Where The Ride Proceeds Go

Your support of the DC Ride makes a huge difference!

Hazon is working to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, as a step towards a healthier and more sustainable world for all. We’re at the forefront of putting sustainability on the agenda of the Jewish community – and the wider world.  Since 2000 we’ve worked tirelessly to educate people, to encourage young leaders, to support cutting-edge new projects, and to enable and encourage the Jewish community to make a difference.

When you sign up for the Ride – or sponsor yourself or someone else – you support this important work.  The Ride's proceeds work far and wide to create the kind of world we want to live in.  

Half of the money raised will support Hazon’s work, and half will be allocated to DC area Jewish environmental projects. 

Hazon's Work

Creating a healthy and Jewish connection to our food & our growers

As Jews, we’ve been thinking about kosher food – about what it’s “fit” to eat - for nearly 3,000 years. And a growing number of people today realize that our food choices have significant ramifications – for ourselves, our families and the world around us. Hazon’s playing a lead-role in rallying the Jewish community to put Jewish purchasing power behind healthy and sustainable eating and food-growing – and in doing so, we’re adding a new and vital chapter to the story of Jews thinking seriously about what and how we eat:

• Tuv Ha’Aretz is Hazon’s Community-Supported Agriculture project, in which members buy a share of the season’s produce from a local organic family farm. They eat well, and actively support farmers who are growing organic produce that’s healthy, pesticide-free, and easy on the earth. Since 2004, we’ve launched 10 CSAs in the Jewish community (in the US and Israel), putting the purchasing power of over 400 families behind local, sustainable agriculture—and we couldn’t have done that without support from the Ride.
• The 2nd annual Hazon Food Conference, will be held in Dec 2007.  Last year, this conference brought together 150 participants from Tuv Ha'Aretz communities and our partner day schools, as well as educators, food lovers, farmers, home gardeners, chefs, and community organizers from across the country to explore the intersections of Jewish tradition and contemporary food issues.   The Hazon Food Conference is poised to become a significant annual event in its own right, at the forefront of the New Jewish Food Movement.
• This year, we launched JCarrot, Hazon’s new blog on Jews, Food & Contemporary Life.  Topics range from recipes, to how to deal with an overload of beets in the winter, to what farmers do in the off season, to rabbinical thought about industrialized food – and much more.

Creating new educational opportunities within the Jewish community

We love the quote “Which is more important, learning or doing?  Learning, because it leads to doing.”  The educational aspect of our work and the work of those we support is bringing people together, fostering new ideas and new vision in the Jewish community, and beyond.

• We are launching Min Ha’Aretz, a family-education curriculum for day school children and their parents on Jews, food & contemporary life.  The curriculum will be textually serious, academically rigorous and grounded in values of family learning and tikkun olam.  We’re extremely excited to work with families tackling issues of kashrut, cooking, brachot and composting, and expanding our conversation about Jews, food & contemporary life to this new realm of family education.
• Hazon holds an annual Beit Midrash (learning community), that looks at Jewish tradition through the double prism of ancient texts and contemporary life.  The Beit Midrash brings together a wide range of participants, with a wide range of backgrounds, for chevruta text study and experiential learning.
• In 2007 we’re launching a new adult Jewish food curriculum, which we plan to distribute widely

Getting people on bikes, getting people to think differently about transportation and cycling, in DC, nationally and in Israel

• Hazon currently runs three rides – the DC Ride, the New York Ride, and the Israel Ride.  Together, these rides reach thousands of people each year – participants, supporters, volunteers, cheerleaders. 
• The impact of the Ride itself on participants can be significant.  Realizing you can travel 60 miles by bicycle throws into sharp relief the potential of the bicycle for more local trips.  Coming out of a bubble experience where cycling is easy and well-supported can lead to significant lifestyle changes.
• We’re in the process of launching JBike, an online Jewish cycling network that will be a national clearinghouse for ideas and events, expose more Jewish cyclists to trips, ideas, events, and ways to enjoy cycling, and promote cycling in the Jewish community in general, both in the US and in Israel
• Hazon is the Jewish voice of bicycle activism in New York City.  When the Police Department proposed to impose a “parade law” that would require a permit for groups of 10 or more cyclists to travel together, we raised a Jewish voice to protest
• Using this Ride to seed other rides
• We support Transportation Alternatives, Times Up, and Adventure Cycling, among a range of significant organizations doing important work

Supporting Israel & the Middle East through environmentalism and peace-making

• We promote and support the The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES), which is a regional center for environmental leadership in the Arava in Israel.  AIES students come from Israel, Palestine, Jordan and North America, and learn environmental issues and how to work together at the same time.  Many students have come to participate in the NY Ride, and hearing from these students is consistently rated as one of our participant’s top experiences of the NY Ride.
• We support environmental leadership and training courses in Israel: Green Course is an Eco-Beit Midrash lecture series at Hebrew University, Jerusalem to teach solutions for current environmental crises through a Jewish lens; and The Green Apprenticeship Program trains Diaspora Jews and Israelis in agriculture, alternative/natural building, migratory bird management at Kibbutz Lotan, an ecological Zionist reform kibbutz in the Arava valley
• We’re also very excited to support Table To Table / Project Leket, where volunteers gather fruits and vegetables that remain in the farmers' fields and orchards at the end of the commercial harvest for redistribution.  A amazing example of an ancient practice reborn!
• We support the Green Zionist Alliance, a lobbying group working to influence the World Jewish Congress to protect Israel’s environment.  In the last congress, the GZA won 2 seats and is making great progress on the recycled paper front in Israel.  GZA representatives have done the ride for many years, and have brought their unique perspective of Israel’s environmental issues and American Jew’s relationship to Israel.

Developing leadership within the Jewish community

• The DC Ride is planned by a volunteer committee, many of whom are new to communal leadership.  We work closely with the exec throughout the year to give them leadership training and opportunities to expand their skills and confidence in group leadership.

• Many of the projects supported by ride proceeds are started by young entrepreneurs.  The Jewish Farm School, Shorashim, the Green Zionist Alliance, Adamah and Teva are all run by and/or primarily staffed by young Jewish leaders in their 20s.  We are incredibly proud to support these young and motivated folks in their projects, both financially and through networking opportunities.

DC Jewish Environmental Projects

We are excited to announce that DC area organizations can submit applications for a mini-grant from the proceeds of the 2007 DC Ride.  Projects must meet Hazon’s mission to create a healthy & more sustainable Jewish community toward a healthy & more sustainable world.  We are particularly interested in funding new organizations and/or projects that will particularly benefit from a small grant.  Grants will be made in summer 2007, and all recipient information will be posted on the website soon after. Click here for the allocation request for proposal.

A sampling from our allocations from our New York Ride include (click here for the full list):

• ADAMAH: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship is a three month leadership training program for Jewish young adults — ages 20–29 —that integrates organic farming, sustainable living, Jewish learning, teaching, and contemplative spiritual practice.  Funds from the NY Ride have been used to put a down payment on the house where the Adamahniks live, and also to build a greenhouse.  The Adamahniks are in the process of launching a commercial pickling and canning business; their motto is “Changing the world, one Jewish farmer at a time”
• Chava V’Adam / Shorashim is a brand-new organic farming educational initiative and sustainable community project in Israel, made possible in part by grants from the 2005 and 2006 NY Rides.  5-month residential apprenticeships are offered twice a year in skills and methodology of organic farming and permaculture design.
• The Teva Learning Center: Teva runs week-long outdoor education experiences for day school children at Isabella Freedman, as well as doing family shabbaton programming for synagogues.  Teva has taught over 5000 Jewish children about Jewish roots of environmentalism and activism over the past 12 years.
• Pearlstone Conference & Retreat Center:  to establish an organic, farm using sustainable energy and resources at the retreat center.  This will begin with the planting of 1 ½ acres.
• Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School: to promote the use of reusable materials in food service and cut waste dramatically and quickly. The Green Committee will work with the cafeteria management of the school.
• Table to Table:  to fund Project Leket, where volunteers gather fruits and vegetables that remain in the farmers' fields and orchards at the end of the commercial harvest.