Zelig Golden | | 4 Tevet 5769 | December 31, 2008

Fourteen years ago I found myself in Costa Rica studying sustainable development with the School for Field studies. My time with Don Amadeo Acosta, a tenant farmer with whom I did an agriculture research project – set me off on my food journey. Don Amadeo was poor of land and possessions, but rich with vision. In a time when virtually all farmers of the area used a sea of chemical sprays to kill insects, Amadeo was passionate about growing food in harmony with the worms, insects and weeds that he seemed to befriend. While planting and cultivating an experimental plot of green beans together, Amadeo taught me the value of having a relationship not only with the beans that I put in my mouth, but the seeds that make them possible and the soil that nourishes them to grow. In a time when I did not feel close to my Jewishness, this connection to creation – the earth itself – opened me to a profound sense of awe and wonder that has drawn me to farms and wild places ever since.

Seven years ago, when I moved to Berkeley for law school, I encountered my Jewish community in Chochmat HaLev – this opened me to a spiritual path in Judaism – yet I longed to root my growing Jewishness in a direct experience with creation, just as I had found in Don Amadeo’s garden. As an Adamah fellow three summers ago, I found what I sought. Each day, after praying the Sh’ma together, we went to work in the field – sowing, weeding, harvesting, and eating the fruits of our relationship to this land. Never were the fruits sweeter, and never have I felt more complete in myself. Through this experience I learned the meaning to one of the deepest teachings of our tradition – “Love your neighbor as you Love yourself” – that through a direct relationship of love, reverence and care for the earth, I come to a deeper connection to the Source of All things, and a deeper connection to myself.

This connection to creation now fuels me in my work as an attorney with the Center for Food Safety, where I work on law and policy for safe, healthy food. One of the Reasons It’s so powerful to be here tonight is how this movement has helped me to weave together my professional life as a food advocate with my spiritual Jewish, spiritual life, and it is this interweaving of my worlds that underlies my vision for a Jewish Food Movement and how we might work toward Tikkun in our relationship to food.

Like the world over, much of our community has lost touch with our food source. Today, our food is largely made on distant, large-scale industrial farms, which use toxic chemicals and polluting machinery. Four large chemical/biotechnology companies – turned seed companies –now own 40% of our commercial seed stocks, the foundation of our food supply. And since the beginning of the short, 60-year era of industrial agriculture, we have lost over 80% of our farmers as small scale, local agriculture has given way to mega-scale corporate agribusiness. We have lost much of our culture, from our agriculture, as we have entrusted our health and well being to an industry more motivated by profit than nourishing people. And in our unique Jewish story, we were once a people of farmers and shepherds – our pilgrimage festivals celebrated the cycle of harvests. Yet due to our unique history of displacement and diaspora, we have also all but lost our direct connection to food and farming.

In the Torah portion for this week, Mikketz, we learn of Pharaoh’s dream where he sees 7 healthy cows followed by 7 sickly cows, interpreted by Joseph as 7 years of abundance followed by 7 years of famine in the land. Pharaoh’s Egypt, under Joseph’s leadership, amasses food for the famine, and our people relocate to the land of Egypt to survive the 7 years of famine. During the famine, and under Pharaoh’s centralized system of food redistribution, we fall under Pharaoh’s power and eventually become enslaved by the very system that fed us. Today, we stand at a critical moment like that in Mikketz, where the promise of abundance from the industrial food system is giving way to a realization that we need to rethink how we sustain our communities. At a time when the economy is shaking, we read about international food crisis and there are rumblings of seed scarcity within the ranks of small farmers. Amidst these troubling times, it is time for us to re-write our Mikketz story of today – one where we spend the next 7 years creating a sustainable food future.

Today, with the passion and hard work of many of you in this room, and the support, inspiration, and coalescing force of Hazon, we have become an incredible community movement of tikkun (healing) for our relationship to food. As farmers, educators, spiritual leaders, activists, chefs and foodies, we have already begun to renew our agriculture through educational programs like Adamah in Connecticut, Kayam Farm in Maryland, and Eco-Israel in Israel, the Jewish Farm School’s programs, as wells as Eden Village Summer camp, coming soon…; through building bridges between local farms and our communities through Hazon’s Tuv Ha’aretz; and through the emergence of a new cadre of young Jewish farmers. And from this place of growing strength, I think we are primed to truly shine our communal light as a Jewish food movement — in my view, I see three areas of potential focus for this light: 1) working for systemic change through political action, 2) working for personal and communal change in our relationships to food and earth, and 3) deepening our earth and food related education.

As a Jewish community, we have before found ourselves on the cutting edge of social movements — and as we grow as a food movement and develop a clearer vision for the food future we want to see, we should mobilize into political action. Much of the nature of our food system is determined through federal policy – in particular, the pervasive farm bill that affects everything from determining the subsidies that will determine farmers’ crop choice, to food aid programs that determine who can receive food stamps and how they may use them, to creating new incentive programs that help young farmers get their start in organic farming. As a food movement, we should sound our strong voice to promote sustainable agriculture through federal farm bill policy. For example, a sustainable food future requires more farmers working at a community level — and you can see here this weekend, a new generation of Jewish farmers – inspired by the likes of Adamah — hunger for the opportunity to serve in this way. Thus, we should work for stronger federal farm bill provisions that encourage a new generation of organic farmers through stronger educational and financial incentives.

We should also work to protect our fundamental “Right To Know” what is in our food. Today, unless we buy certified organic, we don’t even know if our food contain genetically modified, cloned or irradiated ingredients because there are no requirements to put this on food labels. New labeling rules would allow us – at the very least – to choose the foods we eat and the type of agriculture we support. It would also afford the Jewish world more transparency about the nature of our foods as we continue the dialogue about how we will apply our ethical standards and laws of Kashrut to these potentially harmful and ethically suspect modifications.

Any action we take as a Jewish community must be rooted in the transformation of our personal and communal relationships to food. Rather than expect cheap food from the grocery store, we must elevate food in our consciousness and once again value food as a sacred gift. I believe this transformation will occur as we deepen our spiritual consciousness around food. For example, in the Jewish tradition, we have the practice of blessing our food – stopping to give thanks and to recognize what we are about to eat as a gift from our Infinite Source. I also believe we can only create such a transformation if we as individuals and as a community engage our rich wisdom tradition that provides a profound Jewish relationship to food, agriculture and the earth. For example, the pilgrimage festivals of Sukkot, Shavuot and Passover are incredible opportunities to link our ancient traditions to our modern food movement. Here in the Bay Area, for example, Wilderness Torah creates an annual Sukkot celebration on an organic Farm. During this fall harvest holiday, we gather as community in the fields to camp out, pray, shake the lulav, and eat food picked right from the fields. It has been incredibly powerful to pray while gazing over the fields of our sustenance. It seems that this is where transformation happens – when we feel the true meaning of the Shema deep in our bodies – that we are one with all of creation, the Source of Life, the Source of our food. In the next 7 years, I encourage us in our communities across the country to take to the land during our festivals in this ways.

Finally, as I think ahead 7 years for how I envision my food work here in the Bay Area, I am called to fulfill a year-long dream of creating a living model of sustainability on the land by bringing the Adamah educational model right here to California. We are directing our collective vision toward collaborating with others to live on the land; a place to not only grow our food and our children in community, but a place that will serve the Bay Area as a center for a living, earth-centered Judaism that may inspire others like Adamah inspired me.

We are at pivotal moment in history — one where we can truly bring healing in this world — and I look forward to working with many of you, and hearing your stories and your visions as we turn our movement into a vehicle of change.