Hazon In The News

the jewish week, december 2007
What’s Fair And Fowl: An Eco-Kosher Tale
In a separate extraordinary event, some 60 or so people gathered last Friday on a Connecticut farm to witness the kosher slaughter of three goats, who were essentially treated in life as they were in death — with great respect. “The shechita,” the slaughter, “was probably the holiest experience of my life,” wrote Sharon Lebewohl.

JTA, december 2007
The slaughter of goats prompts pain -- and peace
Certainly it was noble that Hazon, the environmental group, wanted to connect participants to their food and halachically slaughter organically, pasture-raised goats and feed them to the participants. But would I be able to watch the killing of not one but three goats?

the wall street journal, november 2007
How Kosher Was Your Turkey?
Yesterday, 24 New York City households served turkeys that were not only free-range, organic and raised on a nearby family farm--but also 100% kosher. For that, their guests can give thanks to Simon Feil, a 31-year-old actor who has devoted the past 1 1/2 years to starting Kosher Conscience, a "kosher ethical meat co-op."

the forward, november 2007
Kosher Activists Strive to Slaughter With a Conscience
It took the founder of Kosher Conscience, Simon Feil, many months to find a shochet, or Jewish ritual slaughterer, who could do the job, and then Feil needed to find a flock of free-range heirloom breed turkeys. But he was not content to deal only with the logistics. When the first turkey went under the knife, Feil was there to cradle it in his arms — feeling the “solemn experience,” as he put it, of life leaving a body.

the jerusalem report, october 2007
The Central Role of Food in Jewish Life
Nigel Savage, Hazon's executive director, thought the idea "had potential" given the role food plays in Jewish culture and religion, both historically and biblically. And he imagined that if individuals at synagogues and JCCs across the U.S. would put their purchasing power toward local, organic farms, Hazon could play a vital role in re-establishing a Jewish understanding and connection between what he says is "space, food and farming."

the associated press, august 2007
Faith & Values: Feeding body, soul
On Wednesday evenings, faith and produce mingle at Atlanta's Congregation Shearith Israel synagogue. As parents gather to collect their children from Hebrew school or attend lectures, many also pass through the social hall, where they collect boxes of tomatoes, peaches, spinach and other organic produce.It's a blending of physical and spiritual sustenance that Rabbi Hillel Norry calls the best of Jewish values in action, and it's just one of a growing number of faith-based community supported agriculture (or CSA) programs nationwide.

philadelphia jewish voice, april 2007
Congregation Kol Ami Brings Organic Produce to its Community
Congregation Kol Ami in Elkins Park, in partnership with the Kehillah of Old York Road and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, has recently launched the first Community Supported Agriculture project (CSA) of its kind in the Philadelphia area under Hazon, a New York-based organization dedicated to a more healthy and sustainable Jewish community.

philadelphia jewish exponent, april 26, 2007
Kol Ami Ups 'Green' Consciousness Via Link With Lancaster Farm
With more and more people becoming increasingly sensitive about what they eat and where their food comes from, congregants at Congregation Kol Ami in Elkins Park have taken a proactive step -- and decided to go right to the source.

interfaith voices, national public radio, january 29, 2007
The Challenges of Keeping Kosher in Today’s World
Nigel Savage and Anna Stevenson on public radio, discussing Jews and food, keeping kosher (including kosher bacon?) and the challenges and opportunities that come with the choices we have about what to eat. Interfaith Voices public radio show is syndicated on 44 stations across the country! Listen to the segment on JCarrot or listen to the whole show at interfaithradio.org.

los angeles jewish journal, january 5, 2007
Opinion: Moral Diet
"Meanwhile, a cutting-edge Jewish organization in New York, Hazon, just announced it would expand its program linking synagogues with local, sustainable farms to five congregations across North America and one in Israel in 2007. Through Hazon's Tuv Ha'aretz program, synagogue members buy shares in a local farm and receive a box of organic produce each week."

contact, january 2007
The Power of Retreat: Limmud, Hazon, Isabella Freedman...and the French Revolution
"Until the French Revolution, Jews of Europe lived in self-contained communities...All of these characteristics -- and others -- were true for Jewish life for centuries. And Jewish retreats are now recreating them."

catholic rural life, winter 2006
Keeping Kosher in the Time of McDonalds and Monsanto: American Jews and the sacred foods movement
"The pace of change in food production and distribution has moved faster than the rabbinical tradition can quite cope with. How do we infer the laws of Torah about whether GMO foods are ok or not?"

the blueprint, december 5, 2006
'From Latkes to Lattes’ at Hazon Food Conference
"If there is anything that can unify Jews from across the spectrum of Jewish life, it has got to be food. Hazon (Hebrew for “vision”), to that end, is holding a conference titled 'From Latkes to Lattes' December 14-17 at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Connecticut."

philadelphia jewish exponent, november 16, 2006
Educator Takes Students Out Into Larger World
"He's currently training for a Jerusalem-to-Eilat bicycle ride this spring sponsored by Hazon and the Arava Institute, which will raise money for Israeli environmental causes."

jewish telegraphic agency, october 30, 2006
Dietary changes afoot, but are they kosher? That depends what it means
"Hazon, a New York-based nonprofit, pioneered the idea two summers ago with its Tuv Ha’aretz program...'We want to reframe the question of kashrut, not to abandon it, but to ask what it means to keep kosher in the 21st century,' project coordinator Leah Koenig says. 'Is it kosher to eat food sprayed with chemicals? Is it kosher to eat eggs from chickens kept in tiny, cramped cages?' "

american bicyclist magazine, fall 2006
"My favorite recent ride was with my 13-year-old son Ben in May 2006. We biked Israel from Jerusalem to Eilat for a total of 330 miles in five days."

new jersey star ledger, september 21, 2006
"Hebrew chants from across the hall provided soft background music for Karen Frank as she helped a dozen Jews meditate on the spiritual importance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish holiday that starts tomorrow night."

wall street journal, october 7, 2005
"To celebarte the Jewish New Year, Nigel Savage gathered here on Monday with nine other men by a small, weedy lake."

the forward, january 21, 2005
"Limmud is a postmodern shtetl," said Nigel Savage, an environmental activist and British Limmud veteran who helped initiate the program's New York incarnation. For the first time since before the French Revolution, we have put three generations and a wide range of denominations to live and celebrate together."

the jewish week, december 20, 2004
" In the small but growing environmental movement, young Jews are getting physical and going back to the land."

united jewish communities, November 25, 2004
"It supports projects similar to those the Trust for Jewish Philanthropy was considering, but on a more modest scale, such as Hazon, or "Vision," which is a Jewish environmental group, and JDub Records, a nonprofit record label and production company that promotes new Jewish music and tries to use music as a way to improve relations between Jews and non-Jews."

jewish week, january 30, 2004
"During those two weeks, we experienced incalculable manifestations of divine power. I carried around a blessings card provided by the Jewish environmental organization Hazon and challenged my kids to see if we could recite every blessing of wonder before the trip was done."

forward, november 15, 2002
"The community we would need to create — the institutions, the leaders, the funding — to get every American Jew to participate in Torah, avodah and gmilut hasadim every week would be one so passionate and so multi-faceted that it would necessarily re-engage both the involved core and those who are the target of outreach. It would be the crucible for shaping what will be the NJPS data of the year 2020."

tuv ha'aretz

the jewish herald voice, april 21, 2006
“How do we find ways of supporting family farmers who are doing sustainable agriculture,” the rabbi asks. “This is very different than the paradigm of agriculture as a big business."

the washington jewish week, april 21, 2006
"Being Jewish isn't just about where you pray or what synagogue you belong to. It should permeate every aspect of your life, including how you eat. This is food that's locally grown, has less of an impact environmentally and tastes better."

the new jersey jewish standard, dec 9, 2005
"Tuv Ha'Aretz reconnects an ancient Jewish conversation about what is fit to eat with a contemporary conversation that questions, 'Is this fit [to eat] based on how it's grown, how it's packaged, and how it's transported.

the new york times, june 1, 2005
"Like a baby, a farm needs as much nuturing as it can get."

new jersey jewish review, april 7, 2005
"Tuv Ha'Aretz offers participants the opportunity to do the mitzva of payot, or leaving the corners of the field for the poor: when participants are away on vacation and do not arrange for someone else to pick up their shares, they will be donated to the poor."

blueprint, november 30, 2004
"Tuv Ha’Aretz, the first-ever Jewish Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project, has garnered rave reviews from hungry herbivores in Manhattan. Congregation Ansche Chesed, a Conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side has joined forces with Hazon, a Jewish environmental and outdoor education group, to the delight of vegetable eaters on the hunt for the organic and tasty."

jewish week, may 28, 2004
"The new CSA is part of a small "eco-kashrut" movement of Jews who see sustainable agriculture and compassionate treatment of farm animals as natural, modern-day extensions to traditional Jewish dietary laws."

2006 israel ride

atlanta jewish times, july 2, 2006
"It is the wide-open spaces. It's undeveloped. It is nature at work and — I know it sounds a bit corny — the raw beauty of nature. I look at the desolate landscape and think to myself, 'This is much prettier than most things man can put together.'"

kansas city jewish chonicle, april 28, 2006
"I have been training for a while, and am rather excited about the ride," Rabbi Katz said last week.

atlanta jewish times, april 24, 2006
"My personal preference is to visit a place and experience it rather than ride in an air-conditioned tour bus."

san mateo county times, december 19, 2005
"It just seemed like an exciting thing to involve the school with"

2005 israel ride

the jewish world, july 7, 2005
"It's one thing to travel to Israel on a Federation mission and another to literally taste the desert and use every last ounce of energy to pedal up Nes Harim...You can't describe how it feels to ride through the desert and stop at Aderet, overlooking the Ellah Valley where the Biblical battle between David and Goliath took place."

jewish week, may 20, 2005
"Jewish environmentalism is action in action. It’s not just ideas or political theories. The environment is the clearest route to peace."

jersualem post, may 17, 2005
"Listening to Palestinians and Jews, Germans and Americans, discussing something of common concern – the environment – made me believe that this was the key to solving the peace process."

daily news, may 13, 2005
"Biker-activist tells of spiriting Holocaust survivors to Israel."

connecticut jewish ledger, february 25, 2005
"The Ride is helping to train a new generation of environmental leaders, Jordanians and Palestinians as well as Israelis, who are working together to improve the quality of life for people across the region."

2004 israel ride

washington jewish week, may 13, 2004
"You just feel the land like no other way. ... You see everything [the Jewish National Fund] has done, inch by inch...You love Israel as you never had before."

jta news, may 9, 2004
"For some, the ride offered the opportunity to express solidarity with Israel; for others, it was a chance to reacquaint themselves with a country they had visited as teenagers."

jewish week, may 7, 2004
"It’s legitimately hard for Israelis to do what they need to do to protect this country and its people for the next five generations when they don’t know what will happen in the next five months. That’s why I believe the American Jewish community has a major contribution to make to supporting the Israeli environmental movement."

2003 israel ride

jta news, may 7, 2003
"The April 28 gathering was extraordinarily emotional for all who participated. Family members shared photo albums, passports and other documentation of the story of the ride to Israel 71 years before."

jerusalem report, april 7, 2003
"It's important simply to go to Israel, to spend time in the country, to send the message that there are Diaspora Jews who continue to believe in the pos-sibility of a better future for the land of Israel and for all who live there"

jewish week, january 24, 2003
"The purpose of the ride is precisely to look beyond the awfulness and intractability of the situation and say, let’s renew our commitment to having American Jews and Israelis work together to build a better Israel and better Middle East"

2005 new york jewish environmental bike ride

jewish ledger, august 25, 2005
"A team from the B'nai Tzedek Teen Philanthropy Program in Western Massachusetts will join actor Mandy Patinkin and more than 200 cyclists on a bike ride from Connecticut to New York to raise money for the B'nai Tzedek Youth Foundation and cutting-edge Jewish environmental education...."

2004 new york jewish environmental bike ride

uja federation of northern new jersey, october 25, 2004
"Melanie Klein and Allison Teittelbaum recently put the pedal to the metal to help protect the environment. These seniors at the Bergen County High School of Jewish Studies, October's Mitzvah Kids of the Month, participated in this summer's NY Jewish Environmental Bike Ride..."

jewish week, june 25, 2004
"The ride has already attracted more than 100 registered participants of all ages and Jewish backgrounds and levels of riding experience from across the United States."

2003 new york jewish environmental bike ride

forward, august 22, 2003
"...carried bikes down darkened stairwells to reach the bus to the Hamptons, motiva ted and energized by the blackout, which they perceived as a warning about over-consumption."

jewish life, august 2003
"When the sun had set and the rain began again, the only warmth we had was our love for each other. And it was enough for us to finish the ride!"

2002 new york jewish environmental bike ride

blueprint, january 2003
"...people from such huge, different areas of religious and cultural backgrounds coming together without having their differences be a tension between them."

forward, october 11, 2002
"I think it's important to create and support projects that are inspirational when Israel is under attack and when antisemitism is resurgent. We need to defend ourselves. But the act of just defending is not, in my view, capable of being a sufficiently positive force in pushing the Jewish community forward."

temple beth el bulletin, july 19, 2002
"By the end of two days, a community was formed among the riders."

2001 new york jewish environmental bike ride

jewish outreach institute, january 2002
"The whole experience took less than 48 hours yet will stay with me for a lifetime."

jerusalem report, december 17, 2001
"We aim to bring Jewish people together across denominational differences to raise environmental awareness in our community."

jewish week, october 19, 2001
"The United States has just learned it lives in a sukkah. In the sukkah, we recognize we are vulnerable and part of the earth, not separate from it."

daily freeman, october 5, 2001
"There was discussion about canceling the ride because of the events of Sept. 11, but organizers decided to go ahead anyway."

forward, september 28, 2001
"Especially after [the terrorist attacks], people are feeling overwhelmed by huge issues, and they're asking, 'How can I have an impact?' The ride is a way for people to get out there and get involved."

2000 cross-usa jewish environmental bike ride

jta news, august 16, 2000
"Drawing on Jewish texts that call for people to respect the earth as God's creation, the riders are united in their belief that environmentalism needs to play a more central role in Jewish life."

jerusalem post, april 7, 2000
"It [the ride] aims to foster Jewish experiences that are meaningful, enjoyable, and which integrate action and Jewish teaching."

jta, february 22, 2000
"I suspect that for some people the thought of only participating in keeping Jewish communal services going - paying bills for stuff that's very basic - is not seen as dramatic or sexy. But I spend a lot of time taking donors and prospective donors to see the services we provide and it's extremely rare when you put donors in front of the people who we take care of that they're not deeply touched by what they see."