• Happy New Year once again! While the Pursue team drew up our own resolutions for 2012, Rabbi (and AJWS alum) Noah Farkas asks us to reconsider how we make our resolutions – it’s not about the end goal but about making “life-adjustments.” He applies this thinking to kashrut, making five resolutions for what he calls “Deep Kashrut,” a way of considering the full story behind the food we are eating: eat more sustainably, spiritually, communally, justly and joyously. 
• Next week marks the second anniversary of the Haiti earthquake that devastated the region in 2010. AJWS, which raised over $6 million for relief in that year, now funds 40 incredible grantees that work on issues ranging from provision of emergency supplies to long-term training in human rights monitoring, disaster risk reduction, and agricultural skills. For a more complete report on Haiti two years after the earthquake and how you can take action, click here.
• The Jewish Organizing Initiative, a long-standing Boston based program that trains Jewish community organizers, announced this week that it is ramping up its activities to become JOIN for Justice, an organization with an expanded mission to train young adults, clergy and Jewish institutional leaders to apply social justice organizing skills in a range of different settings within and beyond the Jewish community. Working now with PJA & JFSJ, JOIN for Justice will also hold its first ever National Summit for Jewish organizers this April: check out the details here. 
• The Jewish social justice world got a major boost this week with the announcement by the Tides Foundation that they are launching a Tikkun Olam Fund. Tides, an organization that supports over 225 nonprofits and social service agencies around the world, sees the fund as an effort to amplify the collective power of the small and often disparate Jewish social justice initiatives on a broader scale than other existing funding sources. One important benefit of the Tides funding strategy is its support for general operating costs—which any struggling organization knows may be the very key to making their work possible!

This coming Shabbat, May 14/10 Iyar, is also being celebrated as World Fair Trade Day, with events happening in over 80 countries around the world. Fair Trade is an international movement in which trading partnerships are based on reciprocal benefits and mutual respect; prices are paid to producers that reflect the work they do; workers have the right to organize; national health, safety, and wage laws are enforced; and products are environmentally sustainable and conserve natural resources (definition by Fair Trade Resource Network).

This is a great opportunity to celebrate and honor the farmers and artisans who make products that we consume and use every day, and to join the larger Fair Trade community. Let’s make it a chag this year!

Eat and Drink Fair Trade

• Serve Fair Trade coffee, tea, sugar and honey (kosher options available)
• Make Kiddush with a Fair Trade wine
• Make a “l’chaim” with fair trade vodka and other spirits
• Serve Fair Trade chocolate for dessert (kosher options available)

Do Fair Trade

• Decorate your home, synagogue or office with Fair Trade flowers
• Discuss this week’s parsha (Torah portion), Behar, as it relates to fair trade principles
• Spend Shabbat afternoon learning about fair trade
• Host a post-Havdalah gathering with an educational film, Fair Trade chocolate tastings and more

Resources

• List of Fair Trade kosher coffee, tea, and chocolate products: http://fairtradejudaica.org/shop/chocolate-coffee-and-tea
• Resources to learn more about fair trade: http://fairtradejudaica.org/learn
• List of available films: http://www.fairtraderesource.org/learn-up/fair-trade-films
• More information about World Fair Trade Day: http://www.fairtraderesource.org/wftd 

Ilana Schatz is the founding director of Fair Trade Judaica, a non-profit organization promoting fair trade as an expression of core Jewish values, including the obligation to work for economic justice, ensuring workers’ rights, being responsible consumers, and sustaining natural resources.

• The Union for Reform Judaism announced this week that AJWS board member Rabbi Richard Jacobs has been nominated to be the movement’s next leader. Currently the rabbi of a suburban NYC congregation, Jacobs has traveled to Chad and Haiti with AJWS and is a dedicated to bringing greater environmentalism and pluralism into contemporary Jewish life. In an interview with the JTA, Jacobs said he is also interested in “making Jewish communal life relevant for Jews in their 20s and 30s.” Between this and Ruth Messinger’s praise that “Rick has been a powerful voice on international social and economic justice,” we at Pursue look forward to his efforts in this new leadership position.
• Hazon intern Ilana Krakowski blogged this week on The Jew and the Carrot about a Jewish response to the inevitable food waste that comes even from reputed “sustainable” farms. As with Purim, when we are required to give gifts to the poor, farming also requires that part of the harvest be intentionally left for the poor. While this may be difficult to put into practice, she highlights the Israeli organization Leket, whose food rescues from farms and private celebrations around the country have become a serious contribution to sustainably fighting poverty by providing fresh food to low-income populations.
• Tackling Torah blogger Elyssa Cohen posted this week on the recent Torah portions of Vayikra and Tzav, focusing on the meaning of sacrificial offerings. While in Biblical times, a physical object was sacrificed, Cohen believes that today, we may instead sacrifice our evil inclination – selfish impulses that take us away from our concern for others. Drawing on her study of Mussar as a Jewish social justice practice, she writes, “We need guidelines for how to maintain a healthy balance of the sacrifices we each make in our lives in order to maintain a caring community and larger global society while still fulfilling our own needs.”
• Expanding on the notion of sacrifice, Rabbi Danielle Stillman wrote a commentary in the Jewish Exponent on this week’s Torah portion, Shemini. Though animal sacrifices are no longer part of Jewish practice, the consumption of animals according to the laws of kashrut still is. Stillman believes that in taking these laws a step further through eco-kashrut – considering the environmental impact of one’s food choices – and the Magen Tzedek – a new ethical seal for kosher products – kashrut can be a model example of how to make sacrifices for a more just world. In making hard food choices, “holiness comes from paying attention to what we are eating in order to be more compassionate to other humans, animals and the earth.”

Everyone’s talking about “food justice” these days, but what is it really? What are all the pieces at play? How do they all connect? Want to take action but don’t know where to begin? Whether this conversation is new or familiar to you, join us for Chewing on Food Justice, a break down on the broken down food system. In this new 4-part program series, we’ll examine the journey our food takes before—and after—it reaches our plates, each event through a different lens.

In our fourth and final session, we’ll explore Jewish responses to food justice issues. What does Judaism say about eating meat versus vegetarianism? What are our underlying ethics about food, and how can we best carry them out?  We’ll take a hard look at the strengths and weaknesses of traditional and modern interpretations and practices of kashrut, including important new initiatives aimed at uniting social justice with dietary practices. Join us for this interactive program featuring a panel of local rabbis and activists, and group discussion over a kosher, ethically produced meal.

When: Tuesday, November 30, 6:30-9:00. Program begins promptly at 7:00.
Where: Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, corner of 16th St and Dolores St, SF
Cost: $15 – dinner and program, $5 – program only
RSVP: http://kosherkosher.eventbrite.com. Dinner will be available ONLY to those who pre-register by Monday, November 29.

Panelists:

Karen Adelman, Co-Owner of Saul’s Deli. When Karen and Chef-Co-Owner Peter Levitt took over the restaurant 15 years ago, they chose to source mostly sustainable, humanely raised meats rather than commercial or strictly Kosher meats. Karen and Peter strive to steward a Jewish cuisine reflecting season, time and place, reconnecting with traditional culinary practices, and provide a community gathering spot for shared heritage, past, present, and future.

Adam Berman, founder and Executive Director of Urban Adamah, and former Executive Director of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center (2002 – 2009), a retreat center and intentional community in the Connecticut Berkshires. At Isabella Freedman, Adam founded ADAMAH: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship. At Isabella Freedman, Adam also co-founded the Jewish Greening Fellowship (JGF), an intensive 18-month Fellowship program for Jewish professionals which works to reduce the carbon footprints of Jewish communal agencies and prioritize environmental stewardship. Adam also served as the Director of the Teva Learning Center, the leading Jewish environmental education program in the United States. Currently, Adam serves on the Board of Directors of Hazon and the David Brower Center, and on Advisory Boards for the Teva Learning Center, Wilderness Torah, Eden Village Camp, Adamah and the East Bay Jewish Community Center. He teaches widely on issues related to Judaism, ecology and civic leadership. Adam holds a Masters in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in Environmental Policy from Brown University.

Rabbi Becky Joseph, aka The Rabbi Chef, is the founder and owner of 12 Tribes, a new environmentally and socially responsible San Francisco company that makes delicious, seasonal kosher eating easy. As a senior anthropologist with National Park Service, Becky led action research teams that saved the largest community garden in the United States – with 1,200 plots producing food for more than 8,000 low-middle income New York City residents; preserved historic family farm stands on federal lands outside Boston; and successfully defended Native fishing rights in Maine. Becky was instrumental in creating parameters for religious observance and Jewish learning as co-chair of Jewish Life for Hazon’s first Jewish food conference. She was a founding member of Hazon’s first Tuv Ha’Aretz site and served on its coordinating committee. Very early on, her expertise in institutional giving was called upon by the Rabbinical Assembly to develop funding strategies for a new ethical seal for kosher foods, Magen Tzedek. Creator of The Parve Baker, the original dairy-free kosher baking blog, her food writing has recently appeared on The Jew and the Carrot and in J. Weekly.

Rabbi Dorothy Richman is the Rabbi Martin Ballanoff Memorial Rabbi-in-Residence at Berkeley Hillel. She serves on the regional council and state board of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, and formerly served as rabbi at Congregations Beth Sholom and Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco. She has been an AJWS Group Leader and passionate advocate for social justice.

Moderated by Rabbi Aaron Philmus, Director of Congregational Life and Learning, Congregation Beth Sholom. In his former life he was a Jewish Nature Educator and Wildlife Ecologist. He continues to learn Torah from the earth, but now he also learns Torah from books and people. Before rabbinical school Aaron studied at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel and the School for Natural and Cultural Ecology in Queensland, Australia. Aaron received his ordination with awards for homiletics and academic achievement from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

Our first session, Fruits of Our Labor, explored workers’ rights in the food system; Mind Your Agri-Business examined environmental and sustainability in the food system; and the third session, Got Access, considered issues of food access and food sovereignty. Is Kosher, Kosher? will be the final session of the Chewing on Food Justice series.

Presented by Pursue in partnership with Hazon and Progressive Jewish Alliance. Co-sponsored by EcoJews of the Bay.

Pursue partner organization (and former New York office mate) Hazon was featured this month in O Magazine in a piece on eco-conscious faith leaders. Hazon founder Nigel Savage chatted with reporter Meredith Bryan about his “eco aha! moment” and his motivation for starting a Jewish CSA:

“For 3,000 years, we’ve asked, ‘Is this food fit for me to eat?’ The word kosher literally means ‘fit.’ And in creating a Jewish CSA, we wanted to devise a mechanism for people to start to ask that question in a different way for the 21st century,” he says. “For instance, I only eat eggs that come from hens that have not been stuck in an eight-by-eight-inch cage. For me, that’s what keeping kosher means.”

Read the interview in its entirety here.