Milking it with Hazon
Live from the food conference:
2 Comments |
Share This
| 
food conference,
Hazon,
hazon |
Food for Thought
On Saturday afternoon, as participants in the 2010 Hazon East Coast Food conference shuffled from their seats to the buffet tables, a small plate of goat meat appeared in the back of the dining hall. Quietly it was passed among the participants in Adamah, a three-month fellowship combining organic agriculture and Jewish learning. Weeks earlier, the Adamahniks had witnessed the ritual slaughter of ten goats they had spent the previous two months caring for. They held the animals to calm them as the shochet went about his work. Then they tanned the hides and hollowed out the horns to make shofars. Now the meat was about to become lunch for some 200 conference participants.
The fellows are an unusually earnest group. Over the three days of the conference I watched them sing and dance, give thanks for their food through song, say blessings with eyes closed and bodies rocking gently. And as the meat was passed around, there was a similar conscientiousness. They held their pieces contemplatively, said a blessing, and chewed slowly. (So did I, and it was phenomenal.)
"It's not easy," Aitan Mizrahi, who oversees the small herd of goats that live at the Isabella Freedman retreat center, told me. "It's emotionally challenging. It's spiritually challenging. My relationship to it is constantly evolving."
Hazon's mission is to create healthy and sustainable Jewish communities, but its most potent association is with food. This is the home of the annual Jewish food conference and, as they regularly reminded us, the center of the "new Jewish food movement." Hazon is the force behind dozens of Community Supported Agriculture programs across the country and has developed a reputation for mindful food practices -- stuff like raising and slaughtering goats in full view of the people who are ultimately going to eat them.
On Friday night, Rabbi Brent Spodek stood up and challenged the conference to go further. "To the degree that this [movement] retains a focus on food, it will remain a movement on the fringe," said Spodek. Rather, the focus should be on labor -- on production rather than consumption. Calling for a "Torah of self-sufficiency," Spodek wondered why there wasn't a Jewish carpentry school, or a Jewish plumbing school.
There were sighs and murmurs of agreement all around, and when he finished, enthusiastic applause. Mark Dornstreich, a veteran organic farmer who attended the conference with his wife Judy, thanked Spodek for defending the "beauty of manual work," which is "so undervalued in our society."
"It seems to have clearly hit a nerve," Spodek told me later.
As I've noted elsewhere, it's rare enough to find Jewish professionals who talk this way -- who tell people to their faces what they should be doing differently, who seem congenitally incapable of speaking bureacratese. But it will be interesting to see if this gains traction. Compared to food, labor is terribly unsexy. It conjures Jewish labor activists, aging hippies, the Workmen's Circle. Food activism is sensual (if you doubt it, you clearly haven't tried the chevre from the Adamah dairy). Chefs have become celebrities in our culture, and they're taking farmers along with them. After Bob Villa, how many famous carpenters can you name?
To be sure, there's lots of old hippy influence in Hazon. My first morning I watched goats getting milked while "Fire on the Mountain" played on the stereo. But I have to believe what part of what makes this appealing to suburban Jewish moms is the potential to eat healthy, and to eat extremely well. Wellness isn't a word I heard once in my weekend with Hazon, but it does seem to be the unacknowledged link between the broader food agenda and the bike trips, Hazon's other signature program.
Hazon is already bigger than food. The conference is a magnet for foodies, chefs, farmers, rabbis, social justice activists, environmentalists, and just regular folks who like to eat. Are these people going to get as fervently behind a Jewish carpentry agenda? Or activism on behalf of third-world laborers? Uniting under the food movement banner has the intrinsic advantage of allowing people to do right by the planet while doing very right by their own bodies.
Nigel Savage, the irrepressible Englishman who started Hazon ten years ago, rejected Spodek's notion that a focus on food would forever consign Hazon to the periphery. He noted that no less a public figure than Michelle Obama had touted Hazon's work (in a recent conference call about teenage obesity), and that Hazon's CSA network is the largest such faith-based effort in the country.
"Across the country people are unbelievably fired up by this," he said. "It's patently obvious that the Jewish food movement is transforming the Jewish community."
0 Comments |
Share This
|
food conference,
hazon,
Hazon |
24 Hours with Hazon
The 2010 Hazon Food Conference, East Coast version, kicked off last night at the Isabella Freedman retreat center in Connecticut. I haven't even been here a full day and already I've learned how to make a compost bucket, milk goats, make farmer's cheese, and braid challah.
Well, not really.
I've been flitting about so much and fussing with my camera that it's more honest to say I've watched other people learn these things. But maybe I've absorbed something. We'll know when I get home and set out to make my own feta.
We also saw video of Julia Child roasting chicken with ribbons of bacon slapped on top, a technique which should prove to be particularly useful.
In the meantime, it's freezing here, and I managed to barely sleep at all, so the Sleepwalking Jew is probably a better moniker right now. But we're powering through till Shabbat, where the word is we'll get to sample cholent with meat raised here at Isabella Freedman.
Video of the cheese/goat situation coming early next week, so stay tuned.
0 Comments |
Share This
|
food conference,
hazon,
Hazon,
isabella freedman |
Spinning the Night Away
It didn't start out very promising.
Somehow though, I managed to score myself a berth in the semi-finals at the dreidel competition hosted last week by the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.
The best part of that was I got to say "Looks like I spun my way into the semis" in the video.
If you don't get that joke, there's really very little hope for you. (viewer discretion advised).
Even without that minor excitement , it was an interesting evening, complete with an arts and crafts table (make your own totes! only at a museum, right?), some fair trade Judaica products, and a chocolate-making demonstration -- none of which made the final cut, alas, but which still merit a mention.
Still with me? Check out the competition:
0 Comments |
Share This
|
contemporary jewish museum,
major league dreidel,
san francisco,
San Francisco |
Reb Zalman
When I started planning this latest leg for TWJ, the first place I wanted to visit was Boulder, and not because I could get to hike with the Adventure Rabbi.
For more than two decades, this scenic college town has been the home of Rabbi Zalman Hiyyah Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement and one of the leading spiritual teachers of our time.
Days before I i was due to arrive, Reb Zalman cancelled our appointment because of a medical issue. Now, after more than a month on the road, I returned to Boulder for our interview. It's fitting in a way that this was the culmination of my latest journey. Along the way, I've met several people whose lives were changed by him and, I'd like to think, I was more prepared now then I was then.
Reb Zalman met me at the door in brown leather slippers and ushered me downstairs into a library teeming with volumes on Eastern spirituality, psychology, and Jewish thought. He seemed robust for 86, but when I asked about his health he shook his head. His mind, though, was sharp. Occasionally he had to search for a word, but he carried on easily for more than 90 minutes, sprinkling his phrases with Yiddishisms, quoting Biblical passages from memory, and dropping seamless references to Jung, Hindu poets, and Ray Bradbury novels.
I confess I'm not entirely sure how to process the footage, but I'll try and figure out some way to present it in the coming days. In the meantime, I'll post just this short clip, Reb Zalman's final words before we signed off.
1 Comment |
Share This
|
boulder,
Boulder,
reb zalman |
Autumn in the Bay
On my last day in the Bay Area, I visited an Oakland farmer's market where protestors have been weekly squaring off over Israel for years. At the appointed hour, both groups assumed their positions on opposite sides of Lake Park Avenue. On one side were about a half-dozen protestors affiliated with San Francisco Voice for Israel handing out flyers and holding Israeli flags. Across the street, about twice as many showed up for a silent vigil organized by Women in Black, an anti-occupation group. Everyone I spoke to, in both groups, was Jewish.
When I asked if there had been attempts to initiate some cross-boulevard dialogue, the sentiment was the same on both sides: Sure, we're willing, but those folks aren't interested in talking. As I interviewed one of the few men standing with Women in Black, one of his colleagues rushed over to inform him I was from the "other side." I informed her I wasn't on either side.
This is the state of intra-Jewish dialogue here. Of the five young Jews who disrupted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the G.A. in New Orleans last month, two were from the Bay Area. They were part of a team of 14 activists brought to the G.A. by the Oakland-based Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that has been vilified for its supposed self-hatred and alleged willingness to consort with Israel's enemies.
The situation has become so polarized and inflamed that several individuals informed me they feared for their physical safety. One of the JVP protesters in New Orleans, Rae Abileah, was placed in a headlock by another member of the audience. In May, the Berkeley home of Tikkun magazine editor Rabbi Michael Lerner was vandalized. And last month, in an apparent response to the disruption in New Orleans, several activists with ties to the pro-Israel group Stand With Us interrupted a JVP meeting in Berkeley (they insisted they were acting on their own). One of the activists deployed pepper spray against a JVP member, though the exact circumstances of the action are in dispute.
0 Comments |
Share This
|
ali abunimah,
Ali Abunimah,
bay area,
jewish voice for peace,
Jewish Voice for Peace,
oakland,
rae abileah,
san francisco,
San Francisco |
The Wandering Spinner
The Contemporary Jewish Museum held a pretty rockin Chanukah party on Thursday. The 2009 Major League Dreidel champ was there -- I know, I roll with celebrities -- and other good fun.
I'm gonna keep the details close to the chest for the moment since there's a sweet video on the way. I'll just say TWJ is a much better dreidel manipulator than once thought.
Also, if you're in Brooklyn next week, check out the Major League Dreidel tournament at the Knitting Factory. I know I shouldn't be plugging events on the blog, but I didn't want Brooklyn to feel bad that San Fran has all the hip Jewish happenings.
0 Comments |
Share This
|
contemporary jewish museum,
major league dreidel,
san francisco,
San Francisco |
Lighting up on Chanukah
Before Rabbi Yosef Langer lit the candles on the "Mama Menorah" in San Francisco's Union Square Wednesday night, he reminded the crowd that Chanukah kits were available for free, in case anyone wanted to "light up" at home.
What is it with this town?
The big celebration Chabad runs on Sunday is named for Bill Graham, the legendary San Francisco music impresario known for his association with the Grateful Dead and -- less so -- for his role in bringing the enormous menorah to Union Square.
And if the message wasn't sufficiently clear, when the lighting was complete, the sound system blasted the Moshav Band's rendition of the Shlomo Carlebach classic, "Lord Get Me High."
Oh wait, I know exactly what it is with this town.
Kidding aside, Langer is an interesting character. He is said to be the first Chabad emissary who wasn't born religious. As a recruitment tactic, he used to pass out free tickets to Grateful Dead shows. He's known to ride around the city on his motorcycle. And he was buddies with Graham, a German-born Jew who emigrated with his family before the rise of the Nazis.
0 Comments |
Share This
|
bill graham,
Chanukah,
chanukah,
San Francisco,
san francisco,
yosef langer |
Kosher tacos
It's been over a year since a kosher food hall in Mexico City got my face flushed, my mouth burning, and my eyes watering and, well, it's time to revisit the kosher Mexican genre.
Takosher has been trawling the streets of Los Angeles for about three months. You can follow its progress on Twitter.
I caught up with the truck last week outside a Ralph's supermarket in Sherman Oaks. Here's what happened.
0 Comments |
Share This
|
The Other Wandering Jews
I corresponded with Ayo and Yair for nearly a month before meeting them, on Thanksgiving morning on a side street near the Burbank airport, and I still didn't completely understand their deal.
I had seen their blog, and vaguely knew they had ditched their city lives, liquidated much of their worldly possessions, and were traveling the country in an RV. Their blog described the adventure as a "well-planned experiment in lifestyle design." So California.
Turns out, they're both east coasters. They married young, held serious jobs -- he at Bear Stearns, she at Deloitte -- but something jerked them off that track. Yair was reading blogs about mini-retirement and watching his boss see his dream of becoming a Navy Seal slip away. Ayo was looking warily at colleagues above her on the corporate ladder and wondering if that was what her future held in store.
"I didn't want to end up that way," Yair said.
So they quit. And hit the road.
Seven months ago, I had done something similar. But it had taken me until age 33 to figure out that the life of urban ambition was not for me. These two, both in their mid-20s, had figured it out much earlier. Part of me envied them.
They've been to the Dominican Republic and Burning Man. They spent some time parked in the lot of a Conservative synagogue in Reno (That didn't appeal to me either, but they seemed to have enjoyed it). For the winter, they'll be in San Diego, the city with the highest average low temperature in the Lower 48.
At some point, they say they'll probably return to a more conventional lifestyle -- have kids, settle down. But that's a few years from now. For now, Ayo says, it's about "traveling, living, having cool experiences."
That's also something I know a bit about.
4 Comments |
Share This
|
Need to know? Get JTA's free e-newsletters!
