Two Inspiring Experiments, and Four Stars

• Two Inspiring Experiments, and Four Stars
• Israel Ride Early Bird Registration ends April 30th!
• Torah of Food Weekend Retreat
• Hazon Food Festival: Rocky Mountain Region Three Days Away!
• Behar 2013: Bringing SHmita to Your Community
• reIMAGINE Society: Behar in the Bay Area
• Become a JCarrot Writer Today

New York
Thursday, April 25th, 2013 / 30th day of the Omer

Dear All,

I just got back from a fascinating and inspiring trip to the West Coast, in which I spent time with our Bay Area staff, finished the first draft of our forthcoming Shmita materials, and visited not one, but two of the most profoundly exciting experiments in Jewish life in the whole country.

The first was in San Diego, visiting the Leichtag Foundation’s Paul Ecke Ranch. It’s a 67-acre plot in the middle of San Diego’s North County, and they have an incredible vision for its future (including their new Jewish Food Justice Fellowship.

Then I spent Earth Day with Adam Berman in the East Bay, meeting the current crop of Urban Adamahniks and visiting what (I trust and hope; and Adam believes and intends) will be the new permanent home of Urban Adamah – a beautifully-sized and well-located site in West Berkeley.

These two new projects are deeply significant, because so much of post-emancipation Jewish life involved a kind of privatization – the classic idea that we would be Jewish in our homes, but simply citizens in public space; variously French, Germans, Brits, and ultimately Americans, “of the Mosaic persuasion”. It was a compromise that was intended to offer civic tolerance, but too frequently in its wake it engendered anti-semitism, and in critical ways narrowed the frame of Jewishness.

Places like Paul Ecke Ranch and Urban Adamah – and like Brandeis Bardin Institute in LA, the Pearlstone Center in Baltimore, and the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in CT – are vital because of the opportunity they afford for what I think of as 360-degree Jewish life. Each of these places bears the possibility, not only of touching people’s lives in profound ways, but also of creating bubbles in space and time that enable new expressions of Jewish life to evolve.

Speaking of bubbles in time: it was great also to be in Seattle, where our Cross-USA Ride kicks-off on June 16th. You’re warmly invited to ride across the USA with us this summer – or just part of it.

Finally: we just received two phenomenal pieces of news:

First: Charity Navigator, America’s largest and most-utilized independent evaluator of charities, has just awarded Hazon the prestigious 4-star rating for good governance, sound fiscal management, and commitment to accountability and transparency. (To put this in perspective: if you type “Jewish” into Charity Navigator’s site, you get 263 hits – and 213 of those don’t have four stars.) This is a significant external endorsement and it reflects hard work and high standards on the part of both our board and our staff.

Secondly, and partly linked to Charity Navigator’s 4-star rating: a family foundation has just offered us a new matching grant. New or increased gifts will be matched, by them, up to a total of $50,000. So if you’ve never supported us in the past, or decide now to increase your gift to us – your gift (or the increase over the previous year) will help us to earn that extra $50,000.

As per the grant we received recently from The Samuel Bronfman Foundation’s Second Stage Fund, you can read my reflections as part of a series on eJewish Philanthropy.

Finally: that match applies also to our Benefit, which takes place next Tuesday, and which promises to be an amazing evening. We will be honoring Richard Dale, Nili Simhai, Saul Kaiserman, and Mira Schwartz. I hope to see you there.

Thank you, and Shabbat shalom,

 

 

 

 

Nigel Savage
Executive Director, Hazon