The Cause - Where The Ride Proceeds Go

How supporting the 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 have worked tirelessly to educate people, to encourage young leaders, to support cutting-edge new projects, and in aggregate 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 make a huge difference. Here’s how:

Food and Farming

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.

Hazon's Food-Related Programs:

• 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 Hazon Food Conference, held in Dec 2006, was launched with a seedgrant from Ride proceeds.  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.
• Min Ha’Aretz is a three-part family education initiative for day schools comprised of a curriculum for students, a related beit midrash for adults, and a joint family-education program. Min Ha’Aretz uses food and Jewish tradition as focal points to create innovative programming for Jewish grade school children and their parents. It aims to strengthen intra-family conversations about food, Jewish tradition, and the world around us.
• Hazon’s award-winning blog “The Jew and the Carrot” at www.JCarrot.org serves as a front page for all of Hazon’s food work, bringing the discussions between Jewish farmers, day school educators, food enthusiasts, chefs, and families to far reaching corners of the Jewish community.

Education

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

Israel & the Middle East: 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.

Leadership Development

• The NY Ride is planned by a volunteer exec, many of whom are new to communal leadership.  We hold an exec retreat and work closely with the exec throughout the year to give them leadership training and opportunities to expand their skills and confidence in group leadership.
• We’re getting many more people on bikes than ever sign up for the Ride through our summer training rides, where they experience, in a safe & supported setting, the possibilities of urban cycling.  Training Rides also give experienced riders a chance to share their knowledge and develop leadership skills they can share with others.
• The Ride provides a chance for teenagers to learn about fundraising, articulating their values, and setting & achieving personal goals.  The teens who do the Ride have an amazing time and are inspired to change the world.

Transportation Alternatives

Hazon is getting people on bikes, getting people to think differently about transportation and cycling, in New York City, nationally and in Israel.

• The impact of the Ride itself on participants can be significant.  Realizing you can travel 120 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 in DC, Martha's Vineyard, and across the USA!