San Francisco’s Jewish Farm Needs More Room To Grow

This article was first published in The Times of Israel.

Urban Adamah fellow Laura Ruiz-Needleman (left) and Dani Friedenberg working on the farm (photo credit: Courtesy of Urban Adamah)

Twenty of Kehilla Community Synagogue’s 3^rd and 4^th graders don’t spend the majority of their Hebrew school time at the congregation’s Piedmont, California building. Instead, they dig into Judaism by getting their hands dirty at Urban Adamah, the only urban Jewish farm in North America, located in nearby Berkeley.

These kids are only twenty of the 10,000 annual visitors who come to Urban Adamah’s 1.25-acre site from around the San Francisco Bay Area for hands-on educational programming that combines Jewish values with sustainable agriculture and environmental stewardship.

Amazed at how quickly its mission and programs have attracted interest, Urban Adamah, which opened in 2011, has already decided it needs more room to grow and has announced plans to purchase and move to a property twice the size of its current one.

And the best part about Urban Adamah’s pulling up roots is that it doesn’t have to actually do so. Differing from other Jewish farms likeEden Village Camp in Putnam Valley, New York and the Pearlstone Center in Resisterstown, Maryland and Kavanah Gardenin Toronto, which are located in rural or suburban areas, Urban Adamah is currently situated on rented property in an inner-city setting. Accordingly, it has devised methods of growing all its crops in beds that are not only raised above the ground, but also portable and relatively easy to safely transport to a new site.

Urban Adamah’s executive director Adam Berman calls the purchase of the new 2.2-acre parcel in West Berkeley “a once in a lifetime opportunity” for the farm. “This piece of land is off-the-charts amazing,” he told The Times of Israel. There are not many large, open lots in the area, let alone ones that are comprised completely of exposed soil and situated next to a restored creek and wetland area.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

How Bourekas Are Shaping Up

This post first appeared as “A Boureka Nightmare” on The Jew and the Carrot blog at the Forward.

Lovers of bourekas, one of Israel’s national foods, had better brush up on their geometry. The Chief Rabbinate has issued new guidelines on the shapes of the pastry pockets — and no, we’re not kidding.

Until now, consumers have relied on signage by storeowners or package labels to discern among meat, dairy and pareve bourekas, which closely resemble turnovers, only with greasier dough. Now, the kashrut authority is apparently trying to standardize things across the country to keep consumers from accidentally breaking kosher laws.

A letter sent by the Chief Rabbinate to factories and bakeries states that beginning August 7, all kosher-certified dairy bourekas made from puff pastry must be triangular, while non-dairy or pareve ones must be square or rectangular in shape. Oh, and, there are different rules for bourekas encased in phyllo dough. These ones must be triangular or spiral shaped if they are non-dairy, and round or cigar shaped if they contain dairy. It’s all enough to give grown adults scary middle school math exam flashbacks.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Separate Trips, Shared Experiences

This article was first published in JWeekly.

The mysterious 1943 photo by Annemie Wolff-Koller of Jacqueline Shelton-Miller’s father that precipitated her recent trip to Germany.

Two mothers were talking at a Brandeis Hillel Day School event last winter in San Francisco when they stumbled upon a coincidence: Both of their families were planning to visit Europe at roughly the same time for the same special reason.

Those trips occurred this spring — one to Germany and one to Austria.

Both families attended dedication ceremonies for the laying of stolpersteine (German for “stumbling stones”) in front of  the homes of their ancestors before the Holocaust.

Stolpersteine are brass plaques with biographical information that are placed in the sidewalk in front of the last address of Nazi victims. The plaques can be found in more than 600 places in Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Norway and Ukraine.

The project is supported by local communities in Europe that view it as a small way to memorialize their Jewish former neighbors.

Both San Francisco families had unique stories leading up to the visit.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.