Hazon Food Curriculum

Food For Thought: Hazon’s Sourcebook on Jews, Food & Contemporary Life creates the opportunity to extend Hazon’s innovative work on contemporary food issues and Jewish traditions around food to a broader audience. Food for Thought is a 130-page sourcebook that draws on a range of texts from within and beyond Jewish traditions to explore a range of topics relating to Jews and food.

Food for Thought is designed to encourage participants to think critically about the food that they eat and the ways their food choices affect the health of their community and the planet.  We believe that the more people are able to understand their own relationship to food, and simultaneously, to Jewish tradition, the more they will engage in broader issues of moderation and conservation.

The sourcebook is during all of Hazon's year-round programming including at our New York Ride, the Food Conference and through all of our Tuv Ha’Aretz sites for educational programs. 

Sourcebook Contents
The sourcebook includes traditional Jewish texts, in Hebrew and English, and a range of contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish texts.  It is designed to be accessible to people with little Jewish background as well as rigorous and challenging for someone with more extensive Jewish learning. It includes a variety of texts on a variety of pressing topics:

Chapter 1: Learning Torah
Chapter 2: Gratitude, Mindfulness & Blessing Our Food
Chapter 3: Kashrut
Chapter 4: Bread & Civilization
Chatper 5: Eating Together
Chapter 6: Health, Bodies & Nourishment
Chapter 7: Food & Place
Chapter 8: Food & Ethics: the implications of our food choices

The sourcebook uses a blend of traditional and non-traditional Jewish and secular texts to raise questions around food, eating and Jewish tradition in an innovative and provocative way.  Study questions help the reader engage with the texts and discussion questions prompt participants to bring the texts back to their own lives and experience. An appendix includes guidelines on cultivating a learning community; including leading chevruta-style learning and running sharing circles that encourages reflection and builds community.

Click here to purchase a hardcopy of Food for Thought:
Hazon's Sourcebook on Jews, Food, and Contemporary Life

Click here to join JFEN & receive Food for Thought, along with Hazon's Min Ha'Aretz student and family curriculum, plus educator training.
For more information email Judith Belasco, Director of Food Programs, at judith@hazon.org.