the seder;
• And then – after the meal – as you count the omer together, I invite you to do two things:
  • First – commit to try to count every day. If you remember every day, and count with a bracha, a blessing – super. But if you forget – count anyway. Count the days to Shavuot. Count the days up through this plague, through diminutions in our freedom of movement, and back – hopefully – towards the light. This year will be a good year to count;
  • And second, if you are minded to, commit to journaling each day about freedom from and freedom to. What you wish to be free from. What you wish to be free to do, or not do. What our world needs us collectively to be free to do more of or less of.

At its heart – make this period in our lives truly count.
And figure out for yourself, and whomever you’re sedering with, what you want it to mean; how, come Shavuot, you’ll be a better person, and help the world be a better world.

If you make these ideas a central theme of your second seder, you will not only bring the evening to life in new ways; you’ll not only engender a rich conversation; but you may also, as I believe the tradition fully intends, have Pesach not be an ending, or a night – or 7 or 8 nights – unto itself; but rather the beginnings of a journey. And this year – this year – that journey will be unique and important.

Two last things.
There are two days that punctuate this year’s counting of the omer that I want to remind you of.

April 22nd – the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Our campaign #soundthecall is gathering steam.
Sound your shofar, if you have one, at noon EDT that day – and post it on social media.
Click here to find more about what this stands for and why it is so important. And, if nothing else, please share this with your rabbi, with friends, with anyone who has a shofar, or anyone who has a drum or a trumpet or who simply wants to stand up in public that day and #soundthecall – a call for change, a call to learn our lessons, a call for healthcare and for environmental sustainability, a call not to bequeath our craziness to the generations that are to come. (And: daytime on April 22nd is the 13th day of the omer – yesod she’b’gevurah. The week is about discipline, and boundaries. And yesod is about fundamentals, in all senses. So this is, as chance would have it, a day in which we are indeed invited to think about the boundaries we need in this world, and how we get back to the fundamentals of living well and safely and equitably, here on this small busy planet.

Lag b’Omer, the evening of May 11th and the day of May 12th. It’s the 33rd day of the omer, and a minor holiday. In Israel a time of bonfires and barbecues. Everyone forgets what it’s about. But it’s about a plague. And the plague started, finally, to cease, and people stopped dying – and so we celebrated, and for twenty centuries we have celebrated every year.  Well – this year this will take on new meaning. If the epidemiologists are right, by then – PG – the tide will have started to turn. May it be so.

These two dates – talk about them at the seder.
Put them on your calendar – literally – and decide how you’ll choose to register them; you might make that part of your meal time conversation, ahead of the count itself.
Understand that when we start counting, on Thursday night, we are beginning a count that leads to Shavuot and is punctuated by these two dates – the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and Lag b’Omer, in the year of the plague.

And so – let’s make it count…

Shabbat shalom, chag sameach,

Nigel

[hr]

#soundthecall this Earth Day
April 22nd is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a time of celebration and a call to action. Let’s #soundthecall online worldwide: share a video of yourself on social media sounding a shofar or other instrument to stand up for the well being of planet Earth. Then this Earth Day, though we are physically distant, we will join virtually at 12pm ET to simultaneously blow shofar, sing songs, and raise our voices. RSVP for April 22nd and learn more at hazon.org/soundthecall.

And, be sure to join us live on Zoom on Monday, April 6th at 12pm ET for the official campaign launch. Learn more.

The post Next Thursday night — and #soundthecall on April 22nd appeared first on Adamah.

Thursday, June 13, 2019 | 10th Sivan 5779

Dear All,

Do we strive to change the world through fear or through a positive vision?

This is not a fake question, or the set-up for an obvious answer.
I’m more confused by this question, at the moment, than at any time in my life.

I used to feel that the answer was “through a positive vision.”
The word hazon is Hebrew for vision, and our name symbolized this view. Yes, we needed to tackle complex and depressing issues; but we would do this by inspiring people, and by sharing a positive vision for change.

And now I’m not so sure.

Most people most of the day simply get on with our lives. This is the nature of being human. It’s rare that there is an acute incident – a heart attack, a traffic accident, a major fire, an act of terrorism in our own community – that really cuts through normal daily life. Other than that we toggle between obligations and celebrations, work and play, family and friends and work and study.

But the climate challenge that faces the world right now is absolutely real, and it is worsening. A report from BP last week revealed that in 2018 extreme weather events themselves increased global carbon outputs.

This is a further negative feedback loop, to add to the ones that we already have.
And it’s against this backdrop that I spent last weekend at a really glorious Shavuot retreat at Isabella Freedman. (Stay with me, through this wrench of gears. This will indeed loop back.) It was Hazon at our absolute best. Bringing people together across difference. Beautiful davening. Inspiring kids’ programming. A quite remarkable Hallel, in which participants of quite different backgrounds and observances came together and sang our hearts out and blew the roof off. And then our unique Shavuot goat parade – our first-fruits, reconnecting with land and with Jewish tradition in a way that is memorable and creative and celebratory.

Part of the pivot that we’re about to make, as we start to implement our strategic plan, is that Isabella Freedman is indeed a Jewish lab for sustainability. It’s a place where people go not only to rest and renew, to switch off electronica, to reconnect in multiple ways. It’s also a place that models a positive vision of the world we’d like to see. Our food is healthy. Most of it is local. We don’t serve industrial meat. We minimize plastic. We compost everything, and the taste of our chickens’ eggs is testament to the healthy and chicken-like lives that they live. And, in other spheres, we want to be good neighbors and good stewards, we strive to create inclusive community, and so on.

So being a lab means not only pointing this out – more clearly than we have in the past – but also saying to people directly: this isn’t just for when you’re on vacation. It isn’t just when you’re at Isabella Freedman. We all need to do this. Jewish institutions need to walk the walk. Every single Jewish institution needs not only a kashrut policy but a food policy. Every Jewish institution needs to make sustainability a central value – changing our consumption, our energy usage, our waste stream – and then, as we do that, we need to stand up in public space, with neighbors of every faith and none and say: we must change our ways, and our governments must change their laws…

And this is how it toggles back, between fear and vision. We lack useful psychological tools to handle the complexity of the challenges that we face. If we live only in a world of “positive vision”, we run the risk of averting our eyes, of failing to see what is happening, and what will happen in the future. If we imagine only a dyspeptic future, we may well avert our eyes in a different kind of a way, because we can’t handle it, or we get depressed or overwhelmed.

And so this question is complexly balanced.

A few last random thoughts. We’re in the time of year when the Torah portions are not in sync, between Israel and the rest of the world. In Israel this week we’re reading b’ha’alotecha; in the US we’re reading naso. And so all these different elements swirl around. We’re reading the census, and I think: that’s right. The Torah teaches that everyone needs to be counted – everyone counts. And then the Jewish people are complaining about the meat they had in Egypt, and how great it was, and why can’t we go back. And I think yep – leadership is exhausting, and people are always complaining, it is always better somewhere else or sometime else; how can our institutions (including public and civic ones) possibly function well when everyone is constantly under attack? And then there’s a plague, and tza’arat (some kind of leprosy, maybe) and I think this is the kind of karma I don’t really believe in, but then it does happen: as a people we err, our actions are off-kilter; and then the world responds, whether we like it or not.

So… this is a time for reflection. As an organization, we’re giving ourselves six to twelve months to figure out how to bring our new strategy to fruition. How do we really get Jewish institutions to change? How do we move from education to action to advocacy; how do we step up from personal changes in behavior to communal and then societal ones? We will need to focus more – more as an organization, more as a Jewish people. We have to raise our game. Somehow we have to thread between a dyspeptic vision and a positive one. We have to remember that the biblical prophets, when they prophesied doom, were not foretelling it; they were not saying, this will happen; what they were saying was, this is what’s gonna happen if you don’t change your ways…

So: may we thread through. Let’s face the world’s challenges. Not be bowed by them. And begin – this week after receiving the Torah – by recommitting ourselves to live better upon the earth, ourselves, and by challenging our communities to do likewise.

(Click here for more information on the Hazon Seal of Sustainability – which nearly 60 institutions have now joined, and which is a roadmap for Jewish institutions to become more sustainable through education, action, and advocacy.)

Shabbat shalom,

Nigel

PS Maybe you were in shul for yizkor over Shavuot. If you were, you will have said the words about giving a donation in memory of someone who passed. If you’d like to give such a donation to Hazon, please click here.

The post A Real Question appeared first on Adamah.

by Aharon Ariel Lavi

This week we start reading Sefer Bamidbar, also known as “The Book of Numbers.” A strange name for a book, is it not? It derives from the fact that the first portion of the book, as well as other parts later on, deal primarily with counting, classifying and organizing the People of Israel back in the Sinai desert.

The text gives a pretty detailed account of the numbers of men in each tribe, and using some simple calculations we can estimate that anywhere between 4-6 million Hebrews lived in the world at the time. The funny thing is that after this general census it was actually forbidden to count the People of Israel again, so the exact number of Hebrews, and later Jews, will remain a mystery. However, Jews don’t always do as they’re told, right?

About 500 years later, King David made another census and was severely punished for violating this law (Chronicles I, 21). If we use the same kind of calculation we will find that the nation has pretty much multiplied itself, to 8-9 million people. Do the math, and you will discover that under normal conditions the Jewish people should have been the size of the Chinese at this point. But it’s not, it’s barely 14 million people strong. We also know that throughout the 2,500 years that have passed since the times of King David our nation never reached a much larger size, and at its lowest point was barely a million people strong, during the time of Rashi and the Rambam (about 800 years go). So where did everybody go? Many were killed in pogroms, and primarily in the Holocaust, but the truth of the matter is that most people probably just chose to leave. Assimilation and opting out of the Jewish People is not a modern, or post-modern, phenomenon, but rather a phenomenon as old as our nation itself. Being a Jew in this world is a mission, a challenge, as well as an opportunity for living a meaningful life. But not everybody is interested, and that’s fine.

While numbers are not the only parameter for the vibrancy of the Jewish People, it is safe to assume that it is important and that if we drop under a certain level of critical mass we may lose momentum significantly as a nation. That is one of the reasons most Jewish institutions in the world are predominantly preoccupied with numbers: intermarriage rates, affiliation rates, diminishing membership in Synagogues and so on. But perhaps they are a little bit too preoccupied with that?

Last week we held another Hakhel local gathering in NYC, attached to the Collaboratory, a conference for Jewish innovators and entrepreneurs. This was the sixth conference, and I had the privilege of attending it as well as three of the previous ones. The first one I attended was in San Diego in 2014, right after the famous Pew study was published with detailed statistics on the Jewish People, showing diminishing levels of affiliation, as expected. I remember one of the organizers saying at her keynote speech, that we – meaning the people at that conference – are the response to the Pew report and the proof that Judaism is not only here, but is actually thriving and reinventing itself as we speak. That conference had about 100 participants; the one in NYC had five times more and was sold out within 48 hours. The Jewish innovation scene is booming and the amount of talent and energy in it is astounding. So while numbers are going down, and they are and there is only so much we can do about it, a Jewish Renaissance is evolving below the surface, waiting to be better acknowledged by legacy institutions and receive the proper support it needs in order to take Jewish life to the next level.

Hakhel is proud to be part of this scene, with over 100 Jewish Intentional Communities around the world, in 30 countries and all continents. Community is the second most important component in Jewish life, after the family, and weaving a network of such communities is something we can all be proud of, and excited about.

So this month, like every month, we are glad to share some more professional insights, stories from communities around the world and key opportunities for all of us to grow.

Below is a picture from our NYC gathering of course, which was an amazing opportunity to learn and network with people from North and South America, Europe, Australia and Israel!

I would like to conclude with a blog shout out to Deborah Fishman from FED, and one of Hakhel’s advisors, for creating this time together for all of us!

Learn more about Hakhel – the first-of-its-kind Jewish Intentional Communities Incubator

The post Hakhel Blog: Aharon Ariel Lavi appeared first on Adamah.

Pictured above: Rabbi Nate and other food justice leaders from across the country.

Dear Friends,

Last week, Hazon Detroit’s Rabbi Nate DeGroot presented at the Center for Earth Ethics’ annual clergy conference, focused this year on the intersection of food and climate change. Rabbi Nate taught on our unified connection to nature and the earth as Jews, and on Jewish practices related to gratitude and food justice. Other speakers at the conference included Former Vice President Al Gore, Center for Earth Ethics Director Karenna Gore, world-renowned soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal, and many more. Mr. Gore’s presentation – similar in style and inspiration to An Inconvenient Truth and An Inconvenient Sequel – focused on three main questions in the face of our changing climate: 1) Must we change? 2) Can we change? and 3) Will we change?

1) Must we change?

We must. Mr. Gore said he likes to keep his presentations relevant, and so he included images and videos of historically abnormal flooding all around the world that has happened in just the last week alone. We know this is severely impacting the midwest region, including right here at home, where excessive rainfall has led to significant crop losses and delayed planting amongst close partners of Hazon and even in our own backyards. Mr. Gore shared that the five warmest years in recorded history have been the last five, and that 18 of the 19 warmest years have occurred since 2001. He shared that climate change has caused economic losses of $653 billion in just the last two years and that it could cause 1 billion climate migrants in the future. We must change.

2) Can we change?

We can. Mr. Gore presented data on the rapid growth of cell phones in the 1980s and 90s as an example of just how radically technology can change. In 1980, it was projected that there could be maybe 900,000 cell phone users by the year 2000. The actual figure was 109 million, or 120 times higher than estimated. Similarly today, the annual growth of the solar energy market exceeds estimates from 2010 by 17 times. In 2018, it exceeded 2010 estimates by 109 times. Solar jobs in the U.S. have grown 6 times faster than the overall economy in the last five years. “Solar installer” and “wind turbine service technician” are forecasted to be the first and second fastest growing job in the U.S. through 2026. Costs to produce renewables are going down. And the beauty of renewables is that, globally, wind could supply worldwide electricity consumption 40 times over, and enough solar energy reaches earth every hour to fill all the world’s energy needs for a full year. We can change.

3) Will we change?

This answer, Mr. Gore left up to us. As clergy and people of faith, he said it was up to us to engage and empower and inspire and motivate our communities to make the changes we need to have a healthy, habitable, hospitable, and balanced earth for generations to come. Will I change? Will we change?

This Saturday night at sundown, we kick off our summer harvest festival known as Shavuot, where in part we respond to that very same question: Will we change? Will we take all the gleanings from 49 days of counting the Omer, will we take the embodied liberation experienced at our Passover seders, and will we accept the sacred teachings of our tradition, so as to carve out a path of meaning, justice, love, and service for ourselves and for our community? Standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, just before receiving the Torah from God, the Israelite people proactively proclaim, “We will do what we understand.” It is on us as modern citizens of a global world, and as Jews awake to the time we’re living, to do what we understand. This Shavuot, will we change?

In our newsletter you’ll find some exciting news from one of our valued supporters, as well as exciting events coming up, celebrating the summer season that is upon us. And as always, feel free to reach out to say hi, to ask questions, and to get involved. 

In loving community,

Rabbi Nate, Wren, Marla, Brittany, Hannah, and Megan

The post Hazon Detroit: Will We Change? appeared first on Adamah.

Want a bigger taste? 
Join us this summer at the Hazon Food Conference!

• 4 6-ounce wild salmon filets (from Alaska), skin off
• 1 tablespoon chopped flat leaf parsley
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh chives
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Pat dry the salmon filets. Combine the fresh herbs in a bowl. Press the herbs on to the “presentation “side of the salmon (non-skin side). Salt and pepper the fish on both sides.

Place a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Lightly coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil. Place the salmon filets, presentation side down, in the pan. Here is the hard part-Don’t touch the fish for at least 3-5 minutes until the fish has browned and is not sticking to the pan. If it sticks, it has not browned enough. The browned fish will be crispy and firm and will loosen itself from the pan.

Turn the fish over and turn off the heat. Cover the pan and the fish will continue to cook for 3 more minutes. Your fish will be a perfect medium rare. If you want it well done (I don’t recommend it) keep the heat on a bit longer and cook the fish until it is firm when lightly squeezed on the sides of the filet.

Brown Butter

• 4 ounces unsalted butter

Place the butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook the butter until it has turned a medium golden brown and is very fragrant (about 10 minutes).

Drizzle the brown butter over the fish.

The post Recipe: Wild Alaskan Salmon appeared first on Adamah.

by Craig Oshkello

The local farm supply store, a seventh generation family business, left a message for me on Shabbat. Probably not aware that it was the fourteenth day of the counting of the Omer, they let me know the barley has arrived. I am one of a growing number of Jews that are leading a lifestyle based on environmental stewardship and social justice. As a Jew in the diaspora this path had yielded deeper meaning in my spiritual growth and a stronger connection to/ longing for the land of Israel.

It is now Motzei Shabbos (Saturday night) and there is a buzz on the farm. Although the north faces of the 4000 foot mountains on the horizon are still under 65” of snow, the first flowers are blooming here at 800 feet above sea level at our home in the valley.

Colts foot, Trout Lily, Marsh Marigold, Trillium, Lady’s Slipper and Blood Root are all of the first to bloom. They are “ephemeral” species whose bloom and foliage will disappear in a month. First to flower among the trees, the White Poplar, has a distinctly hairy looking flower locally referred to as “Popple Fuzz”, is now joined in a subtle symphony of tree flowers that rivals the beauty of their fall foliage. Pinks, reds, peach, white, golden, silver hues which adorn the valleys today will progress up the hillsides and yield to as many shades of green as the season evolves. It was over three months ago when we celebrated these trees birthday. Is this now a display of their adolescence? What is the connection with our ancestors and how did I get here? After 19 years of living and farming in this bioregion, I do know that these are some of the phenomena that serve as signs for to take specific actions on the ground to sustain the healthful and miraculous relationship I have with the food we grow.

After writing this piece, I will harness the metaphorical horses and drive over to Kenyon’s to pick up the barley seed. With the warming temps and moist soil today will be a good day to plant the barley and seed another plot of spring wheat, one of rye and another of oats and peas. While the fruit of the barley will not mature in time for Shavuot, nor will any fruit mature in the next 35 days, I feel a soulful longing for the place of my ancestors held in creative tension with the joys of my life of freedom. While I try to make sense of this on the first two of the four worlds, I revel in the ability to tell a story that weaves elements of the past present and future into a diasporatic earth based journey from Pesach to Shavuot. In remembrance of Yom Hazikaron, I will stop by my friend’s nursery and purchase some of his horseradish roots to plant in our perennial beds, on the sunny side of the hazelnuts, between some masses of Echinacea plants. In preparation for a farm to school event and for a Mother’s Day celebration I will work with my wife Sephirah today to prepare some of the vegetable plots for planting peas this week. In 2003, we bought northern chickpea seed, which is different from a garbanzo bean (think about that…), which we have been growing, saving seed from, and making hummus with ever since. This year we will appropriate a Native American agricultural practice of planting corn, beans and squash with a chickpea substitution and allow its 6’ vines to trellis up the corn stalks. This phenomenon of companion planting also referred to as plant guilds are exciting ways to maximize plant diversity in an more permanent agricultural system.

Engaging in processes of creation is a sacred and meaningful practice. In my experience of growing plants, there are always more questions than answers. Starting small with intention will yield the best results. Whether you are an experienced grower, or a first timer, the myriad combinations of plants that can be grown together creates an exciting opportunity for creative expression in your garden. I encourage you to grow plants this year. Plan for three species that you can plant together in your garden, on a container on your patio, or in a window box inside your apartment. Take the time to nurture this intention and consider your place in the world. Plants offer a marvelous reflection onto the nature of our universe.

Blessings on your journey,

Craig Oshkello

Living Tree Alliance, Vermont USA

Resources:

**Renewal Concept of Four Worlds – https://aleph.org/four-worlds-judaism

**Container Gardens – https://www.bhg.com/gardening/container/

**Plant Guilds – https://permaculturenews.org/2016/08/22/guilds-small-scale-home-

Living Tree Alliance is a Hakhel community. Learn more about Hakhel – the first-of-its-kind Jewish Intentional Communities Incubator

The post Hakhel Blog: Craig Oshkello appeared first on Adamah.

Dear Friends,

According to our biblical calendar, we are in the midst of the grain harvest, a season of gladness and growth which lasted seven weeks of seven days. It began with harvesting barley during Passover and ended with harvesting wheat at Shavuot. Forty-nine days the wheat would grow and grow, until it was ready to be cut and harvested just in time for Shavuot, when two loaves of bread would be offered at the Temple. According to our Torah, this honoring and culmination of the growing season is the reason we celebrate Shavuot, and only later did the slightly more mythical aspects of receiving Torah at Mt. Sinai come to coincide with the holiday’s significance. At one time, the flour was the revelation.

Nowadays, for each of those forty-nine days, Jews around the world engage in a practice called “Sefirat haOmer/Counting the Omer,” where we verbally bless and count each day that passes. While we may not be carefully watching our wheat crops grow, tending to their needs and supporting their health, we do have an opportunity to do just that for own spirits and souls. We once were slaves and now we’re free. But in order to truly be free, we must be the very best version of ourselves we can be, aligning our will and actions with the Divine will, living our best lives, and giving it all we’ve got. Just as we honored and celebrated the life growing around us in ancient times, we get to honor and celebrate the life growing within us today, giving loving attention and astute care to the places within that we want to be growing and developing.

This is a time on our calendar to delve deeply into the transformation that’s made possible by imbuing each day with intention, methodically committing to the changes we wish to see. If spring ever comes, with summer right behind, may we experience the transformation we’re seeking through a budding gladness and a thoughtful tending of the spirit, so that we may burst forth with the sun into the most brilliant versions of ourselves that we can be. This spring, you are invited into that process, as Hazon Detroit fills the calendar with opportunities to engage, reconnect, build, grow, dine, and strive for a healthier and more sustainable us. 

In loving community,

Rabbi Nate, Wren, Marla, Brittany, Hannah, and Megan

The post Hazon Detroit: The Wheat Harvest appeared first on Adamah.

Want a bigger taste? 
Join us this summer at the Hazon Food Conference!

Vegan Peanut Butter Cup Pie

This recipe & photo come from The Minimalist Baker

Prep time: 25 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes
Total time: 40 minutes

Servings: 10

Ingredients

Crust

• 1 sleeve graham crackers (or sub a similar gluten-free cracker/cookie)
• 4 1/2 Tbsp melted vegan butter or coconut oil

Pie

• 12 ounces firm silken tofu (slightly drained and patted dry)
• 1/2 cup creamy salted natural peanut butter
• 1/4 cup agave nectar or maple syrup (or sub honey if not vegan)
• 1 14-ounce can full-fat coconut milk OR coconut cream (1 can yields ~1 3/4 cups // chilled overnight // no shaking the can – you want the cream and liquid to remain separate)

Chocolate Ganache Topping

• 1 cup semisweet dairy-free chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup non-dairy milk

Instructions

Want a bigger taste? 
Join us this summer at the Hazon Food Conference!

Or come to Isabella Freedman for Shavuot! Find more Shavuot resources and recipes here.

The post Recipe: Vegan Peanut Butter Cup Pie appeared first on Adamah.

Want a bigger taste? 
Join us this summer at the Hazon Food Conference!

Garlic Herb Vegan Cheese

This recipe & photo come from The Minimalist Baker

Serves: 32
For the Cheese

• 2 cups (240 g) raw cashews
• 2 garlic cloves, minced (1 Tbsp or 6 g)
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder, plus more to taste
• 1 lemon, zested
• 2 lemons, juiced (1/4 cup or 60 ml)
• 3/4 cup (180 ml) water
• 2 Tbsp (6 g) nutritional yeast
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 2 Tbsp (30 ml) olive oil

For Serving

• 2 Tbsp (8 g) finely minced fresh dill

Instructions

1. Place cashews in a bowl and cover with cool water. Cover with plastic wrap and set in the refrigerator to soak for 12 hours. If you can’t get to them right away, drain, place back in bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. They will keep refrigerated for 24-36 hours.
2. Once soaked, drain cashews thoroughly and add to food processor. Add minced garlic, garlic powder, lemon zest, lemon juice, water, nutritional yeast, salt, and olive oil.
3. Process until very creamy and smooth, scraping down sides as needed. Then taste and adjust seasonings as needed, adding more lemon zest for tartness, nutritional yeast for cheesiness, garlic for zing, or salt for flavor + balance.
4. Place a fine mesh strainer (or colander) over a large mixing bowl, and lay down two layers of cheesecloth (or a clean, fine, absorbent towel).
5. Use a spatula to scoop all cheese over the cheesecloth, then gather the corners and twist the top gently to form the cheese into a “disc.” Secure with a rubber band.
   
6. Place in refrigerator to set for at least 6 hours, preferably 12, or until excess moisture has been wicked away, and it holds its form when released from the cheesecloth.
   
7. To serve, unwrap from cheesecloth and gently invert onto a serving platter. Reform with hands or cheesecloth as needed, then coat with chopped herbs and a bit more lemon zest (optional). It is fragile, so handle gently.
   
8. Enjoy chilled with crackers or vegetables. Cheese will hold its form for 1-2 hours out of the refrigerator, but best when chilled. Leftovers keep well covered in the refrigerator up to 5 days.

Want a bigger taste? 
Join us this summer at the Hazon Food Conference!

Or come to Isabella Freedman for Shavuot! Find more Shavuot resources and recipes here.

The post Recipe: Garlic Herb Vegan Cheese appeared first on Adamah.

Parshat Devarim

The Torah may be our past, but Devarim, the shared name both for this week’s Torah portion and for the fifth book of the Torah, is our history.

What is the difference between past and history?

Our past is simply a chronology of events, one after another, that bring us to the present. It is what one may observe if they traveled back in time and watched things unfold.

History, on the other hand, adds important layers; history is the past we choose to tell and how we tell it.

The establishment of history is an inherently political process. Whoever has the most access to public discourse or public thought typically gets to shape the narrative of the people. In the case of Devarim, this power rests solely with Moses. Though he shall not see the promised land and must cede this honor to his successor, Joshua, he still possesses the most powerful role of this period for the Jewish people: he gets to tell them their own story.

After all, Devarim translates to “the words,” and these are “the words” of the Jewish people.

We already know that the Jews eventually receive the entirety of the Torah, so why does it matter that Moses retells some parts if the Israelites have access to the rest?

Often, the content of the story is less meaningful than its rhetoric. Dr. Albert Mehrabian breaks down human conversation into three percentage blocks: 55% body language, 38% tone, and a measly 7% content, ie. the words actually used. Of course these are situational numbers that rely on a specific context, but they illustrate a point. It isn’t what you say, it’s how you say it that matters. Recapitulation and emphasis are important rhetorical devices that form a people’s history.

What does Moses speak of in his retelling of the Israelites journey through the desert? He admonishes the Israelites for the debacle with the spies, and he reminds them of his organization of magistrates and councilors to help him govern. He talks several times of how they bear the fault of his not entering the Promised Land (no mention of him losing his cool and striking the rock, though). There is no mention of Miriam or Aaron’s death.

Most notably to me, however, are the words of conquest.

What do you feel when you read this passage?
[myquote author=””]32 Then Sihon went forth towards us, he and all his people, to war at Jahzah.
33 And the Lord our God delivered him to us; and we smote him and his sons and all his people.
34 And we conquered all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed every city, the men, women, and the young children; we left over no survivor.

Devarim (Deuteronomy) 2:32-34[/myquote]

For many of us, words like these highlight a profound disconnect between Jewish values and Jewish history. We learn from Abraham the welcoming of guests, and this value seems at total odds with his descendents then leaving no survivors, even children. Even more shocking is that this is not just part of our past, but by Moses’s retelling it is now our history, and it does not seem a shameful retelling.

This parsha coincides with the haftorah that tells the story of Isaiah’s vision of the third Temple, a vision that we celebrate this Friday evening as Shabbat Hazon. This is a poignant week, a time when our tradition asks us to both look back into our history and look forward into our future. When we are, as the Rabbi’s say, “blessed” with a vision of the third Temple this Friday, I urge us all to consider what this vision is and why. Choosing our history shapes our present, and our present shapes our vision of the future. Given our history of conquest, is it any surprise that the vision of this temple tends to be another sanctified space, reaffirming a legacy of ownership and exclusion?

We can build temples of things other than space, though. Heschel writes about Shabbat:
[myquote author=”Numbers 33:2“]Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath[/myquote]

This passage not only establishes the idea of the Jewish sanctity of time, but also opens an array of abstract things that we as Jews can sanctify instead of our space. What other cultural dimensions can we sanctify? Can we choose to sanctify our relationships with our neighbors? Can we choose to build Temples out of our natural surroundings? Can our entire world not be the third Temple? Maybe most importantly, only one thing can occupy a physical space at a given moment, but is there any reason many couldn’t coexist in a temple built of our love for one another?

This vision of the third Temple is not outrageous, but it may seem so given our history. As Audre Lorde writes: 
[myquote author=””]The transformation of silence into language and action is a self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.[/myquote]

If, therefore, we begin to tell a history that acknowledges our colonialism, that tells the stories of those we harmed, that extolls not when we conquered but when we resolved, we may live in a present where a third Temple of this nature may not seem so far fetched.

At summer camp, we try to teach how our natural surroundings are already sanctified. It isn’t our dining hall or our cabins that we’ve built that are sacred, but the two-hundred-year-old oak trees and dusk sky.

Our Saturday morning Shabbat nature service, a series of laminated prayer cards, quotes and stories placed along a hiking trail, replaces any physically constructed prayer space with our environment.

Just last week, we took a group of teens on a sunset walk to show them how the natural world congregates and makes noise as it transitions from dusk to night, just as Jews do with maariv, or evening, prayer. What better way to draw this connection than to experience that transition for yourself under the night sky?

These aspects of our natural world are ever present, but it is when we come together as a camp community that we perceive them as sacred. We choose this vision of the third Temple; a Temple under the sky, large enough for all, which becomes holy only when we come together and practice holiness with one another.

Now, our task must be to tell the history for which this is a fitting Temple.

Henry Schmidt is a Program Director at the Shalom Institute and the Camp JCA Shalom Garden Director. He believes in the power of a delicious tomato and can occasionally be found as the dining hall compost fairy. Read his full bio here.

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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!

The post Choosing our History | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog appeared first on Adamah.

Parshat Maasei

[myquote author=”Numbers 33:2“]וַיִּכְתֹּב מֹשֶׁה אֶת-מוֹצָאֵיהֶם, לְמַסְעֵיהֶם–עַל-פִּי יְהוָה; וְאֵלֶּה מַסְעֵיהֶם, לְמוֹצָאֵיהֶם

And Moses wrote each stage of their journeys as God commanded; and these are the stages of their journeys.

Numbers 33:2[/myquote]

Earlier this year, Isabella Freedman hosted a Moishe House retreat called “Wandering Jews.”

Led by New York Times contributor Eli Reiter, twelve people in their twenties and thirties got together to discuss their experiences and wisdom regarding travel as a Jewish person. They discussed things like kashruth and shabbat observance while abroad.

The question is: Why bother?

When the Torah lists all the stages of the journey through the desert, as per the text from Numbers above, it really does discuss each part. All forty-two stages, in fact!

The question is: Why bother?

God commands that when the Jews do finally enter the land, they are to travel three times a year to Jerusalem.

Wasn’t the journey to the land long enough?! Why bother?!

Travel is hard. Sitting at home is easy.

Hiking is hard. Watching Netflix is easy.

Adventures change you. Inaction keeps you the same.

Wandering is change. On a very basic level, you are moving from one place to another. But it’s so much more than that.

I could quote Emerson on “roads less traveled” or Kerouac on basically anything, or any of the myriad formulations regarding “journey vs. destination,” but we all know it in our bones. Wherever we are isn’t quite enough. Our spirits are thirsty for “new” and “different” and “more.”

It’s not just about knowledge. BBC’s Planet Earth is great. It’s breathtaking and educational, but it doesn’t smell like the woods and doesn’t feel like the soil. I remember sitting at my desk at home watching Planet Earth, and David Attenborough was narrating the journey of some bird that flies miles and miles to get water every day. Instead of absorbing any facts, like the name of the bird, or where on Earth this desert was, I got fixated on a feeling: my body had a sudden urge to go running.

This urgency hits every now and then. I think the term is “wanderlust.” A small form of this might be what my grandmother calls “shplikes.” It’s the Traveler in each of us, the primal instinct to find something somewhere else.

I heard recently that the reason people like shiny things is evolutionary – our evolutionary ancestors that were attracted to shiny things found water more often. Like that bird in Planet Earth, journeys to water are woven into our DNA.

Modern technology has hijacked that instinct. The shiniest thing in our everyday lives is the vibrant display of our LCD screens. Our computers convince us that reading articles and engaging on Facebook has given us real experience and wisdom, but it hasn’t. We’ve merely fallen into the trap of complacency – we let others do our research, we let others do our shopping, we let others do our exploring. The story of the Spies (related earlier in Numbers 13) teaches this very lesson – don’t send others to have your experiences for you.

The Torah teaches us that every single journey is of the utmost importance by listing every one of the forty-two moves the Jews made in the desert. It is important to note the specific language of the verse: Moses wrote the “מוֹצָאֵיהֶם” (motzaeihem) of the Jews. The root of that word is י – צ – א, “go out.”

The destinations were listed, but the verse seems to be saying that the key was the journey – the going. There were stops, but that’s not actually what God wanted recorded.

Journey before destination. It’s a mindset. When we turn on our phones see a Buzzfeed article about a beautiful destination, which is destination-centric, we say something like “I wish I was there.” When we hike up a mountain, a journey-centric experience, we say “I’m so happy I’m here.”

All the Wandering Jews feel this.

All the people who come to Isabella Freedman feel this.

All of humanity feels this. That we’re being tricked into staying where we are. That we’re being sold information as experience. That there’s a real, deep need to move ourselves to new places and to see new things: To become not just informed, but changed.

Eli Weinbach is a Retreat Coordinator and JOFEE Fellow at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. He has been working for Hazon since September 2017, and splits his time between NYC and Isabella Freedman. See his full bio here.

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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!

The post Why Do We Wander? | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog appeared first on Adamah.

Parshat Chukat

In Chukat, our mother dies.

“Miriam died there [at Kadesh] and was buried there. The people were without water and they joined against Moses and Aaron.” ~Numbers 20.1-2

Miriam’s death gets one line, and then the narrative is quickly redirected back to the patriarchs. I was amazed at the amount of lines the Torah takes in Chukat to explicate the condemnation of Moses, the laws or ritual purification, and the military proceedings of the Israelites, while one verse is all we hear about the death of Miriam the Prophetess.

Miriam provided the water. And just as in the central focus of the movement at Standing Rock, “Water is Life.” Mayim chayim.

If you say mayim repeatedly, you also begin to say ima — mother. In the Torah, we lost our mother Miriam, our life source. She is barely mentioned again.

So, the central question for me and for us that comes up is: whose story is this? Who wrote this book? There is an obvious reality that women were centrally important to the life and culture of the Israelites, yet they are seldom mentioned, celebrated, or mourned. I see this as the Torah’s infidelity to the truth; it makes me suspicious of the motives of those men who wrote it, and it makes me sad. It also makes me wonder what was happening in all those deep gaps, and how can imagining into them help us remember, and how can it help my and our Judaism?

At the Jewish Farm School, our philosophy and practice is rooted in the ancestral agricultural teachings in the Torah. With all the Torah’s gaps, we’ve begun to ask: what are we, as an organization, missing? We want to maintain a firm ground in our ancestral texts, and also be in conversation with their patriarchy and violence, with the ways they don’t serve our contemporary community. How can our relationship to the Torah’s stories be made more whole?

Our way into this inquiry was to initiate a study group, open to the community, diving into the historical relationship between Jews and land. We’ve been seeing what it feels like to try to weave together competing and coexisting stories and histories of our people.

We were aiming to feel into the past and fill the gaps that we’re left with, to see if we can inherit a sense of wholeness. What’s been happening is an invigorating rocking between mind-blowing disorientation and clarity, where we’re finding that “who we are” and “who were we” are not distinct questions, that history can never be a singular noun, and that the past is not in the past. We’re learning to remember with a grounding in our own feelings, and into the land itself and all that springs from it–human, spirit, and their confluence. This is our process of flowing from being people of the book, back to being people of the earth.

A central lesson from Chukat, for me, was about mourning. When we live into our histories in this way, we begin to process, and to mourn.  Mourning, in a way, is to see myself in a relationship to the past and to the present, not just in a relationship to a processional march towards the future, towards a destiny. It’s about marking and honoring time, and honoring the space that my body and soul are asking for. It’s something that I haven’t learned how to do well, because my society and my tradition hasn’t really taught me, even though Jewish tradition is rich in mourning practices.

What happened to the Israelites when they didn’t mourn the death of Miriam?

Or did they mourn her, but we’re simply not told the story? We know they mourned for Aaron — who died soon after — for 30 days instead of the usual seven.

I wonder how it really went down, but the story in this Torah portion seems to go: she dies, Moses strikes the stone, the leaders are condemned. They hasten the end of their wandering, they seek to enter land, the people of those lands don’t want them there, they take up arms, almighty god-as-weapon allows them to displace people and take their land.

And that’s the story we have now.

Visual representation of moses striking the rock/the stiff wave of patriarchy

What did the Israelites need in that moment? Miriam, Aaron, and, finally, Moses were the last ones to remember Egypt, and the generation at Kadesh is the first to live in the tension between inherited destiny and inherited trauma. In that tension, the Israelites had a choice: what modality of leadership do we as a people follow?

As we ourselves feel back into history, we perhaps feel the stiff wave of the masculine sweep over the people as they leave behind Miriam’s body. Decisions were made to strike, to invade, to penetrate, to advance, to take.

But other options existed: to gather, to feel, to listen, to heal.

We have the same choices now. We can choose the parts of ancestral spirits and story into whose memory we want to live.

Here is guidance, medicine, and a spell offered to us by Alicia Ostriker in part of her poem The Songs of Miriam:

What did I have but a voice, to announce liberty
No magic tricks, no miracles, no history
No stick
Or stone of law. You who believe that God
Speaks only through Moses, bury me in the desert
I curse you with drought
I curse you with spiritual dryness
But you who remember my music
You will feel me under your footsoles
Like cool ground water under porous stones

Follow me, follow my drum
Follow my drum, follow my drum
Follow me, follow my drum
Follow my drum

Moses, it is said, dictated the Torah. I don’t take that as fact, but I do take it as truth.

His sister died on the same day he was condemned; can we blame him for the selfishness of his memory?

I believe this story can be liberated from the shortcomings of our forefathers. We can breathe our fears and desires and our grief and our question into the spaces they left for us, and step back and feel that, finally, it is memory whole and true. Then, we can sit there for a while, and process, and mourn, and gather, and heal, and look at each other in the eyes, as a people.

And then, if we’re ready, we can move forward towards our collective destiny.

Alex Voynow is the JOFEE Fellow at Jewish Farm School and grew up in the Pine Barrens, 45 minutes east of Philly, where his growing wonder of trees and forest soil mingled with a discomfort and distrust of mainstream suburban lifestyle. He combines his love and understanding of food and agroecology with a commitment to social and ecological justice and community organizing. Read his full bio here.

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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!

The post Mayim Chayim and Honoring our Mother | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog appeared first on Adamah.