There’s a Jewish sustainable food movement. Who knew?

More than 600 conference attendees, apparently, who poured into Monterey, Calif. in late December for the annual Hazon Food Conference. Hazon is an organization devoted to the health and sustainability of the Jewish community and the world. They aim to incorporate sustainability into all aspects of Jewish life, with a particular focus on how we eat. That focus is a natural fit, since food is a huge factor in both sustainability and Jewish culture. Judaism analyzed the significance of foods and meals centuries before climate change and soil devastation were hot topics. It’s the way of our people to think and to nosh –– and to think about what we nosh.

The conference is Hazon’s signature event, and this year’s attendance was the largest ever. For four days, hundreds of Jews from an array of religious and irreligious backgrounds attended workshops on topics like food justice, Jewish farmers, and how sustainability and slow food fit into Shabbos and holidays.

We kicked off on Erev Christmas with, in deference to tradition, Chinese food and a movie. The Chinese food included locally grown vegetables, and the options at the makeshift multiplex were all documentaries about food justice and sustainability. I watched an outstanding film called The Garden, about Latin American immigrant farmers organizing against the planned destruction of a gorgeous 14-acre garden they’d built in industrial South Central Los Angeles.

The next morning, I sat on a food-and-media panel moderated by writer Leah Koenig, with San Francisco Chronicle food editor Miriam Morgan, author David Gumpert and food writer Sheila Himmel. Koening and the audience threw us questions that have been on many minds: What’s the media doing well and not so well around food issues? How can we combat corporate-influenced misinformation, disguised to look like impartial fact?  How have new social media impacted the food movement, and how can we use this to our advantage? 

In answer to the last question, new media are helping build the movement, allowing us to spread ideas about sustainability and eating across communities, Jewish and beyond. Whether it’s a shared article from the New York Times or pictures of dinner on Facebook, we use new media in ways to spread ideas like building chicken coops, planning local-foods-oriented Jewish holidays, or changing how we eat. Media and social networking spark discussions on eating sustainably, and how that fits into Jewish identity in a changing world.

My own Jewish identity skips much of the bits about strict belief in an omnipotent deity, and goes straight to the parts that grab me personally: Delicious food, being part of a community, and, most significantly, taking care of eachother, ourselves and the world. They’re interrelated; I try to take care of my body and beloved friends with healthy, nutritious foods from small farms near where I live.  Dairy and eggs and meats higher in important fat-soluble vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids, from animals allowed to run around on pasture like they’re supposed to. Vegetables that taste like sunlight and healthy soil.

You can imagine my pleasure when, filling out the Hazon conference registration form, there was an option under the question “Do you keep kosher?” for “I view eating ethically (local, organic, ethical treatment of workers, etc.) as a form of keeping kosher.” I realized I’d found my movement, that other people think like I do.

Not that we all agree on the details. The beauty of the Jewish stereotype of two Jews and three opinions is that there’s room for debate, and we don’t hold back. At the conference, I realized we have varied points of view on what constitutes sustainability, and on best approaches to sustainable food.  Vegetarianism/veganism, limited meat, or buying heavily from small, grass-fed meat and dairy farms?  Is it good when large, corporate brands become increasingly organic? What about people who keep kosher, but can’t find kosher meat that wasn’t sent to a feedlot (a.k.a. CAFO) or that was processed in an establishment where workers are treated fairly? 

The challenges are steep, as we learned in a surprisingly hands-on way. Shortly before the event, the conference center’s food service was taken over by the Aramark corporation, whose rules meant Hazon had to reject some donations of produce from several small farms, and trade the idea of locally pasture-raised, ritually-slaughtered chickens for a shipment from a large kosher poultry company in Pennsylvania. Frustrating, but nothing compared to the barriers of being a small food producer in a country deeply controlled by agribusiness. It’s a reminder that this work can’t just happen on an individual level, even if that’s where it starts.

So, where do we start? You don’t have to be a religious Jew to make sustainable eating part of your Jewish identity. Here are three ideas coming out of the Jewish food movement.

First, be connected to the place you live. At the conference, Rabbi Steve Greenberg noted that our history includes feeling ties to a physical place (land of Israel), and being forbidden to farm the land where we lived. Today, Greenberg suggested, we need to take that Jewish value of being connected to a place, and apply it to the many communities where we reside, each with its own soil and climate and rich tradition of Jewish food. 

What does this mean in practice? Shop at a local farmers’ market. Join a CSA or farm share (Hazon organizes Jewish CSAs around the country). Grow some of your own food. Learn what’s ripe when (here’s a list for the Seattle area).  Bring local foods into Shabbos and holidays. Tu b’Shevat is coming up; it’s an agricultural holiday at which many Jews focus on ecology. You can find some resources here.

Second, be mindful about what you eat. It’s a very Jewish thing to do, even if you have no inclinations toward anything religious. Our cultural tradition is that every choice we make, however small, should be made with intention and examined for meaning. You can decide to eat nearly all local foods, to plant a bigger garden and get chickens, or just make a small step like trading your supermarket eggs in for more nutritious pasture-raised eggs from the farmers’ market.
Third, build sustainable community through sustainable food. Gather regularly for meals, whether on Shabbos and holidays or on a whim. Taking time for slow, shared meals increases the way we value food. When you’re able, share wholesome food raised traditionally in renewable ways, taking simultaneous care of yourself and the place you live. Plant gardens together. Get to know the people who produce your food, and advocate for their work to your legislators. Fight for food justice, both the rights of farm workers and packers, and the human right of everyone to have access to fresh, nutritious food.

Finally, share what you’re doing, however small or large. Use media, social networking and time with friends to share ideas around. Cook, debate, plant, think, advocate, eat. Rinse and repeat. It’s so very Jewish.

Resources:

• Hazon’s website
• The Jew and the Carrot, the Hazon blog
• Seattle Local Food, Debs Gardner’s blog (NB: temporarily in archive-only state due to technical difficulties)
• Local Harvest, for finding farms and ingredients where you live
• Seattle has two different farmers’ market associations with different markets:
◦ Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance
◦ The markets in Ballard, Fremont, Madrona and Wallingford
• Puget Sound Fresh, listing Puget Sound area farms and CSAs
• Kol Foods, a resource for grass-fed, organic glatt kosher meat
• The Ethicurean, a blog about sustainable food issues
• Civil Eats, a site about sustainable agriculture and food systems
• Community Alliance for Global Justice, a Seattle-based organization working on food justice and related issues