Week 1: Seattle – Spokane, WA

Previous Week: Seattle                                                                    Next Week: To Helena

Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest

Come join the Hazon Cross-USA riders for Shabbat in Spokane!

• Friday, June 21st:
  • 6 pm – Enjoy a vibrant Kabbalat Shabbat and Maariv service led by our riders at Temple Beth Shalom
  • 7 pm – Services are followed by a vegetarian potluck Shabbat dinner. What could be better?
  • Rabbi Elizabeth Goldstein will be speaking and leading a discussion following the meal.

• Saturday, June 22nd:
  • Join the riders at various Shabbat services
    • Temple Beth Shalom – 9:30 am
    • Chabad – discussion at 9:30 am, services at 10:30
    • Congregation Emanu-El in Comstock park (29th Ave and Post St) – 10:00 am
  • 12:30 pm – Get to know our riders at lunch
    • Temple Beth Shalom
    • Chabad
    • Congregation Emanu-El potluck in the park

Join us on the road!

Experience the mobile Jewish community making a change
for a healthier and more sustainable world:
In Seattle for a one-day ride, from Seattle to Spokane for a week,
or any other section of our beautiful country!

Week 1 Journey (Sunday, June 16 – Saturday, June 22)

The riders will embark on their journey in the naturally rich and mountainous state of Washington on Sunday, June 16. They will travel through many diverse environments including the vibrant city of Seattle, the picturesque city of Soap Lake located at the Columbia Basin, and end the first leg of the journey in Washington’s second largest city, Spokane.

Along the way, they will visit many notable Natural Parks and Forests including Wallace Falls State Park and Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest: Wallace Falls State Park  is located on the west side of the Cascade Mountains and features an incredible 65-foot waterfall and fast flowing rivers and streams. In addition, the riders will cycle through Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, an area that encompasses over 4-million acres along the east slopes of the Cascade Range. Hard to believe that the riders will experience all of this in solely the first week!

The week will be filled with great views, people, community, and experiences. If this ride sounds exciting to you, don’t worry! There is still time for you to join.

Week 2: Spokane – Helena, MT

Previous Week: To Spokane                                                               Next Week: To Miles City

Come join the Hazon Cross-USA riders for Shabbat in Helena!

• Friday, June 28th:
  • 6:00 pm- Shabbat services with the Helena and Bozeman Jewish communities in Guadalupe Hall, Carroll College
  • 7:00 pm- Community Shabbat Dinner: Vegetarian potluck
  • 8:15-9:00 pm- Teaching from Ellen Baumler about Helena Jewish community

• Saturday, June 29th:
  • 9:30 am- Shabbat services at Carroll College
    11:15 Text study led by Rabbi Ed Stafman of Bozeman
  • 12:00-1:00 pm- Enjoy Shabbat lunch with our riders

Join us on the road!

Experience the mobile Jewish community making a change
for a healthier and more sustainable world:
From Spokane to Helena or Helena to Miles City for one week,
or any other section of our beautiful country!

Week 2 Journey (Sunday, June 23 – Saturday, June 29)

And the ride continues…The riders say goodbye to Washington State and are off to Idaho and Montana. Montana is known as the home of the most beautiful untamed, wild, and natural features and parks (Yellowstone and Glacier) in the country. The riders take off from Pinehurst, Idaho and cycle through breathtaking natural forest and parks along the way including the Coeur D’Alene National Forest (above) and the National Bison Range. They continue on to Missoula, where they will visit Adventure Cycling, Free Cycles, and the PEAs farm (right). They end their jam packed second week in Helena, MT at Carroll College.

The week will be filled with great views, people, community, and experiences. If this ride sounds exciting to you, don’t worry! There is still time for you to join.

Introducing a new Jewish acronym – JOFEE

I Grew Up On A Factory Farm

By Yadidya Greenberg

I spent the first eight and a half years of my life living on one of Israel’s much-idealized kibbutzim (communal living villages). My mom worked in the kibbutz dairy, and for a time my dad worked with the broiler chickens. I loved milking the cows, and my favorite thing in the world was to let the calves put my entire hand in their mouths. Through these experiences I developed a great fascination and love for animals that has never left me.

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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

Eco-Judaism: The Torah Mandala and the Mystical System of Sustainability

By Rabbi Elisheva Brenner

In the Torah “holiness” is part of an idiosyncratic way of understanding how the cosmos came into being, our place in it (cosmogony) and the nature of reality (epistemology). To our ancient ancestors, the cosmos, the physical world as we experience it, all life was brought about by “the word of G-d.” Today we would regard “the word of God” as a metaphor for the energies, forces, karma, particle and wave plus the energy of human consciousness that concentrates, compresses, expands and contracts into what we experience as the physical and spiritual world. When the energies of life are in properly balanced, albeit dynamic, homeostasis, the life system has achieved a state of sustainability. In Torah-speak, that homeostasis, that sustainability, is called “Holiness.” The parts of the system as well as the objects, actions and time intervals used to maintain and correct the system are called “Holy.”

courtesy of mru-rosa, Flickr

We can find our way into the Torah’s way of understanding through the study of language and literary structural forms. Language is a window onto the way a people or culture perceives reality. It both arises from and reifies a culture’s epistemology. Biblical Hebrew is a language that for the most part, is made out of verbs and verb roots. This lets us know that our ancient Hebraic ancestors experienced reality as something in constant motion–even nouns and predicate adjectives are made out of verb roots–they represent motion in repose. In Torah, holiness/sustainability is a living system of systems just as we humans are living systems of systems. Each component of the system – humans, the Earth, nature, time intervals and the Godfield – are all in recursive relationship with every other part of the system. We humans are energy movers, drawing down from and sending up to the Divine source, and sending out to and receiving from other people, other life forms and the living Earth. The holiness system is in constant flux, needing to be balanced and corrected by human action.

Just as the systems of the human body exist in a structural form, so the cosmic system has a structural form. When we study the Torah according to its own ancient literary conventions, we find that just as the universe was spoken into existence, so the written words of Torah form a pictogram of the cosmos–a 3-D mandala made of words. The holiness/sustainability message is so central that it sits in the eye of the mandala, in the Holiness Code of Leviticus!

I first became interested in mandala form and the tendency of the human mind to “mandalize” visual memory in another forum… psychology. I did a master’s in counseling psychology at an Evangelist college in Atlanta, Georgia while I was in rabbinical school. That school did a lot of research on the integration of spiritual and religious parameters into the various psychological theories. It seemed to me then that the mandala, particularly the four-quadrant mandalas of Jungian psychology, related more to the horizontal dimensions of psychological geometry—they didn’t really model the “quest” dimensions of the psyche as well as some other models.

Our Hassidic rabbis psychologized cosmology in a way that addressed both dimensions. The four worlds model of Hassidut gives us a vertical dimension—every soul receives energy influxes from above to below and we “quest” from below to above as we elevate our consciousness toward the most abstract realm of communion with the Godfield. We express those energies in the world horizontally by way of what Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak called “talents.” Today we would call them personality traits. I brought Hassidut into my own research on personality theory and interpersonal psychology, and there it was—a mandala! The details of years of research aside, I eventually realized that this three-D geometry keeps repeating – in psychology, in chemistry, in nature, in halakhic reasoning and in Torah.

My final halakha project for ordination was about kosher meat. That brought me to reconsider many of my preconceptions about the sacrifices. For the first time (I admit), I really got into Leviticus. That interest continues to this day and informs my work and life as a rabbi. I read and reread works by Jacob Milgrom, Mary Douglas, and eventually, Moshe Kline. Those scholars in particular made me aware of how various literary structural forms used in Torah also reflect the cosmonology and epistemology of our ancient Hebraic ancestors. Those scholars convinced me that I, like so many others, kept imposing a Western linear reading on an archaic document.

New understanding brought many changes in my life. Take the way I pray, for example. I used to davven the traditional way. Now, I sit on the floor in a meditative pose with my coccyx, spine and head forming the vertical axis, the “quest” dimension, and the fringes of my tallit spread out in four directions. I imagine my head as the eye of the mandala. The tzitzit represent the mitzvoth and ethical commandments by which I interact with the world. I visualize myself as a mandala anchored by my vertical axis within the greater mandala of the cosmos. As I meditate, I focus on balancing my spiritual energies. On Shabbat I love to “travel” out of the physical world up to watch the angels doing the first “Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh (Holy, holy, holy),” praising the eternal sustainability of God, alone. I then go out of linear time to watch our people rejoicing after they, we, cross the Sea of Reeds. The energy field is very different in the Earthly realm.

It has also affected how I regard my work. My husband, Aleph Rabbi Dr. Hersh Saunders, and I started the Center for Eco-Judaism a few years ago. We farm and ranch on 415 acres in Southern Colorado. For both of us, our Jewish spirituality is expressed and reinforced through our interaction with the land and the growing and processing of our food. I imagine that this land is much like the land our ancestors encountered. Our actual experience here, along with our study of historical, climatic, and archeological information from the ancient world also changed our understanding of much of the Torah and inform the Eco-Judaism courses we teach.

If you are interested in the ideas I have laid out above, I invite you to study with me at the Aleph Kallah this coming July, in the week-long course titled “Eco-Judaism: The Torah Mandala and the Mystical System Of Sustainability.”

I am teaching this in the hope that it will invite other Torah students to join me in developing Eco-Judaism as a way of life. For it to be rich and compelling we need midrash, commentary, praxis, and responsa. There is a lot of room for creative thought and collaboration, here. As the saying goes, “iron sharpens iron.” The synergy of our collective mind will, no doubt, take us places we might never go alone.

Complicated as the individual channels of study may seem, it all gets fairly simple when it comes together. So, I will close with this quote from Pirke Avot V:27:

Effort is its own reward. We are here to do, and through doing to learn; and through learning to know; and through knowing to experience wonder; and through wonder to attain wisdom; and through wisdom to find simplicity; and  through simplicity to give attention; and through attention to see what needs to be done.

Rabbi Elisheva Brenner, JD, LPC, NCC, is executive director of the Center for Eco-Judaism in Pueblo, Colorado, a 415-acre farm, ranch, nature conservancy, and worship,research and teaching facility, and co-founder of Eco-Glatt, Inc. For more information, visit www.centerforecojudaism.com.

10 Ways to Make your Passover More Sustainable

Here are the Top 10 quick and useful suggestions from Hazon, to make your Passover more healthy and sustainable. To find out more information and suggestions from Hazon for Passover, visit the Hazon Passover Resource Page.

1 – Passover Recipes

Charoset from Around the World

2 – Plan Ahead

In the time leading up to Pesach , be mindful of what you buy. Try to finish those “almost empty” containers in your fridge, and half empty bags of bread, rather than automatically resorting to buying new. You can get rid of chametz in the most sustainable and cost effective way by planning ahead in order to use up as much as you can of what you have before the start of pesach.

3 – Invest in Passover Dishware

Pesach is a time when many families break out the fine china and heirloom silverware. It is a good investment, cost effective, and a sustainable method to invest in a set of Pesach dishware, that way you do not need to buy disposables every year.  However, if you’re using disposable plates this year, use post-consumer waste paper or plant-based ones. For some great compostable disposable dishwear products, check out Leafware, Go Green in Stages, Let’s Go Green, and World Centric.

4 – Get Rid of Your Chametz – Sustainably

You don’t have to douse your house in poisonous chemicals—noxious to both you and the people who work in the factories that produce them—to get rid of your chametz (bread products and crumbs which are literally, and ritually, cleared before Pesach). Try using natural, non-toxic cleaning products, and scrub away. Eco-cleaning products that we like are Seventh Generation and Ecover.

5 - Buy Veggies at Your Farmers Market

Meat dishes like chicken soup with matzah balls and brisket are traditional favorites for Passover. Try buying your meat from the person who raised it (or as close to that as possible. Where to shop: farmers’ markets, meat order co-ops, local butcher shops (ask themwhere the meat comes from). If you’re looking for kosher organic meat, visit our page on kosher, sustainable meat for some great options!

6 – Every Charoset Tells a Story – Lean More about Charoset!

Charoset’s mixture of apples and nuts is already healthy and delicious and, when made with local apples, sustainable. Charoset also offers you the chance to explore other cultures within the Jewish Diaspora. Check out the Jew & the Carrot to find recipes from Russia, Spain, Holland, Yemen, Turkey, Surinam… – or ask your guests to bring their own favorite charoset recipe and have a taste-test. Check out this delicious Sephardic Charoset recipe!

7 – Sprout Your Own Karpas

If you can’t find locally grown greens to dip for karpas, sprout your own! Although many sprouts come from corn, soybeans, and other chametz or kitnyot, in just 2-3 days, you can have fresh, delicious quinoa sprouts that you “grew” yourself!

8 – Buy Fresh or Make Your Own Horseradish

Buy and grate fresh horseradish root for maror on your seder plate. When it comes time for the Hillel sandwich, hold up an ungrated root so your guests know where that bitter stuff comes from. Or learn how to make your own horseradish.

9 – Use Free Range Eggs

Buy organic, free-range eggs, and be willing to pay slightly more for them. They taste better, didn’t cause suffering to the animals who laid them, and support farmers who are making it possible for you to eat good food.

10 – Roast a Beet

If you’re going vegetarian for your seder (see below), substitute a roasted beet for the roasted lamb shank. Or follow The Jew & The Carrot reader, Sarah Fenner’s suggestion: “In place of the shankbone in my home, we have often roasted a “pascal yam” instead!”

With All Your Heart, With All Your Soul, With All Your Might

“With all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might”. This is my mantra. Not because I am a person who davens three times a day reciting this phrase from its original source in the Sh’ma, but simply because I think it’s beautiful. Imagine a world in which we dedicated our whole selves to every mitzvah we preform, every fleeting thought we have. In a gemara in the tractate of Brachot, the Rabbis expound upon each of these segments: “With all your heart” they explain as what Freud might call the “id”—that is the most instinctual, animalistic parts of ourselves, “with all your soul” refers to our actual life, and “with all your might” commonly refers to our physical possessions. I strive preform every action with all my heart, soul, and might whether it’s loving God as the original texts indicates, loving a friend or a stranger as some scholars interpret, doing a project at work, or even something as mundane as grocery shopping (I said strive!). (more…)

Shmita: Weaving Relational Threads

Yigal Deutscher, Manager of the Shmita Project

The tribes of Israel have just gathered together, am echad b’lev echad, one nation with one synchronized heart, in alignment and in unity. They have just stood, in deep humility, in awe, in trepidation, witnessing and receiving a divine gift.

They have emerged from the brokenness of slavery; they have traveled through the wilderness for 50 days, only to stand together in this moment, before a mountain covered in fire, topped with thundering clouds, shimmering with lightning, rippling with the sounds of the Shofar. 1o utterances have emerged from the heart of creation; 10 utterances so clear and powerful that the tribes could actually see & feel each of them, as they echoed from the mountain, from the sky, from the ground and rock and sand below their feet, and from within their own beating hearts. (more…)

The Sabbatical Debt Release

By Yigal Deutscher

www.strikedebt.org

In the third and final mention of Shmita in the Torah, the concept of Shmita expands to directly influence economic and monetary systems. Until now (sources in Shemot & Vayikra), Shmita texts have been specifically in reference to land, agricultural practices, and annual harvests. Here, with the text of Devarim, the picture and implications of the Shmita Year is complete: Along with the practices of leaving land fallow, opening private lands as commons, collectively sharing the harvest, we are also to synonymously forgive debts. Once the Seventh Year arrives, all loans which are outstanding are released and all debts are cancelled. Here are some thoughts to consider regarding this practice (see the full text here):

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