Hazon Food Guide Toolkit

Hazon Food Guide Toolkit

Revised 2016

5th Edition

Hazon Food Guide Toolkit Authors: Judith Belasco and Anna Hanau, with contributions from Ellen Botnick, Miriam Coates, Rachel Gelman, Justin Goldstein, Lauren Greenberg, Aaron Gross, Melissa Hoffman, Daniel Infeld, Leah Koenig, Becky O’Brien, Shuli Passow, Robin Rifkin, Alli Rosen, Rachel Sacks, Brooke Saias, Amanda Schanfield, Ilana Schatz, Nadia Schreiber, Natalie Soleil, Edith Stevenson; Introduction by Rachel Jacoby Rosenfield We would like to acknowledge and thank Emanuel J. Friedman Philanthropies for their support of Hazon’s collaborative work with The Humane Society of the United States and the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA). JIFA, which focuses on Jewish values and compassion to animals, contributed substantially to this revised edition.

Hazon’s work would not be possible without the generosity of our many supporters. A list of our major donors can be found on our website: hazon.org/about/who-we-are/supporters/.

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES. Hazon, 125 Maiden Lane, Suite 8B, New York, New York 10038 212 644 2332 - www.hazon.org Hazon creates healthier and more sustainable communities in the Jewish world and beyond.

Copyright © 2016 by Hazon, Inc. All rights reserved.

“Being part of a religious community that includes composting as part of its regular habits is deeply meaningful. It integrates one set of values into another, as my environmentalism finds new expression as a Jewish act, and my Jewish community encompasses a behavior that aligns with my personal commitment to environmental stewardship. This seemingly small practice of composting enables me to feel more fully whole in my Judaism and more spiritually rooted in my work to connect with and care for the earth.”

— Shuli Passow

Hazon Food Guide Toolkit New York, NY Boulder and Denver, CO Fifth Edition: 2016

Contents

Introduction by Rachel Jacoby Rosenfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 About Hazon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Hazon Food Guide 1. Healthy, Sustainable, Humane, Kosher: Food “Fit” to Eat”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2. Eating Together: Planning for Meals, Kiddush, Simchas, and Holidays . . . . . . . . . . 27 3. Serving and Cooking the Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 4. Food Waste: Making Less of It, Doing More with It. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 5. Food Education. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 6. Community Supported Agriculture and Gardens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 7. Food Justice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 8. Working With Your Institution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58

Appendix I: Education Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 Appendix II: Sustainable Buying Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Appendix III: Animal Welfare Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87 Appendix IV: Local Community Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Conclusion: Making Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97

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Introduction

Why should my Jewish institution use this toolkit?

“V’Achalta, V’Savata, u’Verachata” You shall eat, you shall be satisfied, and you shall bless God. —Birkat hamazon, the traditional Jewish blessing after the meal.

Jewish meals unite us—whether it’s a Passover seder at home, a communal lunch in a JCC, a senior center, or a Jewish summer camp, or a Shabbat dinner in your congregation. Food, rituals around food, and distinctions about what’s “kosher,” whether defined according to Jewish law or to other ethical standards, is a defining feature of our religion, tradition, and culture. So, when a group of Jews sit down to eat in a JCC, a synagogue, a hospice program, or a summer camp, what we serve and how we serve it matters.

The Food Guide and Audit Toolkit seek to help us to approach the daily act of feeding ourselves and our communities with the kind of sanctity, satisfaction, and gratitude our tradition celebrates. And believe me, in the age of industrial agriculture and in our increasingly “flat world,” this is not as easy as it seems. We do our best to provide nutritious meals to our children, our families, and our seniors. And yet, when we hand over a Styrofoam plate heaped with steaming industrial processed red meat, slaughtered by underpaid laborers and stewed in tomatoes imported from who-knows-where, we can’t help but be nagged by the uncomfortable question, is this really “kosher?” If we determine that who grows our food, where it comes from, what it’s fed, what’s sprayed on it, and what it’s served on matters to us, to our health, to the earth, to our neighbors, children, and grandchildren, then it’s time to begin asking ourselves a few tricky, but answerable, questions right now. Where does my agency get its food? How many “food miles” did it take to get from the farm to my mouth and how much petroleum does that represent? Were animals slaughtered, and if so, was it done humanely? Who are the people growing my food and are they being paid enough to feed their families? Are there farmers nearby who are struggling to sell their crops who might supply our agency?

As a Jewish communal agency, how might we supply our constituents and neighbors with healthy, locally grown food within our building and beyond?

Jewish agencies have begun to answer these questions in all kinds of exciting and innovative ways, from planting their own gardens to sponsoring local farm stands for their communities. As the gathering places of our people, the places where we convene to learn, to pray, to socialize, to heal, and yes, to eat—Jewish institutions have the opportunity to address these questions in meaningful and perhaps even game-changing ways. We represent formidable purchasing power and we can vote for a more sustainable and healthy world with our daily purchases. So use this Food Guide Toolkit to help you take the first steps, to ask yourselves the very real and very Jewish questions about where your agency is sourcing its food. Together we can work to sustain ourselves, our communities and our world.

Rachel Jacoby Rosenfield was the founding Director of the Jewish Greening Fellowship, an innovative program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center that supports JCCS and Jewish camps in greening their facilities, operations, and programs.

While we hope that the Hazon Food Guide Toolkit will help you make tangible changes in your institution – whether by procuring compostable plates or starting a garden – it is our hope that more than any one change, we provide a range of ideas and tools to help you use Jewish food education - in the broadest sense - to renew and strengthen your community, to help your community live lives that are more Jewishly vibrant and healthier and more sustainable.

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About Hazon The word hazon means vision.

We work to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community and a healthier and more sustainable world for all.

Our motto is “the Torah is a commentary on the world, and the world is a commentary on the Torah,” which reflects our determination to apply Jewish thought to some of the greatest challenges of our time – and our belief that the act of doing so is good not only for the world, but also for the renewal of Jewish life itself.

We effect change in three ways:

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Through transformative experiences such as immersive multi-day programs that directly touch people’s lives in powerful ways;

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Through thought-leadership that is changing the world through the power of new ideas and fresh thinking. We include in this category writing, teaching, curriculum-development and advocacy, amongst other things;

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And through capacity-building, which means not just working with people as individuals, but explicitly supporting and networking great projects and partners in North America and Israel.

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We were founded in 2000 and we have grown every year since, by pretty much all metrics. We are based in New York City and at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT, and we have staff in Detroit, Boulder and Denver. We welcome participants of all religious backgrounds and none, and we work closely with a wide range of institutions and leaders across the Jewish world. If you’re interested in talking to us about how we might work together in the future – and especially about how we might be of use in your community – please be in touch.

These are some of the current foci of our work:

Transformative Experiences •

Retreats at Isabella Freedman, on all of the Jewish holidays, plus silent meditation retreats, LGBT programming and others.

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Multi-day food programs, including the Hazon Food Conference and the Hazon Sustainable Israel Tour

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Multi-day bike rides, including our New York and Israel Rides

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Teva Retreats for middle-schoolers

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The 3-month Adamah program, for 20-somethings

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Our Intentional Communities Conference

Thought-Leadership •

The JOFEE Fellowship invigorates the Jewish educational landscape by developing a cohort of year-long fellows in professional placements who will receive intensive training and mentorship by leaders in the Jewish Outdoor, Food, Farming & Environmental Education field.

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Resources on Jews, Food & Contemporary Issues, including curricula materials for adults and kids

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Our blog, the Jew & the Carrot

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Resources on shmita – the sabbatical year in Jewish life

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Weekly emails, speaking, and teaching that we do throughout the year

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Capacity-Building •

Our local and regional staff are working closely with a range of institutions and leaders to support and strengthen Jewish life, including by launching a series of one-day Jewish Food Festivals around the country, and by utilizing our Food Guide Toolkit in Jewish institutions

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The Hazon Seal of Sustainability provides a roadmap and certification for Jewish organizations across the country engaging in sustainability-related education, action, and advocacy. Hazon helps organizations form a Green Team, perform an audit, and commit to meaningful sustainability projects.

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The Hazon CSA is the largest faith-based network of Community-Supported Agriculture projects in North America

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We give out mini-grants to support the JOFEE field

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Through fiscal sponsorship and Makom Hadash we help to incubate, house, and network great young organizations in the Jewish world.

Hazon and the Jewish Food Movement As Jews, we’ve been thinking about kashrut - about what is “fit” to eat - for nearly 3,000 years. And a growing number of people today realize that our food choices have significant ramifications—for ourselves, our families, and the world around us.

Hazon stands at the forefront of the Jewish Food Movement, leading Jews to think more broadly and deeply about our own food choices. We’re using food as a platform to create innovative Jewish educational programs to touch people’s lives directly, to strengthen Jewish institutions, and, in the broadest sense, to create healthier, richer, and more sustainable Jewish communities.

The majority of today’s agriculture system relies primarily on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, large amounts of water usage, and concentrated livestock facilities. These practices, along with a multitude of others, pollute the environment, cause health problems for workers and consumers, and suffering for animals.

Hazon’s Food Guide Toolkit is a way for your Jewish institution to adopt more sustainable practices when it comes to its food choices and to understand why

making these changes is so critical to the Jewish community and world at large.

This is a comprehensive, go-to resource for any Jewish institution looking to change their food programs to be more sustainable. There are different sections within the Food Guide Toolkit that pertain to specific topics on how to alter your institution’s food programs and policies to be more environmentally, socially, and spiritually conscious. Do not feel overwhelmed by the many different sections you see here; you do not have to do everything all at once! It is important to realize what your goals are for your specific institution and then take this greening food process step-by-step. Even a small change is better than no change at all.

Don’t forget to let us know as you make changes within your institution. We want this guide to be a forum for all Jewish institutions to share their sustainable food practices. If you want to learn more about Hazon’s work, visit hazon.org. If you have questions, email seal@hazon.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

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Hazon Food Guide Jewish meals unite us—whether it’s a Passover seder at home, a communal lunch in a JCC senior center or a Jewish summer camp, or a Shabbat dinner in your congregation. Food, rituals around food, and distinctions about what’s “kosher” (whether defined according to Jewish law or to other ethical standards) are defining features of our religion, tradition, and culture. So, when a group of Jews sits down to eat, what we serve and how we serve it matters.

Hazon’s Food Guide is full of inspiration, ideas, definitions, real-life stories, and guidance. It seeks to help us to approach the daily act of feeding ourselves and our communities with the kind of sanctity, satisfaction, and gratitude our tradition celebrates.

Jewish institutions—as the gathering places of our people, the places where we convene to learn, to pray to socialize, to heal, and yes, to eat—have the opportunity to do this in meaningful and perhaps even game-changing ways. So use the Food Guide to help you take the first steps.

The process of reading the Food Guide can lead to change simply through raising awareness and seeding inspiration. You will learn of many possible changes you could make, which can be useful but potentially overwhelming.

1 Healthy, Sustainable, Humane, Kosher: Food “Fit” to Eat” The word “kosher” means “fit” – and Jews have been evaluating what food is “fit” for them to eat for thousands of years. Jewish institutions generally have policies around kashrut observance; you’ll want to find out what the policy is at your institution if you don’t already know. These policies set the standard for what food may be served to the community at that institution.

While kosher is important, we see an opportunity to expand your consideration of what food is “fit” to eat based on how and where it was grown or raised, and the effects of its production on the people who do the work and the land where it is produced. Just as there are a range of hechshers (kosher labels) indicating different levels of kosher supervision, there are a number of different “eco-labels” and terms used today to tell you about how a certain food was made.

We explain these terms and labels here, to guide you in your food choices. And we remind you that, in working with your institution to incorporate more sustainable food into its practices, you will have a lot of choices. Our food system is imperfect, and we don’t suggest that you set out hoping to serve exclusively local, sustainable, Fair Trade, kosher, humane, handmade, ethical, recycled everything on your first go. While you may always strive to bring your institution to greater heights of sustainability, be satisfied by incremental steps towards your goal.

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Organic The widespread availability of Certified Organic foods is one of the best resources available to consumers to find fruits, vegetables, grains, and other plant­based foods that are healthier and better for the environment.

Unfortunately, certified organic chicken, turkey, and eggs may come from animals raised on typical factory farms and certified organic beef cattle, like most all cattle in the US, spend the end of their lives on crowded feedlots. While there may be some welfare benefits for animals raised in organic dairies, even this is uncertain.

When it comes to animals, organic insures mostly only that animals were not given certain drugs and were fed certified organic feed.

Agriculture is the human endeavor most vulnerable to climate change. And, changing farming practices can do much to mitigate stress humans are putting on the atmosphere. “Conventional” (or non-organic) agriculture depends on cheap oil at every step on the food chain from the production of fertilizer to transportation of crops to market. One third of greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to the food system, leading to an unsustainable cycle in which agriculture contributes to climate disruption, which in turn leads to stress on agriculture. Today, experts are calling for a shift from dependence on petrochemicals to an agro-ecological approach that conserves water and energy, builds the fertility of the soil, and values sustainability over the long term.

ORGANIC FRUITS, VEGETABLES, AND GRAINS To be certified organic, crop farmers must use only approved fertilizers and pesticides on their crops, and ensure that there is no sewage sludge used or potential for contamination from neighboring, non-organic fields.

The USDA regulates a few different uses of the word “organic” on packaged goods: •

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100% organic - must contain only organically produced ingredients and processing aids (excluding water and salt). The USDA seal may appear on the packaging.

Organic - must consist of at least 95% organically produced ingredients (excluding water and salt).

Any remaining product ingredients must consist of nonagricultural substances approved on the National List including specific non-organically produced agricultural products that are not

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commercially available in organic form. The USDA seal may appear on the packaging.

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Made with organic ingredients - must contain at least 70% organic ingredients and list up to three of the organic ingredients or food groups on the principal display panel. The USDA seal cannot be used anywhere on the package.

Organic labels tell you that chemical fertilizers and pesticides were not used on your crops; this is a great step in the right direction, as these substances damage soil structure, harm pollinators and wildlife, poison farm workers, and may potentially cause damage to consumers as well.

ORGANIC CHICKENS, TURKEYS, AND LAYING HENS Organic is a fantastic idea, but, sadly, an organic certification doesn’t ensure that animal welfare has been improved. An organic certification on chicken and turkey meat does not imply any improvement in animal welfare. For eggs, organic standards only prohibit the caging of laying hens, which may provide minimally better conditions for the birds than conventional systems.

However, organic standards for eggs do not require the husbandry changes that are needed to make cage­ free systems truly high welfare. Consumer Consumer Reports explains that though “USDA regulations explicitly prohibit continuous total confinement of organic animals,” in practice “the USDA has failed to enforce this standard for poultry, and continues to allow a number of industrial-scale producers who have built covered porches as ‘outdoor access,’ inaccessible to the majority of the birds, to label their poultry products ‘organic.’” As Jonathan Safran Foer puts it in Eating Animals, for “organically raised” birds “‘access to the outdoors’ can mean nothing more than having the opportunity to look outside through a screened window.”

ORGANIC DAIRY AND BEEF CATTLE Beef and dairy cattle, too, are not necessarily better off in organic operations. Like conventionally raised beef cattle, organically raised beef cattle typically start their lives on pasture but end them on feedlots where they are fed an unnatural diet of grains, albeit certified organic ones, instead of grazing. Animals raised in organic dairy production may suffer less compared to those in conventional dairies because ruminants

are required to have some access to pasture on a regular basis (many dairy cows spend their lives in total confinement). However, restrictions on treating parasites and disease in organic dairy and beef cattle may actually reduce welfare. For example, organic standards prohibit standard methods of delousing that normally enhance animal welfare, and since even the use of therapeutic antibiotics to treat ill animals is prohibited for animals sold as organic, organic standards can end up making farmers reluctant to treat animals, further compromising animal welfare.

Food for Thought A typical carrot has to travel 1,838 miles to reach your dinner table.

Farmers’ markets enable farmers to keep 80 to 90 cents of each dollar spent by the consumer.

Globally, an estimated 1/3 of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are from our food system and land use changes, which include GHGs emitted to grow, process, package, transport, store, and dispose of our food.

OUR ORGANIC RECOMMENDATIONS: •

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Buy certified organic produce whenever possible or, if you are lucky enough to know farmers personally, talk with them to ensure that your fruits, vegetables, and grains are produced organically even if they are not certified organic by a third party.

Be doubly sure to buy organic when buying the “Dirty Dozen”! These are foods that are ranked by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) as having the highest levels of chemicals and pesticides. The EWG estimates that you can reduce your exposure by 80% by only buying organic: apples, celery, strawberries, peaches, spinach, nectarines, grapes, bell peppers, potatoes, blueberries, lettuce, and kale.

If you are buying organic animal products, look for products like 100% grass-fed beef that also have benefits for animal welfare.

Purchase and serve organic options of popular Jewish foods such as grape juice and matzah.

Work with your synagogue or other Jewish organizations important in your life to institute policies that preference or require buying organic produce whenever possible.

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Local Being able to talk to the people who grow your food is just one reason to buy your food from people who grow it or produce it nearby. Here are a few others: • Taste the freshness! Local food is more likely to be picked when it is ripe, as it does not need to travel over several days to arrive at the market.

Additionally, producers who sell locally can choose to grow varieties of vegetables that are known for their flavor and health qualities, rather than just their ability to hold up over long-distance shipping (“heirloom tomatoes” are one such crop; the standard ‘beefsteak’ tomato common in supermarkets was actually bred to be able to travel

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long distances, sacrificing flavor for convenience.

Heirloom tomatoes bruise easily and do not keep for long—but their flavor is out of this world!)

Cut down on the carbon. Nearly one third of all greenhouse gasses emitted come from the production and transportation of food. Much of these emissions come from livestock. When a farmer can drive a few hours to deliver their food— rather than ship it thousands of miles—the carbon footprint of your food shrinks dramatically.

Eat in your view. Buying locally means you’re creating a market for people who farm and produce food in areas near your city to make a living. If you don’t buy their products, they can’t continue to do what they do. Family farms all over the country are giving way to subdivisions and abandonment, as farmers can get higher prices for selling their land for houses than for vegetables. This means that food has to travel even farther to get to cities, and those rolling green hills you love to drive through on your way out of town are quickly disappearing.

Sourcing local animal products is one of the more challenging aspects of a embracing a local food system, but also one of the most important. Meat products require more processing than produce, and require specific facilities. These facilities, including slaughterhouses, packing houses, and canneries, are often inaccessible to local farmers.

Enjoy the seasons. The Jewish calendar gives us at least one or two holidays each season that call for a feast, and several are in fact tied to agricultural cycles. Using local foods to celebrate means that you’ll have different foods for the holidays because different crops ripen at different times. Eating with the seasons is a great way to notice the passing of the year. When people complain about not having strawberries on the Kiddush fruit platter in the winter, tell them that they’ll really appreciate them when they’re available locally in June.

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HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN PROMOTE LOCAL FOOD: •

Shop for ingredients at a farmer’s market

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Make a connection between the food and your region (i.e., “New York State is the second largest apple-producer in the country, and we’re serving apples grown just a few hours away...”

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Invite a farmer or local food producer to come speak at your institution (then organize a trip to go visit their farm!)

GE or GMO Free Genetic engineering (GE) is the process of transferring specific traits, or genes, from one organism into a different plant or animal. The resulting organism is called transgenic or a GMO (genetically modified organism). 70% of processed foods in American supermarkets now contain genetically modified ingredients—mostly soybeans or corn.

According to Sustainable Table, a consumer education group, “many concerns have been raised over the inadequate testing of the effects of genetic engineering on humans and the environment. Genetic engineering is still an emerging field, and scientists do not know exactly what can result from putting the DNA of one species into another. In addition, researchers do not know if there are any long-term or unintended side effects from eating GE foods.”

From a Jewish perspective, a few concepts help to shed light on questions about GMOs: •

Might the laws of shatnes and kilayim (prohibitions against mixing species, say, by planting flax and linen in the same field) apply to GE crops, where mixing occurs on a molecular level?

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What about the concept of ‘shmirat haguf’ (taking care of one’s body)? When the health effects of new technologies haven’t been fully tested, what is our obligation as Jews to take precautions with our health?

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Are we playing God? While farmers have been breeding plants and animals for thousands of years, selecting for desirable traits (i.e., chickens who lay eggs frequently, or wheat that doesn’t drop its seed when it is ripe), the process of actually combining different species that can’t mate on their own (spider genes and tomatoes, for example) seems

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dangerously close to tampering with the wisdom of the natural world. There is a fine line between letaken ha’olam b’malchut shadai (perfecting the world for the sake of heaven), and playing with the biological building blocks of life in ways that may have unforeseen and dramatic consequences.

We’re not sure about the answer to these questions, but we do strongly caution against GMO crops for the unknown health risks to people and other species, as well as the dangerous interplay between corporations and the public good. GMO seeds are patented, copyrighted intellectual property. However, seeds are designed to spread with the wind, and mingle with other seeds. When this happens with GMO seeds, the owners of their patents can sue unwitting farmers for ‘stealing’ their property. In case after case, large seed companies have intimidated farmers, patented seeds which were once common property, and consolidated their power. We see this as an affront to local food security and democracy, and as such recommend that you avoid GMO crops whenever you can.

HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN AVOID GE/GMOS: •

Look for foods that are labeled “GMO-free”.

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Avoid foods that contain high-fructose corn syrup, other corn products or soy products; nearly all of the conventional soy and corn crops grown in the US are from GE seeds.

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Eat organic foods. Genetically-modified fruits and vegetables cannot be certified organic by the USDA, and organic meats cannot come from animals that were fed genetically-modified crops.

Fair Labor

HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN PROMOTE FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS:

It is also important to support the workers who are picking, packing, and serving our food. Part of what makes food so cheap is that the people who actually do the work to produce it are paid very little for their hard work. Additionally, many who work with the toxic pesticides used in commercial agriculture develop cancers and other health problems. Even if studies show that agricultural chemicals don’t linger in the food—they linger in the air and the soil of the fields where people are working, and can make them very sick.

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Buying food from a farmer you trust is one way to ensure that the people producing your food are treated fairly and paid adequately. But for crops that are produced in other climates —notably coffee, bananas and chocolate—there are a few different certifying agencies who can do your homework for you. These include FLO (Fair Trade Labeling Organization), Fair Trade USA, and IMO/Fair for Life.

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Fair Trade ensures that: • farmers are paid an adequate price for their products, • farmers have the ability to organize into collectives, increasing their bargaining power, • profits are reinvested into the community to make capital improvements (e.g. building schools and hospitals), • environmental sustainability methods are used, • child labor is prohibited.

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Promote Fair Trade products for your kiddush, such as fruits and wine.

Hang Fair Trade fruit in your sukkah.

Switch to using Fair Trade tea and coffee.

Hold a Fair Trade tasting event so people can see the range of Fair Trade products and decide which Fair Trade tea, coffee, or chocolate is their favorite.

Ask caterers to use Fair Trade ingredients (be sure to tell the guests on the invitation that you will be serving Fair Trade products).

Hold a film showing or educational program on the issues surrounding Fair Trade.

Hold a Fair Trade bagel brunch and serve Fair Trade tea, coffee, sugar, and fruit.

Ask your gift shop to carry Fair Trade products

Look for Eco-Kosher Heckhshers These encourage consumers to buy from kosher food producers who care for the environment, animals, and their workers.

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Earth Kosher certifies a range of food, clothing, and health products.

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Natural Food Certifiers offers an Apple K Kosher label for kosher food that is also healthy.

Thanks to Ilana Schatz from Fair Trade Judaica for consulting with us on this section.

Fair Trade USA (formerly Transfair) recently resigned its membership from FLO and launched its own program, “Fair Trade for All”, which is setting up new certification criteria and extending its program to include farmers on plantations. FLO is in the process of establishing a new certifying body for products distributed in the U.S. To be sure that your product is made according to Fair Trade standards, look for one of these Fair Trade labels on: bananas, chocolate, tea, rice, coffee, cocoa (chocolate), fresh fruit and vegetables, honey, juices, sugar, spices/ herbs, and wine. Certified ingredients are now used in bottled beverages, body care products and spirits.

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Buy Fair Trade Products Since embarking on my current role as the Jewish Social Action Forum Campaigns Coordinator I have come to realize how fundamental the concept of fair trade is to build and sustain a just world. Buying Fair trade is a practical way of expressing an opinion on trade justice and is concurrent with Jewish values.

When we purchase something in the United States that carries the Fair trade mark it guarantees that farmers in the developing world are paid a fair price for their product. Furthermore, a premium is given back to the farmers and their communities by being part of a Fair trade cooperative. This premium is often spent on building schools, hospitals and better road systems. For those living in extreme poverty, powerless in the global economy, Fair trade has come to mean an education for their children, clean water supplies, electricity and a level of health care they could never have dreamed of. It is the difference between being stuck in a permanent cycle of poverty and having the chance to build a better future.

You may be asking “Why should I purchase Fair trade products for my Jewish institution? Is it really necessary for our community to be involved in a campaign about these things?” The root of the word tzedakah is ‘tzedek’, meaning justice or righteousness.

So when we are obliged to give tzedakah we must Organizations Working on Fair Labor issues in the Jewish Community In recent years, a number of different projects have launched in the Jewish community around fair labor practices. We list these organizations here, so you can familiarize yourself with their work and to show the breadth of the Jewish sustainable food movement.

Jews from all walks of life are starting to pay attention and make a difference: •

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B’Ma’aglei Tzedek’s Tav Chevrati is an Israel-based certification for businesses and restaurants that indicates workers are fairly treated and the facility is accessible to people with disabilities.

Fair Trade Judaica promotes fair trade as a Jewish value through educating the Jewish community, and expanding the production, distribution, and sale of fair trade Judaica products.

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do more than put loose change in a charity box. In our act of tzedakah we must seek justice to create a fairer world. As Jews we should be buying fair trade produce and dedicate time and resources to ensuring this happens.

There are more and more fair trade products that are certified kosher, so whether it is at home, at a simcha or in your synagogue; it is easy to change to fair trade.

It is not just food—clothing can also be fair-trade. It is now even possible to purchase Fair trade kippot, made in India from Fair trade cotton.

We have a chance to change the lives of the world’s poorest people through what we choose from the shelves of our supermarkets. So next time you go shopping, choose Fair trade. As consumer, we do not need to accept trade injustice. By making the simple decision to switch to Fair trade products we can, while shopping, help create a more just society for those who produce our goods.

Adapted from “Why Buy Fair trade”

by Poppy Berelowitz.

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Uri L’tzedek, an orthodox social justice organization, has created an ethical seal for kosher restaurants called Tav HaYosher. This seal is a local, grassroots initiative to bring workers, restaurant owners, and community members together to create just workplaces in kosher restaurants.

Jewish Animal Ethics Nonhuman animals are a vital part of our ecosystems and communities, and they awaken in us a wonder at the world around us. Like us, they feel pleasure and pain, joy and emotional distress. As Jews, we’ve inherited a tradition that has numerous beautiful insights about animal life and, from the time of the ancient rabbis, Jewish law has offered detailed advice on how to treat farmed animals ethically based on the Jewish principle of compassion for animals, tza’ar ba’alei chayim.

Unfortunately, modern methods of factory farming animals have changed the world of farming so much that it is hard to know how to apply past wisdom.

Agriculture has changed more in the last century than in the last millennium. In the past, the greatest welfare problems were at the time of slaughter; now the greatest welfare problems are had on the farm, where kosher law has little to say. This leaves all of us with an exciting task: perhaps like no other generation, we have the opportunity to rethink what it means to treat farmed animals ethically!

WHAT IS WELFARE? Minimally, animal welfare requires maintaining appropriate standards for accommodation, feeding, disease prevention and treatment, freedom of movement, and the ability to express natural behaviors.

As Jews, the Torah mitzvah and moral imperative of tza’ar ba’alei chayim calls upon us to provide animals with thoughtful care and protection that attends to both their physical and mental well-being, whether on the level of the individual, or on the level of whole groups or species.

SEEING FOR OURSELVES By visiting the farms that raise and slaughter the animals we eat, we can see for ourselves how they are raised. Unfortunately, visiting animal farms and slaughterhouses is not nearly as easy as seeing crop production. Often farms and slaughter plants are located far away, and, even if they were next door, the overwhelming majority of animal farms don’t allow people to visit.

case, unless you have considerable expertise in animal husbandry, a certification is usually a faster and more accurate way to find out about welfare than attempting a farm field trip. Another important window into the everyday life of animals on industrial farms comes from the work of undercover investigations by groups like the Humane Society of the United States--just google and see what you find.

WHAT ABOUT KOSHER MEAT? Frustratingly, the overwhelming majority of kosher animals are raised in the same factory farm conditions in which most other farmed animals are raised. A kosher certification does not typically mean that animals were spared standard inhumane practices like the caging of egg-laying hens, the inhumane handling of cattle in transport and before slaughter, or the use of hybrid chicken and turkey genetics that cause the animals to grow so fast that they suffer from unusual diseases and often have pain even when walking. Even worse, it is harder to locate higher welfare kosher food because the most reliable animal welfare certification programs presently will only certify operations that stun animals pre-slaughter, and contemporary kosher authorities have typically disallowed this stunning.

The good news is that until welfare certifications are more available on kosher meats, ethical kosher meat retailers have stepped in to provide us information about how animals are raised, and plant-based meat analogues available in most every grocery store are typically certified kosher. Grow and Behold and Kol Foods supply poultry, beef, and other meat products nationally, commit themselves to higher welfare standards, and are transparent about their farming practices (not all their products meet the same level of welfare, so ask to find out what’s right for you).

Other more humane meats are locally and regionally available, like Teva Beef located in California and distributing at Trader Joe’s locations throughout the western United States.

The good news is that we do have a way to “see” how animals are treated on farms through higher-welfare certifications or buying from retailers that enforce their own welfare standards (more info below). And, in any

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HIGHER-WELFARE CERTIFIERS AND PLANT-BASED ALTERNATIVES

APPLICABLE ANIMALS AND PRODUCTS

STANDARDS

CERTIFIER

If you’re not buying kosher meats, there are already nationally available products with welfare certifications that allow you to “see” how animals are treated. For more detailed information on these certifiers see the following chart.

BETTER WELFARE CERTIFIERS

BEST WELFARE CERTIFIERS

Certified Humane

Global Animal Partnership (GAP)

Global Animal Partnership (GAP)

Steps 2-3

Steps 4-5+

(no addendum, “cage free,” or “free range” )

http:// certifiedhumane. org/how-wework/ourstandards/ Cattle (beef, dairy, calves), Chickens (broiler + laying hens/ eggs), Sheep, Goats, Pigs, Turkeys, Bison

Animal Welfare Approved

(with “pastureraised” addendum)

(AWA)

http://www.globalanimalpartnership. org/5-step-program/standards

http:// certifiedhumane. org/how-wework/ourstandards/

Cattle (beef), Broiler chickens, Pigs, Turkeys, Sheep, Goats, Bison

Cattle and other ruminants

Cattle (beef, dairy, calves), Chickens (broiler + laying hens/ eggs), Sheep, Goats, Pigs, Turkeys, Bison

HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN PROMOTE MORE HUMANE CONSUMPTION: •

Perhaps the single best thing you can do is work to create ethical food policies that reflect your institution’s values around tza’ar ba’alei chayim.

•

Promote vegan and higher-welfare products for your kiddush, such as AWA-approved egg brands.

•

Start a monthly community potluck where highwelfare products and new vegan recipes are featured.

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Certified Humane

http://www. americangrassfed.org/ about-us/ourstandards/

Another way to avoid supporting intensively raised farmed animal systems is to rely instead on widely available plant-based meat, dairy, and egg alternatives.

Most of these products carry kosher certifications. Find out more on page 17: Food from Farmed Animals.

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American Grassfed Certified (AGC)

http://animalwelfareapproved. org/standards/ list-of-standards/

Cattle (beef, dairy, calves), Chickens (broiler + laying hens/ eggs), Sheep (dairy + meat), Goats (dairy + meat), Pigs, Turkeys, Ducks, Geese, Bison

•

Ask caterers to use higher-welfare animal products and integrate vegan options into their menus.

•

Hold a film screening or educational program on the issues that face animals in an industrial farming system.

•

Organize a cooking class that teaches community members how to cook heritage chicken or vegetarian and vegan food.

•

Take a community field trip to a farm animal sanctuary to learn about the day-to-day needs of the animals we raise for food.

Food From Farm Animals ANIMAL MATTERS Eating lower on the food chain (eating fewer animals and animal products) reduces stress on the environment and can be better for personal health, not to mention animal welfare. Customer demand for cheap food doesn’t stop with vegetables: in fact, meat, dairy and eggs are one of the largest components of the commercial agricultural system. As with “organics,” there are a lot of terms used to describe feeding and handling practices used. It’s important to understand these terms when you’re considering what eggs to use for your egg salad, cream to use in your coffee, and meat to serve (or not serve) at a special event.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States (FAO), 56 billion animals (not including fish) are slaughtered globally each year in the meat, dairy, and egg industries. Most of these animals are raised in conventional, industrial agriculture systems known as factory farms or, less commonly, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOS). While these systems are designed to maximize productivity and profit for the producer, they create serious welfare problems for animals. Below you’ll find a species by species guide of what you need to know to make food choices that better fit your values.

LIVES OF ANIMALS Cattle Raised for Dairy: All cows typically live together in herds and on grasslands, where they spend most of their time grazing. They form strong friendships and family bonds, and recent science has shown that, like in humans, their stress levels (interpreted from heart rates) are lowered when around a preferred partner as compared with a random individual. Although very social animals, most of today’s dairy cows live in confined operations where they have limited or no movement, socialization, or access to the outdoors. The dairy cow of today has been artificially and genetically selected to produce up to 12 times the amount of milk needed to feed her calf. Lowwelfare breeding practices lead to lameness and other painful conditions in dairy cows, who are slaughtered after 3-4 pregnancy cycles. By contrast, in a traditional pastoral system, a dairy cow’s life span could reach 25 years or more.

Like humans, dairy cows produce milk as a result of pregnancy and giving birth. Female calves are typically kept for dairy production, while males are taken away from their mother at a young age and are slaughtered at 16-18 weeks. While some veal farmers allow calves to live in groups, many confine calves to small, solitary stalls where they cannot explore, groom, exercise, or bond with other animals—behaviors crucial for natural development. Calves typically suffer from disease and high levels of stress during their short lives. Because of this, high-welfare certification programs such as Animal Welfare Approved do not certify veal operations.

Cows are routinely fed growth hormones to increase their milk production. The effects of these hormones on people are not fully known, but many people seek to avoid them. The dairy industry has also seen massive consolidation, with low milk prices causing the near collapse of a once-thriving family farm sector in the Northeast. Buying milk from “grass-fed” or “pastureraised” cows “never treated with rBST” means that you’re avoiding extra hormones, and supporting farmers who are taking good care of their animals.

There are higher-welfare alternatives to conventional dairy products and higher-welfare certifications to look for; see appendices I and II. Interested in dairy alternatives? We are lucky to live in a time where plant-based (e.g., soy, almond, coconut, flax) milk and other dairy alternatives (for yogurt, cheese, ice creams, dips, and spreads) are widely available in many major and smaller stores across the country.

Cattle Raised for Beef: Most cattle raised for beef start their lives on the range and are allowed to graze and socialize, making their experience much better in comparison to other conventionally raised farm animals. However, almost all cattle spend approximately the last six months of life in feedlots, where they are fattened on grain and kept in dirty, crowded, unnatural conditions. Also, conventional cattle systems allow for painful mutilations, such as dehorning, branding, and sometimes tail docking (although this is typically associated with dairy farming)—all without the use of anesthetics or analgesics.

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Food From Farm Animals Conventionally-raised meat cows are routinely fed hormones to increase their growth rates. They are raised in feedlots with thousands of other cows, in conditions that promote disease. To combat this, preventative antibiotics are added to their food.

This overuse of antibiotics stimulates the creation of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, reducing the drug’s effectiveness in treating human illness.

The environmental effects of large-scale animal agriculture are huge. While cow manure can fertilize a well-managed pasture, creating a balanced closed-loop ecosystem, manure from cows raised in feedlots has nowhere to go. Giant sewage lagoons of animal waste pollute waterways and cause unpleasant odors for miles around.

There are higher-welfare alternatives to conventional beef products and higher-level certifications to look for: see appendices I and II. Want to nix the beef and eat it, too? Increasingly, there are plant-based “beef” products that simulate the taste and texture of beef like never before.

Laying Hens and Chickens Raised for Meat: All chickens are originally from the jungle. They are omnivores who like to scratch in the dirt for bugs and “dust bathe,” which is how they stay cool and clean.

Research has shown chickens to have complex and well-ordered social structures. They also have the ability to exercise self-control, anticipate the future, and to adjust and tailor their communication to different individuals. Despite what we now know about chickens’ and other birds’ sophisticated and complex cognitive capacities, these animals suffer more in conventional systems than any other animal.

Traditional breeding of birds for meat and egg production used to occur by carefully selecting healthy males and females and allowing them to mate.

Offspring would then possess characteristics similar to their parent birds. These healthy lines are now known as “standard-bred” or “heritage.” With the rise of hybrid breeding, highly controlled confinement systems, feed supplements, and subtherapeutic antibiotic use, welfare concerns have yielded to profitability. Many birds in conventional systems suffer from painful abnormalities as a result of their genetics, and are kept in overcrowded conditions with poor air quality and no

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natural light. They rarely or never have enough room and opportunity to run, fly, stretch, flap their wings, or express other natural behaviors. Even when given the space, many of these animals are now bred to grow so large so quickly that they often cannot walk, let alone run, without pain.

Fortunately, there are tools to find higher-welfare alternatives. BuyingPoultry.com is an excellent resource for consumers, providing information about every legally regulated welfare claim as well as ethical ratings for different products. For more information about higher welfare certifications for poultry and eggs: see appendices I and II. And for those who want to have their meat and not worry about how animals are treated, there is a new generation of plant-based meat analogues to chicken that are increasingly difficult to distinguish from the original.

Farmed Fish: Fish farming, a form of aquaculture where fish are raised in human-made enclosures either on land or within natural bodies of water, is the fastest-growing area of animal food production. Salmon, tuna, cod, trout, and halibut are among the most commonly farmed species.

Although fish farming is often portrayed as taking the burden off of overexploited wild fish populations, these farms can severely damage ecosystems by introducing diseases, pollutants, and invasive species. Farms often depend on wild fish lower on the food chain - like anchovies - to feed larger carnivorous farmed species, and the overfishing wrought on these populations can have disastrous repercussions.

Like with farmed land animals, farmed fish live in crowded and cramped conditions and may suffer from lesions and debilitating injuries. Stressful conditions cause disease and parasite outbreaks, like sea lice, that farmers respond to with pesticides and antibiotics.

These treatment measures promote resistant strains of diseases that can harm both wild fish populations and humans who eat the farmed fish. While there are tools to learn about the ecological impacts of fishing and aquaculture—we especially recommend SeafoodWatch.org and the Marine Stewardship Council­­—there are no regulations to ensure the humane treatment and slaughter of fish raised on aquafarms or those harvested from our oceans.

Sustainable and Organic Kosher Meat Providers: In their Own Words Labels and seals on food packaging can be unclear and even misleading. For animal products, welfare certification programs (described on pages 15-16) are important for letting people know how animals lived and died, and will likely certify kosher meat in the near future. While USDA Certified Organic is a step in the right direction, this certification does not itself ensure that animals were treated ethically or that the product is sustainable.

Here is what kosher meat producers – from small coops and new businesses, to long established ones – are saying about their products. We encourage you to examine what is being said and what is not being said and when in doubt, talk to the provider directly.

Empire Kosher Defining the principles of green kosher. Eating healthy, safely, and strictly kosher, buy responsibly, promoting working and animal rights, protecting the environment, and supporting small family farmers and their communities. http://www.empirekosher.com/ Grow and Behold brings you delicious OU Glatt Kosher pastured meats raised on small family farms.

We adhere to the strictest standards of kashrut, animal welfare, worker treatment, and sustainable agriculture.

We do it right, so you can enjoy every bite! http://www.growandbehold.com/

Kol Foods Honest & healthy. Sustainable & Humane.

Deliciously mouthwatering. We help you balance modern & traditional values. The kosher world is not free of the bewilderment and fear surrounding our meat, but at KOL Foods we come close. In an age when it takes an investigative reporter to clarify where your meat comes from, we are committed to telling its honest story. We want you to know and trust that each animal is raised in the traditional, environmentally-friendly way, on open fields. We are committed to kashrut, sustainability, transparency, animal welfare, your health and offering the most delicious meat on the market. And with our home delivery, we are convenient to boot! KOL Foods is what kosher should be. http://www.kolfoods.com/ Robariah Farms uses sustainable, rotational grazing practices so their chickens enjoy fresh pasture every day, where they receive plenty of exercise, sunlight, and clean air. No antibiotics or hormones are ever used. A healthier chicken means a healthier you. Pastured meat has been shown to contain higher levels of Omega-3 fatty acids (good fats) and antioxidants (e.g., vitamin C and E, and betacarotene), than non-pastured meat. http://robariahfarms.com/ At Wise Organic Pastures, we hold these truths to be self-evident. Animals should be treated with dignity and allowed to roam free. Meat is no place for antibiotics or hormones or pesticides. Families, not big business, make the best farmers. That nourishing ourselves is a sacred act. The quality and purity of the foods we eat is not negotiable. That’s why we insist on bringing only the healthiest, best-tasting, humanely raised beef and poultry to market. It’s organic. It’s kosher. It’s WISE. http://www.wiseorganicpastures.com/

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How do you make kosher meat?

Kosher Animals The first step in kosher meat is the actual species of meat. Chicken, turkey, duck and geese are all kosher species; there are varying traditions regarding the kashrut of other fowls, such as quail, pheasant, squib and pigeons. Birds of prey are generally not kosher. For larger animals, kosher laws permit the consumption of species that chew their cud and have split hooves. This includes, cows, sheep, goats, bison, deer, elk and even giraffe, though beef and lamb are generally the most common meat in the kosher marketplace.

Kosher Slaughter (Shechitah) To make kosher meat, a kosher animal must be slaughtered in a very specific manner, according to the laws of shechitah (kosher slaughter), which Jews have followed for generations.

The shochet (slaughterer) is highly trained in both the act of the slaughter and all the specific laws that must be followed, and must have a high level of yira’at shamayim (awe of heaven). The training process for shochtim is long and arduous, in order to ensure that only individuals with the skills and temperament can perform this holy task, because the act of slaugher occurs with the utmost level of respect for the animal and the laws of kashrut.

The shochet uses a perfectly sharp knife that is at least twice the length of the animals neck and checked against the shochet’s fingernail for nicks. Any nick at all would tear the flesh of the animal, causing great pain and rendering the slaughter invalid.

After making a blessing, the shochet uses a very fast, continuous cutting motion to quickly sever the trachea, esophagus and major blood vessels in the neck. This causes the animal a minimum amount of pain and ensures a quick drop of blood pressure to the brain and nearly immediate loss of sensibility.

Kosher inspection The lungs and innards of kosher slaughtered animals must be inspected by a trained bodek (inspector) for imperfections that might render the animal traif (non-kosher, literally “torn”) and unfit for kosher consumption. The bodek inspects for adhesions, both between the lobes of the lungs and between the lobes and ribcage. The lungs are inflated with air and submerged in water to check for any bubbles that would indicate a perforation. Animals with lungs that are free of perforations and major adhesions can be ruled “glatt” kosher, literally, “smooth”.

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“Butt” Wait, There’s More In North America, only the front half of the red meat animals are used for kosher consumption, due to the presence of forbidden fats and nerves in the rear of the animal that are very difficult to remove. After separation of the hind from the fore, there are a number of major blood vessels that must be removed from the meat in a process known as nikkur, or traiboring (deveining).

Soaking, Salting, and Labeling Jewish law prohibits the consumption of the lifeblood of the animal. All kosher meat and poultry must undergo a special process to remove it. The meat or poultry is soaked in clean water for thirty minutes, then removed to drip dry. The meat is then salted and left to hang for sixty minutes to further draw out any remaining blood. The meat is washed three times in cold, clean water to remove the salt. Finally, the result: clean, fresh, and kosher meat. After the final washing, the meat is dried, further butchered into retail cuts, and packaged and sealed for both consumer safety and kashrut.

What Kosher Doesn’t Necessarily Mean With the exception of the processes noted above, the kosher meat industry generally resembles the conventional meat industry. Animals come from a range of different kinds of farms, but generally the farms are large. Animals have limited room to move around and eat mostly corn and soybeans. Meat factories are expensive to run and operate at a furious pace; a one minute delay could cost thousands of dollars. As a result, conditions for workers are at best unpleasant and often unsafe. And although the soaking and salting process is an excellent sanitizer, the volume of production in large-scale factories creates the potential for the spread of pathogens that can make people sick.

This section adapted from a piece by Naftali Hanau, founder of Grow and Behold Foods

Kosher Sustainable Chocolate

Kosher Sustainable Wine

CHOCOLATE. Need we say more? Actually yes – because a run-of-the mill bar of Hershey’s pales in comparison to the sweet, cocoa ambrosia listed below.

All of these chocolate snacks are kosher-certified and some combination of organic, Fair Trade, cane sugarsweetened, and vegan.

Organic wine can be hard to find, but there is more and more of it available on the shelves. Additionally, many wines from Europe are completely or almost completely organic, even if they’re not certified. Ask your sommelier! Kosher organic wine is even more difficult to find – but it does exist! Here are several wineries that make kosher organic wine.

Chocolove: Made in Colorado, these chocolate bars are organic, kosher (Scroll K, Denver), and come in a variety of different flavors from ginger to orange peel to toffee and almonds. They are also some of the most beautifully wrapped chocolate bars we’ve ever seen.

Dagoba: Dagoba chocolates are made by an Oregonbased company with organic, certified fair-trade and KSA kosher, and the bars come either plain (milk or dark chocolate) or infused with dried cherry, hazelnut, coffee, hot chili, mint, lemon ginger, lavender blueberry, and roseberry. Dagoba also makes amazing hot chocolate mix.

Equal Exchange: This Massachussetts-based fair trade organization sells chocolate bars and hot chocolate that are made with organic ingredients and are certified by the Kashrut Council of Canada.

Four Gates Winery: California-based, organic, kosher for Pesach/year-round, not mevushal Yarden Chardonnay Odem Organic: Israel-based, organic, kosher for Pesach/year-round, not mevushal Hafner Winery: Austria-based, bottled under the name “Queen Esther,” organically-grown grapes, kosher for Pesach, mevushal.

Baron Herzog: California based, not certified organic, but many of Baron Herzog’s wines come from “sustainably grown/low spray” grapes, mevushal and many varieties

Lake Champlain: This Vermont-based company makes both conventional and organic chocolates. All products except marshmallows and Blue Bandana chocolate bars are certified Star-D Kosher.

Late July Dark Chocolate Sandwich Cookies: The cocoa flavor in these cookies stands up to any bar of chocolate – and there’s even more chocolateygoodness (in creme form) inside! These cookies are certified by the OU and are also organic.

Seeds of Change: These chocolate bars look and taste like treasures. Their Santa Caterina bar is filled with mango, toasted coconut, and cashews and, like all their chocolate bars, is certified kosher and made with organic ingredients.

Sunspire: These chocolate bars (and baking chips and candies) have it all. They are certified organic and kosher (OU), come in a variety of yummy flavors like raspberry, peanut, and peppermint patty, are sweetened with natural cane juice and organic sugars, and offer both vegan-friendly and fair trade options.

Terra Nostra: Terra Nostra is a founding member of Equitable Trade, which gives farmers fair trade benefits with organic chocolate production and offers several vegan bars. Terra Nostra will soon introduce a line of truffles to go with their bars, specializing in pomegranate and ancho chili flavors.

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Kosher Sustainable Cheese Until recently, the world of kosher cheese was pretty bleak. On the one hand you had shrink wrapped, industrial-produced (but kosher-certified) brands like Miller’s. On the other, hand you had artisanal, raw-milk and hand-crafted (but not kosher-certified) cheeses.

These days the tide is turning. While not all certifiedorganic, the cheese companies below allow you to have your kosher cheese and eat ethically too!

free of growth hormones (and some of the milk comes from nearby Amish farms). The company also has a charitable giving program.

Tillamook Kosher Cheddar: This Oregon-based company is actually a 98-year-old farmer cooperative.

Like all of their cheeses, the milk used to make their cheddar is free of growth hormones. (For folks living in or visiting the Pacific Northwest, a visit to their factory is also a lot of fun!)

5-Spoke Creamery: Starting with raw-milk from grassfed cows that are free of hormones and antibiotics, hand-crafted artisanal cheeses are produced, including Cheddar, Herbal Jack, Colby, Tumbleweed, Talcott, and Browning Gold aged cheddar. Tablet-K certified.

Narragansett Creamery: This Rhode Island-based company is a four-year-old venture is the only cheese company in the state, and, while not available in markets out of state, you can order their products online and they will be delivered straight to you!

Cabot Creamery is a farm family-owned cooperative located in the hills of Vermont producing all natural, award-winning cheeses, including the “World’s Best Cheddar”, as well as a tasty variety of flavored cheddars.

Some cheeses Tablet-K certified.

The Cheese Guy: Based in Yonkers, New York, Brent “The Cheeseguy” Delman sells and produces exclusively kosher cheeses, ranging from mozzarella to feta, Pecorino Romano cheese aged over 18 months to jalapeno cheddar jack.

Mainland Grass-fed Organic: This New Zealand-based company now offers a grass-fed organic cheddar that is OK certified.

Organic Meadow Cottage Cheese: This Canadian company produces organic cottage cheeses as well as cheeses with a mild, creamy taste.

Organic Valley Cottage Cheese: The cottage cheese from Organic Valley is hand-crafted without preservatives or additives, free of animal by-products, hormones, or antibiotics and comes from humanely treated cows.

Redwood Hill Farm: These artisanally crafted goat cheeses are delicious. They offer creamy chevre, goat feta, and several other varieties of goat-milk cheeses.

While Redwood Hill Farm is not certified organic, they use almost exclusively organic practices.

Sugar River Cheese Company: This Wisconsin-based cheese company produces a wide variety of cheeses (everything from White Cheddar Chipotle to Prairie Jack with Parsley and Chive) all certified by the Chicago Rabbinical Council and the OK. All of their products are

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Bonus! The biggest difficulty with making kosher cheese is finding a rennet (the milk coagulant) that does not come from an animal – traditionally a cow stomach. Here are some traditional vegetable rennets that are animal-free: fig leaf sap, melon, thistle flowers, safflower, lemon juice, and bay leaves.

HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN USE SUSTAINABLE DAIRY, EGGS, AND MEAT: •

Switch to organic milk and cream.

•

Buy milk in reusable glass jars.

•

Use local eggs.

•

Source your meat from a sustainable kosher meat provider, listed above.

•

Serve less meat.

Food from the Sea According to Leviticus 11:9-12, any fish that has fins and scales is kosher. These criterion rule out seafood such as eels, shellfish, and catfish. Fish is considered pareve and can be eaten with either milk or meat. There is no particular method of slaughter required for fish and, therefore, any fresh fish with fins and scales is kosher.

Fish are the last group of wild animals that are hunted for large scale consumption. As worldwide demand for fish has increased, wild fish populations can’t keep up with our appetites, and find themselves threatened by overfishing (harvesting at faster rates than the population can reproduce) and by-catch (accidental death caused by trawls, dredges, long-lining, purse seining, and gill-netting). Scientists suspect that due to overfishing and by-catch, 90% of the large predatory fish populations have been depleted.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch is one of the leading organizations working to protect our oceans and fish populations. Seafood Watch has created several resources to help consumers make educated choices. Their “sustainable” certification for fish is based on the concept of “ocean friendly,” which assesses damage to the environment during the fishing/fish farming process, health and abundance of the fish population, the amount of by-catch from the fishing process, and how well the fishery or fish farm is managed.

Tuna that is labeled “dolphin safe” means that no dolphins are intentionally harmed during the fishing process. This certification still allows fishermen to lower nets around schools of tuna and dolphins but they must lower the nets enough to allow dolphins to escape. Although the dolphin safe label has improved conditions for dolphins, research indicates that dolphins face health risks due to the stress of the fishing process: including being temporarily captured, which often results in heart problems, miscarriages, and mothers being separated from their calves, which results in the death of the calves. Therefore, Seafood Watch recommends purchasing hook and line caught canned tuna, instead of “dolphin safe” tuna.

Aquaculture, the process of farming fish in either fresh or saltwater, is the fastest growing method of animal food production. Nearly 50% of the fish consumed worldwide come from fish farms. Depending on the type of fish, location of farm, and farming practices, aquaculture can offer either a sustainable option or one that is equally problematic to wild caught fish.

Farmed salmon is one such example. These salmon are

raised in coastal waters and, therefore, the pollution generated by the farm flows into the coastal water.

Large numbers of salmon are kept in a pen, resulting in diseases and parasites, which can easily spread to wild salmon swimming nearby. It is not uncommon for the farmed salmon to break out of these pens and compete with wild salmon populations. Additionally, farm raised salmon require approximately 3 pounds of wild fish to produce 1 pound of farmed salmon, which is an unsustainable ratio. The most sustainable options for farmed fish include those which are herbivores or omnivores. Some of the best farm raised options include: arctic char, striped bass, and U.S. raised barramundi, cobia, tilapia, and rainbow trout.

HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN SOURCE AND USE SUSTAINABLE FISH: •

Print a sustainable fish pocket guide from Seafood Watch (or download their free smartphone app) and use this guide before purchasing fish.

•

Serve Pacific sardines, which reproduce quickly and are currently abundant.

•

Purchase fish that has the Marine Stewardship Council certification.

•

Make your tuna salad with pole/troll caught albacore tuna from the U.S. or Canada.

•

Make sure the lox on your bagel is wild-caught from Alaska.

Seafood Watch’s Super Green List Fish that are good for you and good for the earth, the Super Green List includes fish that meet these criteria: • Low levels of contaminants (below 216 parts per billion [ppb] mercury and 11 ppb PCBs) • The daily minimum of omega-3s (at least 250 milligrams per day [mg/d])* • Classified as a Seafood Watch “Best Choice” (green) The Best of the Best (July 2013) • • • • • • •

Atlantic Mackerel (purse seine from Canada and the U.S.) Freshwater Coho Salmon (farmed in tank systems, from the U.S.) Pacific Sardines (wild-caught) Salmon (wild-caught, from Alaska) Salmon, canned (wild-caught from Alaska) Albacore Tuna (troll- or pole-caught, from the U.S. of British Columbia) Sablefish/Black Cod (from Alaska and Canadian Pacific)

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Healthful

juices. Invest in pitchers or a water cooler rather than providing disposable plastic bottles at events.

Keeping your congregation healthy is just another part of having a sustainable community. There are many different aspects of staying and eating healthy, but here are some to keep in mind:

High Fructose Corn Syrup: High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is any corn syrup that has been processed in order to turn some of its naturally occurring glucose into fructose to make it sweeter. In the US, HFCS has become one of the most widely-used sweetening methods for commercially produced foods. The use of HFCS in foods has been linked to obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

An easy way to avoid HFCS is to avoid buying processed and pre-packaged foods. Additionally, stock up on kosher-for-Passover items such as ketchup and salad dressing—­while made with HFCS year round, the Passover versions are made with regular sugar.

Vegetarian: Consider making some of your events vegetarian events, or have at least one vegetarian/ meatless/vegan option at all meals and events.

Necessary nutrients can be found in vegetables, grains, nuts, soy products, eggs, and dairy. Vegetarian diets have lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein, while having higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, antioxidants, and vitamins. Eating lower on the food chain also reduces stress on natural systems, including reducing greenhouse gas emission that are fueling climate change. Check out Veguary (www.veguary.org) for more information.

Whole Grains: A whole grain contains all parts of the original plant, and therefore will not lose any of its nutrients after processing/cooking. The benefits of eating a diet heavy in whole grains includes reduced risk of stroke, diabetes, heart disease, and weight gain.

Serving whole grains, such as brown rice, wheat berries, or quinoa, at your events will help to keep your whole congregation healthy and active. Check out the Whole Grains Council (www.wholegrainscouncil.org) for more information.

Low Sodium: Sodium is a periodic element that is water soluble, and necessary in small quantities to help maintain a fluid balance, transmit nerve impulses, and contract/relax your muscles. But too much sodium can be dangerous, leading to fluid retention, high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney failure, and stroke. Many processed foods contain more sodium than foods you would make at home, so make sure to check the labels on the pre-packaged foods that you are buying, and always look for “Low-Sodium” alternatives. If people want to add more salt, let them do it on their own.

Serve Water: Everyone knows that drinking enough water is crucial to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean that they actually drink the suggested amounts. The U.S. government recommends 3.7 liters of water per day for a male over the age of 18, and 2.7 liters of water per day for a female over the age of 18. Providing water at all of your events, especially when food and other drinks are served, is an easy way to make sure that people are reaching their daily intake needs and cutting back on sugar-filled sodas and

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Different Kinds of Fat: There are many different kinds of fats in the world, some that are good, and some that are very bad. Trying to serve as little of the “bad” fat is an important step in keeping your congregation healthy. Serving low-fat foods is a good place to begin.

Home-cooked foods often have less fat than their storebought alternatives because you can control what goes into them.

•

Trans fats – Also known as unsaturated fats, trans fats are not essential, and provide no known benefit to human health. Because of this, the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that there is no safe level of trans fat consumption.

•

Hydrogenated/partially hydrogenated oils – Hydrogenation is a process through which oils are heated and hydrogen is passed through them in order to make them denser. Fully hydrogenated oil is actually a solid fat and partially hydrogenated oil has a consistency like that of butter. These have high levels of trans fats and are very closely linked to obesity.

Healthy Vending Machines – A Growing Trend As awareness of junk food and its negative health and environmental impacts increases, healthier options are also increasing, and not only in stores and farmers markets but even in vending machines! These machines provide snack options that reflect the healthful suggestions made in this section. Search online for “healthy vending machines” to find vendor options in your area.

•

•

•

Saturated fats – Saturated fats are naturally found in certain foods, especially animal products (such as butter, cheese, and meat), as well as certain vegetable products (such as coconut oil). While it would be nearly impossible to cut saturated fats completely out of your diet, it is highly recommended that you cut back as much as possible.

recommendation is at least 50%); and in terms of soda, try serving flavored seltzer instead, or try a less processed soda, such as GUS: Grown Up Soda. Other healthy drink options include water, unsweetened iced tea, and non-fat/1%-fat milk.

HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN START TO SERVE HEALTHIER FOODS

Essential fatty acids – Also called EFAs, these fats are necessary for your body’s biological processes, but they can’t be produced by your body. These important fatty acids can be found naturally in many common foods, such as fish, flaxseed, soya oil, canola oil, leafy vegetables, and walnuts (although more of the good fatty acid is absorbed from meat than from vegetable sources). EFAs are crucial for heart health.

•

Juice/Soda: While juice and soda might be the most popular beverage options for your group, they often contain high amounts of processed sugars or high fructose corn syrup and add extra calories that no one needs. If you do want to serve juice or soda at your events, make sure to get juices that have high contents of “real fruit juice” (the basic

• • •

Prices: Can we afford to do this?

•

Buy in bulk. Buying in bulk will keep costs down. Look for pantry staples often available in bulk, such as beans, legumes, rice, flour, nuts, chocolate chips, and much more. Many local co-ops have extensive organic bulk sections. At a farmers market, you may get a good price for a whole case of fruit for your Kiddush fruit tray.

•

Buy in season. When foods are locally abundant, they may be lower in price (although premium products may always be more expensive, even when they are in season, especially if the season is short, as it is for strawberries or sour cherries). Again, when you’re buying local foods, your money is going all to the local farmer, rather than the shipping and packaging companies.

•

Be selective. You may wish to pick a few foods to focus on at first. Make the switch to fair trade coffee, or locally-produced milk, or fruit from a local farmer. Big change starts with small steps.

You can’t afford not to! Buying sustainable products may be a little more expensive, but once you know what you are (or aren’t) paying for, the benefits of sustainable foods on the health of your community and the environment outweigh the slight price increase. It may mean that you will have to adjust your institution’s budget to spend more on food, but it is an important adjustment.

• • • •

Tips for buying sustainable foods with price in mind: •

Beware of the markup. Many grocery stores add 150%-200% markup on organic products.

A co-op or farmers market will likely have lower markups or none at all. When you buy closer to the source, less of your money goes to middlemen (the costs of running the supermarket, for example) and more goes right to the farmer.

Use brown rice instead of white, or whole grain salads (such as wheat berries) instead of cous cous.

Serve flavored seltzer rather than soda.

Make sure plain water is available whenever drinks are served.

Choose to have home-cooked food whenever possible.

When purchasing foods, buy low-fat or low-sodium products if they’re available.

Use canola oil instead of butter.

Serve fish that’s high in omega-3 fatty acids.

Have at least one vegetable/vegetarian option at every meal.

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What does your organization serve for snack?

You don’t have to swing to an extreme of serving only local, organic kale chips to be healthier! Check out this USDA infographic on Smart Snacks and see how simple, impactful, and budget-neutral changes from one kind of delicious snack food to another can be.

United States Department of Agriculture

SMART

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 requires USDA to establish nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools — beyond the federallysupported meals programs. This new rule carefully balances science-based nutrition guidelines with practical and flexible solutions to promote healthier eating on campus. The rule draws on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine, existing voluntary standards already implemented by thousands of schools around the country, and healthy food and beverage offerings already available in the marketplace.

SNACKS IN SCHOOL

Equals 1 calorie

Before the New Standards

286

249

TOTAL CALORIES

TOTAL CALORIES

Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

Fruit Flavored Candies

(6 medium)

242

235

Shows empty calories*

After the New Standards

136

170

161

118

95

68

0

TOTAL CALORIES

TOTAL CALORIES

TOTAL CALORIES

TOTAL CALORIES

TOTAL CALORIES

TOTAL CALORIES

TOTAL CALORIES

TOTAL CALORIES

TOTAL CALORIES

Donut

Chocolate Bar

Regular Cola

Peanuts

Light Popcorn

Low-Fat Tortilla Chips

Granola Bar (oats, fruit, nuts)

Fruit Cup (w/100% Juice)

No-Calorie flavored Water

(1 large)

(2.2 oz. pkg.)

(1 bar-1.6 oz.)

(12 fl. oz.)

(1 oz.)

(Snack bag)

(1 oz.)

(1 bar-.8 oz.)

182

177

147

112

126

0

17

0

32

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

(Snack cup 4 oz.)

(12 fl. oz.)

0

0

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

*Calories from food components such as added sugars and solid fats that provide little nutritional value. Empty calories are part of total calories.

USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

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2 Eating Together: Planning for Meals, Kiddush, Simchas, and Holidays When we eat together, we can connect on many different levels. We connect to the food, and if you have the chance to serve food from a local farm or a producer you know, then the stories of the people and the land that grew the food can be just as nourishing as the food itself. We connect to each other around a table, too; food gives us the chance to have longer conversations with folks we may regularly just see in passing. And we have the chance to learn and celebrate together, in a long chain of Jewish tradition.

Planning communal meals can be complicated by people’s busy schedules, institutional kashrut polices, space and time challenges, and so on. The tips in this section will help you navigate some of these challenges and help you create a memorable feast—whether the occasion is simply bringing your community together, giving your weekly kiddush table a sustainable-upgrade, celebrating life-cycle events, or planning for big holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Passover.

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Advance Planning

Planning Moments for Connection

There are a number of different questions you want to ask when you’re contemplating a communal meal:

A good meal has a good start and a good ending.

People should feel welcomed and included. They should understand that there is a focus to your meal, and know what that focus is. Here are some suggestions for bringing mindfulness to your meal:

•

•

How many people am I expecting? What is the ideal number for achieving my goals (intimate conversation, bringing the whole community together, etc.)? Will this be kid-friendly or geared more towards adults (hint: a 40 min speech by a guest speaker, not so kid-friendly)? Be clear about your expectations to your guests.

Should we use the institution’s kitchen/social hall?

(You may wish to explore this option if kashrut is an issue, if you’re expecting a lot of guests, or if you don’t wish to open up your home.) Other advantages include guests feeling comfortable in a familiar space, access to large-scale kitchen equipment, janitorial staff (though you should confirm that they will be available to help you).

•

Or maybe a picnic in a park?The obvious challenge to this option is weather: a park with a covered picnic location is a great way to ensure success regardless of the elements. If you do plan an outdoor event, consider: can everyone find the location? Do you need a permit for a large gathering? Will other activities in the park contribute to or hinder the atmosphere you’re trying to create?

•

Hosting at home? Great for smaller gatherings and building community. Navigating kashrut concerns can be a challenge - see the note below with some suggestions for helping to make all your guests feel comfortable.

•

Food Blessings: JJews have been saying blessings over food for over 2000 years. Pausing before a meal to offer thanks can be a profound moment of connection--with the growers, producers, and chefs; with the people around your table; with God and with creation. Jewish food blessings offer an accessible entry point into Jewish tradition, but if the traditional wordings are a challenge, consider inviting people to articulate their own blessings, or offer a kavanah (intention) before the meal in addition to saying traditional blessings.

•

Opening Circle: An opening circle lets people get a sense of who they are going to be eating with. It lets them share a piece of themselves that may not come up in ordinary dinner chit-chat, which helps deepen relationships. It helps to focus the group on a particular question that will be discussed during the evening learning, and it lets everyone be heard.

People might already be chatting in small groups, so gently ask for everyone to quiet down. Introduce yourself and explain what is going to happen first, then pose the question, then indicate a person to start.

•

Learn Some Texts Together: Later in this chapter, some texts from Food For Thought: Hazon’s Sourcebook on Jews, Food and Contemporary Life have been included to help you think about your relationship to food and Jewish tradition. You may want to use these texts as a conversation starter at a communal meal.

Sourcing Your Food Use the tips in Chapter 1 to help you decide what food to serve. Remember, you may not be able to serve a 100% kosher sustainable meal. Rather, aim to choose elements that really stand out, and make sure that people notice them. Signs on tables or an announcement to point out the local flower centerpieces, the donated chocolate from a sustainable chocolate company, or the seasonal fruits on the fruit platter will start to educate your community about the available options.

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So we can all eat together Communal meals pose some challenge for folks with strict dietary concerns, whether this is kashrut, allergies or anything else. Here are some tips to navigate the options with grace: •

Have labels and pens available, and encourage guests to write out ingredient lists to label their dishes.

•

Set aside one table for kosher food, one table for vegetarian food, one table for everything else.

•

Have a conversation with your guests ahead of time to find out about special dietary needs. Let them know what you expect to be able to accommodate, and where they may wish to simply bring their own food.

Hosting a Sustainable Kiddush The weekly Shabbat kiddush table is a place of blessing, schmoozing, and simcha (happiness). But it also has the tendency to generate a lot of waste and unhealthy eating habits. Check our Hazon’s Green Kiddush program (hazon.org/greenkiddush), a thorough resource on hosting a sustainable Kiddush. Additionally, the list below offers a few resources and ideas for making your kiddush table healthy and sustainable. The same ideas can easily be transferred to your next synagogue social event, Hadassah meeting, book club, or canned food drive •

Start a Kiddush Committee at Your Synagogue.

Get together a group of people who like to cook and give your usual caterer a break. Try offering a “homemade kiddush” once a month where everything is cooked by volunteers and is locallysourced and organic.

•

Go Free Range. Egg salad is a staple of the kiddush table. Try making egg salad from cage-free eggs.

•

Veggie Cholent. Serve vegetarian cholent at your kiddush. Try featuring a new grain like brown rice, barley, or millet.

•

Feature Seasonal Fruits. Fresh fruit platters are commonly found at kiddush tables and are both beautiful and healthy. But if you live outside of California, it can be next to impossible to source these fruits locally during the winter months. Focus on fresh fruits when they’re in season in your area, and when they’re not, consider dried or canned (if dried and canned locally!).

•

Can the Soda. Avoid sugary sodas and fruit punches – instead, serve seltzers, 100% real fruit juices (and scotch, of course!). A grape juice to try: if you live in the Northeast, try serving the kosher grape juice from Glendale Farms.

•

Family Style. Try serving kiddush family style – with the food on small platters on tables, rather than vast quantities at a long buffet. This allows people to see what’s available and encourages them to take healthy portions.

•

Hummus! Hummus is relatively simple to make fresh in large batches and tastes amazing.

•

Salatim. Salatim is an assortment of small salads and dips. Try serving pickles, dilly beans, or other value-added products from local farms. Invite the farmers to speak to the congregation about their farm during Shabbat lunch.

•

Leftovers. “If you run out of food, or there is none left by the end of kiddush, then the amounts were perfect,” Edith Stevenson comments. “The idea that we must have LOTS of food at a kiddush is a Jewish tradition that I think is just plain wrong!” If you do have leftovers, consider donating them to a local Food Bank or other food recovery organization.

Another option: freeze your leftovers and deliver them to families with a new baby or someone recovering for surgery or illness.

Host a Sustainable Shabbat Dinner!

For thousands of years, Shabbat has sustained the Jewish people by providing a respite from the work of the week. Creating a sustainable Shabbat dinner, a meal that uses our natural resources wisely, means that Shabbat can continue to sustain us for thousands of years to come. Hazon and Birthright Israel NEXT partnered to create a guide on Hosting a Sustainable Shabbat Dinner. The guide will help you plan your meal, think about what to serve, how to set up and clean up, get the meal started, and bring some insightful Jewish learning to your Shabbat table. To download your own copy visit hazon.org/education.

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Here’s a great example of a Sustainable Simcha event flyer from Moishe Kavod House in Boston

WHAT IS ‘FARM TO SHUL’?

Anatomy of a Sustainable Simcha

Farm to Shul connects local Jewish communities to sustainable and just food systems! We work to make Boston Jewish communities more eco-friendly, campaign for justice for farm workers, and visit farms for hands-on Jewish learning.

Tasty treats brought to you by ‘Farm to Shul’

Farm to Shul is currently running an Institutional Purchasing Campaign to make our consumption more just and sustainable.

We have audited our food consumption and established a Community Food Advisory Board (CoFAB) which will make recommendations to Moishe Kavod House membership.

We learned the full importance of

WHAT DID WE relationships and knowledge held LEARN IN THIS by our community members that allowed us to source tasty, ethical, PROCESS?

and affordable food. Throughout the whole process we pushed our creativity and redefined our limits. We learned of new food resources, such as Market Mobile, which we may share with other communities looking to do similar work.

VOLUNTEERS

Provide tasty, healthy vegetarian hors d’oeuvres within time and budget constraints and considering kashrut

Increase support for small farms and sustainable production by sourcing directly from producers

• Menu • • Dips•

Green Salad

Served with Clear Flour Bakery Baguette

Parsnip, Potato, Sweet Potato, Carrot

Hummus

Sweet Potatoes with Coriander, Fennel & Oregano

Chickpeas with Tahini, Lemon Juice, Garlic, & Olive Oil

Deviled Eggs

from Narragansett Creamery

Butternut Squash and Carmelized Onion Galette Triangles

Meira Soloff Helen Bennett Becca Weaver Aliza Wasserman Alex Khitrik Hannah Levine

• Dessert •

Butternut Squash and Onion with Chevre in a Flour and Sour Cream Crust

Choosing simple recipes enabled us to easily multiply them for the large group, and we supplemented our team’s time with a crew of volunteers from our community who spent a few hours in the kitchen during the past week.

Flourless Chocolate Cupcakes Butter, Sugar, Eggs, Chocolate & Cocoa

Apple Chutney on Crostini

Tart Green Apples with Garlic, Ginger, Raisins, & Mustard

SOURCES

The existing relationships that members of our team had with local producers and distributors was essential to researching purchasing options. In the end we sourced mostly from Market Mobile and local grocery stores, and took advantage of discounted and bulk options. The small number of direct sourcing channels helped to maximize our budget and time.

Cheese Spreads

Eggs with a Mayonnaise, Relish & Mustard Sauce and Paprika Garnish

The Farm to Shul Team

We crafted a menu around seasonally available items - thus, we are featuring many root vegetables tonight - and chose light and healthy previously tested recipes. Over weekly phone conversations we finalized a menu that would respect the kashrut policies of our community and host institution and meet our team’s sustainability and duplicability goals. We used online tools that we could all access to assist with data and time management.

Tri-color Vegetable Puree

Spicy Sweet Potato Wedges

Over the course of four days and nights: Blake Heller, Elana Kieffer, Darya Mattes, Katie Temes, Jessica Stein, Dalia Fleming, Jill Lofchie, Jeff Levinson, Abe Miller, Sally Velez Guzman, Amy Horning

Minimize exploitative production by sourcing fair trade and from smaller, more transparent companies where possible

PROCESS

• Delights • Mixed Greens with a Lemon Honey Vinaigrette

Prep & Cooking Volunteers

INTENTIONS

Create an inspiring model that may be replicated by others

All Items Served on Compostable Dishware

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Temple Beth Zion for hosting and Rav Claudia Kreiman and Jeralyn Elowitz for coordination.

Inna’s Kitchen & Alex Khitrik for industry knowledge and use of their space.

Greens

Allen Farms Westport, MA

Farming Turtles Exeter, RI

Organic, Kosher

Eggs

Baffoni’s Poultry Farm Johnston, RI

Apples

Hill Orchards Johnston, RI

Butternut Squash, Potatoes, & Parsnips

Cheese

Narragansett Creamery Providence, RI Kosher

Market Mobile

Farm-to-Biz online ordering. Fresh from 40 family farms and local producers across RI, MA, and CT. Delivered to community member in Newton, MA.

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A multitude of organic & fair trade options.

Conveniently located for volunteers.

Cambridge, MA

Parsley & Marjoram

Olive Oil

Organic

Spices

Helen Bennett for coordinating with Moishe Kavod House.

Whole Foods Market

Condiments

McCormick and Wojnar Farms Foster, RI

All those who lent refrigerator space.

Garlic & Ginger

Onions Local

Some Organic

Sugar

Fair Trade

Chocolate Coffee & Tea

Fair Trade, Organic, Kosher

Schartner Farms Exeter, RI

Equal Exchange

West Bridgewater, MA

Clear Flour Bakery Carrots & Sweet Potatoes Czajkowski Farm Hadley, MA

Bread

Brookline, MA

Restaurant Depot

Used community member’s industry knowledge to access.

Newton, MA

Salt

Lemon Juice Chickpeas

Goat Cheese Kosher

Sustainable Simchas It seems that there is always a reason to celebrate in the Jewish community. While the Jewish calendar is packed with holidays, lifecycle events offer additional opportunities to sing, dance, and eat great food! Use the following tips to ensure that your next simcha reflects your commitment to living a sustainable life. The following suggestions can be applied for any holiday, event, or occasion!

•

Serve a Vegetarian or Vegan Meal. Serving a vegetarian meal is often healthier and less expensive and certainly more environmentally friendly. If you are serving a dairy meal, look for recommendations on kosher, sustainable dairy products in the section above.

•

Serve Produce that is Grown Locally and in Season. Connect to the season that your simcha falls in by serving seasonal foods that are grown locally.

Often you can save money buying this produce at a farmers market. If you are catering your simcha, ask the caterer where they get their produce. If they don’t source from local vendors, ask them if they would make an exception.

•

Serve Meat or Fish that is Sustainable If you decide to serve meat at your simcha, you will find recommendations for sustainable kosher meat in the section above. Look for fish that is certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council or select “Best choice” or “Good” options from the Seafood Watch pocket guide.

• L’Chaim! (A traditional Jewish toast meaning “to life!”)

What would a simcha be without a good l’chaim? You can find recommendations for organic, kosher wines in chapter 1. Consider serving beer or alcohol that are brewed or distilled in your area.

•

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Compost! Get a clear idea of how many people you will be expecting at your simcha so that you don’t purchase unnecessary food. If you have leftover food, think about freezing leftovers, giving it away to your guests, or donating it to a local shelter or emergency food provider. Try to use reusable dishes, cutlery, napkins and table cloths. Make sure that all recyclable products end up in the appropriate recycle bins. Instead of filling landfills, turn the leftover scraps from your simcha into nutrient rich soil by composting! If you don’t have your own compost bin, find a friend, farm, or community garden where you can donate your compostable scraps.

For more ideas on hosting a sustainable simcha, check out the “Green and Just Celebrations” guide put out

by Jews United for Justice http://www.jufj.org/green_ just_celebrations. This guide focuses on simchas in the Washington DC area but has ideas that can be used anywhere.

Kosher Sustainable Caterers The following list features caterers from communities around the country. Some of them incorporate sustainable practices into their ethos, and others are open to working with you to choose more sustainable options for your event/simcha. All of them are kosher or have kosher options. If your community is not listed, consider reaching out to one of these businesses to get suggestions on how to negotiate with caterers in your area.

Baltimore: Bon Appetit Management Company iis driven by culture, to create food that is alive with flavor and nutrition, prepared from scratch using authentic ingredients. http://www.cafebonappetit.com/

Chicago: Catering Perfection is a health minded full service catering company with kosher food. Catering Perfection has a commitment to purchase fish, meat, and poultry that is prepared in a sustainable and ethical way. http://cateringperfection.com/

Colorado: La Vie Catering is a full-service boutique caterer specializing in kosher cuisine. They focus on seasonal and local ingredients. They also offer culinary classes. http:// www.laviecatering.com/ Occasions Catering has kosher menus as well as a commitment to sustainability. Occasions’ commitment to sustainability is based off of their effort to do business locally, avoid filling the landfill, and putting leftovers to great use. http://www.occasionsdenver.com/ Sweet Pea Cuisine offers sustainable meals for a range of catering needs. All menus have kosher options and have the ability to be tailored to your dietary desires. http:// sweetpeacuisine.com/

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Los Angeles: Hovav Catering believes in fresh, seasonal ingredients, sustainable foods, organic when possible, and fusing cuisines from all around the world. Hovav Catering is able to provide various levels of Kashrut. http://www.hovavcatering.com/

Michigan: From the Hearth Food offers creative answers to kosher, vegan, and vegetarian catering needs for large or small special events in southeast Michigan. From the Hearth Food uses local, sustainable, and organic ingredients whenever possible. http://fromthehearthfood.com/

New Jersey: Branches Catering provides Glatt Kosher catering along with their initiative of a commitment to “Green Cuisine.” Branches Catering is taking efforts to incorporate sustainability into their products and services whenever possible. http://www.branchescatering.com/

New Orleans: Audubon Nature Institute is the only green-certified caterer in the state of Louisiana, and offers Kosher catering in the Audubon Tea Room. http://www.auduboninstitute.org/caterers-in-neworleans

New York: The Adamah Foods kitchen is certified kosher and their innovative chefs create farm-to-table magic. A significant amount of the produce used is grown right on campus. http://isabellafreedman.org Avril Kaye is a kosher caterer who is known for their seasonable and sustainable food with a modern twist. http://www.avrilkaye.com/

Philadelphia: Bon Appetit @ Penn is a sustainable food service company with kosher catering options. Bon Appetit is dedicated to providing food that is alive with flavor and prepared from scratch using authentic local and seasonal ingredients.

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Peachtree Kosher is the kosher division of Peachtree & Ward, which brings luster to the kosher marketplace.

Peachtree is committed to sustainable agriculture, recycling, and a greener planet. http://www.peachtreecatering.com/

San Antonino: Green offers full service vegetarian and kosher catering for special events. Green is San Antonio’s only 100% vegetarian and kosher restaurant and caterer. http://greensanantonio.com/menu/catering/

San Francisco: Hearth Healing Foods uses organic, local and seasonable produce as well as herbs. Many international cuisines are available. All food is kosher. All production and serving is done with as little disposables as possible.

And they aim to be affordable and accessible. hearthhealingfoods.com/

Seattle: Leah Cooks Kosher is dedicated to elevating the expectations consumers have about kosher food and to be responsive to the Seattle community, renowned for its foodies and eclectic social conscience. Vegetarian and vegan, gluten-free and dairy free options available, and all is kosher. www.leahcookskosher.com/

St. Louis: Bon Appétit @ WashU hhas a mission of preparing food with creativity and passion. Bon Appetit uses only the highest-quality and freshest ingredients available for kosher food preparations.

Toronto: Kavanah Catering serves the downtown Toronto area via bicycle-powered transportation. CKC creates innovative, healthful, vegetarian and vegan kosher food and focuses on using local and organic ingredients. http://www.kavanahcatering.com/

Texts on Food and Mindfulness Seeing again, for the first time Because we eat two, three or four times every day, it’s easy to forget how wondrous that is. It’s like the sunrise or the sunset. The sun rises and sets every day. If it’s an especially beautiful sunrise, we may notice it. But if it’s not “special” we may not even see it.

But if we can see it as if for the first time, each sunrise becomes very special and very beautiful. And so with each meal we create.

– Bernard Glassman, Instructions to the Cook Radical Amazement As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines.

Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind.

Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.

Radical amazement has a wider scope than any other act of man. While any act of perception or cognition has as its object a selected segment of reality, radical amazement refers to all of reality; not only to what we see, but also to the very act of seeing as well as to our own selves, to the selves that see and are amazed at their ability to see.

– Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man

Gratitude means noticing Why is eating a vegetable one of the steps to freedom?

Because gratitude is liberating. And how do we get there?

We focus on the details.

Close your eyes: You are holding a piece of parsley, which you are about to dip into salt water. But before that – what things needed to happen to get this parsley into our hands?

Who placed the parsley seeds into the ground? What sort of conditions did it grow in? Was it a hot summer? What did the soil feel like? How was the parsley harvested? What did it look like at that perfect moment when it was mature and ready to be picked? Who picked it? Where did the parsley travel next? Was it packed into cardboard boxes? How did it travel to the store or farmer’s market? Who unloaded and unpacked it? Who placed it on a scale and weighed it so it could be purchased? Think for a moment about the number of hands that played a part in getting the parsley to this table and into our hands.

Now open your eyes: Look a little more closely at the parsley in your hand – what does it look like? How many leaves does it have? What does that specific color green remind you of? What does the stem feel like? Imagine what it tastes like…

Take a piece of parsley and dip it in salt water. Then we say the blessing together, and then we eat. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who brings forth fruit from the earth.

– Leah Koenig (Pesach 2006)

Healthy and Sustainable Holidays “What should I serve for Rosh Hashanah?”

“How can I make my sukkah more sustainable? ” “What might an ecologically inspired, spiritually tuned-in, multi-generational non-denominational Tu B’Shvat Seder look like – and how can I host one?”

We’re glad you asked!

Over the years Hazon has developed a number of resources to help you celebrate the Jewish holidays in line with your values, and to use these key moments in the Jewish calendar to bring some of our most complicated struggles to light.

Visit hazon.org/education/holidays to find resources that can inspire a theme for a holiday, an activity for your family or event for you community.

And remember – Reb Shlomo Carlbach taught that the holidays come to remind us of ideas that we should really be thinking of year-round, so feel free to use these suggestions any time of year!

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3 Serving and Cooking the Food

You’re going to need plates and utensils to serve all that delicious, locally-sourced food. This section will go through the best decisions you can make for your own Jewish institution and help you implement change where it matters most.

You may also wish to evaluate the pots and pans and appliances in your kitchen, in order to produce even more sustainable food at your institution. We don’t suggest, however, that you go through your kitchen and discard perfectly good items. Rather, when you’re in need of a new pan, or the old fridge breaks, consider making the investment in healthy and sustainable items.

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Reusable Dishes—Nothing to Throw Away When it comes to using plates and flatware at your institution, it is always better to use non-disposable, because even so-called “green” disposable products take a lot of energy and resources to produce.

Ceramics. Buying a set of glass or ceramic dishes is a good investment to make, but sometimes not always in the budget. If your budget is tight, consider purchasing used glass plates at a local thrift store (Check with your institution about their kashrut policy first, and find out what steps you’ll need to take to kasher (make kosher) used dishes. Note that ceramic and pottery generally can’t be kashered). If you’re buying reusable plates and utensils in large quantities, try a restaurant supply store for a good bulk rate. (Try restaurantwarehouse.com if there isn’t a local store in your area.)

Bamboo. Bamboo products are also a great alternative, whether they are reusable or disposable. Bamboo wins major sustainability points because of its ability to grow and spread quickly — in some cases three to four feet per day, without the need for fertilizers, pesticides or much water. A bamboo grove also releases some 35 percent more oxygen into the air than a similar-sized stand of trees, and it matures (and can be replanted) within seven years (compared to 30-50 years for a stand of trees). A growing number of companies are producing bamboo-based plates, silverware, and kitchen items, like salad bowls and cutting boards as well.

weekly study group) where it can become part of the group’s culture. With such a group there is also time to do a little awareness raising and education about the environmental and cost benefits. Families who attend the monthly Family School program at Congregation Har HaShem (Boulder, CO) are encouraged to bring their own dishes for their monthly potluck dinner and those who do get to go to the front of the buffet line!

Disposable Dishes: Compostable, Biodegradable, and More Using dishes and silverware that can be discarded after use have obvious benefits for your clean up crew. A growing number of disposable dishes are available that use recycled content and are designed to breakdown in composting facilities or landfills. Here’s what you need to know about these items: Compostable Products. According to the International Standards of the American Society for Testing and Materials, compostable products will break down in commercial composting facilities at a specified rate (usually 180 days or less). The catch: the composting facility is not a backyard heap, but an industrialsize facility that your city may or may not have. If it turns out your city does have the means to compost these dishes, add an extra bin labeled ‘compostable’ and set up a committee to help get the materials to the compost. More on composting and compost committees in Chapter 6.

Here are some brands that offer compostable dishes: •

Leafware / www.leaf-ware.com

•

Go Green in Stages / gogreeninstages.com

At Hazon...

•

Let’s Go Green / letsgogreen.biz

Hazon purchased a set of glass dishes and utensils for our own meetings and office events. Hazon spent over $500 on compostable plates, cups, and flatware in 2008 from World Centric 9 for our board meetings and office events. This year, we ordered a set of 12 glass bowls, 12 glass plates, and 45 piece flatware set for only $120. It has not only been better for the earth, but better for our budget.

•

World Centric / worldcentric.org

B.Y.O. - Bring Your Own For some community meals, it might be feasible to ask people to bring their own reusable dishes. This works particularly well with smaller groups that meet regularly (such as a monthly seniors luncheon or a

Biodegradable Products. Manufacturers may make claims about biodegradable products that aren’t verified, because there is no regulation on them.

Recycled Products. If compostable dishes aren’t available, recycled products provide a good alternative to plastic. Look for the phrase “made with recycled post-consumer waste” to indicate that the product is made from materials already used once (many factories “recycle” waste materials from their manufacturing process, particularly since it saves money). However, this definition of “recycled” doesn’t mean that the product is diverting material that would otherwise end up in a landfill. For recycled paper dishes, consider •

Earth Shell

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•

Seventh Generation / seventhgeneration.com

•

Preserve (recycled plastic products) / preserveproducts.com

Sustainable Math Sustainable plates and utensils are most likely going to cost you more than standard products. A case of 1,000 compostable 12-ounce NatureWorks cold cups averages $0.97/cup, whereas a 1,000 pack of 12-ounce Solo cold cups comes out to about $0.13/cup.

Corn-Based Products. Some new companies are making disposable dishes from corn. In some ways, it’s a great alternative to plastic, and they do breakdown in landfills much faster than plastic (which never actually fully disappears). Some of these products are heat sensitive, so be careful if you’re serving soup or hot coffee! Corn-based products are an interesting development, but corn production in the US is one of the most environmentally-damaging processes of conventional agriculture. The processing required to turn the corn into plastic is also energy intensive.

Get Rid of all that Plastic Plastic’s convenience comes from being lightweight and from its ability to absorb impact shock without breaking, which on its own merit, is hard to argue with. It comes in an endless range of colors and finishes, is pliable, and is easily formed and molded. Most would say it’s a perfect material, right?

Wrong. The long term negative health and socioeconomic effects of plastic at the local and global scales far outweigh the benefits realized by the use of plastics. Its inexpensiveness is the result of a large portion of the costs associated with its life — production, use, and disposal — being put onto society as a whole.

Plastics are made from oil, a non-renewable resource whose extraction and use are contributing to climate change. Further, the harmful chemical typically found in plastic items with a recyclable symbol number 3 is Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), which leaches into food and liquids that we consume. Another chemical in plastic, Polycarbonate, which contains Bisphenol A (also known

No Styrofoam! Really.

You have probably heard this over and over by now, but just in case you forgot, styrofoam is one of the absolute worst things for the environment and your health. Not only does it leach toxic chemicals into foods, it’s made from petroleum, our #1 non-renewable energy source and pollutant. Further, styrofoam never really breaks down, so it ends up sitting in our landfills indefinitely.

If you take even one small step at your institution, replacing styrofoam with any of the above-mentioned options is a great first step!

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However, the price of these products is continuing to go down as demand increases. When looking at price, it is important to keep in mind a “systems perspective”, understanding the long term benefits for the greater whole—your community’s health, protecting the environment, and helping to move toward a more sustainable future. When you consider the costs cleaning up landfills, an extra $0.84/cup starts to sound like a good deal! Also, try partnering with other institutions to buy in larger quantities to minimize the price per piece. as BPA), has also been found to leach into the contents/ liquids that a plastic container is holding. When you eat or drink things that are stored in plastic, it is incorporated into your body. You quite literally “are what you eat” and in this case, it’s not a good thing.

Transitioning your plastic plates and utensils over to the more sustainable options is the best choice when it comes to serving your food. If you absolutely need to buy plastic plates for some reason, make sure they are BPA-free and never microwave food on them. It’s hard to avoid plastic, especially at an institutional level. If this is the case, an alternative can be to re-use safer plastics for storage around the institution. For example, if you are a synagogue that receives large plastic containers of food, these containers can then be used to keep materials for pre-schools, religious schools, and for office storage.

Adapted from “Get Plastic Out of Your Diet” by Paul Goettlich Good plastic? Bad plastic? Find out what’s what: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/which-plastics-are-safe. html

HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN USE SUSTAINABLE DISHES •

Use reusable dishes. It will save you money, and create a lot less waste. If you can, purchase used glass dishes from a thrift store.

•

Use recycled, compostable, or biodegradable dishes and napkins.

•

If you can’t overhaul your entire disposables budget, consider starting with the coffee mugs. Put a sign next to the coffee station explaining about how the coffee cups are made, and how they can be composted or recycled after use. Make sure to label disposal bins appropriately!

•

Have markers and tape available for people to put their name on their cup so that they can reuse it

throughout a longer event.

Napkins and Tablecloths Cloth napkins and tablecloths are not only better for the environment; they can also be more cost-effective because you don’t have to buy new ones for every event. Investing in a set of napkins and tablecloths is worthwhile for any institution. If you don’t have laundry facilities, consider starting a volunteer laundry rotation.

Check out these providers: •

Bambeco (www.bambeco.com)

•

Rawganique (www.rawganique.com)

•

Eco-cycle (ecocycle.org/ecostore)

•

Green Home (www.greenhome.com)

Cookware The types of pots and pans you cook your meals in are an important aspect to think about when considering your institution’s health.

Stainless Steel. Stainless steel is really a mixture of several different metals, including nickel, chromium and molybdenum, all of which can trickle into foods.

However, unless your stainless steel cookware is dinged and pitted, the amount of metals likely to get into your food is negligible.

Anodized Aluminum. These days, many health conscious cooks are turning to anodized aluminum cookware as a safer alternative. The electrochemical anodizing process locks in the cookware’s base metal, aluminum, so that it can’t get into food, and makes for what many cooks consider an ideal non-stick and scratch-resistant cooking surface. Calphalon is the leading manufacturer of anodized aluminum cookware; All Clad has recently joined the market as well.

Cast Iron. Consider that old standby, cast iron, which is known for its durability and even heat distribution.

Cast iron cookware can also help ensure that eaters in your house get enough iron—which the body needs to produce red blood cells—as it seeps off the cookware into food in small amounts. Unlike the metals that can come off of some other types of pots and pans, iron is considered a healthy food additive by the FDA. Note that most cast iron cookware needs to be seasoned after each use and as such is not as worry-free as other alternatives.

Ceramic Cookware. For those who like the feel and

heat distribution properties of cast iron but dread the seasoning process, ceramic enameled cookware from Le Creuset, World Cuisine, and others are a good choice.

The smooth and colorful enamel is dishwasher-friendly and somewhat non-stick, and covers the entire surface of such cookware to minimize clean-up headaches.

Copper. One other surface favored by chefs for sauces and sautés is copper, which excels at quick warm-ups and even heat distribution. Since copper can leak into food in large amounts when heated, the cooking surfaces are usually lined with tin or stainless steel.

Teflon. According to DuPont, the finished product of Teflon does not contain any of the production-process chemicals linked to health problems in factory workers.

Further, the U.S. EPA says that ingesting small particles of Teflon flaked off into food is not known to cause any health maladies. However, others aren’t as sure.

The nonstick coating is supposedly safe up to 450 °F, when it starts to break down and emit carcinogenic gases. Stoves generally heat the pans to a much hotter temperature than 450 °F. If you’re concerned about Teflon, use it on a lower heat, and replace them with one of the alternatives listed above when the coating starts to wear down.

Cleaning Supplies Choose non-toxic, non-polluting cleaning supplies in your facility, and especially in your kitchen and on the plates, utensils, appliances, containers and other items that come in direct contact with food. This keeps us safe from digesting and inhaling toxins and keeps pollution out of local water and waste streams. Additionally, safe cleaning supplies are just as effective and can cost the same (and a lot less if you make your own out of common items like baking soda and vinegar).

Check out the Environmental Working Group’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning at http://www.ewg.org/guides/ cleaners, www.greenseal.org, or search online for other non-toxic cleaning supplies to find many resources and information.

Efficient Energy Use Preparing and storing food takes up a lot more energy than you realize. Here are some tips for reducing energy use in your kitchen: • Unplug small appliances when they are not in use • Minimize the use of appliances with electrical heating elements such as toaster ovens and coffee makers

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•

Replace high energy-eaters (refrigerators, dishwashers, dryers) with Energy Star models

HOW TO MAKE YOUR INSTITUTION’S KITCHEN MORE SUSTAINABLE: •

Replace old appliances with newer, energy-efficient models.

Make buttons or stickers to help you remember to turn off the lights, etc.

When you have to purchase new pots and pans, consider ecological options.

EnergyStar.gov has an abundance of resources around energy efficiency (and not just for your kitchen).

Search for financial incentives that may be available to your institutions on the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiencies, http:// www.dsireusa.org/.

Consider an energy audit to evaluate the entire building’s energy use. While beyond the scope of Hazon’s Food Guide, here are several organizations that can work with your institution on overall greening: • UJA Greening Guide (www.ujafedny.org/greening-initiative) • COEJL (www.coejl.org) • Hazon’s Jewish Greening Fellowship (http://hazon.org/jewish-greening-fellowship/ overview/)

• • • •

•

Efficient Kitchens Surprise Lake Camp (Cold Spring, NY) participated in the Jewish Greening Fellowship in 2009-2010. One of the requirements of the Fellowship was to complete an energy audit. The audit revealed many ways to save energy in the kitchen. Over several years, the camp replaced the dishwasher with a high efficiency model, installed an on-demand hot water system, and insulated the walk-in refrigerator. These upgrades were accomplished with the help of financial incentives from the local electric utility and New York State.

Low Hanging - High Impact Congregation Bonai Shalom (Boulder, CO), like most congregations, celebrated kiddush each week using small disposable plastic cups. Always looking for steps to reduce their environmental impact, they decided in 2006 to invest in 200 two-ounce stainless steel cups from a catering supply company at the cost of about $1 a piece. In comparison, the plastic cups, bought in bulk, cost about 2¢ each.

They calculated that they used 80-100 plastic cups per week, over 300 per month, almost 4,000 per year! Hence, it took only one year for the investment to pay off financially. Seven years after the initial investment, they estimate they would have used nearly 30,000 plastic cups! There’s clearly a significant environmental pay off, and savings of $80 a year after the first year.

The metal cups either slide in the dishwasher with other kiddush items, or sometimes volunteers hand wash them. Beyond the very real financial and environmental benefits, this is a highly visible and symbolic step to take given that the cups are used in ritual. Rabbi Marc Soloway shares, “Regardless of cost and environmental impact, it feels so much better to have a little metal cup to hold than those horrible little plastic things.”

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4 Food Waste: Making Less of It, Doing More with It Reducing the amount of waste we produce is a core Jewish environmental value. Even though over-consumption and waste production are relatively recent environmental issues, Judaism has been tackling these problems since Talmudic times. The Jewish concept of Bal Tashchit, which prohibits us from being wasteful or unnecessarily destructive, is based on a text from the Torah that urges us to consider our relationship to the natural world.

This section shares some innovative tips on reducing your food waste from the Teva Learning Center. And, when you’ve cut down all you can and still have leftover food, we cover the basics of composting: how it works, how to start your own pile or work with a facility in your area. Considering the entire food chain—not only what happens before the food gets to our plates, but what happens after it leaves— is a key component of shifting your institution toward sustainable food choices.

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Reduce your food waste When it comes to food waste, most of us have all fallen into the trap of cooking too much food or taking too much on our plate. Before we even discuss how to manage our food waste, it’s important to plan on reducing the waste to begin with.

HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN REDUCE FOOD WASTE: •

Try not to cook too much food. If you’re not sure how much to make for a gathering of 20 or 30 or 50, think about how much food you would serve a family of 4…and then just multiply it.

•

Encourage people to only take what they will eat by making an announcement before the meal or putting signs on the tables.

•

If there are leftovers, find a place to donate them or come up with creative ways to reuse the leftovers for the next day instead of tossing all of it into the garbage.

•

Easiest of all, encourage people to take home leftovers if they’ll eat them!

•

Freeze leftovers and organize a committee to deliver leftovers to families in mourning, people dealing with illness, or homes with a new baby.

•

Serve whole fruit rather than cut-up fruit—it’s easier to reuse later if it doesn’t get eaten.

•

Offer people smaller plates. When you don’t have too much room on your plate, you’re less likely to take more than you can eat.

•

Conduct a food waste audit as a great educational and fun activity to figure out what is in your waste stream and prioritize. Try Greenfaith’s waste audit resources (greenfaith.org/resource-center/ stewardship/waste-reduction-and-recycling/wasteaudits) or an online search for “waste audit” will bring up several options.

Lessons from Psolet (food waste) Before the kids’ first meal at Teva [a week long Jewish environmental education program for 6th graders], the students are told they can eat as much as they want. They can come back for seconds or thirds even, but they should try not to create too much psolet. After each meal, the leftover food is collected in a bucket and ceremoniously weighed. … The goal is to have the kids produce less psolet [each day.] By the last lunch at a session this fall, 45 kids produced less than a pound of waste collectively, a new record.

Psolet on my plate OO WA OO WA OO WA OO OO (X2) Each day I go to breakfast Put oatmeal in my bowl Fill up my glass with O.J. Eat half my jelly roll.

I can’t believe I took more than I ate That’s why I have so much psolet on my plate.

OO WA OO WA OO WA OO OO Take two bites of an apple Drop raisins on the trail Pull breadcrusts off my sandwich I say it’s cause they’re stale.

Each night I ask the stars in the sky (Hey stars) Why does the food on my plate pile up so high?

OO WA OO WA OO WA OO OO But now I’m feelin’ happy I’m peaceful and serene I’m a ba’al bal tash’chit Because my plate is clean!

It’s true, I took no more than I ate That’s why you’ll never find psolet on my plate.

OO WA OO WA OO WA OO OO (X2)

Composting Composting is a process that helps organic matter to break down into a nutrient-rich, soil-like substance that is used in organic gardening. Food waste that is not composted ends up in landfills and releases methane gas, a potent greenhouse gas, as it decomposes.

Nearly all organic matter (that is, plants, meat, fish, milk, cheese, eggs, flower stems, etc.) can be

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composted, but the actual items that are accepted at each composting facility may vary. The reason for this?

Some materials need a lot of heat to break down, and a given composting site may not have enough volume to generate the necessary heat. Other compost sites are concerned about pests; although meat and fish are perfectly compostable, they also can attract unwanted animals, and so many sites stick to vegetables only.

What are your options? If you have room on your property, starting a composting project can be a great educational opportunity for your community, and an extremely convenient way to compost your leftover food waste. However, you’ll need someone (or a committee) to devote some energy to it.

Alternately, you can bring your food waste to a public composting facility. This may be run by your city government or a non-governmental agency. Many community-gardens offer public composting as well.

Resources for Institutional Composting •

The EPA has an extremely comprehensive website of resources on composting, including: what can and can’t be composted, regional composting programs, laws and statutes, environmental benefits of composting, the science and technology behind the process, and a list of publications with more information.

•

Connecticut State developed a manual for composting in schools.

•

The Jewish Farm School has a Jewish composting guide, including instructions on building a compost bin and thoughts on the nature of cycles in Jewish tradition.

•

Vermiculture (composting using worms) is a fun and effective way to handle small amounts of compost, a great educational opportunity for a classroom setting.

•

If your institution has a CSA, find out if your farmer could pick up your compost.

Composting at synagogue Altshul, an independent minyan in Park Slope, Brooklyn, has been composting since 2009. About seven or eight Altshul members take turns collecting the compost after kiddush and bringing it to farmers markets and community gardens in Brooklyn and Manhattan that have public compost drop-offs sites.

Education is important – there was a lot of support and interest in the idea, but also some trepidation about what items could actually be composted (the answer: all food items!). To increase awareness and facilitate the process, the group has made a set of reusable signs that they put above three different bins in the kiddush hall: trash, compost, and reusable/rewashable (for the Kiddush cups and plastic utensils that can be used again). The biggest challenge is getting people to commit to actually take the compost—but the group has a strong core of volunteers and is hopeful that as awareness grows, so will the number of people who get involved.

One member of the team, Shuli Passow, told us about her experience:

“Being part of a religious community that includes composting as part of its regular habits is deeply meaningful. It integrates one set of values into another, as my environmentalism finds new expression as a Jewish act, and my Jewish community encompasses a behavior that aligns with my personal commitment to environmental stewardship. This seemingly small practice of composting enables me to feel more full whole in my Judaism and more spiritually rooted in my work to connect with and care for the earth.”

Advice from the group’s founder, Leah Koenig, on starting your own composting program: •

Research your compost drop-off options. Gardens within walking distance are ideal.

•

Talk about the idea with your community to gauge interest, then recruit people to help you. Don’t go at it alone!

•

If you can’t compost right away, at least switch to compostable plates! It’s a step in the right direction.

This is how Altshul got started.

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HOW TO START COMPOSTING AT YOUR INSTITUTION

IDEAS TO INCREASE RECYCLING AT YOUR INSTITUTION

•

Evaluate: how much food waste is produced, and when?

•

•

Find out if your institution would be willing to start composting on-site. Use information from Connecticut State and the Jewish Farm School to explain what will be involved.

Find out what the local recycling laws are and evaluate your institution to see if they are in compliance.

•

Encourage recycling by making bins available everywhere food is eaten (classrooms, offices, social hall, outside, etc.)

•

Recruit a committee to help you put your plan into action. You’ll need to work on the infrastructure (or on a rotation schedule if you’re bringing compost to a facility off-site), and on people’s habits, getting them to remember to put food waste in a separate bin from trash.

•

Engage your community in a poster campaign: the winning entry will be displayed throughout your institution to encourage recycling.

•

Organize “drives” for specialty recycling items, such as electronics and batteries, and bring them to a facility in bulk. Make sure to feature your efforts in your institution’s newsletter!

•

Buy recycled paper, dishes, and napkins.

Recycling If your town or municipality offers recycling, your community may still need some reminding when it comes to putting bottles, cans, and paper in the right bins. Make sure there are always recycle bins next to trash bins, and make sure they are clearly labeled (this could be a good project for your Hebrew school). At the Hazon office, we label the trash bins with a sign that say “landfill” – a somewhat in-your-face reminder of where our non-recyclable trash ends up.

If your town doesn’t recycle, find out if there are organizations that can take your recyclables, and organize a drive in your community.

In addition to making sure your materials get recycled, encourage your institution to purchase products made from recycled materials. Newspapers, paper towels, aluminum, plastic, glass soft drink containers, steel cans, and plastic laundry detergent bottles commonly contain recycled materials. As consumers demand more environmentally sound products, manufacturers will continue to meet that demand by producing highquality recycled products.

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Recycling gets a lot more air time than the other two of the “3 Rs”—yet reducing the waste we generate, and lengthening the shelf life of the products we do use, must become as routine as recycling. Here are some tips for Reducing and Reusing: •

Buy in bulk

•

Use pitchers and glasses for water, or a water cooler, rather than individual-sized water bottles

5 Food Education Changing the food you eat is one part of the equation; changing the way you think about it and talk about it is equally important. Food offers a wonderful starting point for diving in to Jewish tradition, and some of our ancient Jewish texts and practices offer remarkably relevant insights into the way we eat today.

It’s amazing how Jewish tradition can come to life when you have a hands-on learning experience. In this chapter we offer a variety of different educational programming ideas, including movie nights, field trips, cooking classes, and speakers. We invite you to explore the possibilities of Jewish food education!

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Go on a field trip

Host a Beit Midrash / Learning Series

Getting out of the synagogue/community center and going to a different location automatically makes something more exciting. Taking a field trip to a local farm, or even a museum, is a great way to get people thinking more about the outside world and less about their computer screens, homework, and day-to-day tasks.

Hosting a beit midrash (literally, “house of study” – in practice, a one-time or multi-week series of learning classes on a given topic) is a great way to get people talking about food, faith, and agriculture. Having a text in common is an excellent way to get a conversation going, while also having a framework around which to center the discussion. A number of organizations have assembled collections of texts on these topics, including Hazon’s “Food For Thought: Sourcebook on Jews, Food & Contemporary Life.” For a full list, see the Resources section in the Appendix.

•

Go to a local farm or farmers’ market. This is a great way to see a sustainable food system in action, as well as munch on some yummy snacks.

•

Go to a food processing facility. If there’s a big factory in your city/town, find out if they offer tours. This can be a great way to see industrial food production first hand and learn about what is in your “backyard.”

Go to a museum exhibit. Visit a museum about local food history, farm workers, economic justice, or other food-related topics. See if you can arrange for a special guided tour for your group by one of the docents.

•

Cook together!

Bringing people together for a cooking demonstration, or to cook a meal together, serves as a great opportunity to talk about the importance of using local /organic/sustainable ingredients, the benefits of cooking at home, and new, exciting ways to make old and familiar dishes.

•

Cooking demos. Host one at your community CSA. Even if you don’t belong to a CSA, cooking demos are great ways to showcase a new and interesting food. Bring in a chef from outside or just have someone in your community share one of their favorite recipes!

•

Potlucks. Interact as a community in a fun way through a potluck. Have everyone bring a dish for a picnic/dinner and make sure to encourage people to share what ingredients they used/where they came from.

•

DIY Food Preservation. Give people the skills to eat locally year-round by teaching pickling, canning, fermenting, and preserving!

Invite a speaker Bring in someone from your community (or outside your community) to teach about food justice issues, sustainability, or some other topic that you think your community members would find interesting. Sample topics include: •

Sustainability. Talk about ways to improve sustainability both at home and in the community.

•

Food justice issues. Talk about the Farm Bill, ethical kosher meat, or hunger in your community.

•

A farmer’s perspective. Have a local farmer talk about the work that she/he does.

The Hazon Jewish Food Education Network (JFEN) IIn order to empower educators and individuals to teach sustainable food issues through a Jewish lens, Hazon has created the Jewish Food Education Network (JFEN). JFEN is a way for educators all over North America to connect with, share and learn from each other with the help of Hazon’s innovative food education resources and support.

“JFEN is an invaluable experience for the next generation. Hazon has put so much time and care into creating amazing resources that can be used in all types of learning environments.” - JFEN Member Whether you have been teaching for 2 months or 20 years, or if you’re an educational director at a synagogue, a Jewish camp counselor, or a parent who wants to teach their kids at home, you can benefit from Hazon’s educator resources.

Visit hazon.org/jfen for more information

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Meet your Meat: Organizing an on-farm shechita (slaughter) The do-it-yourself food movement is growing: people are braiding challah and making pickles in numbers not seen for at least three generations. Learning these newold skills is a way to connect to older generations—and also a way to take back some control over the food we eat, which is increasingly grown, produced, and packaged behind closed doors or in places too far away for us to ever see. Learning about how Jewish tradition prescribes the transition from living animal to meat is a something that few people ever imagine to see, but more and more people are yearning for. “If I’m going to eat meat, I ought to be able to look the animal in the eye before it dies on my behalf,” said one participant at the chicken slaughter before the 2009 Hazon Food Conference.

This is a feeling shared by many, and an educational shechita actually gives people access to see the process— from the cut of the knife through the plucking of feathers and soaking and salting (part of the process of making kosher meat). Viewing an educational shechita can be a very powerful experience for participants.

For logistical reasons, we recommend organizing a poultry shechita, rather than a larger animal. Cows, lamb, and goats must have their lungs checked after slaughter, and there is a 30-70% chance that this will reveal that animal is unfit for kosher consumption.

Even if the animal is kosher, only the front half is used for kosher meat in the United States, so you will have at least half an animal (if not the whole thing) that will need to go to non-Jews. The infrastructure requirements for butchering a cow or lamb are very complex as well. For these reasons, we suggest you stick with chickens!

Slaughtering, plucking, eviscerating, and butchering a turkey is disgusting.

No, it’s not. It’s beautiful. If animal meat makes you squeamish, go see the Bodies exhibit or find yourself an illustrated anatomy book. Our lives depend on our intricate series of tubes and containers, a central distribution system, waste collection… the “asher yatzar” (bathroom blessing) comes to mind: if but one of these openings or hollows was closed where it should be open, or open where it should be closed, we could not function. Ditto with animals. Putting my hand inside the carcass of a dead turkey and pulling out the still-warm entrails was an AWE-some experience. Meat comes from a living animal, and if you can’t hear that – you shouldn’t eat meat.”

– Anna Hanau, after the turkey shechting at the 2008 Hazon Food Conference

There are several organizations that can help you organize a chicken shechita: •

Grow and Behold Foods (New York area) www.growandbehold.com

•

Loko (“Local Kosher”) (Boston area) www.lokomeat.com

Hazon may also be able to connect you with individuals in your area with some experience in this kind of project, who can help you. Contact seal@hazon.org for more information.

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The year of 613+ Shabbat Dinners Beth Am in Baltimore, Maryland took “feels like home” to new heights in the year 5772 with the introduction of The Year of 613+ Shabbat Dinners, an exciting new initiative to connect members to one another around the Shabbat table.

Their goal was to reach 613 (or more) dinners and engage each and every Beth Am family by Rosh Hashanah 5773.

Members posted online about their meals sharing stories: “We talked about how Shabbat ‘requires’ us to rest and as a result, gives us the gift of guilt-free time away from all the demands of our lives.”

“Shabbat Hanukkah! We enjoyed latkes and other goodies and the kids got to play dreidel and eat gelt.”

“We marveled at the warmth of the evening and how Beth Am has widened our spiritual circle. We discussed the diverse ranges of ritualism amongst the parties at the table as well as the varying perceptions regarding “What/Who is God”.

We also laughed a lot and ate too much.”

The Boulder JCC Preschool “We are incorporating some preschool projects where the children will be painting our recycling bins to make them more visible. During this process they will learn more about environmental issues. We also have a preschool garden that they are working on for a Tu B’Shvat program. The preschool was also mentioning bringing in the “Eco Elf” for next year (I know not overly Jewish, but very informative).”

Bonai Shalom’s Food Challenge: Let All Who are Hungry…

In the month of March 2012, in the lead up to Passover, Congregation Bonai Shalom in Boulder, CO presented a whole month of programming based on food justice. Download all the resources to conduct a Food Challenge at your shul at hazon.org/education Calendar Month of Adar: The Bonai Shalom religious school students will be studying the following values: sharing food, moderation, reducing and reusing.

March 1st: Food Challenge month begins along with the Food Volunteer Challenge and the Clean Out Your Pantry Challenge.

March 2nd: First Friday Program – “Faith, Food, and Hunger.” Join Congressman Jared Polis in conversation with Becky O’Brien from Hazon and our own Rabbi Marc Soloway.

March 3rd: A short talk by Susan Finesilver, a representative of Community Food Share, at services. The Food Waste Challenge begins with the weighing of food waste at kiddush.

March 4th – March 8th: Food Waste At-Home challenge.

March 7th – March 8th: Purim! Come hear the megillah with money in your pocket to buy a mac & cheese grogger, boxes and money to be donated to Community Food Share.

March 11th – March 17th: Food Stamp Challenge.

March 12th: Volunteer with Bonai at Bridge House Community Table.

March 13th: First of a two part Hazon class, Setting the Table. Bonai Shalom’s Kita Vav (6th grade) volunteer at Community Food Share.

March 18th: Volunteers cook and serve breakfast at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless.

March 23rd – March 24th: Visiting Scholar Weekend with Noam Tzion. We will weigh the food waste at kiddush.

March 31st: Food Challenge ends.

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Shmita Project Shmita, literally translated as the “year of release,� and more widely known as the Sabbatical Year, is a biblical Jewish tradition, which, once every seven years, re-adjusted agriculture and commerce to ensure an equitable, just and healthy society. The next Shmita year starts Rosh Hashanah 2014 and continues through Rosh Hashanah 2016. The year of Shmita is a time when agricultural lands were collectively left fallow. Take a moment to realize just how radical and audacious that sounds. As an equivalent, since most of us are not farmers in this age, imagine a year when every shopping mall and bank would be closed, or a year when everyone would stay home from work. How might that sound to you?

The Shmita Cycle presents a way of being, a blueprint for a resilient, whole-systems culture, one grounded in vibrant, healthy and diverse relations between community, ecology, economy, and spirit. To truly celebrate this cycle is not simply to mark our calendars. Rather, it is to genuinely embrace a value system which calls for a paradigm transition from global to local, from profit to wellness, from the realm of the private to the realm of the communal, and from short term thinking to long term visioning.

It has been many generations, many cycles of sevens, since we can collectively say we have celebrated this tradition, with its true intention and cultural significance and today the idea of working with the rhythm of the Shmita Cycle may be more impractical than ever. Then again, this may precisely be the perfect time to connect to, and bring to life, a story so old and ancient we have forgotten just how much we need it today, for our own survival, and for our own growth. As we begin to re-imagine the Shmita Cycle, these are the questions to ask: What would a culture look like if it actually did prepare itself to fully celebrate this year? How would their food systems function? How would their economic systems function? How would their communities be organized?

And how might we apply such value systems to our cultural practices today?

The reimagination of the Shmita Cycle begins with you, at home, with family, with friends, and with neighbors, at the most local, grassroots level. This process will actively take shape as a community effort, on our streets, in our synagogues, in our schools, and in our community commons. To support and strengthen this process, the Shmita Project has been created as a shared educational platform for individuals and communities working towards establishing a new vision for the Shmita tradition.

Visit www.ShmitaProject.org to access educational resources, ideas for local community initiatives, ways you can directly partner with Shmita Project, and more.

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6 Community Supported Agriculture and Gardens The increasing popularity of Jewish gardens and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects makes it even easier to bring healthy food and awareness of local food and farming issues to your synagogue, community center, or institution. Hazon’s food work began with the launch of the first ever Jewish CSA in 2004. Since then, the Hazon CSA program has expanded to include nearly 70 sites across the US, Canada, and Israel. We’ve seen firsthand how a CSA can bring a community together, inspire new programs and learning, and have a very real effect on supporting sustainable agriculture. Collectively, Hazon CSAs have put nearly $7 million in Jewish purchasing power behind sustainable agriculture since 2004.

If you want to go beyond a CSA, what better place to learn about the miracles of growing food than in a garden where you can actually watch the process happen? People of all ages can learn something new in a garden, finding joy and intrigue in the unfolding drama of growing plants. A garden at your institution can connect your community to the growing cycle. It can also, if it’s big enough, grow enough food to feed you, or perhaps even supply a soup kitchen in your area. And it can become a living laboratory where you can learn about Jewish agricultural laws and food blessings with an entirely fresh perspective.

This section uses material from the Jewish Farm School’s Jewish Gardening Workshop. Explore this and other resources at jewishfarmschool.org.

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Start a Hazon CSA!

Start a Jewish Garden

Hazon’s CSA program is the first ongoing effort in the American Jewish community to support local, sustainable agriculture. Founded in 2004, our CSA program now includes nearly seventy CSAs in the US, Canada, and Israel, and over 2,300 households. The Hazon CSA program has helped the Jewish community to put over $7 million dollars behind sustainable agriculture and supported Jewish institutions such as synagogues and JCCs to create innovative educational programming around the intersections of Jewish tradition and contemporary food and environmental issues.

Gardening is an activity that can rejuvenate Judaism and Jews on many levels. For one, gardening serves to reconnect the Jewish spirit to the earth. Two thousand years of Jewish urbanization has forged an estrangement from nature that reaches to the core of the Jewish psyche. Gardening restores familiarity with our local ecologies and deepens our understanding of where our food comes from. Even more consequential, intimacy with nature deepens the Jewish sense of wonder and heightens our consciousness of God’s countless miracles.

Hazon’s CSA program will help you through your first year of planning, marketing, organizing, and running your CSA project. We’ll also help you create engaging, high-quality adult and family Jewish education around food and agriculture.

“I have struggled connecting with the Jewish community because I have not found myself in it. Joining a Jewish CSA was a great way for me to connect my Jewish identity with things I am passionate about, such as food politics and sustainable living. I am glad that the Jewish community recognizes that food issues are Jewish issues. Thank you for creating a space in which people like me who struggle with connecting to the Jewish community can feel welcome and invited.”

Esty, Brooklyn NY

Host a Farmers’ Market A farmers’ market is a great way to support local farms, as well as give your community easy access to wonderful, fresh produce. You may want to invite a few farmers or local vendors to an event you’re already planning (i.e. Sukkot fair, Lag B’omer picnic) or set up a weekly or monthly market. Make sure you think about what kind of traffic you’ll have— you want to make sure your vendors sell enough to make it worth their time!

The Riverdale YM-YWHA hosts a very successful farmers’ market in their community’s downtown that has been thriving and helping build community. Read more about it in the programs section of their website, www. riverdaley.org.

For suggestions on starting a farmers’ market, including signage, management, by-laws, budgets, and fees.

This sense of wonder, the sensitivity to the web of life that supports us both physically and spiritually, is an integral aspect of Jewish consciousness and thus a prerequisite for Jewish living. The famous verse from Breishit 2:15 states, “And the Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to till it and to tend it.” The Torah’s notion of human responsibility to steward the earth, as well as the rest of our tradition’s rich collection of teachings concerning the relationship between humanity and the natural world, become irrelevant and, even more, incomprehensible to the Jew who is not in relation to nature. Jews must reacquaint themselves with the earth. Gardening suits such a noble and formidable task. There is little else that reminds a person of the feeling and smell of nature quite like placing one’s hands directly in the earth.

Gardening reawakens our dulled senses to the lifeblood of our planet.

The Jewish connection to the earth emerges from our people’s agricultural roots. As we cut Judaism off from its own heritage, we in turn lose our connection to our agricultural history and the ecological themes in our holidays. For example, the agricultural themes inherent during the growing and harvest season from Tu B’Shvat, the beginning of the budding of trees through Sukkot, the final harvest, lose their meaning without our continued intimacy with the cycles of nature. By reconnecting with the natural world through gardening we allow these aspects of our tradition to speak to us in new ways and to bring greater meaning to our lives.

Finally, gardening can also be used to bring Jewish text to life. Even for Jews for whom the world of Jewish texts is already familiar and accessible, Jewish gardening offers us rich opportunities for opening up the world of the Torah, Rabbinic texts, and the siddur to in new, vibrant, and creative ways.

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Plant Fruit Trees Within your garden plan, be sure to include some fruit trees as well. Fruit trees may not provide the instant gratification that growing vegetables does, but after a few years, these trees will provide hundreds of pounds of fruit for your community! Fruit trees are perennial plants, while most common garden vegetables are annual plants. The difference between them is that annuals complete their life cycle from seed to seed in one growing season, while perennials live many years.

Their deep roots and woody bodies allow for more resilience against pests and against drought. Once they are established, they also require less work to maintain than your vegetables will.

If your trees are planted in a community garden, synagogue, school, or community center, think of your fruit trees as a shared orchard. When the harvest comes in, be sure to find creative ways to share the harvest with community members. Gather together for work parties and harvest celebrations. Host fruit preservation workshops. Donate excess harvests to local food banks.

As part of Jewish agricultural practices, once every seven years was the Shmita, which marked a year-long agricultural fallow period. During this time, there was no tilling of soil, and no seeds were planted. Since vegetables would be hard to come by on this year, much of the fresh harvest was dependent upon the abundance of fruit trees and other perennial plants.

To learn more about Shmita, and the role of fruit trees during this year, visit hazon.org/shmitaproject.

Each winter, during the full moon of the Hebrew month of Shvat, your fruit orchard would be a wonderful place to creatively celebrate Tu B’Shvat, the New Year of the Trees. Also, growing fruit trees allows us to symbolically celebrate the biblical tradition of orlah (Leviticus 19:2325): during the first three years of growth, no fruits were harvested from a tree. On the fourth year, fruit were sanctified and brought to the Temple, and on the fifth year they could be eaten. How would you celebrate the first harvest of your fruit tree? And how would you ‘sanctify’ these fruits?

Themes for Your Jewish Garden While a garden lends itself to all kinds of different programs, you may wish to create a garden that has a specific focus or educational goal. Here are a couple suggestions, with program ideas:

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A Garden for Jewish Rituals: Havdalah. A Havdalah garden consists of plants that can be used for the Havdalah ceremony and allows gardeners to connect the act of gardening with religious practice. Not only does it give a deep and spiritual framework for the physical labor, it can also foster a deeper connection to the Jewish ritual. One major advantage of a Havdalah garden is that many fragrant herbs, such as lavender, sage, mint, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, are hardy perennials and will come back year after year.

Additionally, these plants will grow more robust with the weekly harvesting of leaves for Havdalah.

Program suggestions: •

Dry herbs and make Havdalah kits

•

Make Havdalah in the garden

•

Learn the brachot (blessings) related to smell

Israel and Biblical Gardens. Many people are interested in biblical plants. A biblical or Israel garden can serve as a great tool when teaching about Israel, both ancient and modern. Seeing the numerous plants that are mentioned in the Torah can really help young gardeners connect with the sometimes distant text.

The plants you grow in an Israel garden can be limited to the seven species, or you could expand it to include as many biblical plants as you can find and grow.

Program suggestions: •

Tour of Israel through the garden

•

Prepare a biblical meal

•

Construct a biblical agricultural calendar

Great Gardens All Around the Country!

The Greenpoint Interfaith Food Team Garden Project Congregants at the Greenpoint Shul wanted to take unused land behind their synagogue and build a garden to grow produce for the soup kitchen at the nearby Greenpoint Reformed Church. They found seeds for free at a farmers’ market festival and used Craigslist to find topsoil and a person to deliver it. A volunteer got rainwater barrels donated and plants came from local garden shops and one member’s own yard.

Initial work to prepare the space included clearing the brush, cleaning out the garbage, and leveling the ground. Once that was complete, they brought in the soil. The soil went down on July 4th, and the garden had its first harvest in August. The garden is completely organic, and it has seven beds complete with tomato

plants, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplants, basil, thyme, and plenty of other vegetables. It took a combined effort and a combination of skills from people who were willing to devote their time and energy to really get this project off the ground. The community seems to be enthusiastic about this new project that simultaneously makes their Jewish institution greener, and helps to feed a much larger community of people in need.

Improving the World Around Us One Tomato at a Time “Beginning this Fall our facility will be home to a new community garden. In addition to providing daily educational opportunities for our students, the garden’s fresh, organic produce will also give our children a chance to experience tikkun olam by feeding those in need at SOVA: Community Food and Resource Program, and PATH (People Assisting The Homeless). It is our hope that the garden will show our students the impact every action can have and that even the smallest tomato or berry can help heal the world.

Moreover, the garden is intended to unify our community in the pursuit of helping others. Serving as a sacred space (makom kadosh), the garden will become a source of pride for the entire community, providing a chance to physically work together to help our broader community.

Each year students and families can add to our garden just as they do to our community as a whole and we will be able to watch with joy as the garden grows from a few plants to an expansive preserve. “ - Cassie Weinstock, Los Angeles, CA Beans & Tomatoes in New Rochelle “About a year ago, I read about a church in Maryland that set aside some of its property for a garden and donated the produce to its local food kitchen. I thought that would be a wonderful mitzvah project for Temple Israel of New Rochelle.

The TINR’s Brotherhood and Sisterhood each contributed $300. Individual members of the Brotherhood donated another $70 for plants. Children in TINR’s Early Childhood Program started tomato seeds, planted the tomato plants in the garden, and brought in black and white newspapers for mulch. They enjoyed the opportunity to pet the worms before I placed them in the garden. I did not use any fertilizer or herbicides in the garden.

I had consulted with our local food pantry about what

types of vegetables they wanted and they requested green beans and tomatoes. We started harvesting green beans on June 30 and tomatoes on July 13. For most of the summer, we harvested twice a week early in the morning and there were anywhere from 2 to 5 members at each harvest. One person would then take the produce to the HOPE Community Food Kitchen in downtown New Rochelle. In our first year, we harvested over 114 lbs. of green beans and over 183 lbs. of tomatoes!

- Richard Grayson, New Rochelle

A Year in the Life of a Jewish Garden

This section by Daron Joffe, Former Director of Gan Chaim January-February • Tu B’Shvat fruit and nut tree planting and garden seder • Groundbreaking community celebration • Garden design and build workshops • Nutrition, preservation, and cooking workshops • Seed planting in local greenhouse • Indoor gardening for schools, vacation camps, and after-school programs • Horticultural therapy activities for seniors and people with special needs • Adult Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) education programs • Start seed planting indoors • Primary activities: Designing, mulching, planting trees, pruning, and building March-May • Spring gardening workshops for adults and families • Spring garden programs for day schools, camps, volunteer groups, and families • Passover seder in the garden • Community planting party • Primary activities: Tilling, composting, planting, transplanting, and watering May-June • Open house tours • Staff training • Summer garden activities for campers, students, and people with special needs • Summer garden workshops and programs for adults and families • Activities: Planting, transplanting, weeding, transplanting, and mulching

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June-August • Intensive camp gardening activities: about seven sessions day, five days/week • Summer gardening workshops and programs for early childhood, teens, adults, seniors, and people with special needs • Weeding, trellising, planting, transplanting and harvesting August-October • Fall gardening workshop • Food preservation workshop • Theater in the garden • Intergenerational activities and family day programs • Volunteer groups to the garden • After-school programming • Field trip to a local farm • Plant garlic, onions, spinach, collards, and kale • Plant seasonal color and cover crops • Fall plantings of bulbs, perennials, and overwintering crops • Winter gardening classroom science projects October-November • Sukkot arts and crafts workshops • Sukkot harvest celebration in the garden • End-of-season Sukkot festival at the farm • Nutrition workshops • Home landscaping workshop • Volunteer groups to the garden • After-school programming • Early childhood programs • Family and intergenerational programs • Winter garden classroom science projects

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December • Volunteer groups at the garden • After-school programs • Early childhood programs • Family and intergenerational programs • Special needs horticultural therapy programs • Winter garden classroom science projects • Expand and evaluate programs and curriculum • Summer garden workshops and programs for adults and families • Activities: Planting, transplanting, weeding, transplanting, and mulching

7 Food Justice

Our current industrial-based food system does not adequately give equal access to healthy, nourishing food. Jewish tradition, however, firmly rooted in texts from the Torah, sees a direct connection between social justice, agriculture, and religious obligations. This section will explore the issues of food justice and explain why it is important that as a Jewish community we not only work on spreading awareness, but that we do something to help create a just and sustainable food system for everyone.

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What is Food Justice and Why Does it Matter?

Food justice is communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food. Healthy food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate, and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals. Practicing food justice leads to a strong local food system, self-reliant communities, and a healthy environment.

Until recently “food security” has been a more common term used to describe a similar, if not broader, area of social concern. Government bureaucrats and international non-governmental-organizations have been using the term “food security” to call attention to a whole host of agriculture and hunger related issues. Activists have also used it to focus on creating community-based ways of producing food in an affordable, sustainable, and environmentally-friendly manner. Along the way they have sought to create local jobs, promote good health, and stress the importance of small, local farmers.

With the use of the term “food justice” this activism hasn’t changed so much as it has taken on fresh new political energy. In an increasing number of grassroots efforts in New York, local people are re-imagining their collective relationship to food. Food justice starts from the conviction that access to healthy food is a human rights issue—it goes beyond advocacy and direct service. Food justice calls for organized responses to food security problems—responses that are locally driven and owned.

Food Bank Cooking Demo Eating fresh, organic produce through a CSA is a blessing – but the blessing of healthy, sustainable food is not equally accessible to everyone. The Hazon CSA in Elkins Park, PA, held two separate cooking classes at the Stiffel Center in South Philadelphia, which is part of Philadelphia’s Mitzvah Food Pantry network. Approximately 25 participants attended each class. Each class was focused around preparing two or three different recipes and incorporated health and nutrition information about the vegetables being prepared.

The program allowed CSA members to share some of their passion for healthy, organic food with members of a low-income community.

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HOW YOUR INSTITUTION CAN GET INVOLVED IN FOOD JUSTICE: •

Host a gleaning trip on a local farm. Go to the farm towards the end of harvest season and collect the excess produce. Make arrangements to donate the food to a local food pantry or soup kitchen. Tie in some learning about agriculture and tzedekahh.

•

Link up with a local shelter or food bank to donate your excess food. Your partnership could include donating food, organizing a field trip for members of your community to volunteer at the shelter, or partnering on events (see the “Food Bank Cooking Demo” sidebox).

•

Start a Hazon CSA. Implement flexible payment options to allow people of all income levels to participate.

•

Start a Peah Garden. Peah is the biblical commandment of leaving the crops in the “corners of your field” for the poor. Create a garden where you use some or all of the space to grow solely for the purpose of donating to community members who do not have access to healthy, nutritious produce.

•

Glean from local fruit trees. Many fruit trees on private and public property produce more fruit than their owners can possibly use. Find trees that seem under-appreciated and ask the homeowner for permission to glean. Or, use one of the online sites

Gleaning in Milwaukee “I coordinate the Surplus Garden Harvest project of Tikkun Ha-Ir of Milwaukee. This project started three years ago as a way to encourage gardeners to donate their surplus garden bounty to meal sites and food pantries. In the first year, the donations were minimal. In the second year, we donated 1,000 pounds of fresh produce during the course of the Midwest gardening season (Produce came primarily from unclaimed CSA boxes). We now encourage donations from home gardens, the Jewish Community Garden (located on the grounds of our local JCC), CSA boxes, and also from local farms with surplus edible, but not salable, produce.

The latter is providing the majority of the donations so far this year – at just halfway into the growing season, we are at 1,060 pounds and are on track to triple what we donated last year.”

- Pam Frydman-Roza

that list trees available for gleaning (such as www. fruitshare.net, www.neighborhoodfruit.com, and in San Francisco sfdpw.org/index.aspx?page=1243).

Enjoy what you can and donate the remaining fresh fruit or bake or can with the fruit and then donate.

•

Screen a movie such as Food Stamped and discuss ways that your community can come together and make a difference.

Food Justice Organizations •

•

Just Food is a NY-based non-profit organization that has been the leader in connecting local farms to NYC neighborhoods and communities since 1995. Their food justice program increases awareness and action around food and farm issues and advances policies for a thriving local food system.

Growing Power iis a national non-profit organization and land trust that supports people from diverse backgrounds and the environments in which they live by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe, and affordable food for people in all communities. Growing Power implements this mission by providing hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstration, outreach, and technical assistance through the development of Community Food Systems that help people grow, process, market, and distribute food in a sustainable manner.

•

Second Harvest is the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity. Its mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger.

•

Ample Harvest diminishes hunger in America by helping backyard gardeners share their excess garden produce with neighborhood food pantries.

•

People’s Grocery is a community-based organization in West Oakland, CA that develops creative solutions to the health problems in our community that stem from a lack of access to and knowledge about healthy, fresh foods. Its mission is to build a local food system that improves the health and economy of the West Oakland community.

•

that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times. The coalition seeks to develop self-reliance among all communities in obtaining their food and to create a system of growing, manufacturing, processing, making available, and selling food that is regionally based and grounded in the principles of justice, democracy, and sustainability of justice, democracy, and sustainability.

Community Food Security Coalition is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local, and regional food systems

Support Systems Members of your community may be eligible for government support from various food and nutrition programs. Make sure your institution has information available about these programs. You can request brochures at http://snap.ntis.gov/.

•

SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) used to be known as the Food Stamp Program, and is a Federal assistance program that provides low and no-income families with money with which to buy food.

•

WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) is a federal assistance program for providing healthcare and nutrition for low-income pregnant/breastfeeding women, infants, and children under the age of five.

•

SNFMP (Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program) is a Federal program which gives grants to governments in order to provide low-income seniors with coupons that can be exchanged for certain foods (such as fruits, vegetables, honey, and fresh-cut herbs) at farmers’ markets, roadside stands, and CSAs.

Second Helpings For the past six years, about 100 congregants from Temple Sinai in Atlanta, GA go to grocery stores, schools, and restaurants to pick up perishable food that is either almost expired or prepared and ready for freezing. They then deliver it to 14 different community agencies. To date, they have picked up over two million pounds of food which previously would have been discarded, and thousands of needy individuals and families have been fed.

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Food Justice, Then and Now In 2004, Hazon launched the first Community Supported Agriculture project in the Jewish community. The preceding winter, we talked about food charity and peah at our Beit Midrash, a 12-week series on “How & What Should a Jew Eat?” We were new to the idea of CSA, and so we asked: if we are no longer farmers with fields where we could leave gleanings for the ‘poor, widow, and orphan,’ then what is our responsibility to food charity, as Jews and as twenty-first century city-folk?

Dr. Phyllis Bieri said, “Well, with a CSA, there are always leftovers!” We realized that, indeed, it was inevitable that some members would not pick up

Shikhecha: Leaving sheaves When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the orphan, and the widow — in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.

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When you beat down the fruit of your olive trees, do not go over them again; that shall go to the stranger, the orphan, and the widow. 21 When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not pick it over again; that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. 22 Always remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore do I command you to do this thing.

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– Deuteronomy 24:19-22

Peah: The corners of your field When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the Lord am your God. 9

– Leviticus 19:9-10

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their share every week, and that therefore, built into the system of the Hazon Community Supported Agriculture Project (which met a series of other contemporary food issue concerns, being fresh, local, mostly organic, minimally-packaged, etc.) was also a mechanism that enabled us to “observe peah and shikecha” as well. It made us even more excited to begin the CSA project at Ansche Chesed that summer. The leftovers that year were taken every week to a soup kitchen on the Upper West Side.

Hazon’s CSA program has since grown to over seventy sites in the US, Canada, and Israel. In 2013, we estimate that this meant over 70,000 lbs of leftover produce was donated to emergency food providers.

Food Justice and Fair Trade Resolutions The Rabbinical Assembly, the membership organization for Conservative rabbis, passed resolutions in support of Food Justice and Fair Trade practices in 2012. The resolutions read, in part: Be it resolved that members the Rabbinical Assembly encourage its members to contact major food retailers and corporate food purchases to ensure their suppliers address the wages and working conditions of agricultural workers within the United States and encourage them to provide incentives to those who support their workers’ rights.

Be it resolved that the Rabbinical Assembly encourage its members to have their congregations, schools, camps, Hillels, JCCs and other institutions endorse and advocate Fair Trade, and purchase Fair Trade goods, when feasible, both individually and in their communities; Be it further resolved that the Rabbinical Assembly encourage its members to contact their elected and appointed officials to advocate for Fair Trade practices; and Be it further resolved that the Rabbinical Assembly use Fair Trade goods when feasible.

See the full texts at: www.rabbinicalassembly.org/story/resolution-support-food-justice and www. rabbinicalassembly.org/story/resolution-support-fair-trade-practices.

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Chapter 8 Working with Your Institution Your decision to read this guide shows that you’ve already taken the first step by deciding to make a difference at your Jewish institution. This section will guide you through the conversations you can have and the steps you can take to make changes successfully. Keep in mind that every Jewish institution is unique, with its own set of values and priorities. The more you are able to show that you understand your institution’s values, and that the changes you are proposing will benefit your community, the more successful you will be.

The material in this section is adapted from Oxfam’s “Farm to School Toolkit” and The Sustainable Food Policy Project’s “A Guide to Developing Sustainable Food Purchasing Policy.”

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Set the Stage for Success Be realistic. Start with something small. Once you have accomplished something small, you will be more confident to go on to bigger things. Make sure you go into this with a positive attitude. Expect to have bumps along the way and unless you believe that you can make a difference, you never will.

Form a “Green Team” Don’t go at it alone. Find other people in your institution who are passionate about environmental issues and changing your Jewish institution’s food environment. You can assess volunteer interest by sending a survey through your institution’s listserv, newsletter, or other form of communication. Hold an information meeting, install a comments box, and/or set up a dedicated email address to actively solicit and allow people to share the changes they would like to make.

The very people who you might need to convince to go “green” are usually the same people who have the information you’re looking for.

Here are examples of some of the important questions you can ask: (Depending on the institution, you might need to pose these questions to the Rabbi, an office manager, or a kitchen staff person.)

•

Who manages the food and supplies purchasing?

•

Where does the food at your Jewish institution come from now? Is it from a kosher caterer? A larger food vendor? A local, kosher restaurant?

•

What are your kitchen’s resources/restrictions? What is the kashrut policy and how will this affect what you will be able to purchase?

•

What is your budget? How much money is your institution currently spending on food? How much money is your institution spending on plates, cups, utensils?

•

Conduct a formal or informal waste audit (see chapter 4) to discover what is in your waste stream. Do you recycle or compost already? Who hauls the waste and what does it cost? What are options for adding/ increasing recycling and composting and how much would it cost (don’t forget to account for reduced trash collection when calculating costs)?

How to Decide Where to Start The process of reading the Food Guide can lead to change simply through raising awareness and seeding inspiration. If you are reading this chapter you are planning on taking concrete action, ready to make real changes in your institution. But where to start? With so many possibilities it may feel overwhelming.

It will help you rank and compare different steps you could take by considering their levels of importance, cost, time, commitment, and ease/difficulty. If possible, fill it out and discuss with your “green team”, social action committee, other involved volunteers, and/or staff.

In addition, Oxfam’s “Farm to School Toolkit” and The Sustainable Food Policy Project’s “A Guide to Developing Sustainable Food Purchasing Policy” are both helpful resources.

Research As you begin to consider where to start, it’s important to have a full understanding of how your institution purchases food, where it is sourced, how it is prepared and served, what is done with food waste, etc. This will allow you to shape your goals and next steps, as well as make you more educated on these issues for when you present the new idea to the person(s) in charge. This research process is also a relationship building process.

Eating our Values at Beacon Hebrew Alliance, Beacon, NY Over the past year, a committee of BHA members met to discuss these issues. They learned from Fresh: the Movie (made by our member Ana Joanes), Food for Thought, their friends at Eden Village Camp and Common Ground Farm and most importantly, each other. The outcome of those conversations is the new BHA Food Policy, which you can read it in its entirety on the Hazon website.

Some highlights are: •

Except for Pesach, our kitchen is going to be entirely dairy. This is in recognition of the complexities involved with managing a very small kitchen which thankfully, has many volunteers.

•

We are going to prioritize, but not require, eating food grown or produced in the Hudson Valley.

•

We’re going to make a real effort to give blessings

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Get Organized

journey and a public signifier of institution-wide support for these issues.

Organize a meeting of your Green Team. Set goals using the information you have gathered. Think big, but act small. Take into consideration your Jewish institution’s limitations and also its potential.

Below you will find two examples, one from Hazon and one from a synagogue in Toronto, of possible food guidelines for your institution.

Hazon’s Organizational Food Values

Develop a Plan and a Timeline Break down your plan into small steps to help make it more manageable. Compile a list of resources and allies. If you have a larger institution, form committees to take on different tasks.

Educate and Communicate Education and raising awareness are not separate from action. Don’t expect everyone to understand why you want to make changes in the food culture of your organization. Create enthusiasm for change by educating your community about why change is needed. Select initial projects that are visible to demonstrate progress.

Whatever you do, tell the community about it! Have a regular presence in the newsletter, post signs around your facility, make announcements at events. Letting your community know what you are doing inspires new people to get involved, sends a message that change is possible, and helps to plant new practices in the culture of the organization.

Crafting Institutional Food Guidelines or Policy You’ve done the research. Creating a food policy or set of food guidelines for your institution is one possible next step. Your guidelines should facilitate decisions about food choices and help determine a course of action. By establishing a formal policy or guideline, everyone in the community will be able to look to it when they are making food choices for your community.

As we’ve stressed all along, making sustainable food choices are often nuanced, gradual, and sometimes contradictory. As such, considering “guidelines” rather than “policy” may be more realistic for your community (see Andrea’s comment below about including the words “to the best of our ability” in their synagogue guidelines).

Even so, having a written set of values and/or guidelines can be an important milestone in your institution’s food

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In our society, all too often the readily available and familiar sources (national brand names) for our food prioritize uniform quality and economies of scale over taste, nutrition, environmental health, and local communities. At Hazon, we have developed a list of food values that we strive to reach when we are planning food at all Hazon events, programs, and meetings. However, we often are required to prioritize one (or more) of our food values over another as we are planning our events.

As we work towards a healthy and sustainable food system where we will be able to meet all our food values all the time, we want to be transparent about the food choices we are making along the way, where we are falling short in meeting all our values, and how we are working to do better next time.

The following Hazon food values are listed in alphabetical order.

Cost Effective – As Michael Pollan (and others) have suggested, we should not shy away from paying more than we’re used to for good-quality food that fits our values. That said we have to make our food choices fit into our overall budget.

Delicious – Food should be inspirationally delicious.

Enough said!

Ethical – We care not only about the food but about the circumstances of the people who produced, prepared or served it, and when we eat animals, including cows, fish, and poultry, we want to know how they lived and how they died. In general we believe that informed choices ultimately change behavior.

Fair-Trade – When purchasing foods often grown in exploitative environments in other countries, we always try to source from companies that commit to paying their workers fair wages, and supporting community development and empowerment. Coffee, chocolate, tea, bananas should be fair trade certified.

Healthy – Hazon believes in serving healthy, nourishing food that is pesticide free. In general our society consumes too much refined white sugar and flour, high fructose corn syrup, and salt. However, celebrations and holidays are often marked by “out of the ordinary” foods – especially sweets and snacks. Additionally, our outdoor adventure programs may require participants to

eat foods heavy in sugar and salt to maintain their energy and electrolyte levels. We aim to find a balance between serving foods worthy of the simcha, and sustainable for a bike rider, while maintaining a focus on whole, fresh and nourishing foods. We think there is value in working extra hard to produce treats that are healthier than what is normal in our society.

Kosher – Because inclusive Jewish community is central to what we do and believe in, the meals we serve should be accessible to people across the Jewish spectrum. Food should be kosher. Hechshers should be provided so that people can decide for themselves if the food adheres to their own standards of kashrut. Non-hechshered products can be served if necessary, as long as it contains no explicitly traif ingredients and is clearly labeled as non-hechshered. When food is prepared under the supervision of a Mashgiach (a kosher supervisor) their credentials shall be clearly displayed in the dining hall and/or made available to interested participants ahead of time.

Low Carbon – We aim to serve food that has the lowestpossible carbon impact, including the amount and type of packaging that is used to contain it during transit, the dishes and utensils that we eat on, and how we clean/ dispose of those after a meal. In addition, we consider the miles that our food travels to get to our table, thus emphasizing a menu that changes with the seasons.

We’re in favor of serving home-made foods when the event is small enough and where appropriate kashrut arrangements can be made.

Lower on the food chain – Whenever possible, we serve whole, unprocessed vegetarian foods including hummus, fresh fruit, etc. We usually serve meat at least once at our multi-day events, but not always and not as a matter of course; we believe that vegetarian meals can be fully satisfying and we aim to provide delicious examples of this!

Organically and/or Sustainably-produced -- Organic labels let you know that the food was produced without prohibited chemicals and is not GMO. In some cases, smaller farms aren’t certified organic, but produce their food in a way that is sustainable and environmentally conscious. We’re in favor of supporting the organic movement, and we’re also in favor of supporting farmers who are growing with sustainable farming practices, especially if they are nearby (which helps us meet our low-carbon goals and support local food economies).

Transparency/Education – We believe in using food as a teaching tool and a conversation starter. And we believe in empowering individuals to make choices according to their own values. So being transparent about the choices we make is critical to our food work.

The Sustainable Food Guidelines at First Narayever, Toronto, CA First Narayever Congregation in Toronto, CA, recently passed a resolution regarding the food served at synagogue events. The resolution was the culmination of over a year of committee work, targeted outreach, and education. Andrea Most, project coordinator, reflects on the process of passing this resolution: “So how did we get here? First, we approached and got support from the President of the Board who agreed to chair the Ad Hoc committee. We then spent over a year studying our own practices, and also outside practices (such as reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and watching Food, Inc.). We then put together a more formal committee, and started drafting recommendations. For a committee of 10 people, we identified 9 important areas to work on. Our final presentation to the Board was received very positively, and they voted unanimously to approve it. In the process, we decided that the words ‘to the extent possible’ were important to get the motion passed. But we feel confident that once we begin to implement these principles (and to educate people about them), they will quickly become ‘the new normal.’

The resolution reads: Moved that the Food Committee (formerly the Kiddush Committee) oversee the delivery of all food served in the shul, encouraging the use of food that is, to the extent possible: healthy and nutritious, produced in a sustainable, environmentally sensitive manner, produced under fair labour and trade practices, produced according to a high standard of animal welfare, and produced locally, while maintaining a budget that is sustainable by the congregation and while encouraging as much community participation as possible in bringing out food practices more closely in line with our Jewish values.

Passed by the Board of the First Narayever Congregation, May 3, 2011

Small Steps for Success Congregation Kol Ami in Elkins Park, PA, has made it their policy to serve Fair Trade coffee and tea at all congregational events.

Eating our Values at Beacon Hebrew Alliance, Beacon, NY Over the past year, a committee of BHA members met to discuss these issues. They learned from Fresh: the Movie (made by our member Ana Joanes), Food for Thought,

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of gratitude before and after meals and to reinvigorate a culture of inviting new and old friends to our homes for Shabbat.

Most excitingly, as a way of recognizing that being deliberate about eating kosher, healthy food can be very time consuming, they are organizing four largescale cooking extravaganzas, called Eating Our Values.

These events will be chances for the community to come together and stock the BHA pantry with nonindustrial, kosher and, to the greatest degree possible, local food which they can easily access for kiddush, classes, and more.

Take Action Now you’re ready to talk to the person in charge.

Having the conversation is usually the most difficult part in this process.

Set up a meeting. Meet with your rabbi, executive director, kitchen manager, or person(s) in charge of the food purchasing.

Consider the issues from your institution’s point of view. Place yourself in the shoes of the person you are meeting with and consider: What are their priorities? What are the limitations? What educational opportunities can your Jewish institution take advantage of from this, and how can you frame sustainable food choices in the context of your institutions’ Jewish values?

Share your vision. Consider writing a statement that inspires your institution’s leadership to work with you on this project. Focus on your institution’s concerns.

Make it clear that adopting sustainable food practices at your institution will add value to the community and will not compromise traditional values. Here’s an example: “This could be a great way to get young adults, who tend to be passionate about environmental issues, involved in the synagogue. Changing our food will not compromise our traditional values of kashrut, but is a way for our synagogue to be a voice in addressing contemporary issues. It is also a fresh, innovative way to re-engage current members.”

Know your facts, and share examples. Use the information and links in this guide to bring data to back up your points. You’ll want to show that you have done your research and that you have looked up this topic from different angles. Use the examples of what

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other synagogues have done in this guide to show that the changes you’re talking about are not only possible, they’ve been made in other communities with great success.

Anticipate Challenges You might be faced with criticism and skepticism.

Don’t get defensive or discouraged. It’s important to show that you understand the institution’s values and position. Do your homework and practice responses in a calm, collected way. You don’t want to add stress to their jobs, rather, you want to offer an opportunity that will benefit both your institution and the community.

Here are some examples for how to address these concerns: Problem: Prices. “It sounds like this is going to be way more expensive. We need to keep our food costs down.” Response: Buying local does not always mean higher prices. Remind the person you are meeting with that the higher price will reflect the higher quality and nutritional value of the food. If it is really out of the institution’s budget, figure out where you can make the most important adjustments—say by offering organic grape juice for kiddush.

Problem: Distribution. “This seems way too complicated. Right now we have one kosher caterer that can supply us with everything we need.” Response: Describe how important this is to you and your green team. Explain that there are people willing to make this happen—including working with the existing food providers to help them add sustainable foods to their repertoires.

Problem: Legal issues. How can small farmers monitor their production and processing in terms of food safety issues?” Response: Most farmers have liability insurance.

Come prepared with a few farms you have looked into and their information.

Problem: Labor/staff time. “We don’t have enough staff to deal with the added labor of buying local.

There’s not enough time to chop, clean, etc.” Response: Some farmers offer value-added products: locallyproduced jams, jellies, or pickles will require little additional preparation than the products you’re used to. You can also consider organizing the green team to help out with the food preparation.

Evaluate Evaluation is key to see how far you have come in

attaining your goals. You can decide to do this every few months or after a year. Assessing how far you have come will empower you to work towards higher goals.

Share your Success!

Spread the good news. Share all you have learned with members of your institution and the community by educating them about the changes you have made.

Write an article for the local or institution’s newspaper and hold an educational event such as a film night, panel, or potluck. In the process you can also gain more support and momentum for effecting change.

Email seal@hazon.org so we can spread the word for you!

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Appendix I Education Resources Hazon has developed a number of resources to engage people of all ages on issues related to eating, cooking, and making sense of the challenges of our contemporary food system.

These include curricula for students and families, Food for Thought: Hazon’s Sourcebook on Jews, Food, and Contemporary Life, and the Jewish Food Education Network. In this section you will find Hazon resources, as well as a long list of other possibilities, including books, movies, and organizations.

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Appendix I

Hazon Resources Food For Thought: Hazon’s Sourcebook on Jews, Food and Contemporary Life pairs traditional Jewish texts with contemporary writers to provide a basis for conversation and exploration of issues related to how and what we eat.

Food for Thought contains a whole chapter on “Food and Ethics: The implications of our food choices” as well as a chapter on Kashrut.

Min Ha’Aretz. Hazon’s Min Ha’Aretz student curriculum allows students from grades 5-9 to explore the question, “What is the relationship between Jewish texts, traditions, and practices and the food we eat?” Over the course of eighteen lessons, divided into five units, the students explore this question and develop a deeper understanding of both the question and its myriad answers.

Tu B’Shvat Haggadah This haggadah and sourcebook were put together to help people host Tu B’Shvat seders for their communities.

Hosting a Sustainable Shabbat Dinner Through a partnership with Birthright Israel NEXT, Hazon has put together a guide for hosting a Sustainable Shabbat.

Fair Food Book Club Hazon has put together a book club curriculum, including a leader’s guide and participants’ guide, to help people host a book club around Oran Hesterman’s new book, “Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All.” Divrei Torah Over the years Hazon has compiled many divrei torah for all occasions.

The Year of the Goat (Margaret Hathaway and Karl Schatz, Lyons Press 2007) tells the story of the journey that a couple made when they decided to quit their jobs in NYC and move to Maine to raise goats.

Food, Politics & Sustainable Agriculture The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Michael Pollan, Penguin 2006) is an introduction to the American food system, with discussion about mainstream fast food, large-scale organic, small-scale local, and foraging your own.

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (Michael Pollan, Penguin 2008) implores readers to follow a new philosophy of eating: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis (Christopher Cook, New Press 2004) is one of the best summaries of 20th century agriculture policy, the food industry and the environmental effects of our current food system.

Diet for a New America (John Robbins, Stillpoint 1987) is a book by Robbins, heir to the Baskin & Robbins fortune, who walked away from the ice cream industry to expose animal cruelty in factory farms and the health effects of animal-based diets.

Fatal Harvest Reader (Ed. Andrew Kimbrell, Island Press 2002) The images of farms and farmers in the full-color version are stunning; the paperback version contains the same essays on current agricultural challenges and solutions in a smaller format.

Books

Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (Vandana Shiva, South End Press 1999) is an excellent introduction to issues of safeguarding traditional food knowledge and culture, and the effects of global corporations on Indian communities.

Farming and Growing Food

Food Fight: A Citizen’s Guide to the Farm Bill (Daniel Imhoff, University of California Press 2011)

All available at www.hazon.org/education.

Fields of Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey in Search of Real Food and the People who Grow It (Michael Ableman, Chronicle Books 2005) details a cross-country trip that Ableman made with his son in search of innovative and passionate farmers and food artisans who are producing sustainable nourishment.

The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener (Eliot Coleman, Chelsea Green 1995) the bible for organic vegetable growing.

Fair Food: Creating a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for Everyone (Oran Hesterman, Public Affairs 2011) is a new book that discusses what we need to do to create a just food system.

Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Raj Patel, 2012) White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf (Aaron Bobrow-Strain, 2012) Eating Animals (Jonathan Safran Foer)

Cooking from the Garden (Rosalind Creasy, Random House 1988) was a truly ahead-of-its-time work of art; this cookbook contains detailed information on growing and cooking a huge range of vegetables.

Appendix I

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Meat

Jewish Culture and Food

Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser, Harper Perenial 2005) documents the rise of the fast food industry. There is also a teen version of the book called “Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food”, and a film.

A Blessing of Bread: The Many Rich Traditions of Jewish Bread Baking Around the World (Maggie Glezer, Artisan 2004) Tons of new ways to braid your challah, bake your pita, and feed your family, along with stories about Jewish breadmakers.

My Year of Meats ((Ruth Ozeki, Penguin 1999) tells the story of fictional protagonist Jane Takagi-Little, a Japanese-American documentary film maker commissioned by a beef lobbying group to make a television show that encourages beef consumption by equating meat eating with a happy family life.

Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages (Rabbi David Kraemer, Routledge 2007) explores meat in ancient Israel, and kashrut in antiquity.

Health The Great American Detox Diet ((Alex Jamison, Rodale International 2005) Morgan Spurlock, creator and star of the film “Super-Size Me,” nearly killed himself by eating nothing but McDonalds for an entire month. Luckily, his girlfriend was a nutritionist. This is the detox diet she put him on to get him back to health.

If the Buddha Came to Dinner: How to Nourish Your Body to Awaken Your Spirit ((Hale Sofia Schatz, Hyperion 2004) explores why we eat, how food makes us feel, and how greater awareness of our bodies’ needs can make us happier and healthier. Includes a step-by-step food cleanse and other exercises.

Food, Ethics, & Spirituality The Way We Eat: Why our Food Choices Matter (Peter Singer and Jim Mason, Rodale Books 2006) documents corporate deception, widespread waste, and desensitization to inhumane practices.

Food and Judaism: Studies in Jewish Civilization (Leonard J. Greenspoon, Ronald A. Simkins, and Gerald Shapiro, Chreighton University Press 2005) is a compilation of scholarly essays about food and Jewish culture.

Judaism and Vegetarianism (Richard Schwartz, Lantern Books 2001) is a comprehensive look at Jewish sources that support vegetarianism, as well as environmental, social and health reasons to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle.

A Wild Faith ((Mike Comins, Jewish Lights 2007) discusses the role of “the wilderness” in traditional Jewish spirituality, and provides tools and activities for the reader to access feelings of awe in the natural world.

The Question of the Animal and Religion: Theoretical Stakes, Practical Implications (Aaron S. Gross)

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Miriam’s Kitchen: A Memoir (Elizabeth Ehrlich, Penguin 1998) is the story of how food can connect us both to family tradition and to a deeper relationship with Jewish life.

Comfort me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table (Ruth Reichl, Random House 2002) is the second part of Reichl’s autobiographical trilogy in which she recounts her life as a personal and professional foodie.

Kosher Nation (Sue Fishkoff )

Cooking and Jewish Cooking The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution (Alice Waters, Clarkson Potter 2007) contains recipes that verge towards the gourmet, with seasonality and sustainable growing practices in mind.

Simply in Season (Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert, Herald Press 2005) is a beautiful cookbook with simple recipes, facts, stories, and poems; organized by season.

Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World (Gil Marks, Wiley Press 2004) this cookbook includes charts to show the evolution of some of our favorite Jewish vegetarian dishes.

The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York (Claudia Roden, Knopf 1996) is a cookbook, a history of Jewish Diaspora through food, an incredible reference for Jewish dietary laws, cooking techniques and much more.

The Jewish Holiday Kitchen (Joan Nathan, Shocken 1987) The classic Jewish cookbook.

Jewish Cooking for all Seasons: Fresh, Flavorful Kosher Recipes for Holidays and Every Day ((Laura Frankel, Wiley 2006) contains beautiful, tasty meals organized by what’s-ripe-when.

The Hadassah Everyday Cookbook (Leah Koenig 2011) Reinventing classic Jewish recipes in healthy and sustainable ways.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (Mark Bittman, 2007) The title says it all.

Poetry and Essays In Praise of Fertile Ground: An Anthology of Poetry, Parable, and Story (Ed. Claudia Mauro, Whit Press 2003) is a beautiful collection of essays and poems about agriculture, cooking, hard work, and eating together.

The Unsettling of America (Wendell Berry, Sierra Club Books 1977) is a classic book of essays about agriculture and consumption in America; sadly still relevant although nearly forty years old.

Moral Grandeur & Spiritual Audacity (Ed. Susannah Heschel, Farrar/Straus/Giroux 1997) Reading Abraham Joshua Heschel’s essays make me want to jump up with glee for being Jewish. Read for a little inspiration and good spiritual wrestling.

Jewish Food Text Study Jewish Food Rules is the Jewish Farm School’s curriculum which attempts to identify core values that can represent the contemporary Jewish food ethic. (http://www.jewishfarmschool.org/store/jewish-foodrules/) On 1 Foot is American Jewish World Services’ source for Jewish texts on social justice. The database can be searched and browsed by specific categories. (http://www.on1foot.org).

Movies If you’re interested in starting conversations about food issues in the Jewish community, movies can be a great place to start. Consider showing some or all of these films, and then use some of the texts or study questions from this book for a post-movie discussion. If you’re going to show a film at an event, be sure to preview it yourself first! Make note of your reaction, and try to anticipate some of the conversations that might follow.

If you can, provide additional information on related topics to further conversation. If you’re looking for more independently-produced, environmental videos, check out Bullfrog Films (www.bullfrogfilms.com). Make sure to get permission for a public screening before screening your film.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006) Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film contains a clear presentation of the science of global warming, and a call to action based on what Gore calls “the moral imperative.” 96 min.

Beyond Organic (2000) Tells the story of the struggle to maintain a 12-acre farm, Michael Ableman’s Fairview Gardens, located in Goleta, California, right in the middle of some of the most expensive real estate in the U.S. 33 min.

Broken Limbs: Apples, Agriculture and the New American Farmer (2004) Looks at the plight of apple growers in the age of globalization, and points the way to sustainable American agriculture. 57 min.

Fast Food Nation: The Movie (2006) A dramatized film that focuses on the experience of immigrants in the food industry, and the relationship between cheap food, environmental degradation, and illegal immigration.

Contains graphic images of meat processing plants. 106 min.

Forks over Knives (2011) examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based and processed foods.

The Future of Food (2004) A look at the GMO (genetically modified organisms) industry and the science behind GMO technology. 88 min.

King Corn (2008) A funny, lighthearted and informative film about how corn subsidies work, what life in rural Iowa is like, and how cheap corn products, especially corn syrup, are poisoning the nation. 90 min.

The Meatrix I, II (2003) The Meatrix films are short Flash animation productions that spoof The Matrix movie trilogy while educating viewers about the problems with industrial agriculture and today’s meat supply.

The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2006) A personal documentary about John Peterson, a farmer, artist, and eccentric/innovative thinker cast in rural Illinois. 82 min.

Refugees of the Blue Planet (2006) A look at “environmental refugees,” that is, folks who need to leave their homes because of environmental situations. Brings up the question of how responsible we are for the effects of the North American lifestyle on people in the rest of the world. 54 min.

The Story of Stuff (2007) A 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. The same organization also produced The Story of Bottled Water (2010). Viewable online at storyofstuff.org/movies. A six-session curriculum was created that helps Jewish teenagers explore the relationship between their consumption, their faith, and the health of the planet. Access this resource at storyofstuff.org/resources/faith-based-program-forjewish-teens/.

Appendix I

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Organizations

three-month residential leadership fellowships. www.urbanadamah.org

Global Food and Sustainability

The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) works with synagogues and other local Jewish organizations to bring Jewish environmental education, ecologically-conscious Jewish observance, and opportunities for environmental action to Jewish families and individuals, and brings a Jewish vision and voice to issues of environmental justice and sustainability. www.coejl.org

American Jewish World Service (AJWS) is an international development organization motivated by Judaism’s imperative to pursue justice. www.ajws.org Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers in 56 countries worldwide. www. viacampesina.org Slow Food is an eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life. www.slowfood.com / www. slowfoodusa.org Fair Food Network works at the intersection of food systems, sustainability, and social equity to guarantee access to healthy, fresh, and sustainably grown food, especially in underserved communities. www. fairfoodnetwork.org

Hunger City Harvest works to end hunger in communities throughout New York City through food rescue and distribution, education, and other practical, innovative solutions. www.cityharvest.org Hazon Yeshaya is a leading humanitarian organization that is fighting poverty and hunger by encouraging and supporting the projects of Hazon Yeshaya Soup Kitchens in Israel. www.hazonyeshaya.org World Hunger Year (WHY) advocates for innovative, community-based solutions to hunger and poverty. www.worldhungeryear.org Mazon is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing and alleviating hunger among people of all faiths and backgrounds through a holistic approach that involves education and advocacy. www.mazon.org

Jews & the Environment ADAMAH: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship is a three month leadership training program for Jewish young adults — ages 20–29 —that integrates organic farming, sustainable living, Jewish learning, teaching, and contemplative spiritual practice. www.isabellafreedman. org/adamah Urban Adamah is a community organic farm and Jewish environmental education center located in Berkeley, CA. The farm is run by Jewish teen fellows, who participate in

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Jewish Farm School is an educational organization comprised of farmers, builders, writers and educators whose mission is to practice and promote sustainable agriculture in order to cultivate just food systems rooted in Jewish traditions. www.jewishfarmschool.org Kayam Farm at Pearlstone is an active Jewish educational farm that welcomes close to 3,000 participants annually for field trips, holiday celebrations, summer camp, volunteering, skills workshops, and more. www. kayamfarm.org The Teva Learning Alliance is North America’s Jewish Environmental Education Institute. By immersing participants in the natural world and providing structured activities that sensitize them to nature’s rhythms, Teva helps them develop a more meaningful relationship with nature and their own Jewish practices. www. tevalearningalliance.org The Orthodox Union (OU) is the major kosher certifying authority in the US. Their websites have a lot of information about Jewish dietary laws and kosher products, as well as interesting information about the kosher food industry. ou.org and oukosher.org Shoresh Jewish Environmental Programs Through educational programs and grassroots initiatives, rooted in Jewish social and environmental values, Shoresh is working to build a more connected and ecologically sustainable Jewish community in Toronto.

Ganei Beantown Beantown Jewish Gardens is dedicated to building pluralistic Jewish community through hands-on agriculture and sustainability education framed within Jewish tradition, history and culture in the Boston community.

Find Good Food Eat Wild is a national online store for safe, healthy, natural and nutritious grass-fed beef, lamb, goats, bison, poultry, dairy and other wild edibles. www.eatwild.com Just Food works to develop a just and sustainable food system in the New York City region. www.justfood.org

LocalHarvest maintains a definitive and reliable “living,” public, nationwide directory of over 9,000 small farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources. www.localharvest.org The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) promotes responsible fishing practices. www.msc.org

Sustainable Agriculture & Environmental Information Farm to Table promotes sustainable agriculture and cuisine by educating and assisting farmers, food industry professionals, policy makers and the public to facilitate the transition to sustainability. www. farmtotable.org Environmental Working Group is a team of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers who expose threats to public health and the environment, and try to find solutions.

They have special sections on issues related to food and farming. www.ewg.org and www.foodnews.org National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) provides a voice for grassroots groups on farm, food, trade and rural economic issues to ensure fair prices for family farmers, safe and healthy food, and vibrant, environmentally sound rural communities here and around the world. www.nffc.net.

Food Education Sustainable Table offers resources related to food and education, including lesson plans, information on bringing sustainable food to cafeterias and dining halls, and school gardens. www.sustainabletable.org Center for Environmental Education has a resource center that offers sample criteria for “green schools” and access to national curriculum databases. www. ceeonline.org Green Teacher has a website for the curriculum magazine Green Teacher, which includes pedagogical articles and lesson plans. Back issues available online for free. www.greenteacher.com Environment Protection Agency Environmental Kids Club has on their website games, pictures, and stories for fun ways to help your institution explore the environment, and take steps to protect it. www. epa.gov/students.

Northwest Earth Institute offers educational resources to help engage your community in meaningful conversations about the way you live, work, create, and consume. www.nwei.org.

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Appendix II Sustainable Buying Guide The Sustainable Buying Guide is essentially a condensed version of the Food Guide, designed to help individuals and institutions when you are actually buying your food. It can be a challenge to buy food for yourself, your family, or your institution when weighing a number of competing factors such as cost, kashrut, nutritional value, sustainability, and ethical practices. We have put into pages the most essential information and structured it to help you overcome any confusion that may come with purchasing food that is aligned with Jewish values.

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Sustainable Buying Guide Whether you’re buying food for your family or an institution, you will often weigh a number of competing factors, such as cost, kashrut, nutrition, and sustainable and ethical practices.

When it comes to cost effectiveness, as Michael Pollan (and others) have suggested, we should not shy away from paying more than we’re used to for good-quality food that fits our values. That said we have to make our food choices fit into our overall budget.

The definition of “local” will vary depending on your location and what is available to you, though it is often defined as coming from within 200 miles, or a day’s drive. Don’t just get hung up on “food miles” -- it’s most important to be aware of the overall journey your food takes from farm to fork and consider the environmental impact of fuel emissions to import and transport food.

When feasible, prioritize hyper local food from within your city or county.

Making purchasing decisions on the basis of sustainable and ethical practices is challenging, as you will often be faced with a range of possible choices. This guide strives to help clarify the confusion that comes with purchasing food that is holistically “healthy” and aligned with Jewish values: fresh, nutritious, and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers and animals.

Like the term “local,” the definition of “family farm” or “small farm” is fluid. Rather than measure in acres, look for farmers that own their own animals or land, participate in the daily labor and management of their farms, and get a good portion of their livelihood from their farms.

Just as the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program helps consumers and businesses make choices for healthy oceans, we’ve laid out Hazon’s recommendations for purchasing food that is produced with sustainable, humane, and healthy practices.

2. Have dignified working conditions: reasonable hours, fair treatment, good training, safe conditions, and proper washing facilities

Best Choices are those produced with the highest standards of sustainability and animal welfare.

Good Alternatives are options to consider when the best is unavailable, or when the best choice is cost prohibitive, but be aware that there are concerns with how food is raised or farmed in this category.

Avoid the practices that are most damaging to the environment, inhumane to animals, and present known health risks to people. Food in this category is often the cheapest, but comes with bigger environmental and societal costs.

All workers should (at minimum): 1. Be paid fair, livable wages

3. Receive employee benefits and perks: collective bargaining rights, rest days, overtime compensation, and unemployment insurance The agricultural sector often depends on seasonal work and on migrant work, and abuses of workers have been widely documented. Unfortunately, there is no single certifying agent who evaluates labor practices on farms.

Good Alternatives Food that is from your region, or within the United States.

Farms should, at minimum, meet federal labor standards: minimum wage pay, and OSHA standards for training and safe working conditions.

Institutions that purchase food on a large scale may use this guide in developing a relationship with food growers, producers, and distributors, by knowing what questions to ask and what red flags to look for.

Avoid Food that travels across international borders, such as goods imported from China, Latin America, and South America.

Individuals will find this guide most useful when engaging with farmers and growers at the farmer’s market, or when seeking out a CSA

Food grown and handled in farms and facilities with less than minimum wage pay, unsafe working conditions, or a lack of washing facilities are unacceptable labor practices for food and farm workers.

All Food

Fruits and Vegetables

What to ask: Where is your farm located?

What size is your farm?

What are the labor practices and policies of your farm?

Best Choices

What to ask: Do you grow your produce with organic or agroecological production methods?

How do you manage pests?

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How do you promote soil health? How do you fertilize your soil?

Best Choices Certified Organic” by the USDA or other third-party certifying agency. Food is grown without the use of chemical pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers.

Transitional organic, or in the process of becoming certified. The farmer is using organic methods but has not reached the three-year pesticide-free requirement and cannot yet use the Certified Organic label.

Farmer can speak to organic and sustainable farming practices used, but is not certified or in the process of becoming certified. Some small farms grow their food organically but choose not to become certified due to the cost and paperwork load associated with doing so.

Encouraging soil health is a primary practice for managing pests. Healthier soils produce crops that are less susceptible to damage by pests, and are friendly to beneficial insects. By building soil health as a foundation, farmers eliminate the need for chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides.

Farmer grows diverse crops that are rotated throughout the land each season. Soil is fertilized by composting, composted manure, cover crops, and mulch. These practices build soil fertility by returning nutrients to the soil, building soil structure, and preventing erosion.

Good Alternatives IPM (Integrated Pest Management). Farmer uses natural substances to keep crops disease resistant. Pesticides are used only at a last resort, when pest damage would keep them from bringing in a profitable crop.

“Ecologically grown” is an uncertified label that signifies a crop is grown without the use of chemical herbicides or fertilizers. Products with this label can be grown using IPM practices, which minimize but don’t rule out the use of chemical pesticides.

“Big Organic” or industrial sized organic farming, like Earthbound Farm and Grimmway Farms, follows the USDA’s standards for organic certification but produce on an industrial scale.

Avoid “Monoculture” or growing a single crop over vast acreage, year in and year out. This practice pulls the same nutrients from the soil every year. Even in a single growing season, this practice depletes the health of the soil and increases potential for damaging pests to thrive.

Conventional farms grow using chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers produced from petroleum and nitrogen responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. These

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fertilizers only feed plants three nutrients, leaving out a whole variety of minerals that are important to plant health.

Dairy, Beef, and Lamb What to ask: What do your cows, goats, lamb, and/or sheep eat?

What percentage of their diet comes from grazing on pasture?

Are animals given growth hormones or antibiotics?

Best Choices Cows and other ruminant animals are meant to graze on grass and be outdoors year round. Their pasture should be free from chemical sprays.

The AGA (American Grassfed Association) certification for pasture-raised animals, which governs ruminant animals only (beef, bison, goat, lamb and sheep) are the most stringent of standards: 1. Diet: Animals are fed only grass and forage from weaning until harvest.

2. Confinement: Animals are raised on pasture without confinement to feedlots.

3. Antibiotics and hormones: Animals are never treated with antibiotics or growth hormones.

4. Origin: All animals are born and raised on American family farms.

Manure is a source of fertility and should be used to fertilize pasture rather than collecting in lagoons that pollute the air, surface water, and ground water.

Good Alternatives USDA-grass-fed certified animals receive a majority of their nutrients from grass throughout their life, though diets can be supplemented with grain. The USDA standard only partially addresses buyers’ expectations for grassfed meat, as the standard leaves a loophole for animal confinement, only requiring access to the outdoors during the growing season.

If some of the animal’s diet comes from grain, its meat will often be referred to as “grain finished”. Find out what the finish diet is composed of to ensure than animals were raised on pasture until slaughter — even a little grain makes a huge difference to the health of the animal.

Conventional beef production takes calves that began life on pasture and brings them to confinement feedlots, where they are brought to weight on grain. It is possible to spin this process and describe it as “grass fed, grain finished.”

Rather than treat birds with antibiotics as a routine practice, a “good” solution is one where antibiotics are

used only when animals are sick.

packed cages.

Avoid

Chickens fed conventional grain feed, which sometimes contains animal by-products or genetically modified (GMO) grains. Antibiotics are routinely used to help them fight off the illnesses brought on by their unsanitary living conditions.

Cows in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) at a diet that is designed to be cheap and fatten them up quickly. Conventional grain feed contains antibiotics and animal by-products. No percentage of the animal’s diet is from pasture as feedlot livestock is raised in confinement on grain only.

Avoid dairy products, beef, and lamb where use of growth hormone is a routine practice.

Eggs and Poultry What to ask: What do your birds eat?

Are your birds free range or cage free?

Are your birds debeaked or force-molted?

Are your birds ever given antibiotics?

Best Choices Poultry is raised on pasture, allowing animals to roam and graze, with room to peck and eat bugs. Feed is organic and all-vegetarian, which ensures that they are not eating animal by-products, and free of antibiotics.

The practice of “debeaking”, or cutting off one-half to two-thirds of a bird’s beak to reduce birds’ “cannibalistic” pecking (i.e., pecking one another to death), is only implemented in severely overcrowded factory farms.

Birds should never be debeaked or force-molted.

However, there are humane reasons to allow beak trimming of laying hen, but this must be practiced according to strict guidelines.

Good Alternatives “Cage-free” or “free range” as defined by the USDA means the birds have “access” to the outdoors. Farmers have to take only minimal steps to provide this kind of access; they may, for example, cut one small doorway in a barn filled with thousands of chickens. Farmers may provide only a yard covered in concrete or gravel, rather than a space with grass and bugs for chickens to graze on.

Poultry should be raised, at minimum, with access to the outdoors, and cage size should be considered as an important factor in the humane treatment of the bird.

Rather than treat birds with antibiotics as a routine practice, a “good” solution is one where antibiotics are used only when the flock is sick.

Avoid Factory-farmed eggs from birds raised in unsanitary and inhumane conditions, like tiny cages or huge, overcrowded barns. Because birds want to peck, farmers debeak them so that they won’t peck one another in their

Healthy, Sustainable Shopping It starts with the cart!

You can promote a more sustainable, healthy, and equitable food system by making small, manageable changes to your food shopping routine. Here is a list of tips to overcome the three most common barriers to purchasing healthy, sustainable food at the grocery store.*

“Better food costs more.”

At grocery stores, food grown and raised with sustainable practices often costs more than its conventional, industrial counterpart. But cheap food has bigger environmental and societal costs. An organic apple at Safeway is $0.20 more per pound than non-organic of the same type and source ($2.19/lb vs. $1.99/lb), but an organic apple purchased in season at your famer’s market is generally cheaper than what you can find in the store.

Don’t pay the middleman. Avoid the upcharge on sustainable alternatives by getting as close as you can to the source of your food. Shop at a local farmer’s market, purchase a farm share through a Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA), or grow some of your food yourself. This way, your dollar directly supports farmers who grow food locally and in season, offering you the cheapest price possible.

•

Hazon has the largest faith-based CSA network in the country. Find a Hazon CSA near you: www. hazon.org/csa

•

Local Harvest is a great way to find a farmer’s market near you: www.localharvest.org/

Eat lower on the food chain aand save meat for special occasions. Purchasing only kosher, sustainable meat will prove challenging to your food budget if you include it in every meal. Transition to eating meat only once or twice a week or on special occasions, and supplementing foods from the bottom of the chain into your daily diet will benefit the environment, your wallet, and your health.

Plant-based protein sources such as grains and legumes are lower on the food chain and superior to meat in that they come with disease-preventing fiber and naturally

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contain a wide variety of vitamins and minerals that our bodies need to thrive. Spend your valuable food dollars on the lowest foods that you can afford to eat more of, like beans, grains, fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

people to decide for themselves if what they’re seeing is greenwashing. Check out their website for tips to spot greenwashing (The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth) and view and rate ads that fellow informed consumers have submitted.

Shift your priorities to free up room in your food budget. If a farmer’s market or CSA doesn’t work for you, you may need to shift priorities and free up room in your food budget in order to purchase the sustainable alternative at grocery stores.

Figure out what you currently spend on food by tracking your food-related expenses for one month. Save receipts from everywhere you buy food: grocery stores, coffee shops, and restaurants. At the end of the month, organize and tally the totals.

• What surprises you about your food spending?

• Where is the bulk of your money spent?

• What changes can you make?

• Calculate how much you might save each month if you made your coffee and lunch at home. What if you cut out soda, juice, and other empty-calorie foods?

“Sustainability terms are complex and misleading.”

Terms like “organic”, “grass fed”, “naturally raised” and “cage free” don’t always mean what they seem to mean.

When you make purchasing decisions on the basis of sustainability, you will often be faced with a range of possible choices. Sometimes there is a clear best choice, but most of the time you will be weighing a number of competing factors. Store signage, labels, and packaging offer few, and often misleading clues about where it was grown or raised, and the feeding and handling practices used.

Refer to a reputable source. Animal Welfare Approved created an exhaustive list of the “bewildering range of terms and claims used to promote and label the food we buy” in “Food Labels for Dummies”, available for free download on their website.

Beware of “greenwashing”, when companies and organizations make themselves and their products sound or look like they’re helping the environment, luring you in by creating the perception that you can support sustainability by purchasing their product. In some cases you are helping. In some cases, it’s greenwashing.

The Greenwashing Index was created to educate consumers about how to “read” an ad and encourage

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Look for labels from third party certified sources.

Some labels (like “organic”) are third-party certified— meaning that a grower has to follow a certain set of practices in order to use this label. This is the best available way to know that a company’s claims are reliable, and have been substantiated by an independent, outside party.

While certification holds growers accountable, it often falls short of a gold standard of sustainability. Other terms, like “naturally raised,” aren’t certified at all, and the label means very little. The following labels, seals, and insignia have certified backing: USDA Organic seal says that overall, organic operations must demonstrate that they are protecting natural resources, conserving biodiversity, and using only approved substances. http://www.ams.usda.gov/ Fair Trade Certification is designed and audited to ensure equitable trade practices at every level of the supply chain. http://www.fairtradeusa.org/ Rainforest Alliance Certification seal assures consumers that the product they are purchasing has been grown and harvested using environmentally and socially responsible practices. www.rainforest-alliance.org Food Alliance Certification is a voluntary way for agricultural producers and food companies to address customer demands for traceability and social and environmental responsibility. http://foodalliance.org/ Animal Welfare Approved is a food label for meat and dairy products that come from farm animals raised to the highest animal welfare and environmental standards.

http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/ Ask questions. One of the many benefits of shopping at a farmer’s market is being able to ask questions of the grower or producer, but grocery store employees can also help. Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s have product guides available at customer service and on the web.

Ask the right questions. When you shop at a farmer’s market, seek out a CSA, or have the opportunity to engage directly with the grower, producer, or distributor of the food you buy, know what questions to ask and what red flags to look for. We’ve compiled a list of questions to ask about fruits and vegetables, dairy, eggs, poultry, beef, and lamb on our Sustainable Buying Guide.

“Unhealthy options outweigh the healthy ones.”

Grocery store shelves are filled with thousands of unhealthy, packaged, processed food options. These tips will help you set yourself up for success to fill your cart with the healthiest and highest nutrient-dense foods available.

Plan ahead and map your route. Adopt a routine where you map out your weekly meals. Determine how many meals you need to prepare that week and create a list based solely on the ingredients required for the menu.

Control spending and avoid impulse buying by sticking to the list.

Assess what you have on hand. Avoid food waste by doing a quick inventory of what you have in your refrigerator, freezer, and cupboards that need to be used up, and fill in your menu plan using these items first.

Set yourself up for success. Carefully choosing when to shop can affect how much you spend and what you bring home.

• Avoid shopping when you’re hungry, as your body will be craving sugar and you’ll be more likely to make impulse purchases.

•

Shop when the store isn’t crowded. This saves time and you can concentrate better.

•

Leave the family at home if they’re likely to distract or cause you to stray from the list.

out of the empty calorie aisles (potato chips, crackers, candy, soda, deli), usually found in the center of the store.

•

Supplement fresh with frozen. Stock your freezer with frozen vegetables, fruit, meat, and wild-caught seafood.

Pay for food, not convenience. You save money when you buy the basic ingredients in your recipes/meals rather than pre-prepared items. You also have more control over the quality of your ingredients when you create a meal for yourself.

Make sure what you’re buying is food. Understand what’s in processed food. Read the ingredients—fewer is usually better. Anna Lappé goes by the “thumb rule”: “If the ingredients list is longer than your thumb, put it down.” Avoid items that have ingredients that are difficult to pronounce or identify, such as partially hydrogenated oil and high-fructose corn syrup. “Don’t eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” says Michael Pollan.

Compare the unit price for the best buy. The “unit price” is the cost per weight or volume of a food. It is usually posted on the shelf below the food. Use unit prices to compare costs of different brands of the same food.

Look up, look down. Companies pay to display their products at eye level. Look on higher and lower shelves for less expensive products. Consider purchasing the generic or store-brand, but make sure to review and compare the ingredient list.

Pay attention at checkout. Make sure you got the sale price, the cashier punched in the right code on your produce, and that you leave with everything you paid for.

Don’t forget your reusable shopping bag! *This list of tips was informed by research conducted with the Class of 2013 Brandeis Hillel Day School 7th grade students. Learn more about this project: A New Way to Grocery Shop.

Priorities first. Fill your cart with the basics first— vegetables, fruit, and protein. These foods are nearly always found along the outside walls of the store.

• Arrange your master list according to the store layout. This will save time and prevent backtracking.

If you need something in the center aisles, dash in for specific items, then return to the outside walls.

•

Don’t even go there! Avoid temptation and stay

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Appendix III Animal Welfare Resources Building off the information you read in the Food Guide, these resources are meant to help you, your family, and your institution make ethical food choices that cause the least amount of animal suffering. We have put together information that will make it easier for you to interpret labels, find more humane certification programs, and understand some of the many issues that face farmed animals in our society today. Through learning and careful consideration, we can adopt practices that better reflect our appreciation for all life and our Jewish value of tza’ar ba’alei chayim.

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Animal Welfare Resources 2. Welfare Certifications

What does ‘free-range’ mean, anyway? In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the number of labels placed on all kinds of food products, including beef, chicken, fish, dairy, and eggs. Many of these labels, like “all-natural”, “farm fresh”, and “humanely raised” are completely meaningless; other labels might refer to something about the product, but are meaningless with regard to animal welfare, such as grass-fed, vegetarian-fed, all-natural, organic, cage-free, freerange, free roaming, pasture-raised, humanely raised, farm fresh, omega-3 enriched, pasteurized (for a more comprehensive guide to labels, visit AWI’s Food Label Guide: https://awionline.org/foodlabelguide).

Third-party animal welfare certifications help us understand the conditions in which farmed animals live out their lives. Third-party auditors inspect farms to make sure that they meet certain standards, but these standards can range from simply ensuring that standard factory farming procedures are followed to requiring animals be raised in higher welfare pasture-based systems. Unfortunately, many alleged “certifications” are little more than advertisements. Fortunately, there are three major certifications--Certified Humane, Global Animal Partnership (GAP), and Animal Welfare Approved (AWA)--that are widely recognized as legitimate by animal protection groups. At this time, no certification process exists to ensure more humane raising and slaughter of farmed fish or more humane methods of catching wild fish but we will likely see them in the future (see pages 17 and 18 – Food from Farmed Animals).

APPLICABLE ANIMALS AND PRODUCTS

STANDARDS

CERTIFIER

1. Reading Labels

BETTER WELFARE CERTIFIERS

BEST WELFARE CERTIFIERS

Certified Humane

Global Animal Partnership (GAP)

Global Animal Partnership (GAP)

Steps 2-3

Steps 4-5+

(no addendum, “cage free,” or “free range” )

http:// certifiedhumane. org/how-wework/ourstandards/ Cattle (beef, dairy, calves), Chickens (broiler + laying hens/ eggs), Sheep, Goats, Pigs, Turkeys, Bison

American Grassfed Certified (AGC)

Certified Humane

Animal Welfare Approved

(with “pastureraised” addendum)

(AWA)

http://www.globalanimalpartnership. org/5-step-program/standards

http://www. americangrassfed.org/ about-us/ourstandards/

http:// certifiedhumane. org/how-wework/ourstandards/

Cattle (beef), Broiler chickens, Pigs, Turkeys, Sheep, Goats, Bison

Cattle and other ruminants

Cattle (beef, dairy, calves), Chickens (broiler + laying hens/ eggs), Sheep, Goats, Pigs, Turkeys, Bison

For quick, general information use this diagram. For more detailed information, see the label-by-label explanation on the following page.

http://animalwelfareapproved. org/standards/ list-of-standards/

Cattle (beef, dairy, calves), Chickens (broiler + laying hens/ eggs), Sheep (dairy + meat), Goats (dairy + meat), Pigs, Turkeys, Ducks, Geese, Bison

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Better: 1. Certified Humane audits farmed animal operations that are typically on the better end of the factory farming spectrum.Standards include minimum space requirements, provisions for indoor housing requirements, and requirements for slaughter.

However, there are areas where the standards do not require more than the industry norm. Chickens and turkeys, for example, are not required to be granted access to the outdoors, making it possible that animals with the Certified Humane label were confined indoors for their entire lifespan. If, in addition to the Certified Humane label, a Certified Humane poultry product is listed as “free range,” then the birds also have access to the outdoors.

2. Global Animal Partnership (GAP) Steps 2-3 provide similar levels of welfare as Certified Humane. The GAP label is a tiered rating system, where Step 1 is the lowest rating and Step 5+ is the highest rating. GAP Step 1 is currently not much of an improvement, but Step 2 assures similar levels of welfare as the Certified Humane program. Step 2 represents better standards of care compared to the industry norm, but, as with Certified Humane, many welfare concerns important to consumers are not addressed, such as outdoor access. GAP Step 3 adds outdoor access and a few additional welfare benefits to Step 2 and is roughly comparable to Certified Humane products also marked as “free range.”

Best Available: 1. Global Animal Partnership (GAP) Steps 4-5+ represent the high end of currently available welfare. At Step 4 animals are raised on pasture.

At Step 5, no physical alterations are performed on the animals. At Step 5+, the entire life of the animal must be spent on the same integrated farm (transport is not allowed).

2. American Grassfed Certified does not aim at being a welfare certification but nonetheless correlates with higher welfare.This certification ensures that all ruminant animals were fed a lifetime diet of 100% forage, were raised on pasture and not in confinement, and were never treated with hormones or antibiotics. All beef cattle spend some time on grass, so it is important to understand that a promise of “grassfed” alone does not indicate higher welfare; 100% grass-fed beef is where the greatest welfare benefits occur. Unfortunately,

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American Grassfed Certified does not include humane slaughter standards and so we recommend inquiring about slaughter standards for products bearing this label.

3. Certified Humane with a “Pasture-Raised” addendum on poultry products means that, in addition to meeting basic standards, birds must be given a certain amount of space (108 sq. ft. per animal, compared to 2 sq. ft. for “free-range” animals) and fields must be rotated. Hens must be kept outdoors year-round with mobile or fixed housing.

4. The Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) (www. animalwelfareapproved.org) label, along with GAP 5+, represent a gold standard in animal welfare.

Animals are raised on a family farm with meaningful welfare protections, access to pasture, and careful handling during transportation and slaughter.

Compliance is verified through an onsite audit conducted by trained staff of AWA.AWA is also the only program that is free for farmers, which makes us recommend this certification above all others.

For more on farmed animal issues, visit: 1. Farm Forward is an organization committed to ending factory farming, reducing animal suffering, and promoting conscientious and sustainable food choices. Farm Forward is increasingly engaged with Jewish and other religious communities to help leaders and members enact their values through their food choices: farmforward.com.

2. The Humane Society of the United States is the country’s largest animal welfare organization and major agent of change in farm animal protection and policy: www.humanesociety.org/issues/ campaigns/factory_farming/. The HSUS’s Faith Outreach Department is partnering with religious communities to educate and act on animal protection issues: http://www.humanesociety.org/ about/departments/faith/.

3. The Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA) provides new ways for the Jewish community to bring its values of compassion for animals into practice and strengthen Jewish communities in the process. With a primary focus on farmed animals, JIFA is generating a lasting impact on the American Jewish community’s attention to animal welfare as an important issue in both education and policy. JIFA is a project of Farm Forward: jewishinitiativeforanimals.org

Appendix IV Local Community Resources Compiled in the Food Guide and its appendices are a number of resources available nationally to support your efforts to become healthier and more sustainable. Additionally, many local communities have resources uniquely available to them. In this section you will find such resources for some communities. If your community is not included, we invite contributors to create a new supplement; please email us at seal@hazon.org if you are interested.

Communities: • Bay Area, California • Colorado

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Community Resources – Bay Area Healthy, Sustainable, Kosher: Food “Fit” to Eat Local producers: The Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) Buy Fresh Buy Local California search engine helps connect consumers with local products. growers, food artisans, farmers markets, retailers, restaurants, and institutions: http://www.buylocalca.org/ Wise Food Ways is a website run by local Bay Area chef Jessica Prentice. She maintains a section of her website, “Where the Wise Foods Are”, with recommended Bay Area purveyors of free-range and grass-fed meat and poultry, raw and cultured dairy products, fresh, organic, local fruits and vegetables, and naturally-leavened whole grain breads: http://www.wisefoodways.com/bay/ The Organic Consumers Association has compiled one of the largest national directories of green and organic businesses, ranging from food to clothing to pet care.

Here you can also find links to other national directories, like Local Harvest and the Eat Well Guide: http:// organicconsumers.org/btc/BuyingGuide.cfm Farmers markets: A Certified Farmers Market is a location, regulated by the State of California, where a producer sells only their own local fruits and vegetables directly to consumers.

Purchasing from certified farmers allows you to be sure that her/his products are grown, raised, or caught in California and sold directly by the producer. Locate a certified farmers market nearest you at the following websites: • California Farmers Markets Association: http:// cafarmersmkts.com •

Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association: http:// www.pcfma.com/

Eat in season: CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture) works to cultivate a more sustainable food system through the operation of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and educational programming. Seasonal fruit and vegetable charts are available for download on their website: http://cuesa.org/page/seasonality-chartvegetables Local Foods Wheels are available for the San Francisco Bay Area, New York Metro Area, and Upper Midwest and are designed to help you identify what foods are grown

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in those regions, and what is in season at various times of the year. Wheels are available for purchase for only $12.95 on their website or at many local businesses: http://www. localfoodswheel.com Fair Trade: Fair Trade Judaica is building a fair trade movement in the Jewish community, with a special focus on Fair Trade Judaica products. Every product featured on their website is either made by a recognized member of a fair trade membership organization or is a product certified Fair Trade by a recognized certifying agency: http:// fairtradejudaica.org/ Fair Trade USA provides a list of their licensed fair trade partners located in California. Many partners are local to the Bay Area: http://www.fairtradeusa.org/productspartners?state=CA#tabset-tab-2

Eating Together: Planning for Meals, Kiddush, Simchas, and Holidays See attached Sustainable Buying Guide for Hazon’s tips on how to make healthier, more sustainable choices at the grocery store.

Food Waste Food Runners is volunteer organization working to help alleviate hunger in San Francisco, prevent waste, and create community by picking up excess perishable and prepared food from businesses such as restaurants, caterers, bakeries, hospitals, event planners, corporate cafeterias, and hotels and delivers it directly to shelters and neighborhood programs that feed the hungry. For information on donations and how to volunteer, visit: http://www.foodrunners.org San Francisco’s Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance requires residents to separate their recyclables, compostables, and landfill trash. SFEnvironment has tools and resources to help you and your household compost and recycle: http://sfenvironment.org/zero-waste/ recycling-and-composting.

Food Education The City of San Francisco hosts a website with information specific to San Francisco’s food system.

You’ll find information on buying healthy food for your workplace or family, applying for Food Stamps, finding a farmers market, and discovering what San Francisco policy-makers and researchers have said about our food: http://www.sfgov3.org/index.aspx?page=753

Advocacy: •

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Community Food and Justice Coalition (CFJC) is a state-wide membership coalition that promotes the basic human right to healthy, affordable food while advancing social, agricultural, environmental and economic justice, through education, advocacy and by collaborating with community-based efforts in California and throughout the country. Learn about their grassroots efforts to take back our food system and events you can participate in: http:// cafoodjustice.org The Institute for Food and Development Policy, also called Food First is a “people’s think-and-do tank” working to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger. They carry out research, analysis, advocacy and education with communities and social movements for informed citizen engagement with the institutions and policies that control production, distribution and access to food: http://www. foodfirst.org Roots of Change (ROC) works to develop and support a collaborative network of leaders and institutions in California with interest in establishing a sustainable food system by the year 2030. This network involves food producers, businesses, nonprofits, communities, government agencies, and foundations that share a commitment to changing our food thinking, food markets, and food policies.

For opportunities in citizen advocacy and to join campaigns to change food and farming, visit: www. http://rootsofchange.org The Oakland Food Policy Council is a 21-seat council that studies the Oakland food system and makes recommendations to the City of Oakland on ways to make the system more equitable and sustainable. Meetings are open to the public and citizens are encouraged to attend: http://www. oaklandfood.org

Food Banks and Food Providers: •

The California Association of Food Banks provides support to a membership of 43 food banks by increasing the visibility of hunger and its solutions, sharing food resources and influencing public policy: http://www.cafoodbanks.org/

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The San Francisco and Marin Food Bank is working to end hunger in San Francisco and Marin by collecting and distributing millions of pounds of food through farmer’s market-style food pantries.

Their website is equipped with resources to support your Food or Fund Drive. Learn more about their wide-ranging programs and opportunities to volunteer: http://www.sffoodbank.org

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The Alameda County Food Bank is the hub of a vast collection and distribution network that provides food for 275 nonprofit agencies in Alameda County, such as food pantries, soup kitchens, childcare centers, senior centers, after-school programs and other community-based organizations. The Food Bank distributes enough food for 380,000 meals weekly: http://www.accfb.org

Urban Agriculture and Food Justice Education: •

City Slicker Farms organizes low-income children, youth and adults in West Oakland to grow, distribute and eat more organic produce through investing in individuals through education and training, and provide them with the essential tools, resources, and ongoing support to become food self-sufficient.

For information on their programs and ways to get involved, visit: http://www.cityslickerfarms.org

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Hayes Valley Farm is an urban center and permaculture demonstration site offering curriculum of workshops, classes, courses and tours guided by Urban Permaculture. Their focus is on gardening and farming in the urban setting, using minimal inputs, upcycling local waste, replenishing the landscape, and maximizing community involvement and available resources: http://www. hayesvalleyfarm.com

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Oakland Based Urban Gardens (OBUGS) offers nutrition education programs to students in West and North Oakland to learn about gardening,

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nutrition, exercise, healthy eating, and science.

Volunteer to help with everything from teaching garden programs to maintaining the gardens to working in the office: http://obugs.org/ •

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People’s Grocery is working to improve the health and economy of West Oakland through the local food system. They pursue positive community change and address social determinants of health through a food lens. People’s Grocery’s urban agriculture, nutrition, and enterprise programs provide healthy food access and have set the stage for a systemic conversation about healthy food in West Oakland. For a full overview of their programs and resources, visit: http://www.peoplesgrocery.org Phat Beets is a food justice collective that operates two certified, clinic based farmers’ markets, one youth-led school farm stand and community nutrition hub, and a youth market garden in partnership with a local hospital obesity prevention program in North Oakland. As a collective, they strive to support social businesses, small farmers, and farmers of color. For a full overview of their programs and resources, visit: http://www. phatbeetsproduce.org Planting Justice is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, CA dedicated to food justice, economic justice, and sustainable local food systems.

They are working to empower economically disadvantaged communities to transform empty lots, paved backyards, and grass lawns into productive organic gardens that serve as living classrooms for community members to practice Urban Permaculture and bio-intensive gardening techniques: http://plantingjustice.org The San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance (SFUAA) is an alliance of organizations and individuals committed to expanding and improving urban agriculture. They promote the growing of food within San Francisco through advocacy, education, and grassroots action. For resources on how to start your own urban growing project, visit: http://www.sfuaa.org

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•

Slide Ranch is a non-profit teaching farm that uses food as the organizing theme to teach about our connection to the sun, soil, water, air and people who work to feed us. Family Programs, Group Programs and Summer Day Camp are offered to bring learning to life with hands-on education activities on a working farm. Slide Ranch uses its organic gardens and animals to teach an appreciation of where fresh healthy food comes from, and to inspire a lifestyle that includes growing and preparing nutritious foods, getting plenty of exercise, and sustainable use of natural resources: http://www.slideranch.org

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Spiral Gardens is working to create healthy sustainable communities by promoting a strong local food system and encouraging productive use of urban soil. Based in Berkeley, CA, they operate a community farm, nursery, produce stand, community harvest project and community education on food production: http://www. spiralgardens.org/

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• Urban Adamah is a community organic farm and Jewish environmental education center located in Berkeley, CA. They offer a three-month residential leadership program that integrates organic farming, direct social justice work, and progressive Jewish living and learning. The Urban Adamah farm is an educational center for Bay Area students and community members. Visitors are invited to participate in specific educational programs, volunteer work-days, and special holiday programs: http://urbanadamah.org.

Urban Adamah is a community organic farm and Jewish environmental education center located in Berkeley, CA. They offer a three-month residential leadership program that integrates organic farming, direct social justice work, and progressive Jewish living and learning. The Urban Adamah farm is an educational center for Bay Area students and community members. Visitors are invited to participate in specific educational programs, volunteer work-days, and special holiday programs: http:// urbanadamah.org

Community Resources – Colorado Healthy, Sustainable, Kosher: Food “Fit” to Eat Buy Colorado: Look for the “Colorado Proud” logo when grocery shopping

Local producers: The Organic Consumers Association provides a list of different farms and companies across the state that produce all varieties of organic food from vegetables to hummus to pasta. www.organicconsumers.org/state/ greenbiz.cfm?state=CO&type=food The Rocky Mountain Growers Directory is an extensive directory of local businesses producing all varieties of food, flowers etc., all produced in Colorado. http:// localsustainability.net/

Farmers markets:

The Colorado Farmers Market Association provides a complete list of farmers markets across Colorado. www. coloradofarmers.org/marketfind.htm.

Eat in season:

The Colorado Department of Agriculture provides a calendar of Colorado produce and each of their peak seasons. https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/ files/CropCalendarEnglish.pdf Fair Trade: Fair Trade USA provides a list of their licensed fair trade partners located in Colorado. www.fairtradeusa. org/products-partners?state=CO#tabset-tab-2

Sustainable, local, kosher meat and fish: There are many resources for sustainable, ethical, kosher meat for Coloradans. Please refer to Chapter 1 of this guide, “Sustainable Kosher Meat Providers: In Their Own Words,” and the Producers Guide in appendix I. Monterey Bay Aquarium offers a downloadable pocket guide to buying fish in Colorado, print it out and keep it in your wallet. www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/ cr_seafoodwatch/content/media/MBA_SeafoodWatch_ MidwestGuide.pdf

Fishchoice.com “connects buyers and sellers of sustainable seafood.” The search engine generates a list of the best choices to buy as close to Colorado as possible.

For local and sustainable fish from right here in Colorado, go to “sustainable” near the bottom of the page at this link for a list: www.seattlefish.com/products.

Eating Together: Planning for Meals, Kiddush, Simchas, and Holidays Wine: Check out the local section and organic section of your local liquor store; if they don’t have one, ask them to show you their local and organic choices.

There are many Colorado wineries, enabling you to buy your wine as close to the vines as possible! www. coloradowine.com/index.cfm

Rosh Hashanah: Choose your county in Colorado and this website will generate a list of farms where you can “pick your own” apples and other fruits! www.pickyourown.org/CO.htm Dip your apples in delicious, raw honey produced by a small-scale apiary. There are many local honey providers listed in Boulder County’s Eat Local Guide: http://www. localfoodshift.pub/directory/wpbdp_category/honey/ Find many other local honey resources across the state at: www.honeylocator.com/locator/find/state/CO/.

Chanukah:

Get local beeswax candles from Bee Squared, who has hives in Weld, Larimer, and Boulder County. www. bethsbees.com/candles.htm.

Serving and Cooking the Food: Sustainable dishware: Ecoproducts sells just about any type of recyclable and compostable disposable product, from hot cups to straws. See their products and vendors: http://ecoproducts.ziplocator.com/results_list.php?show only=US&tab=US&state=CO&city=&name=

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Food Waste: Making Less of It, Doing More with It Food Rescue: We Don’t Waste is a Denver organization that will pick up excess prepared and perishable food after your largescale event for free. www.wedontwaste.org/.

Recycling: Sorted by city, the Colorado Recycles website offers a comprehensive list of links to companies that will recycle all recyclable items. http://www.recycling-guide.com/ searchfolder/search.html

Signage:

Boulder Food Rescue picks up food that would otherwise be considered waste, and delivers it to homeless shelters, school programs, and others serving food insecure populations. If your institution has significant, perishable leftovers on a regular basis, contact them to become a donor. www.boulderfoodrescue.org/

Download free, sector-specific business recycling, compost, and trash posters and bin labels from the City of Boulder. If you’re located within the City, you can also order laminated posters and even submit photos and they will create custom signs reflecting the actual materials used in your organization.

Donate surplus produce from your garden or fruit trees.

Use the search feature at www.AmpleHarvest.org to find a local pantry that will accept donations like this from individuals.

https://bouldercolorado.gov/lead/zero-waste-signs-forbusinesses

Cleaning out your pantry for Passover? Donate your non-perishables to a local food bank or food pantry.

Find listings here: http://feedingamerica.org/foodbankresults.aspx?state=CO www.foodpantries.org/st/colorado

Composting: Denver Urban Gardens has 100+ gardens. Their website and organization provides information about everything related to gardening, from how to start a community garden, where to find an existing garden, to composting techniques, tips, and training opportunities. It is an excellent resource! http://dug.org/compost.

Consider becoming one of Eco-cycle’s Zero Waste Community Partners. Available in Boulder, Eco-cycle will pick up all of your waste, from your compost to your recycle from your curbside! www.ecocycle.org/files/pdfs/ Eco-CycleZWSbrochure.pdf. They also offer education for your organization’s staff about sustainable practices: http://www.ecocycle.org/businesses/education.

Western Disposal also offers curbside composting for residential and commercial purposes. They serve Boulder, Longmont, Louisiville, Broomfield, and Lafayette! http:// www.westerndisposal.com/ The “Denver, Mile High City” website provides a list of places that sell composting bins in the Colorado area. http://www.denvergov.org/ trashrecycling/TrashandRecycling/Composting/ BinsforHomeComposting/tabid/438327/Default.aspx

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Food Education Hazon’s Jewish Food Education Network (JFEN): JFEN is a way for educators all over North America to connect with, share, and learn from each other with the help of Hazon’s innovative food education resources and support. There are several educators in Colorado who are members of the network. Check it out and consider becoming a member at www.hazon.org/resources/jfen/.

Local One-Day Food Festival: Hazon hosts a one-day food festival on the Front Range every year. It’s a day of learning, celebration, eating, community-building and hands-on doing at the intersection of food, sustainability and Jewish life. Visit www.hazon.org/colorado for details on the next event.

Hazon Educators: Hazon’s Colorado staff is available for teaching and providing programming ideas and resources. Contact Colorado@Hazon.org for details.

Local classes: The GrowHaus offers public classes in the Denver area on anything from food justice to worm composting.

Take a look at their schedule at www.thegrowhaus.com/ classes/.

Feed Denver offers workshops on a vast range of topics concerning sustainable gardening and more! Check out their upcoming events at www.feeddenver.com/classes-events.html.

Produce Denver offers a variety of educational classes related to gardening in Denver. They will teach you how

to do everything that has to do with your garden, from starting a garden from scratch to preparing and cooking the fruits of your labor http://producedenver.com/.

Community Agriculture and Gardens Community Supported Agriculture (CSA):

There are several Jewish CSAs in Colorado, join one today! Check out the Jewish CSA directory on the Hazon website: www.hazon.org/programs/csa/communities/.

If you’d like to start a new CSA, take a look at the CSA Bible on the Hazon website and contact our local staff for assistance, Colorado@Hazon.org.

Ekar: Take a field trip to Ekar, a Jewish urban farm in Denver. ekarfarm.org

Food Justice Local organizations that address hunger and food insecurity: Jewish Family Services Weinberg Food Pantry in Denver helps families struggling with food insecurity.

Donation and volunteer opportunities are available on their website. http://jewishfamilyservice.org/services/ weinberg-food-pantry Ekar Farm donates 90% of the community-grown, organic, whole food grown on their 2 acres to those in need. Learn more at http://www.ekarfarm.org GrowHaus provides food to people in need. Located in the largest food desert in Denver, GrowHaus has a small farm, space to hold educational classes, and a market place coming soon. www.thegrowhaus.com GreenLeaf Denver works with youth to create food sustainability and increase access to healthy fruits and vegetables in and around Denver. www.greenleafdenver. org/?page_id=20.

The Growing Project in Ft. Collins is a food justice organization educating people about sustainable farming, and providing food to people facing food insecurity in Larimer County. Youth and adults can get involved. www.thegrowingproject.org/.

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Conclusion: Making Change “Ma Tovu Ohalecha Ya’akov, Mishkenotecha Israel” How lovely are your tents, O Jacob; your dwelling places, Israel.

—Morning Blessings, from Numbers 24:5 A midrash explains that the reason the prophet, Bilam, found the Israelite’s encampment so worthy of blessing was that each family had set up their tent so that their doors did not directly face any other tent, creating respectful privacy in the community.

Similarly, taking steps to change the food we eat, and the way we serve it, at our institution recognizes that the actions we take within our own community have an effect on the world around us. And there is no one way to go about it; the doubling in this verse suggests that there are many different tents, many different peoples, and many ways to achieve our goal of a healthy, sustainable, just, and righteous food system. The important thing is that we take the steps that are right for our community.

Building a new food system—one that respects the health of ecosystems, animals and people, one that ensures all people are fed, one that emits no waste or greenhouse gasses and requires no toxic chemicals—will take a lot of people, and a lot of work at a lot of levels.

By encouraging the Jewish community to add their voice, Hazon is working towards creating healthy and sustainable communities in the Jewish world, and beyond. We thank you for partnering with us in this important work!

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10 Ways We Can Help You Make a Difference 1. You’ve already taken huge steps by using the Hazon Food Guide Toolkit to learn more and to help you navigate food choices in your synagogue or other Jewish institution. Thank you!

2. Think about launching a CSA in your community – or joining an existing one. Community-Supported Agriculture programs bring local, sustainable produce to your community. We’d be happy to help you launch one in your synagogue – either by yourselves, or in partnership with a neighboring Jewish or non-Jewish institution.

3. Ride for change. Join us as an individual, organize a team, or crew for sustainable food systems, to renew Jewish life, and to have a great time. Visit www.Hazon.org to learn more about our annual New York Ride, California Ride, and Arava Institute and Hazon Israel Ride.

4. Commit to celebrating healthy and sustainable Jewish holidays. Over the years Hazon has developed a number of resources to help you celebrate the Jewish holidays in line with your values, and to use these key moments in the Jewish calendar to bring some of our most complicated struggles to light. Use these resources to inspire a theme for a holiday, an activity for your family, or an event for your community.

5. Be an advocate for healthy and sustainable food policies at the local, state and national level, including the Farm Bill. Be responsive to calls for advocacy action from Hazon and the Jewish Working Group for a Just Farm Bill.

6. Join the thinkers and the doers of the Jewish Food Movement at a variety of transformative, fun, multiday events, including the Hazon Food Conference, Torah of Food, Israel Sustainable Food Tour, and other opportunities. Visit www.Hazon.org for upcoming events.

7. Use food as a platform for innovative Jewish education. Join a network of individuals at the cutting edge of the Jewish Food Movement—join JFEN: Jewish Food Education Network for access to resources, or purchase Food for Thought, a 130-page sourcebook on Jews, food, and contemporary life. It’s perfect for rabbis or educators to use, and it’s accessible to anyone. We also have Min Ha’Aretz, a curriculum for middle-school students. All of this and more available online.

8. Eat sustainably and healthfully with your friends and family. Renew your tradition of Shabbat meals, a wonderful way to spend quality time with family and friends without the distractions of everyday life, and a great way to celebrate food and start a community.

9. Read, blog, or comment on Hazon’s award-winning food blog, The Jew & The Carrot, or our general Hazon blog. If you’re doing something exciting with food in your community, write about it and send it to us, or send us a short video, and we’ll publish it.

10. Donate to Hazon to help create healthy and sustainable communities in the Jewish world and beyond!

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Thank you This fifth edition of the Hazon Food Guide Toolkit is the result of many hardworking hands. Huge thanks to the following people who have brought this project to life!

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Brooke Saias, for giving the project real shape

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Rachel Loebl and Liz Kohn, for razor-sharp copy editing, and to Lauren Greenberg for valuable editing, updating and revision support

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Rachel Gelman and Daniel Infeld, for working on the print layout, and Jake WilkenfeldMongillo and Lauren Wasserman for making it available online

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Nadia Schreiber, for work on the Food Audit Toolkit

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Becky O’Brien, for editing, revisions, and championing the Food Audit in communities around the country

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Alyssa Berkowitz, for work on the Food Audit Webinars

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Mirele Goldsmith, for editing and many valuable contributions

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Chloe Friedman, for creating the Colorado Community Resources supplement

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Alli Rosen, for creating the Bay Area Community Resources supplement and the Sustainable Buying Guide

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Those who contributed stories about the actions they’ve taken in their community: Ellen Botnik, Miriam Coates, Richard Grayson, Leah Koenig, Shuli Passow, Robin Rifkin, Rachel Sacks, Natalie Soleil, Edith Stevenson, Cassie Weinstock

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…and Justin Goldstein, Rachel Gelman, Anna Hanau, Amanda Schanfield and Nadia Schreiber for helping tell those stories

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Rachel Jacoby Rosenfield, for her beautiful introduction

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Judith Belasco and Nigel Savage, for direction and guidance

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Special thanks to the Baltimore Food and Faith Project at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future for allowing access and use of their Faith Community Food Audit which formed the basis for the Hazon Food Audit

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Special thanks to Sarah Chandler, Melissa Hoffman, and the whole team at Jewish Initiative for Animals and to Emanuel J. Friedman Philanthropies for their support of Hazon’s work

What changes are you making at your institution?

We’d love to hear about them and include them in our next edition of the Food Guide!

Send your stories to seal@hazon.org.

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