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Sun, Soil, Water: California Magic Should Do the Rest
Garden season in Southern California is year round and every time I turn around another garden has popped up. Last week I helped IKAR, a spiritual community in Los Angeles, to put in their very own garden. A great company, Farmscape, donated beds, soil and automatic watering supplies to the cause. Neighborhood people and IKAR congregants helped with the building and schelping. It was a beautiful day and I was proud to be a part of it. However, ...
Eye on RAVSAK: The North American Jewish Day School Conference
Today is the second day of the RAVSAK conference and I will be presenting on a panel discussing "Laboratories for Innovation: Day Schools and Jewish Social Entrepreneurship." The theme for this year's RAVSAK is The High Performance, High-Tech Jewish Day School of the Very Near Future. The various presentations that are happening throughout the conference are clear within thematic scope: issues pertaining to technology, innovation, ...
Do you know Evonne? You should.
As a member of the Jewcology team, I’m a happy camper. I wasn’t totally sure of how the bits and pieces of Jewcology.com would come together or which people would engage with the material and users. However, last week was TuBShvat and there were so many accessible and usable resources on the site. I know a number of people who went to the site to learn more ways of teaching and engaging with the holiday. Last week was really the first ...
California Grows!
California Grows! I recently attended the Hazon Food Conference in Sonoma, CA. There, I met numerous others who are working with gardens of all stripes; urban, suburban, rural, educational, communal, and private. I want to highlight a few of the interesting garden or farm projects in California. By sharing these projectsI hope others can learn about what they are doing to engage their communities in environmental and food learning. ...
The Language of Sustainability as Second Nature
As I continue to write about my experience in teaching a formal Judaism and the Environment course at a Jewish high school, I aim to share with you some of my personal and professional lessons along the way. This week I am wrapping up the first semester of my 11th grade Judaism and the Environment course. Each semester I have a new crop of students and I try to experiment with new ways of teaching the texts and contemporary examples to ...
Garden Goodness in Los Angeles
Gardens are popping up across the U.S., and terms such as trowel, compost, mulch, organic, and community-supported agriculture are becoming part of our daily vocabulary. And increasingly, Jewish institutions are beginning to see another potential of community gardens: using them as a shamash or a light unto the world; a beam for the future. In this technological age of wonder, the ancient agricultural practices of our people are have never been ...