Sara In Akko

These sweet potatoes were the start of an important discussion. One my husband and I had been having for some time. One I'd almost forgot to have with my children, but one they would most certainly be effected by.

"Do you see how this sweet potato grows on it's own? What would happen if we put it in the ground to grow?"

"Would it grow us lots of sweet potatoes Mommy?"

"Yes. It would work with other kinds of vegetables too."

"Then we wouldn't have to go to the store, you would say, 'Go outside and get us vegetables from the ground' and we would say 'Nummy, ground vegetables!'"

Her tiny reasoning was music to my ears.

Essentially my husband and I have been having, not so much a debate, but an evolving conversation that has grown with us over time. How do we want to live?

We're inching towards moving off the grid. Not in the romantic wilderness way but slowly planning for a future that involves self-built and ecologically sound housing and a micro-farming business. Some kids, some small animals and we'll call it a hard fought win.

We're hoping that in the next year or so we'll be ready for the big move from rented apartment dwellers with with potted herbs in the kitchen to home builders with the start to a healthy and self reliant life.

But there is finding land, being absorbed into the community, searching out suppliers, finding the right builders, obtaining permits, learning our limitations, the hunt for financing, government loans and and and...

There is an ever growing list of single tiny hitches that could derail the utopia of our plans at every bend. Just thinking of how to go about a life change of this magnitude isn't easy and so I can only imagine what life on a tiny farm would actually mean to our entire family.

So this is the first step.

"Don't you think it would be nice to live somewhere where we could grow our own food?"

"That'd be awesome Mommy! Let's do it."

Maybe someday soon we will.

Looks like one of my favorite pastimes is gaining some street cred around Israel.*

Check out this commercial from a popular clothing chain in Israel

Love it!

I loved my first encounter with Urban Knitting or Guerrilla Knitting aka Yarn Bombing a few years back and still find it "the least offensive form of graffiti" around. In fact it's downright cheerful.

While living in Jerusalem, I felt ridiculous when I'd find myself to be the only woman on the bus not busy at work crocheting kippot for my husband, son or brother. I simply didn't know how.

Being that it was the apparent city-wide sport of my peers, I taught myself.

Rather, this great woman taught me how to crochet. She makes the most instructive and helpful YouTube tutorials I've ever found. Have a look.

* For the record, we don't own a TV and I just happened to see this commercial which sent me into a frenzy trying to find it online to share, I just think it's that neat.

I typically take steps to keep my personal blogging fairly light hearted and without much intrigue but was tempted today by something larger than a contest. But rather a really on point question raised by said contest. A Tallit up for grabs was posted recently by a blog I've enjoyed reading for some time here.

So I began to think about my own interest in Tallitot. For starters I grew up in an egalitarian community where women did not wear a Tallit, but as I grew the environment began to change rapidly. Although just five years prior my sister was not given a Tallit, by my Bat Mitzvah it was not a question of whether or not a girl would wear a Tallit but which Tallit she would wear.

The options were not plentiful, you could choose between a very plain blue striped pattern or a more elaborate blue striped pattern. All wool, all with machine embroidered Atara and all miniature versions of a full grown man's Tallit, sized to accommodate the petite stature of a girl about to become a tiny woman.

As I had demanded a dark navy blue invitation with the skyline of Jerusalem in a 3 hour negotiation stand-still with my mother, it was my natural choice that I would choose the blue Tallit with the elaborate Jerusalem skyline to match. I was told repeatedly for years to come that this was a pretty "Butch" Tallit for a young lady.

I didn't care.

I loved wearing my Tallit. I loved draping it around my body. I loved being a fully-fledged adult and member of the community and I took this responsibility with all the maturity I could muster. Wearing a Tallit gave me a sense of religious purpose, stepping into my own space to commune with my Maker.

But I do not wear my Tallit anymore. I have become a more observant Jew, as observant as I imagined myself to be as a tween. I am a Jewish wife and mother and woman in Israel and all of these labels give me new limitations and horizons in my development. My chosen community is millions of miles away from the community in which I was born and I can't see myself walking around on Shabbat in a Tallit with all the men of my small city. I can't say that I would care to. As a modern religious woman I've found that can take that sense of my own space with me at all times, I don't need this props and staging.

I could go back and forth on the debate; is it forbidden, no. Does that make it appropriate, perhaps? Can a woman even wear a Tallit? Well, can't she?

I feel very fortunate to have lived to see a point in religious renewal where well educated and well grounded women are able to ask important questions. Questions that are not in defiance of tradition saying boldly that men and women are no different (believe me, we're different) but rather questions that force us to think like our sages. When our world has changed so drastically, are we not at a different point in our religious needs. The Torah is unchanging and society cannot be a measure of how to observe the laws of our Torah but there are questions that simply aren't answered by assuming a woman is not obligated and therefore may... or may not... or should not.

I don't feel that I would ever be comfortable in the community I was raised in. Their observances are now so foreign to me that I am often at a loss of words when I return for brief visits.

Instead of answering important modern Halakhic questions based in law and religious discourse, I often find that the purveyors of religious knowledge are limited in scope and are unable to adequately answer the basics of Religious Law. Instead there is an odd mixture of fear and myth about rituals they have deemed unnecessary such as Kashrut, Taharat Mishpacha and a host of other fundamental issues. This doesn't mean I resent other Jews who choose to live a different path than I choose for myself and my family but rather I am saddened that the outright prevalence of deeming my practices archaic.

I don't flinch at a woman in a Tallit and Kippa who is called Rabbi, but I feel a kindred purpose with those wearing a Tichel or beanie and are as well versed in living Judaism and Halakha as any man who never questioned whether or not he would wear a Tallit.

I hope that somehow my coming from this particular community widens their tolerance and love of other Jews as well as my own Ahavat Yisrael.

I guess I've arrived at a point where I can say a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.

Thanks to A Mother in Israel for the soul search.

I'd love to hear your comments if you've got them.

Not so long ago my life was not comprised of a husband, children, family business or blog.

At one point I lived in a large house in the city that housed a collection of eco-do-gooders. Conscious communists of the French variety (born into commune life, not self-declared), bicycle messengers, and the other city-dweller sorts of earthy young adults who drove bio-diesel burners or never drove at all. We had the kind of transient roommates that are best described as couch surfers who seemed to drift effortlessly through life without a mailing address.

Everyone held stable-ish jobs for 20-somethings. One was even the head of a large corporation's programing department. His paycheck certainly wasn't the reason he lived in a communal house.

Some of these roommates and transients belonged to the local bike gang. Not quite Hell's Angels. The gang's activities included rehabbing bicycles to become load bearing and be sent to Developing Nations, creating environmental awareness through the city with their rides that closed down major thoroughfares, creating found-art of everything and anything and....

Dumpster Diving... for food. Also known as Dumpster Dining.


Our home often hosted large dinners of coworkers from an environmental watch group that could reach up to 20+ people on any given weeknight. Rent plus utilities and normal groceries rarely accommodate feeding that many others in your home regularly. I won't describe the incredible amount of food large grocery networks are forced by law or policy to throw away daily or the steps they take to ensure that their food isn't accessible once tossed to the dumpster, but you can imagine that every item that does not sell from your local Whole Foods will eventually end up in their dumpsters out back.

If that food is fortunate, and willing hands are fortunate enough to reach it in time the food may end up on someone's plate as a perfectly good meal. This photo of the found food is taken from an interview with a few college-freegans in MN who seem to express the same sort of attitude as my former roommates.

I never ate a veggie gone bad, there was nothing on anyone's plate that had turned or soured. This was nourishment with intrinsic value both nutritionally and monetarily to our huge dinner tables. In fact, you'd be surprised at the way organic produce looks when finally given the heave ho from the aisles; wrapped, labeled, dated, edible. Most grocers even dispose of their expired items in a re-user friendly way quite naturally as each section takes care of their own clean-up, they bag and separate food items by department.

My life is long since removed from these re-purposed dinner tables. Here in Akko, there are not any alternative bike gangs running around screaming for the environment, or groups of youths jumping into dumpsters to rescue high quality organic produce that has sat for it's one day in the sun. There are no locks on our dumpsters to keep these alt-kids out.

But Akko is a terribly poor city. Our citizens are on average old and many live well under the poverty line even on government assistance. Many elderly collect bottles and cans from the receptacles for the tiny refund they can receive in the supermarkets. There are also quite a few salvagers who look for scrap out of the 40 year old electronics that are thrown to the curb. Although there are assistance organizations that take second-hand clothing for redistribution it is often most common for clothes to be left folded neatly in large bags and placed next to the dumpsters so someone in need might take these items quietly in the night without the shame of visiting an aid organization.

My home is directly behind the supermarket which, for comparisons, is roughly the size of a large American 7-11 with just 4 aisles. Our market opens at 7AM and by 8AM all of the cleaning of the produce aisle and the shipments for the new day have taken place. The old produce, often visibly rotten (high heat and high humidity are not the friends of such products) is brought out to the dumpster. By 8AM when I walk my daughter to preschool the entire back end of the market is covered with elderly waiting for this food to be disposed of so that they can toss it into their market carts to be taken home.

Today was the first day my 4 year old gave any serious notice to this matter. Although she is generally a very thoughtful and caring child she has learned from well intentioned adults that something unclean is labeled "foo dirty."

And so she began with her questioning, "Mama, isn't that a bad man? He is playing in the garbage. Foo. That's not nice."

My heart breaks a little every time I see someone's grandmother digging through our trash or someone's grandfather jumping in after the spoiled tomatoes but I had no idea how to explain in a Jewish and civilly responsible way to my child what she was witnessing.

Jewish law goes very far to explain that you are obligated to provide charity to others in need, even when you yourself are in need. Throughout Israel you will even notice that people do not throw out bread, it is left in the open for the poor to take. And overall, that while you are to provide for others in need, you must grant people their self respect which sometimes means allowing them to do what is necessary to survive. Slipping someone a few bucks to go into the market and buy food might seem like a reasonable action to the untrained bystander, but that very action might take away the person's dignity in accepting charity.

And so today I have to prepare myself for a talk with a four year old about the facts of life, that people in her city do go hungry and that people who look like her grandparents often wait for food to be thrown in a dumpster so they can feed their families. I know that this is true of other major cities, even in the lucrative suburbs of my youth, but here our poverty is apparent and should be confronted head on. Even if that means starting with my own children.

This is a short documentary called Meet the Freegans
Britain has become serious about reducing food waste in the home, great for conservation ideas

Where I grew up, the birthday ritual for a child was pretty straightforward. Generally there would be a birthday party with a handful of kids from your neighborhood Games, cake and gifts. Perhaps you throw in a family dinner later that week.

There was even a time when we were kids when you would get to bring special treats to your classmates. Something home-baked, loaded with sugar, decorated with care and that took away just enough time from class work to make all 24 classroom birthdays really special. I have heard that most American schools have done away with this ritual for all the same reasons we enjoyed them so much.

*Let me interrupt this little story with an important detail, although my family has lived in this city for a few years, for all intents and purposes, I am pretty foreign to my surroundings.

When my daughter started preschool last September, I wasn't concerned with what I thought was the standard operating procedure. Mom makes lovely hand written invites to all the girls in the preschool class, prepares cake and party games and waits for the guests to arrive.

Much to my surprise, 2 girls attended my daughters first kid birthday party. They had a lovely time and ate a ton of cake, but I was completely caught off guard.

So what do you do for an Israeli kids birthday party?

My daughters birthday was the first of the school year and I was later told by the surprised parents of other children that the correct thing to do is bring goody bags to the classroom, the kids sing and eat a store bought cake from a package (although plenty of sugar crosses into this preschool much to my chagrin, no food from a foreign and possibly not kosher kitchen can).

I chalk this up to a lesson learned and have been preparing goody bags for months, both in my head and in my craft room. This birthday, I'll be ready.

This year has seen a continued growth of National Service participation among Arab youths within their communities. Akko has been awarded for the exceptional services offered by it's Arab youths in their dedication to their community.

I can't think of anything more important to emphasize than this achievement. Many Israelis and foreign onlookers are quick to criticize the community service offered by youths within the Jewish sector.

"Why don't they do more for all the residents of the entire city?"

I have heard this question before. This question implies that a teen who works in a Jewish school has neglected the needs of the Arab sector. This question also shows that it is being asked by a person who doesn't see the larger picture, the scope of need within a city quite like Akko. It is layered and complex and certainly not as simple as if one population is being served than another must be neglected.

I have often wondered how people could believe that a single solution would possibly fit for an entire city and it's many needs. There is no such magical one-size fits all solution to societal distress. It takes many partners to care for an entire city and it's varied population.

The rising number of Arab youths concerned about their own communities and volunteering to better the situations of children and families in need is exemplary. Its scope of impact, creating safe afternoon options for 70 children 5 days a week, is a service this city is truly in need of.

See the full article in Hebrew here

Actually... it's here.

We're building towards soemthing big to help kids in the city of Akko. We're saving money on the annual dinner budget and taking it to the Web! Join us, pass it on and most importantly...

Spread the Love; Ahavat Yisrael!

Here's the big exciting project Yeshivot Bnei Akiva is letting me work on. This was filmed in a single hour all around Akko and with a plain digital camera. Using only free applications and open-source programs I'm attempting to build a new approach to the Annual Dinner. More details to follow.

Everyone knows that the best way to prepare for the worst is just that, plan for the worst.

Here in Akko, during the Second Lebanon War, many of the residents were left stranded in their homes for days and days and days on end. All normal life ceased. Stores were open sporadically, basic food staples were scarce and tensions ran extremely high as air raid sirens blared daily for hours on without much respite from this tense situation. For school children who had planned on a least a uneventful summer break, the war's toll was much more costly than the lost hours of childhood vacation.

During this war, as was true also during Operation Cast Lead, the citizens left in ther bomb shelters in fear of their lives were greatly aided by those who in the face of danger served their communities to the best of their abilities.

This great compassion and ability to serve others is a quality widely recognized in the many Hesder students across the nation. They learn, they serve, they are community leaders. We owe them a great deal for their dedication to Am Yisrael.

Israel's Civil Defense has recognized this natural resource and has created their own emergency plan for the "next case of all-out war, natural disasters, large IDF operations, and similar national emergencies." - Arutz Sheva

Nobody likes thinking of what the next crisis, disaster, operation or war will look like, what terrible form it will take or its toll on our citizens. The best way to save lives in a time of crisis is to be prepared.

Here's the original report.