July 20 - 24

Shmita Redux | 2022 Vision | Fig & Rosemary Cookies…

Dear All,

Hazon will be completely closed for nine days in November – our offices will be closed, the Isabella Freedman campus will be closed, our staff will all be off work, and we don’t plan to send – or reply to – any email in that period.

To explain how and why this arose, let me note that Rosh Chodesh Nisan – at the end of next week – represents the exact mid-point of the shmita year: six months after it began, and six months until it ends, the day before Rosh Hashanah.

It’s thus a good moment to think about some of what has happened in the lead-up to the shmita year – what have we learned, what’s happening, where are we going, what could or should we be doing or thinking about?

The first thing to say is that, for great reasons, there is no comprehensive picture possible about what is going on in relation to shmita. This shmita year has been very different from any of the shmita years in living memory, in terms of what has been happening.

The clearest example of this is from looking at coverage of shmita in the New York Times over the last 64 years:

This is the article in the NYT in the shmita year of 1951 which first explains the heter mechira – the process of “selling” the land in order to circumvent the prohibitions of shmita.

This is the article in September 2000 that describes the arguments in Israel about the heter mechira, at the start of that shmita year.

This is almost the same piece in October 2007 – the piece that first prompted me to start working on shmita. Seriously? – in the last seven years we didn’t put any serious thought into shmita? That article played a role in our founding the Shmita Project, in December 2007, with the intent that – next time around – we’d think about shmita more widely, more thoughtfully, and also earlier.

Happily this time around it’s been very different.

This is how the NYT marked the start of this shmita year, in September 2014 – with an article that focuses on fascinating changes in Israel in relation to this shmita year – very different from previous years. (And we were gratified that, though we had nothing to do with placing the story, everyone quoted in it has been involved in Hazon’s shmita work and most had attended our Shmita Summit in London, six months earlier.)

Finally, two months later, this remarkable article in the NYT gave a clear sense of how shmita has assumed much wider salience this cycle. And we were gratified that the way that the NYT chose to explain shmita by linking to Hazon's Shmita Project homepage.

So the shmita year is on the agenda. A huge amount of creativity has come forth. In Israel, people like MK Ruth Calderon, Rabbi Mordechai Bar Or, Einat Kramer and Rav Michael Melchior – and Yossi Tsuria, Yosef Abramowitz and Rabbi Julian Sinclair, all mentioned by the Times – have done phenomenal work. Across the Jewish community, institutions have been hosting learning sessions, rabbis are teaching on shmita. Questions are being raised, and things are starting to change.

And yet something even more profound is I think happening. A few weeks ago the remarkable Leichtag Foundation, based in Encinitas CA, hosted a significant gathering of Jewish farming leaders around the country. The sense that it was the shmita year – and that this was an important and salient part of our tradition – was a strong and explicit part of the gathering.

Shmita is, at the simplest level about letting go. It’s about changing our relationship to land, objects, acquisition, money. But the gap between our contemporary understanding of it and its depth and profundity has barely yet been closed. I have personally observed Shabbat by not buying books – and that’s been a fascinating experience – and by not buying scotch and liquor – and that too has been fascinating. I will write about each later in the year – each decision has taught me significant things that I didn’t know or expect when the year began. But shmita, in the end, is about much more than any one of us giving up something, or something else, as part of our personal observance. At a time when we are over-consuming our planet; when the bounds of social capital have frayed; and when inequality has entered the public discourse as an electoral issue in many of the Western democracies, including both Israel and the US – shmita is there before us: a teaching; a challenge; a vision; a set of questions; a provocation; an opportunity for hope.

As we move into the second half of the shmita year, our gaze should start to shift to the next 7-year cycle in Jewish life. The next shmita year starts this September – and ends in 2022. What is our vision for Jewish life in 2022? What could or should America or Israel look like? What role will the Jewish community play in creating a healthier and more sustainable world for all? What would you like your shul to look like then? Your school? Your firm, your business? Your family? Your community, your neighborhood, your building?

Shmita affords us the gift of thinking in these terms. And in the next seven years we need not only to envision, consciously, what our communities should look like in 2022. We also need to learn about shmita itself, much more deeply. We need scholarship. We need conferences. We need people to come together across disciplines and across geography. Christians are starting to get interested in shmita. We need economists and ethicists and farmers and biologists and elected officials to start to learn together about shmita.

(If you’ll be at JFN’s Conference next week, you’re warmly invited to join Rabbi Mordechai Bar-Or and me for the session we’re doing on shmita on Tuesday afternoon. And if you'd like to learn with Rabbi Julian Sinclair about shmita as part of our partnership with Project Zug and Hadar, you're warmly invited - information below.)

And it is because shmita is larger than just the individual that we’re also closing Hazon for nine days in November – the week of Thanksgiving, from November 21st to November 29th. Our staff – everywhere – work incredibly hard. The people who deliver our retreats at Freedman clear snow and make meals and clean toilets and lead hikes and schlep boxes and deliver retreats, and they do it evenings and weekends – their day is not 9 to 5. Hazon’s staff in New York and around the country have equally demanding jobs including emails in their tray – as I know most of you do – also 24/7.

So David Weisberg and I, mindful of the shmita year, wanted to do something for our staff – something that would slow the velocity a little. And of course for many people an extra two or three days “off work” is no longer the vacation it might have been for our grandparents – just a larger stack of emails to deal with when you come back.

So we were already closed the Thursday and Friday of Thanksgiving week. We’re giving all our staff the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off, in addition, and we’re paying our hourly workers extra to cover them too. We’re not hosting retreats the weekend before or after. And by closing up shop – and putting up an organization-wide out-of-office note, we hope to reduce the internal flow of emails, which is itself a substantial part of everyone’s to do list.

It’s at one and the same time both “not that a big deal” and “an ambitious experiment.” I’ll let you know in December how it goes. But to us it feels like a good way to start the next seven year cycle. I invite you to brainstorm equivalently for yourself, your organization and your community. Feel free to let me know what ideas you come up with.

With all best wishes, Shabbat shalom,
Nigel

PS – one little gift for everyone, if you read this far. We have a very talented pastry chef called Ayala Sherman. This week she baked absolutely the most amazing cookies I’ve eaten in my life. I asked her for the recipe, so I could share them with everyone. If you’re clearing out your chometz in the next week or two –this recipe for Fig and Rosemary Cookies (w/ Gluten Free Option) is a fabulous way to do so.

Celebrate your freedom by bringing your whole family to an enriching, relaxing, and fun-filled Kosher-for-Passover program in a beautiful country setting. Delicious holiday feasts featuring the highest quality Kosher for Passover foods from our AdamahFoods kitchen and delicious OU glatt kosher pastured meats raised on small-family farms from Grow & Behold. Engaging Seders and Divrei Torah led by “New York’s Funniest Rabbi,” Rabbi Neil Fleischmann, back for his 16th year! Wildly popular environmental program for kids, Camp Teva, featuring engaging activities for the young ones every day of the retreat. Daily schedule packed with morning yoga, compelling lectures, interactive workshops, a folk concert with Laura Wetzler, and a campfire and kumzits (singing) night – something for everyone. Register today.

The Adamah Fellowship is a two- or three-month leadership training program for Jewish young adults that integrates organic farming, sustainable living, Jewish learning, community building, and contemplative spiritual practice. Adamah is located in the Connecticut Berkshires, where fellows live surrounded by the beauty of the natural world and a unique all-stream Jewish retreat center. Visit Adamah online for more information, dates, and how to apply.

March 16, 23,30, April 13, 6:30 - 8:00 PM
Mile High United Way, 711 Park Avenue West, Denver, CO

Converse and identify the key ideas that underlie the Jewish commitment to social action. What does it mean for Jewish spirituality to nourish our soul and sustain our work of reparing the world. We invite people of all political and spiritual persuasions to participate in this conversation. Each class will involve text study, discussion, poetry, and snacks! Presented by JYW and Bend the Arc. Co-sponsored by Hazon, Ekar, Hebrew Educational Alliance, B’nai Havurah, Temple Micah, Rodef Shalom, DU Center for Judaic Studies, JCC Life & Learning, and JEWISHcolorado. Learn more.

Explore Jewish environmental education in its natural setting. Teva’s educators are musicians, artists, performers, scientists, athletes, scholars and explorers who impart Jewish environmental wisdom as outdoor educators on the road and at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Live in community and learn from your peers as you teach students and campers across the northeast about the natural world. Learn more and apply today.

Hazon is excited to partner with Project Zug powered by Mechon Hadar to offer an online learning course called "Let's Talk about Shmita", taught by Hazon's Yedidya Sinclair. Project Zug's online learning platform provides dynamic Jewish content, and a havruta (one-to-one) learning partner in Israel or around the world. Learn more and register today.

Registration is open for our Shavuot retreat over Memorial Day weekend. Featuring Rebbetzin Eve Ilsen and many students of Reb Zalman. Highlights include:

• Parade for first-fruits/Bikkurim with Adamah Farm & Fellowship
  
• Eco-Kosher farm-to-table feasts & cheesemaking
  
• All night vigil with chanting, meditation, text study and more
  
• Daybreak outdoor musical Torah service
  
• Celebrate & learn with leading lights of Jewish Renewal
  
• Outdoor creative children's program with Camp Teva
  

Register today.