Education on the Ride

The Hazon Cross-USA Ride will be an adventure like no other. We hope the ride will become a platform for action and involvement for participants.  This ride is a physical, emotional, and spiritual journey.  We expect to lead participants through a process of understanding how we grow, harvest, process and consume food as Jews in the United States. We aim for participants to become  learners and educators on this journey across the country. The educational components of the Ride will be what distinguish this Cross USA Ride from any other.

Sustainable Food Systems

This primary education theme will enable riders to explore multiple aspects of America’s complex food system. This involves the following components:

  1. Local Food – Learn how small scale local farms work and why it is so important to support them.
  2. Food Policy – Engage in the national food agenda, how it affects local communities, and how you can work to shape it in the future.
  3. Food Insecurity – Explore issues surrounding food insecurity including national and local initiatives.
  4. Meat Production – Understand the full process of meat production, from large scale to backyard kosher slaughter.
  5. Food Production – See the various ways how food is produced in America and the options you have as a conscious consumer.
  6. Eating as a Community - Discover what it means to be part of a Jewish community that needs to eat together and as part of a wider community.
  7. Jewish Relationships to Food – Delve into kashrut, blessings, Jewish agriculture law, and shmita
Click here for a list of confirmed learning opportunities on the Ride

Other Topics

Crossing the country provides no lack of topics around Jewish life, the environment, and issues that are part of Hazon’s larger mission. Some of these will include:

  • Local Environmental Challenges – as we travel, we will be able to see some of the current hot-button issues at stake in the environmental world. These include cycling past the route of proposed Keystone XL pipeline, through coal country, and more.
  • Transportation Alternatives – as cyclists, we will be sure to utilize parts of the vast network of bike trails and bike lanes in cities across the country. But we will also take time to learn about how we can transform our urban space and advocate for better infrastructure.
  • Jewish Communities – we will visit Jewish communities of all sizes, and interact with them in different ways. We hope to teach them about our core issues of sustainable food systems, but each community is also a learning opportunity to understand how Jewish life manifests itself in all corners of the country.
  • Personal Journey – our entire trip can be framed as one powerful journey, and we hope participants will utilize the experience to reflect the notions of journey, transformation, and community.

Opportunities for Education

These themes will be explored in various ways through the Ride. Read more below about the different avenues we will be utilizing.

Participant Learning

Participants will join this Ride with all levels of Jewish and environmental knowledge and experience with traditional and modern Jewish sources. The Ride will follow an accessible curriculum that will allow participants the opportunity to explore the connection between Jewish text and the natural world in group and chevruta (partner) study. Every participant will receive a copy of the specially designed source book for the Cross USA Ride. We will cover topics related environmental issues, food justice, worker’s rights, respect for the land, and kashrut (biblical laws regarding food).

Guest Teachers

In addition to our educators on staff at Hazon, we are planning for the Ride to have a number of guest teachers along the route. Additionally we are hoping to have rabbis join us on the bike as part of a multi-denominational “Rabbi Relay”. One of the highlights of the Cross USA journey will be the guest educators that join us for evening programming or meet us along the way at sites of interest.

Teaching Communities

Over the course of Ride, we will aim for the Ride to meet with communities along the route, both Jewish and inter-faith. We hope our visiting communities will be a positive presence in the community giving us the opportunity to explain the intersection between Judaism and the environment, and share what Hazon and the Jewish community is doing to work on pressing environmental challenges. Our hope is that all participants on the Ride, who are interested, will have the opportunity to speak in these communities and teach from the Cross USA sourcebook. We hope that all our participants will be learners and well as educators on this journey.

We feel that these interactions will raise people’s conceptions of what “being Jewish” means in this century. Both through example and through teaching we were demonstrating that there can be a Jewish vision which is both particularistic and universalistic; that transcends denominational and generational boundaries; and that is rooted in Jewish tradition, lived in the present and focused on the future. It is our experience from the first Cross USA Ride that communities we visited, both Jewish and non-Jewish, were moved and inspired by their meetings with Hazon riders. Three themes were repeated most frequently:

  • the fact that we were a pluralistic and diverse group, who nevertheless seemed to get on well with each other and were thus a positive role model for a diverse Jewish community which might not necessarily be rent by arguments and attacks;
  • the fact that we were a Jewish group, but were taking on a wider issue, and were thus role models for a community which was proudly Jewish but also decisively engaged in the wider society;
  • the fact that we were doing something so physical, and thus provided unusually healthy and robust role models relative to stereotypes of intellectual, but not physical, Jewish endeavor.
Places of Interest

While the route is still in the final planning phases we are envisioning that there will be many opportunities to see and experience as well as peddle. We hope to make stops to visit farms, factories, national landmarks, national parks, and environmental points of interests. The stunning places you will visit on this program will challenge and inspire you.

As we finalize our route, we will post more information
Community Service

A meaningful part of our trip will be the opportunity to do community service along the route. Whether we have an afternoon, or a whole day to devote to service and social justice, we know that we can make a vital difference. We hope that our service will inspire those around us to give their time and effort to serve those in need. Projects might include working on a farm, soup kitchen or food pantry, community garden or working with kids at a summer camp. We hope that you opportunity to take part in a wide range of educational hands-on activities.