Hazon Food Guide

Hazon has been steadily working to compile our best practices around food for Jewish institutions. The Hazon Food Guide and Food Audit Toolkit will help you navigate food choices in your synagogue or JCC, and offer practical suggestions for bringing our ancient tradition of keeping kosher–literally, eating food that is “fit”– to bear on the range of food choices we’re making today.

Click on the Food Guide Chapters on the right for an overview of each chapter, or download the complete Food Guide below:

 

Food Audit Toolkit Pilot Season

A group of Jewish institutions are participating in our 6-month pilot season, using the Food Audit to:

  1. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your institution’s policies and practices for promoting food sustainability and justice through an assessment process that covers seven main categories;
  2. Develop an action plan for improving your institution’s food sustainability and justice policies and practices, and;
  3. Involve your institution in implementing this plan.

Apply to participate in the Food Audit Pilot Season

Program Details

As participants in the pilot season, pilot members will:

  • participate in bi-monthly webinars
  • take the Food Audit in October, then identify key areas to address in the next 6 months (many of the projects you’ll want to undertake will take more than 6 months.  However, as we’re still evaluating our format for best supporting individuals and institutions, we’ll evaluate options after 6 months).
  • assemble a “Food Team” or committee to work on these projects
  • provide Hazon with thoughtful feedback on Guide and Toolkit to strengthen it for future publication (encouraged to share on the Jew and the Carrot, etc.)

Hazon will provide the following resources:

  • Copy of draft Food Guide & Food Audit Toolkit
  • Training webinar every 2 months
  • Individual support & troubleshooting
  • Listserv with other pilot members
Food Audit Webinar Schedule

* Please note that topics are subject to change, especially as we continue to confirm guest teachers!

  • Monday, October 24 (Food Day!), 4-5pm EST.  Welcome & Introduction; Assembling a Committee; Learning: Local, Organic, Jewish?
  • Tuesday, December 6, 3-4pm EST. Report on progress; Jewish Holidays to highlight your work: Chanukah, Tu B’Shvat; Learning: Compostable Plates: what it all really means
  • Tuesday, February 7, 3-4pm EST. Report on progress; Sustaining momentum: ways to involve the community & re-inspire key volunteers; Learning: Planning a Garden
  • Tuesday, March 20, 3-4pm EST. Report on progress; Reflections on the Food Guide & Food Audit Toolkit; Learning: Leaving Mitzrayim: Exploring Food Justice at Jewish Institutions
  • Tuesday, May 22, 3-4pm EST. Rosh Chodesh Sivan; Presentations from Pilot Members; Wrap up / Next steps?
Participating Sites

The Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA
The Hillel JUC is currently in the process of attempting LEED Certification. As part of this effort, The Hillel JUC is revamping its relationship and connection to food by drafting and implementing a sustainable (and yummy!) new food policy with the guidance of Hazon’s Food Audit and Guide.

New Community Jewish High School
West Hills, CA

Tifereth Israel
Washington, DC
By participating in the Hazon Food Audit, Tifereth Israel would like to work on their kiddushim in attempts to make them more sustainable.

14th Street Y
New York, NY
Our New Country Day Camp (NCDC) has about 400 campers a day who attend.  NCDC provides snack for each of these campers.  Our current snack comes from a caterer and is usually a cookie and non-recycled juice cup.  We would like to create a more sustainable snack for our campers by buying locally and eating more healthfully. 

Temple Emanuel
Winston Salem, NC

Chabad Jewish Center of Longmont
Longmont, CO
Our core focus is to come as close as possible to having no negative impact on our environment and to serve as an example of the interfacings of Judaism and Ecology. We currently have only a handful of congregates who are paying attention to the consequences of our actions. The rough focus at this point is to change our utensils, plates, recycling, i.e., our impact on our environment; we cannot remain separate and alien from it, but through our actions we hope to become be as close as possible in a sustainable relationship with the creation.

Temple Isaiah
Los Angeles, CA

For more information and to sign up, contact Anna Hanau at 212-644-2332 x307 or anna@hazon.org

Thank You

This second draft of the Hazon Food Guide is the result of many hardworking hands. Huge thanks to the following people who have brought this project to life!

Judith Belasco, Poppy Berelowitz, Alyssa Berkowitz, Ellen Botnik, Miriam Coates, Rachel Gelman, Paul Goettlich, Justin Goldstein, Richard Grayson, Anna Hanau, Daniel Infeld, Leah Koenig, Liz Kohn, Rachel Loebl, Shuli Passow, Robin Rifkin, Rachel Jacoby Rosenfeld, Rachel Sacks, Brooke Saias, Nigel Savage, Amanda Schanfield, Nadia Schreiber, Natalie Soleil, Edith Stevenson, Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, Cassie Weinstock, and Jake Wilkenfeld-Mongillo.

The Jewish Farm School, the Teva Learning Center, the Big Jewish Green Website,  and Earthworks Urban Farm.

Special thanks to the Baltimore Food and Faith Project at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future for allowing access and use of their Faith Community Food Audit which formed the basis for the Hazon Food Audit.