Pesach Round-Up

Underwood Family Farms, Culver City, CA Farmers Market

Underwood Family Farms, Culver City, CA Farmers Market

As you’re busy cleaning your house, shopping and cooking for Pesach, I thought you might want to read and reflect upon some of my posts for the holiday. Chag sameach!

Passover: Liberate Yourself From Industrial Food: A list of suggestions to make each part of your seder more sustainable.

Passover: Ending Slavery in Our Food Systems: The horrible enslavement of people in the production of food worldwide.

Nisan: Bless and Sustain: The ultimate Pesach food!-Quinoa and roasted fruit and vegetable recipe

Also, if you haven’t had a chance yet, check out the resources page on my website to find a wide range of wonderful groups working in both the secular and faith spaces to address hunger, agriculture, animal welfare and many other important issues.

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Re’eh: Meat and Poverty

Re'eh Ratatouille

Re’eh Ratatouille

In this week’s Torah portion, Re’eh, it is written, ‘I will eat meat,’ because your soul desires to eat meat, you may eat meat, according to every desire of your soul” (12:20).  Follows is a list of animals that cannot be consumed and the commandment not to cook a kid in its mother’s milk.

Further along in the Torah portion, it is written, “If there will be among you a needy person. . . you shall not harden your heart, and you shall not close your hand from your needy brother” (15:7).

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches that, “It was through agriculture that the Torah pursued its religious and social programme. It has three fundamental elements. The first was the alleviation of poverty.”

In our current society, what is the connection between eating meat and people living in poverty? The people in the US who are raising animals for food consumption are needy people. Continue reading