Feel free to contact Adam Kotin or Deborah Newbrun with any last minute questions about transportation, housing, packing, arrival – we’re here to support you.

adam.kotin@hazon.org | deborah.newbrun@hazon.org 

(415) 397-7020 (Office) | (415) 823-1302 (Cell)

Emergency contact phone number for the retreat site where we will be staying during the ride: Walker Creek Ranch: (415) 491-6000

Getting Your Bike to Camp

We will help transport your bike to the ride from the Bay Area and from Los Angeles at no additional cost. We’ll offer bike loading at the following times and locations. Look for Hazon volunteers and a 14-foot Uhaul truck.

Thursday

San Francisco: 6:30pm – 7:30pm, near 16th Street Mission BART (Walgreens parking lot on Capp St, near 16th).

East Bay: 8:30pm – 9:30pm, Ashby BART.

Friday

San Francisco: Starting at 1:45pm at Jewish Community High School (1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA). Bike loading will begin at 1:45pm. The charter bus will depart promptly at 2:40pm.

Los Angeles: 8:30am – 9:00am at Milken Community High School (15800 Zeldins Way, LA)

Getting Yourself to Camp

Registration opens at 2:30pm on Friday May 24th at Walker Creek Ranch. We are offering a shuttle from San Francisco and LA that will arrive in time for Shabbat. If you are signed up to join us later in the weekend, please note arrival times and directions below.

Driving and Carpooling

We have been in touch with many of you about carpooling up to the ranch. We need to minimize the number of cars being driven to the ranch as much as possible. Any cars driven to the ranch that we are not aware of will be left there and alternative transportation should be arranged to retrieve them.

For approved carpooling to Walker Creek Ranch, please consult these directions.

San Francisco Shuttle

Civic Center BART

• Shuttle departs Civic Center BART at 2:15pm
• The bus can not idle and will depart promptly. There will be no bike loading at this location. If you would like to bring a bike and use this pick up you must utilize our Thursday bike loading locations.

Jewish Community High School

• Shuttle departs JCHS at 2:40pm
• Bike loading starts at 1:45pm. Please arrive no later than 2:25pm.

 LA Shuttle/Carpool

• Carpool departs Milken Community High School at 9:00am
• Bike loading available

Weekend Schedule

Hazon is excited to offer a thoughtful and well-rounded program for this year’s retreat. Thanks in advance to all of the participants who are presenting, teaching a session, leading a service, and sharing their interests and skills with the community!

See the Full Schedule [PDF]

Packing List

Be sure to review the packing list for the Golden Gate Ride. All of your things should fit into one small piece of luggage. Our crew are transporting luggage each day of the ride, so please pack lightly. Our accommodations over the weekend will be rustic but clean and comfortable.

Only those with upgraded housing will be provided linens. All other participants must bring their own linens (sheets, blankets, or sleeping bag), pillow, and towel.

See Packing List

Closing Ceremony

Be sure to invite your friends and family to our closing ceremonies from 2 PM to 3 PM on Monday May 27th at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay (1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA). We encourage you to bring people to join with us in celebrating a successful weekend and in honoring your accomplishments!

Dear Hazon Community,

Ten days from now we will gather in the rolling hills of Marin to share our values of environmentalism, health, and sustainability in the Jewish world and beyond. We hope to be catalysts for positive change through the vitality generated from our cycling adventures, crew spirit, and engaging Shabbat programming. Gear up, bring your ruach(spirit), positivity, and openness — prepare to leave with a spark!

If we have not yet had the chance to meet, please make sure to come say hello to us – Adam and Erica – your friendly volunteer co-chairs for the 2013 Golden Gate Ride. Adam will be riding his spiffy new Trek bicycle and Erica will be supporting riders as an enthusiastic crew member. We both look forward to meeting friends new and old, spending time outside, soaking in the Shabbat sessions, and learning lots from the whole experience.

As the weekend approaches, please reach out to us if you have any questions – we’re here to help and support! We really don’t mind helping, in fact, that’s what we signed up for! Our emails are below.

As the ride draws near, we know many folks are working hard on their fundraising.We’ve found that NOW is the best time to make the push toward your goal.
Here are a few tips:

1. Reinventing the wheel is silly – check out Hazon’s fundraising tools for inspiration and more tips.

2. Make your appeals early, often, and personalized – photos, Facebook shoutouts, a phone call.

3. Follow up is key – many of your soon-to-be-donors just need a quick reminder.

4. Think about how you will say thank you. We plan to write personalized notecards with a photo from our weekend.

5. Use social media: Post about your excitement, your training, and your goals! Here’s a great example…

Lastly, as we get ready for the holiday of Shavuot we are reminded of the lessons from The Book of Ruth. This ancient text incorporates themes of peoplehood, responsibility, and the centrality of the harvest season. These ideas are on our minds as we make the final preparations for the ride, working toward an event with inclusivity and the shared responsibility for the sustainability of our communities. Wishing you a happy holiday and an awesome Golden Gate Ride weekend!

Adam Arenstein & Erica Hymen

2013 Hazon Golden Gate Ride Co-chairs

adamarenstein@gmail.com

ericahymen@gmail.com

In this email:

• Hazon New York Ride
• Farm & Garden with the Jewish Farm School!
• Intergeneration Jewish Survey
• What Are You Doing for Shavuot?

1 – Shavuot Recipes

2 – Understand the Dairy Connection

Although everyone agrees that the food of choice for Shavuot is cheese (most typically blintzes, crepe-like pancakes filled with farmer cheese, or a Sephardic [Mediterranean Jewish]equivalent such as burekas, cheese-filled dough pockets), there are differences of opinion (some quite charming) as to why it is a custom.

3 – Choose the Right Kind of Dairy

Traditionally, Shavuot is a dairy-laden holiday, with cheesecake and blintzes and burekas up the wazoo. Check out the Hazon Food Audit Toolkit and Food Guide for links to Kosher sustainable dairy providers.

4 – Eat Dairy Responsibly

If you are looking to dive into the kitchen, head over to our Healthy and Sustainable Shavuot Menu with recipes and resources to bring delicious local seasonal treats bursting with spring flavor to your dairy-based feast.

5 – Learn about Adamah Dairy

Our friends at Adamah have built a thriving dairy operation based on Jewish and sustainable food values. Check out these articles and podcasts on their amazing work:
Goat Days
New Kids on the Block
Milking it With Hazon

6 – Explore the Connections Between Shavuot and Farming

What can Shavuot teach us about the connections between Jewish tradition and agriculture? This text presents one farmer’s take on seeing Jewish rituals as they connect to the cycles of planting, harvest, and eating, which is useful to think about when considering Shavuot and Farming.

7 – Participate or Lead an All Night Study Session

Since we are celebrating the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, Shavuot is a great time to dive into some Jewish study. People will often study until the wee hours of the morning at a Tikkun Leil Shavuot. Food for Thought, Hazon’s Sourcebook on Jews, Food, and Contemporary Life had lots of great texts that can spark the conversation.

We have created a special three-page Food for Thought Excerpt that you can print and use at your own Tikkun or Shavuot table.

Also check out this handout created specifically for families, with a recipe and family discussion questions.

8 – Learn More about the Raw Milk Debate

In this blog post, the author explores the issues around raw milk production and tastes the difference.

9 – Learn About Shavuot Basics

Shavuot, the “Feast of Weeks,” is celebrated seven weeks after Pesach (Passover). Since the counting of this period (sefirat ha-omer) begins on the second evening of Pesach, Shavuot takes place exactly 50 days after the (first) seder. Although its origins are to be found in an ancient grain harvest festival, Shavuot has been identified since biblical times with the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

10 – Don’t Do Dairy?

Believe it or not, there are still ways to be festive on Shavuot and enjoy your delectable dishes, even if you do not eat dairy products! Try making vegan whipped cream (Vanilla, Chocolate, Coffee, Mocha..yum!) to put on any dessert! You can also try adding dairy free peach pudding or dairy free sorbet to your dessert menu!

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.

This story might inspire thoughts of red barns and cows grazing through lush green fields, chickens gaily clucking and running at their heels. Sadly this is far from what most kibbutzim look like. Those calves that I loved so much were actually veal calves, and were being kept in tiny crates where they couldn’t move so their meat would be tender at the time of slaughter. The milking cows lived in a pool of their own feces and had abnormally large udders that often caused severe back pain and injury.

Conditions for the chickens were a different story, so deplorable and scary that I refused to go near their barns. I even had a fear of chickens into my teens because of those early childhood experiences.

In a way all of us have been through the same process I went through. We grew up with an idealized and superficial sense of human-animal relationships, not being able to imagine the suffering behind the food we ate. Just as I loved those little calves with all my heart, unaware of their agony, we’ve all unwittingly eaten that factory farm product with happy animals grazing green pastures on the package, not knowing the truth behind the pretty pictures. Despite our love of animals we still tend to turn a blind eye to the harsh quality of life experienced by the creatures we consume. I’ve chosen not to.

I choose to confront the reality of killing the animals I eat and to understand the source of all of my animal products. Through my experiences of living on kibbutz, raising my own animals, learning kosher slaughter, and working in an industrial slaughterhouse I’ve come face to face with the factory farm system, and can see what needs to change. I want to share that vision with all of you.

I’m on a journey into the deepest depths of the human-animal relationship. It will be a journey of love and suffering, a journey of life and death, into the blood and guts of it all. We are all omnivores born into this factory farm world, and it’s on us to change it. I invite you all to join me on “The Kosher Omnivore’s Quest”.

Join the quest by following my blog and you can stay informed by liking the facebook page and subscribing to my twitter feed.

Yadidya Greenberg has studied animal welfare for over half his life and was one of the founders of the Boulder Jewish community egg and goat milk co-ops. He is a trained and certified shochet (kosher ritual slaughterer), and is now working with leaders in the animal welfare, Jewish and natural foods world to create a Jewish Animal Welfare Institute as well as line of Jewish Heritage Poultry educational and breeding operations. 

Monday, May 20th, 7:00 pm
Chabad of Plano
3904 West Park Blvd. Plano, TX 75075

RSVP

What does it feel like to cycle on the Israel Ride?  Hear from Mark Segal – 2011, 2012, and 2013  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!

Wednesday, May 29th, 7:30 pm
The Levin JCC
1937 West Cornwallis Road Durham, NC 27705

RSVP

What does it feel like to cycle on the Israel Ride?  Hear from Steve Drysdale, 5-time Israel Rider, about cycling through Israel, the Middle East’s environmental challenges, and the potential for regional cooperation at the Arava Institute.

Join us:  Durham — Chapel Hill — Raleigh
Cary — Hillsborough

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

Fundraising is easier than you think, you just have to get started! Use Hazon’s tools to craft a fundraising plan that will have you reaching your fundraising goal:

• Don’t reinvent the wheel! Use our fundraising letter writing guide.
• Start this weekend! Vamp up your fundraising and send your appeal to no less than 40 friends, family, and coworkers.
• Veteran rider Yesh Ballon shares tricks of the fundraising trade.
• What are you riding for? Read about the winners of our Mini-Grant Awards

Start this Weekend: Raise $1000 in 8 Days

The biggest secret to successful fundraising is to ask everyone you know. Think you’ve exhausted your resources? We’ve got a list to help you think of new people to ask. To get a sense of how your whole community can support you in reaching your fundraising goal, consider this recipe for How to Raise $1000 in Eight Days:

1. Donate $50 to yourself
2.  Ask 4 family members to donate $50
3.  Ask 10 friends to donate $20
4.  Ask 5 co-workers to donate $20
5.  Ask 5 neighbors to donate $15
6.  Ask 10 people from your synagogue to donate $15
7.  Ask your boss for a company donation of $100 (Ask if your company will match what you raise)
8.  Ask 5 businesses that you frequent – like your dry cleaner, hair stylist, or favorite restaurant – to donate $25

Fundraising Tips from Veteran Riders

Yesh Ballon has been one the Golden Gate Ride’s highest fundraisers, participating in 4 rides in 3 years. What are the keys to his success?

Make appeals early and often. Money usually comes in within 48 hour of a request. The more asks, the more donations.

Be Personal. Make your letter personal and specific to you. Tell your potential funders what the Ride is all about, and tell them why you’re so excited to do it. Consider writing personalized letters to different donors to address their specific needs.

Convey Your Enthusiasm. People are inspired by enthusiasm. Talk about the ride. Talk about your training and why you have decided to take on this challenge. Your enthusiasm is contagious — it will encourage your sponsors to be generous in their support.

Be Specific. Include your fundraising goal, and make it ambitious. Put it in bold! The more you ask for, the more people give. Share what your personal financial commitment will be. People are often inspired to see your personal financial commitment and might even be willing to match it. “In addition to training, I am pledging $500 towards my fundraising goal.” Ask for a specific amount and aim high. Say “Please consider a gift of $180”—they can choose to do so, or choose to give you more/less.

Thank your donors. Buy a nice box of thank you notes (environmental or bike theme optional) and hand write–yes, with a pen–a thank you note immediately after each pledge is received, and put it in the snail mail that very day. People will become loyal supporters!

“Thank you for once again being a great support to me and Hazon. This marks my fifth ride—one in Israel and now four in California. I am increasingly impressed by Hazon’s mission and the people engaged in it. Your gift makes their work possible.”

What are you riding for? Mini-Grant Awards Winners Announced

A portion of the fundraising from this year’s ride will be made available as small grants for Jewish and environmental projects on the West Coast. We’re pleased to announce this year’s winners!

13% of YOUR fundraising goes to support these amazing projects:

Milken Community High School

The MCHS Urban Farm Co-op, initiated with help from a Hazon grant two years ago, is a sustainable gardening and food justice initiative at Milken Community High School in Los Angeles. The Co-op plans to expand its garden to a minimum of thirty-six pallets across campus, continuing to connect students to their food sources, to the earth, and to their own potential.

Congregation Beth Sholom

Congregation Beth Sholom seeks to enhance and build upon its existing garden and landscape for our preschool and Hebrew school students, parents, and congregants. Further developing our small outdoor garden will build community around the shared experience of nurturing life and growing the food that is central to so many of the Jewish traditions we celebrate.

Jewish Learning Works

The Nosh Niche is a Jewish cooking project embedded within Jewish LearningWorks’ Shalom Discovery family engagement initiative. The Nosh Niche brings to life issues of food justice and farm-to-table Jewish values cooking lessons, discussion guides, and take-home recipes, along with a cooking feature on our website.

Kehillah Jewish High School

Kehillah seeks to revamp, expand, and improve its small school garden, which was funded and built by a student-led initiative last year. This garden has already begun contributing produce to Kehillah’s meals program, which feeds about 100 people per day with delicious vegetarian food. By growing the garden’s size, as well as its uses on campus, Kehillah can cut down on its food miles, improving overall campus sustainability while also serving as a valuable learning tool.

Temple Emanu-El Preschool

Being in San Francisco, with limited outdoors space, we have been grappling with how to include natural sciences with a focus on ecology to our children and families. This year we have been successful with outdoor education programs such as walking trips through the nearby Presidio and Family Education in Golden Gate Park with a naturalist. Through this project, we hope to bring tanks with natural habitats for animals as well as grow lights and indoor gardening to all of our classrooms.

Peninsula Temple Beth El Green Team

Holistic cooking classes through the ages and stages of life. The classes will focus on various temple groups that will impact our youngest members through our seniors. The emphasis will be to introduce to the audiences the importance of choosing healthy, sustainable ingredients, eating in the season, the nutrients in food and our food supply chain.

New York
Thursday, April 25th, 2013 / 30th day of the Omer

Dear All,

I just got back from a fascinating and inspiring trip to the West Coast, in which I spent time with our Bay Area staff, finished the first draft of our forthcoming Shmita materials, and visited not one, but two of the most profoundly exciting experiments in Jewish life in the whole country.

The first was in San Diego, visiting the Leichtag Foundation’s Paul Ecke Ranch. It’s a 67-acre plot in the middle of San Diego’s North County, and they have an incredible vision for its future (including their new Jewish Food Justice Fellowship.

Then I spent Earth Day with Adam Berman in the East Bay, meeting the current crop of Urban Adamahniks and visiting what (I trust and hope; and Adam believes and intends) will be the new permanent home of Urban Adamah – a beautifully-sized and well-located site in West Berkeley.

These two new projects are deeply significant, because so much of post-emancipation Jewish life involved a kind of privatization – the classic idea that we would be Jewish in our homes, but simply citizens in public space; variously French, Germans, Brits, and ultimately Americans, “of the Mosaic persuasion”. It was a compromise that was intended to offer civic tolerance, but too frequently in its wake it engendered anti-semitism, and in critical ways narrowed the frame of Jewishness.

Places like Paul Ecke Ranch and Urban Adamah – and like Brandeis Bardin Institute in LA, the Pearlstone Center in Baltimore, and the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in CT – are vital because of the opportunity they afford for what I think of as 360-degree Jewish life. Each of these places bears the possibility, not only of touching people’s lives in profound ways, but also of creating bubbles in space and time that enable new expressions of Jewish life to evolve.

Speaking of bubbles in time: it was great also to be in Seattle, where our Cross-USA Ride kicks-off on June 16th. You’re warmly invited to ride across the USA with us this summer – or just part of it.

Finally: we just received two phenomenal pieces of news:

First: Charity Navigator, America’s largest and most-utilized independent evaluator of charities, has just awarded Hazon the prestigious 4-star rating for good governance, sound fiscal management, and commitment to accountability and transparency. (To put this in perspective: if you type “Jewish” into Charity Navigator’s site, you get 263 hits – and 213 of those don’t have four stars.) This is a significant external endorsement and it reflects hard work and high standards on the part of both our board and our staff.

Secondly, and partly linked to Charity Navigator’s 4-star rating: a family foundation has just offered us a new matching grant. New or increased gifts will be matched, by them, up to a total of $50,000. So if you’ve never supported us in the past, or decide now to increase your gift to us – your gift (or the increase over the previous year) will help us to earn that extra $50,000.

As per the grant we received recently from The Samuel Bronfman Foundation’s Second Stage Fund, you can read my reflections as part of a series on eJewish Philanthropy.

Finally: that match applies also to our Benefit, which takes place next Tuesday, and which promises to be an amazing evening. We will be honoring Richard Dale, Nili Simhai, Saul Kaiserman, and Mira Schwartz. I hope to see you there.

Thank you, and Shabbat shalom,

Nigel Savage
Executive Director, Hazon

 

 

Hazon Food Festival: Rocky Mountain Region: Three Days Away!

 

 

The Hazon Food Festival: Rocky Mountain Region is ONE week away! April 28th will be a day of learning, celebration, and hands-on doing at the intersection of food, the environment, and Jewish tradition.  Early bird registration ends Friday ($50/$25). Tickets available Saturday and at the door ($75).

The Food Festival has many exciting programs that will encompass contemporary Jewish life and our sustainable food movement in Colorado and the nation. From hands-on workshops to in-depth panel discussions, the programming is packed with amazing eye-opening experiences to write home about!

Panels range from topics on “Farm to Table: Meeting Your Meat” where you can learn how to shecht (ritually slaughter) meat to “Creating a Just and Sustainable Food System in Our Community: Ways to Take Action!” that will encourage participants to get involved in making food just at a local level.

9:00 am – 5:00 pm
April 28, 2013
Denver Jewish Day School

Learn More | Register

 

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Behar 2013: Bringing Shmita To Your Community

The parsha (weekly Torah reading) of Behar, which literally means ‘On the Mountain,’ introduces the detailed, visionary teachings of Shmita. As we continue to delve into the process of reacquainting ourselves with the Shmita tradition, we are very excited to use the opportunity of Parshat Behar as an annual mark, as a reminder, and as a guide. This year, the parsha of Behar is read on the Shabbat of May 3-4. In the week leading up to and following this occasion, join Jewish communities all over the country in a decentralized, local, grassroots movement to celebrate the visionary teachings of the Sabbatical Year and bring these values to life. We hope your community will join us!

Behar | Behar Events in Your Area

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reIMAGINE Society: Behar in the Bay Area

The parsha (weekly Torah reading) of Behar, which literally means ‘On the Mountain,’ introduces the detailed, visionary teachings of Shmita. As we continue to deepen into the process of re-acquainting ourselves with the Shmita tradition, we are very excited to use the opportunity of Parshat Behar as an annual mark, as a reminder, and as a guide.

On Sunday, May 5th, Hazon is proud to present a day of Shmita-related activities in Berkeley and San Francisco. From 1:00 – 5:00 pm, we will be hosting a skillshare and swap meet at the Urban Adamah farm. Then, at 5:00 pm, herbalist Jolie Lonner Egert will lead an edible and medicinal plant walk in Golden Gate Park. We hope you’ll join us!

1:00 – 7:00 pm
Sunday, May 5th, 2013
Urban Adamah Farm
1050 Parker Street, Berkeley, CA 94710
Behar in the Bay | Behar Info

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