reIMAGINE Society: Behar Happenings in the Bay Area

On the weekend of May 3-4, Jewish communities read the Torah portion of Behar, which contains the teachings of Shmita. To honor the Shmita values of abundance, resiliency, and redistribution, Hazon invites you to join us for a full day of great events on May 5, 2013 in Berkeley and San Francisco, CA.

In the spirit of Shmita, we are offering most aspects of this community day on the basis of donations, though some of the workshops may cost money.  Please share what you can.

Shmita Skillshare & Swap Meet

Urban Adamah – 1050 Parker Street, Berkeley, CA

Edible & Medicinal Plant Walk

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA

Afternoon Exchange Market & Skillshare

Exchange Market – 1:00 – 5:00pm

Do you have perfectly usable items lying around your house that you no longer use? Let other community members enjoy them, and find other items you need.  Clothing, books, toys, childcare items, kitchen appliances, electronics, tools, art, plants/seeds, etc…Donate what you can and receive what you need!

If you’d like to make a gift of your time by volunteering before or during the afternoon events, please contact rebecca@urbanadamah.org.

Community Skillshare – 2:00 – 5:00pm

Backyard Chickens @ 2pm
Worm Composting @ 3pm

Come celebrate and explore the art of creative homesteading through a community skillshare. We’re offering workshops on backyard gardening, chickens, and worm composting.

Have a skill to offer? Home-brewing? Fiber Crafts? Cheese-making? Please email yigal.deutscher@hazon.org to offer your skill!

Evening Edible Plant Walk

Meet at Conservatory of Flowers
5:00pm – 7:00pm
100 JFK Dr. in Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, 94122

Please RSVP by clicking here.

As the Shmita year approaches (once every 7 years) we are encouraged to give the land a rest by refraining from planting or sewing our fields.  Ever wonder what can we eat when our fields are to lie fallow? Did you know that the Bay Area has top notch wild edible and medicinal plants growing plentifully right at our feet?  Join ethnobotanist and herbalist Jolie Lonner Egert on a fun, inspiring, guided walk to explore our local plants, their uses and stories.

Jolie Lonner Egert is an herbalist, field botanist and ecologist. Jolie is the Principal at Go Wild Consulting a company that fosters healthy ecosystems and our connections to them. She has helped thousands of people deepen their connection to nature. She completed her Master’s degree at Humboldt State University where she researched the sustainable harvest of medicinal plants. She currently teaches at College of Marin, Gathering Thyme School of Botanical Wisdom and Philo School of Herbal Energetics.  More info at gowildconsulting.com

Israel Ride Info Session in Atlanta

Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure

Tuesday April 30, 7:30 pm
Hosted by 2008 Israel Rider Michael Weinstock

RSVP For Details

What does it feel like to cycle on the Israel Ride?  Hear from David Lehrer- Executive Director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Israel Ride alum-  about cycling through Israel, the Middle East’s environmental challenges, and the potential for regional cooperation at the Arava Institute.  Meet other Ride alumni as they gather together to reminisce about the incredible experiences they had on the Israel Ride.

Bonus: Alon Tal, Founder of the Arava Institute, will be speaking Tuesday over lunch (11:30 am – 1:30 pm) at Atlantic Station about Israeli Environmental Policy.  For more information, contact Beth Gluck at (404) 236-8990 x851.

Bring your friends with you; all are welcome at this event.

Israel Ride in NYC: With Nigel Savage and David Weisberg

Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure

Wednesday, May 8th, 7:30 pm
Hosted by Nigel and Liz Savage
RSVP for details

The Israel Ride: For Yourself. For Israel. For Peace.

Meet and hear from:

• Nigel Savage, Hazon and Israel Ride Founder
• David Weisberg, CEO of Hazon
• David Rendsburg, Ride alum and 8-time staff member of the Ride
• Annie Jacobs, former Program Assistant at the Arava Institute (and current Dairy Apprentice at Isabella Freedman)
• Arava and Israel Ride alumni

They will speak about cycling through Israel, the Middle East’s environmental challenges, and the potential for regional cooperation at the Arava Institute.

The Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride is a weeklong cycling adventure from Jerusalem to Eilat, including 5 fully-supported riding days and a Shabbat rest day.

Bring your friends with you  |  All are welcome at this event!

Why I Ride – Sue Reinhold

I am riding in my third Hazon Golden Gate Ride this Memorial Day Weekend. I first rode because it seemed like a fun way to raise money to do good things in a Jewish way. I next rode not just for that – dayenu! – but for the powerful sense of community I knew I’d get with fellow riders. Where else can you finish gutting out a 60-mile ride through the most beautiful coastal hills imaginable and then turn to study Torah with some kindred text-loving nerds?

This year, I ride with some deeper intent. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my investment advisory firm’s philosophy around investing. My firm is different from many – we invest our clients’ assets with somewhat of a ‘slow money’ approach. Kind of like some people grow and cook ‘slow food,’ we invest patiently around long-term value, and avoid fast-money strategies much as one might avoid fast food (and, our opinion is that fast money, like fast food, is pervasive and ultimately destabilizing to the entire ecosystem in which it is produced).

Fortuitously, I attended the Hazon Jewish Food Festival in San Francisco last month and learned with Yigal Deutscher, the manager of Hazon’sShmita Project and Founder of 7Seeds, who led very compelling teachings about the agricultural laws in the Torah. These laws include Shmita, the seven-year cycle that requires that the land and people slow down, share resources, and shorten and then ultimately forgive debts. Shmita is not business as usual, but business unusual.

Now, I don’t run a farm. And yet, there are powerful lessons to be learned from our ancient teachings about modern-day business and investment. These laws address how to arrest the extremes of the business cycle, how to move patiently and slowly with care and intent when it comes to putting resources to work, and how to make sure others are cared for in your act of producing. This year I ride to continue the conversation and learning so that I can continue to bring these strands of Torah and the way I work for others, together.

Will you join me?

Sue Reinhold, Ph.D. 

Third-year Rider, Hazon Golden Gate Ride

Founding Partner, North Berkeley Investment Partners

Israel Ride & Yom Yisrael Festival in Palo Alto

Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure

Kol Emeth Yom Yisrael Festival
Sunday, April 28th, 10:30am – 1:30pm

4175 Manuela Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94306
RSVP for details

What does it feel like to cycle on the Israel Ride?  Come to the fourth and final family-friendly Kol Emeth Yom Yisrael Festival. Learn about the Arava region of Israel and how riding through the Negev desert on the Israel Ride can help improve regional cooperation and solve the Negev’s environmental challenges!

Highlights:

- Work in the Arava Medical Center
- Meet animals of the desert
- Harvest and sample Israeli produce
- Visit Ben Gurion’s grave
- Learn about Bedouin-Jewish joint projects
- Study about water in the desert
- Splash in the Dead Sea
- Enjoy a falafel lunch

FREE for Religious School Students & Parents
$10 for other Kol Emeth Members & Guests
(Falafel lunch included!)

Bring your friends with you  |  All are welcome at this event

Patriots’ Day Ride

Patriots’ Day & Boston Marathon Ride
April 15th, 7:00 AM
Newton, MA

Join your friends on this special morning for a great ride in (hopefully) beautiful Spring weather, as the Marathon fans and vendors set up:

• Meet at 7:00 AM in the Newton Library Parking Lot at the corner of Comm Ave and Homer St and leave about 7:15
• Feel free to meet there or along the way
• Ride the Marathon Route out towards Hopkinton (~19 miles) and back
• Finish on arrival back in Newton (~19 miles) or continue all the way into Boston (~26 miles)

Download a Route Map of the Marathon as a guide

Please email Howie Rodenstein, chair of the Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride,
if you are interested.

Enter the Jewish Food Festival

Have you ever wondered why Jewish summer camp and visits to Israel are so impactful in one’s life? One theory is that at camp and in Israel your “life” and your “Jewish life” become one.  It is so interesting to me that people, including myself, make this distinction.  I designate something as happening in my “Jewish life” vs. in my life in general.

Enter the Jewish Food Festival – part Jewish communal experience; part foray into local, organic food; part intellectual discourse on our relationship with food and the environment.  It is one place where my life and my Jewish life become one — outside of my years at camp and my times in Israel.  The environmentalist me hangs out with the foodie meand the spiritual me.  Ahh…integration.  Why did I decide to co-chair Hazon’s Jewish Food Festival even with a 16 month old daughter and a job?  Because I feel that creating a forum for people to integrate their lives around Judaism, food and the environment is crucial to continuing the existence of life on this planet.  Sounds extreme.  It is.

Having been a climate educator, I could bore you with statistics of species destruction at the most alarming rate since the dinosaurs, sea level rise that is displacing entire communities and other dire issues, but you most likely know the facts. Instead, I want to focus on how decisions we make regarding our food and how we live in the world can make a difference.

Enter the Jewish Food Festival.  With sessions on hydroponics, creating a just and sustainable food system, and beekeeping, your attendance at the Jewish Food Festival could change your life.  Again with these extreme statements, but I speak the truth.  At the Jewish Food Festival on April 28, 2013 at the Denver Jewish Day School, you could become so inspired that you start the first kosher, organic, macrobiotic, gluten-free, locally-focused deli in the Boulder/Denver area.  Now that’s integration!

Israel Ride Info Session: Los Angeles

Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure

Sunday, May 19th, 5:00 pm
Bike Improve
10929 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90025

RSVP

What does it feel like to cycle on the Israel Ride?  Hear from Sherry Winston- 2011 Israel Rider- about cycling through Israel, the Middle East’s environmental challenges, and the potential for regional cooperation at the Arava Institute.

Bring your friends with you  |  All are welcome at this event.

JCC of Northern Virginia 4th Annual Cycle Fest

May 19, 2013, 8 AM – 12 PM
Fairfax Corner
8900 Little Rive Tpke
Fairfax, VA 22031 Map
Benefitting Wounded Warriors Project and Hazon

Download a Registration Form Register Online

New Shmita Learning Series Opens in the East Bay, CA

Shmita, literally translated as the ‘Year of Release’ and more widely known as the Sabbatical Year, is a biblical tradition, which, once every seven years  simultaneously re-adjusted agriculture and commerce on a national scale, to ensure an equitable, just and healthy society. During the Shmita year, debts would be forgiven, agricultural lands would lie fallow, private land holdings would become open to the commons, and staples such as food storage and perennial harvests would be redistributed and accessible to all. Shmita was a radical notion that had profound impact on all aspects of life.

You are invited to come to Urban Adamah for a 3-part learning series, where we will explore together, through group study, the historical and spiritual significance of Shmita, as well as how we might begin to reclaim this tradition as a system for holistic cultural design much needed today. The learnings will be facilitated by Yigal Deutscher, manager of Hazon’s Shmita Project.

This learning series will meet on three consecutive Wednesdays, from 7-9pm in the Big Tent at Urban Adamah.  Chai tea will be served.

April 10th: Cultural Rest & the Cycle of Seven

April 17th: The Agricultural Paradigm of the Shmita Cycle

April 24th: The Economic Paradigm of the Shmita Cycle

Each class will build on the previous session, so we encourage attendance at all three. However, even if you can only make one or two of the offerings, you are welcome to join us.

Cost: Shmita imagines a world rooted in generosity, fairness and reciprocity. In this spirit, we are offering these classes on a donation basis. Please share what you can. (Classes at Urban Adamah usually range from $5-$15, so you might consider using this as an estimate.)

Location: Urban Adamah is located at 1050 Parker St, between San Pablo Ave and 10th Street, in West Berkeley.

More on The Shmita Project…

The Shmita Project, a program of Hazon, is as an open educational platform for individuals and communities working towards establishing a new vision for the Shmita tradition. At the core of our work are these questions:

• What might the Shmita year look like in our modern era?
• How might we best renew our relationship with this tradition?
• How might the values of the Shmita Cycle hold the key to approaching the economic, environmental and societal challenges we are facing today?