Jewish Farm School Gains Traction Among College Students

http://www.forward.com/articles/123860/
Forward.com
Jewish Farm School Gains Traction Among College Students Education
By Linda Kriger
Published January 20, 2010, issue of January 29, 2010. Rather than jet to tropical party capitals for spring break, about 105 Jewish college students are choosing to do
something a little different during their time off.
Some will be collecting maple sugar on the East Coast, while others will be working on organic farms in California. At the same time, they will learn about food sustainability, Jewish agricultural laws, medicinal herbs, global food security and the growing food justice movement within the Jewish and secular worlds.
The program, run by Jewish Farm School, with offices in New York and Philadelphia and co-sponsored by Hillel, intends to give students a greater understanding of the complex issues involving sustainable food production. Among the participating schools are New York University, the University of Miami and Arizona State University.
JFS has neither a farm nor a school, but provides a case study on how to carefully develop an organization with big long-term plans. Its gestation has taken five years, parallel to the growth of the Jewish sustainable-food movement.
Nati Passow, 30, a co-founder and director of JFS, became exposed to environmental education when he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Co-founder Simcha Schwartz, 31, went to the University of Kansas, where he became interested in farming, then to Israel, where he became more interested in Judaism.
At Penn, Passow completed a double major in religion and environmental studies and drafted the outline for what eventually became JFS: an experiential Jewish environmental program. At the time, his vision did not have a farming component.
In 2003, he contacted then Yale Law student Mark Barnett, who was interested in creating a Jewish farm school. Barnett sent him a 30-page proposal that mapped out his vision. “But it wasn’t his path,” Passow said. “He told us to take it and run with it.”
Passow said that he and Schwartz came to a realization: “It’s a great vision. We have no money. Let’s start small. Let’s run a couple of programs under the name Jewish Farm School and see what happens.”
One of the JFS’s first goals, Passow said, was to highlight all the “awesome things happening in Philly: city harvest, urban farmers, PhillyCarShare, people advocating for better mass transit.” Thus, in 2007, JFS started an Urban Sustainability Series, offering speakers, hands-on workshops and a Sabbath gathering, all co-sponsored by the Kol Tzedek Reconstructionist synagogue in West Philadelphia. The series has been held each fall for the past three years.
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The partnership with Hillel was the next big step. In January 2008, JFS offered a farming component to Hillel’s community service program. “They knew the model worked,“ Passow said. “They had done work in New Orleans after Katrina, and they wanted to work on food by having students take alternative breaks on farms. The first year, we did a summer pilot project on the Kayam farm in Maryland and one on the Oz farm in Mendocino County, California. Each trip had 10 students. It was very successful.”
Last summer, there were four trips with 75 students, and this year the school is running six spring and summer trips for 105 students. JFS’s next project is to create an educational farm at Eden Village Camp in Putnam Valley, N.Y. The camp is located on land owned by UJA-Federation of New York, about an hour north of New York City. Yoni Stadlin, who heads the camp, wants to focus on Jewish environmentalism, social justice and spirituality. He asked JFS to oversee the farming education piece.
JFS and Eden Village recently received a grant from the Natan Fund to run additional off-season programs on that site, including monthly nights of learning, art and music; a Sukkot festival, and monthly Sunday volunteer days to work on the farm, Schwartz said.
Recently, JFS began a consulting and outreach department called Cooperative Design. The organization gets calls from synagogues and Jewish community centers that want to start a garden on site and don’t know how to do it. JFS also helps private landowners who want their land to serve an educational or public interest function. Currently, JFS is working with a synagogue in northern New Jersey and with a Chicago family with land in Geneva, Ill., that wants to turn that land into an educational farm.
Last summer, JFS was accepted into an incubator program called Bikkurim. Based in New York City, Bikkurim nurtures new organizations by providing office space and organizational development assistance for up to five years. Passow and Schwartz are grateful for the help.
“We’re learning how to do it right,” Passow said. “So many organizations end up saying yes to everything, biting off more than they can chew, or growing at a rate that’s too fast for their own good. This is an opportunity to grow in a managed and sustainable way.”
There is a long-term agenda that JFS wants to pursue.
“We need to start making careers out of Jewish farming,” Schwartz said. “A reason why I helped found the Jewish Farm School was to educate people about Judaism and farming in a community. I want them also to learn how to make farming meaningful and to earn a potential livelihood.”
Linda Kriger is a freelance writer living in Philadelphia.
Copyright © 2010, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This is why we need HAM operators in emergency situations!

Low-tech radios connect some Haitians

By John D. Sutter, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Amateur radio provides a back-up link between Haiti and the world
  
• Proponents say radio signals are often the only way to communicate after a disaster
  
• A Haitian man says amateur radio helped him contact family in the U.S.
  
• After initial outages, mobile phone service has been returning to Haiti

(CNN) -- In the brutal aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, Jean-Robert Gaillard turned to his low-tech radio for solace and for a lifeline.

When the earthquake hit, the 57-year-old from Petionville, Haiti, found most of his normal lines of communication -- his cell phone, the Internet, even his ability to walk down the street and talk to someone -- severed by the disaster.

But Gaillard used a neighbor's generator to power up his radio and connect to a handful of amateur radio enthusiasts in the United States -- many of whom were eagerly listening to radio static for calls like his.

Unlike many other people in Haiti, Gaillard was able to contact family members in the United States soon after the January 12 earthquake hit to tell them he had survived.

In those first hellish moments, that connection seemed like a miracle.

"It relieved the tension of my family members," he said, speaking by Skype from Haiti on Tuesday, which he says wasn't possible until more recently. "They could hear my voice. They knew that I was OK."

Much has been made about the role flashier technologies like Twitter, Skype and text messaging have played in helping disaster victims find loved ones and communicate with international aid workers. But it is worth noting that, when all else fails, the low-tech hum of a radio frequency is sometimes the only line of communication that's open.

iReport: Search list of the missing and the found

Enthusiasts of amateur radio -- or ham radio -- are quick to use this as evidence that international aid groups and governments should rely more heavily on radio in disaster situations. Ham radio signals bounce off of a layer of charged particles in Earth's atmosphere, called the ionosphere, and, depending on the conditions, can work at times when other modes of communication fail.

But amateur radio is best viewed as one of many communications options in the wake of a disaster, said Keith Robertory, manager of disaster services technology at the American Red Cross, who has been helping in Haiti relief efforts from Washington.

The best communication technology in a disaster, he said, is whatever happens to work at the time.

"Amateur radio is a very powerful tool if the amateur radio operators are in the area where the disaster occurs," he said. "There's a window of opportunity for amateur radio operators right at the beginning [of a disaster]. ... That's where they are extremely valuable."

Because that window has now passed, cell phone connections, text messages, Twitter posts and Skype calls are becoming more significant, he said.

A 23-year-old woman, for example, was rescued in Haiti after text messages were sent from beneath the rubble of a school building.

Full coverage | Twitter updates

Radio stations in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, have been broadcasting almost since the earthquake, providing the only means of communication for some people, Agence France-Presse reports.

Some mobile phone towers in Haiti fell during the earthquake, and cell phone service was not returned to much of the country until at least two days after the tremors first shook the poor Caribbean nation, according to a mobile phone company operating in Haiti.

About a third of people in Haiti have access to mobile phones, compared to nearly 90 percent of people in the United States.

Reports suggest Internet connections also were spotty in the earthquake's aftermath; and only about 11 percent of Haitians have access to the Web in non-disaster situations, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Aid groups and journalists have relied on satellite phones, which work independently from local Internet and mobile phone infrastructure as long as the sky isn't too cloudy.

Such technology isn't commonly available for disaster victims, however.

Carol Wilson, compliance director for Trilogy International Partners, which provides mobile phone service to about 1 million people in Haiti, said 80 percent of the company's cell towers in Haiti were working as of Tuesday.

The company is donating out $5 worth of free phone calls to its customers and is giving people double the amount of minutes they would normally get so they can catch up with loved ones and communicate with aid groups, she said.

The main problem with mobile phone connections now, she said, may be fuel, since generators are used to power most cellular towers in Haiti.

In the immediate wake of the disaster, before cell phone coverage was restored, William F. Sturridge, a ham radio operator in Flagler Beach, Florida, said he was able to connect a priest living on the remote Haitian village of Ile-a-Vache with his family members in the United States.

On Wednesday morning, the day after the earthquake hit, he said he heard a faint call of "hotel, hotel," which signifies the "HH" letters at the beginning of radio call signs in Haiti. He responded immediately.

"When other systems don't work, [radio] always works," he said. "It doesn't matter -- no matter where you are in the world ... you can get a [high-frequency] signal out and somebody will hear."

After connecting with the priest in Haiti, Sturridge said he called the man's brother to tell him his sibling had survived the earthquake.

"He was super worried," he said. "They hadn't heard from him, and it was wonderful to be able to pass the information and hear the relief in the voice."

Sturridge said he's been listening for radio calls from Haiti almost non-stop, with no sleep, since the earthquake hit a week ago. The 51-year-old is disabled, and he said the radio gives him a lifeline to the outside world as well.

"It's very difficult for someone who is bed-bound to be able to work and be able to enjoy the benefits of helping other people, so this is one way I can do this very easily," he said.

"Certainly, I can't think of anything more rewarding than saving a life."

While the ability for even one person to communicate with the outside world immediately after a disaster has potentially huge impact, the number of people making calls from Haiti by amateur radio appears to be very small.

Brian Crow, who has been communicating with people in Haiti by radio from outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said only three people in Haiti have made contact with the United States by ham radio since the earthquake.

Crow said his primary role has been taking calls, finding out what aid is needed, and relaying the information to Web sites collecting news about missing people.

A number of sites -- including CNN's iReport and Google -- are creating databases with information about missing people in Haiti.

Other groups have put together population estimates based on satellite maps as a way for aid groups to target their relief efforts. And a site called Ushahidi is mapping text messages and calls for help in Haiti to give aid groups a better picture of dire needs for food, water and medical help.

Gaillard, the Haitian man who used ham radio to contact loved ones, said the week following Haiti's earthquake has been absolute hell.

But the fact that he could get on the radio and talk to people outside the situation made him feel connected to the world and has given him the strength to keep going.

"We are in God's hands now," he said.

Kosher Beef Jerkey

I just found this: http://holycowkosher.com/



Enjoy!

Biblical Sources

Just to add two more Biblical sources to David's posting regarding the first preppers:

Prior to Joseph storing food for seven years...

When Esau was to meet up with Jacob. He feared that he would be killed and took the initiative to divide his family, flock and belongings into two camps. Should one camp be overridden the other would survive.

The second example, and perhaps the most famous, is that of Noah and his preparations for hundreds of years for the eventual flood and destruction of the world!

I'm sure there are many more examples from the Torah. Please let us know what you can come up with...

LDS Preparedness

Maybe we have something to learn from the Mormons...

I just ordered a Family Home Storage Starter Kit from the LDS website.

http://www.ldscatalog.com/

You are not required to be a member and for less than $30 you can get a box of great dry grains, rice and beans with a shelf life of 30+ years!

I'll let you know more when I receive it...stay tuned!

I will also add a link to their pdf 'survival guide'. If you can see beyond their theological hype, they have a lot of good information! Perhaps we should create a Jewish version of this booklet...

www.green-trust.org/freebooks/Preparedness.pdf

Enjoy!

Photos

How do you start prepping? By David

For some time, I’ve been lurking in http://www.survivalblog.com/ and flitting in and out of some of the other ‘prepper’ sites. Many have a strong Christian flavor to them and I began to wonder about the Jewish perspective as well as where I stand.

I’m a huge fan of science fiction and remember reading post-civilization novels as a kid and as preppers began to make it into the mainstream (see Newsweek’s article http://www.newsweek.com/id/228428) I began to think I’m way behind the curve. Our society, especially Jewish communities which tend to be in metropolitan areas rather than rural areas, are incredibly dependent on a hugely complex infrastructure. I remember the first time I worked in a small town in eastern Washington State. I visited ranchers and joked with them as a NYC Jew “so this is where you grow steaks” and even drove a combine for a few rows during a wheat harvest. I met a real cowboy, he ‘commuted ‘ to work on is horse, had the archetypical .45 caliber cowboy pistol around his waist and a rifle tucked away in a scabbard on the saddle. He could have been off a movie set of an old western except he didn’t roll his own cigarettes. In urban and suburban areas, the stores have perhaps a 3 – 4 day stock of food, which depends on trucks for constant re-stocking.

Start Imagining small- time scenarios, for example, electricity being out for 10 days due to a weather storm taking out a few major substations. No electric light, no electric stoves, no gasoline (depends on electric pumps to fill your tank), no ATMs, no credit card or debit card purchases, no internet, no lots of stuff we depend on for our day to day survival. Maybe you can drive to Aunt Sadie, but what if she is also affected. What would I do? What could I do? The food in the fridge and freezer would be gone in a few days, the store shelves would be bare, my cell phone uncharged and only useful as a paperweight, my car nearly out of gas…. Now imagine a larger scenario, and there are plenty to choose from.

I felt overwhelmed. How could I help my parents who are elderly and one confined to a wheelchair? How could I help my brother and sister, my nieces and nephews, how could I help the larger Jewish Community and others? I couldn’t. I would be hard-pressed to manage my (single) self.

I began to read the web’s offerings and despite a lots of view points, and a logic that tells me a 10 – 14 day scenario is probably more likely to occur than not occurring in the next 10 years, I could not find the motivation to take any concrete steps. I could not overcome the expected ridicule of family and friends for ordering a bunch of Kosher MRE’s (google Meals Ready to Eat).

Perhaps I needed a Jewish perspective, a Jewish obligation to start. Couldn’t Joseph be viewed as the first prepper seeing 7 years of famine looming? Although not a student of the Talmud, two things stuck in my head: if you are stranded in the dessert and have only enough water for you to survive the trek to safety, are you obligated to share your water (dooming yourself to death)? The answer is no. The second was if you learned that someone was planning to kill you tomorrow, that you should wake up early and kill them first. I emailed the Chabad “ask the Rabbi” what the Jewish perspective on prepping is and await their answer. And yes, I would rather be the one handing out MRE’s to family and as a charity, then be on the receiving end. Do I think this is likely? No, but I have all types of insurance of mere property. MRE’s are insurance for lives. I hope I don’t need either, but I am prepared for both.

So how do you start? First, read a lot of stuff. We will be compiling a list of reading, both fiction and non-fiction but don’t limit yourself to our choices. Find the framework that motivates you. If you can only envision a short-term disruption in services, start by making sure you have a supply of prescribed medicines stashed away, and enough food that has a long shelf-life. Maybe some extra blankets if the heat goes out for 3 weeks in the winter. What if you envision what is referred to as TEOTWAWKI [The End of The World As We Know]? Boy, planning for a breakdown of the social contract is daunting.

So my answer to the question is simply “prepping for what?” Prepping for a 2 week emergency seems more than prudent. Start by figuring out what you need for two weeks survival without supplies from the outside. For example:
Water containers. Enough for 2 liters per day per person (and some for pets)
A supply of prescribed medications.
Food that can be stored (MRE’s, pasta, freeze dried & etc) long term, figure eating twice daily.
Fuel to cook food if needed (an extra propane tank or bag of charcoal for the grill).
Batteries and flashlights.

That’s probably about as bare bones as you can get and seems to me to be a reasonable start. How far do you want to take your preparations is up to you.

What we aim to do here is to serve as a source of information and a sounding board for those interested in more than the bare minimums. Me, I like target shooting and this Jew will not serve as a scapegoat for the world’s evils if the SHTF (Shit Hits The Fan aka societal collapse). Do you find that idea unsettling? So do I but playing blame the Jew seems to be popular throughout the world in good times, let alone bad times! I have subtly altered my goals in target shooting to enable myself to use my skills in a defensive manner. What skills do you have that can be altered to be more useful in an emergency?

Here are some books that we like.

Fiction:
One Second After, by Willian Forstchen. A fun little novel exploring the what if of losing the entire electrical grid. Makes you think. A lot.
World Made By Hand: A Novel., by James Kunstler. What the world be like years (decades?) after a collapse. Beautiful prose.
Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse, by James Wesley Rawles. More of a how to manual disguised as a novel. Mr Rawles also runs the web site http://www.survivalblog.com/ previously sited.
Unintended Consequences, by John Ross. Very hard to find but rumored to soon be available in paperback. Very seditious in many ways and made me proud that the First Amendment protected this book. I can’t imagine it being printed in most countries!

Non-Fiction:
Boston’s Gun Bible, by Boston T Party. The newly revised edition. The first parts of the book is basic gun education and strong points/weak points of numerous types of rifles, shotguns and pistols. Read this before buying any weapon! The second part of the book is political in nature and his pro-Bill of Rights stand is somewhat extreme. But imagine if you had to register your computer’s color printer!

Numerous books on ‘Outdoor Survival’

The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Knots and Ropework, by Geoffry Budworth. A great book of knotting, with better instructions than most. OK, so I like cool knots.