Civil Eats

They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat. If the majority of Jewish holidays had a single tag line, that’s what it would be, and Passover is no different.

On Passover Jewish people around the world re-tell the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. When the Jews fled from Pharaoh in order to escape slavery, they didn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise so they ate unleavened bread. During the holiday, which begins on April 18, many Jews take up wheat-free and yeast-free diets to commemorate the exodus. Passover represents more than half of annual Kosher food sales worldwide, according to Kedem, a New Jersey-based Kosher food manufacturer.

Each year, the Kosher food industry releases new products in time for the Kosher-for-Passover food rush, and this year there’s a proliferation of gluten-free and organic items. Read More

Only 20 percent of people who seek out kosher foods are Jewish; the rest look for the label because they believe it signals food that is healthy, safe, and generally high in quality. The reality is that many kosher meats and processed foods — like their conventional non-kosher counterparts — are made in large, industrial facilities. Today’s kosher standards are focused mainly on religious ritual and do not account for aspects of the production process that might impact the environment* or food system workers.

If Rabbi Morris Allen and the team behind a soon-to-be-introduced seal and certification process called Magen Tzedek (or “seal of justice”) have their way, however, this won’t always be the case. Through Magen Tzedek, Allen hopes to give food producers a chance to incorporate social justice, corporate transparency, and environmental stewardship into the world of kosher food. And, while Jewish people make up only two percent of the U.S. population, the movement to create a complementary label for sustainable kosher food has significant implications for the wider food world. Forty percent of all products sold in the US are certified kosher and the market is growing. When they were last measured in 2008, sales of kosher foods totaled $12.5 billion. I spoke with Rabbi Allen recently about his motivation and the challenges he’s facing in advancing this new frontier for kosher food.   Read More

In most respects, Fishkill Farms operates like any of the dozens of sustainable family farms that dot New York’s Hudson River Valley. Each morning, a team of workers heads out into the field to plant and prune back weeds, or tend to the farm’s 50 acres of fruit trees. Nearby, chickens busily peck at the grass around their mobile coop, enriching the soil as they go, and laying eggs with yolks like ripe tangerines. Unlike its neighbors, however, Fishkill Farms has an unusual Jewish history — one that, it turns out, is remarkably well suited for the Rosh Hashanah table. Read More