Dear Brandeis community,

 

On Tuesday, we took a day for professional development, one focused on the role of food in Jewish practice and traditions. It was a great day of engagement with ideas—a feast of learning, to use Jewish Learning Works’ phrase—from challah baking to the science of food choice, sustainable farming and Jewish ethics, eco-Kashrut, and the mindfulness embedded in blessings. And of course, lots of food.

 

While our entire faculty and staff gathered around tables to mix, knead, and share stories, I started us off with a Joy Harjo poem (my second Joy Harjo poem for a Brandeis event in the course of a week, which is certainly a personal record), titled “Perhaps the World Ends Here.” It begins with the line “The world begins at a kitchen table,” and from there the table becomes a kind of center for human experience, the gravity that pulls together family, tradition, and history. The poem ends as it begins, in the connection between our lived experience and the tables around which we shared those experiences:

 

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

 

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

 

We were very lucky to partner with some amazing teachers, from parents in our own community (thank you Jackie, Deanna, Michelle, and Joelle!), to Rabbi Alex Shandrovsky of L’Chaim Foods, Rachel Brodie, Deborah Newbrun (Brandeis alumni parent), and Rachel Binstock of Urban Adamah. In designing this professional development day, we wanted to provide a catalyst for future thinking—to spark ideas about how we can continue to develop a K-8 curriculum around the ethics of food in Jewish practice, notions of sustainability, and the connections between what we eat and how we live.

 

It was truly a day to nourish our minds and our community—and no less an authority than Ardath Kirchner dubbed it the best professional development day in her 45 years here at Brandeis. Throughout the day’s workshops and gatherings, our faculty and staff shared their own stories about how they make the choices they do around food—whether through the lens of kashrut, veganism, nutrition, or family traditions. It is our hope that these stories will help move this conversation and curriculum forward. To that end, I would love to hear from any of you in the Brandeis community, about your own food choices, traditions, and hopes and dreams—for your children, for our community, and for our world. Please send me a note with the subject line “Food for the Soul,” and I will share your responses in a future Word of the Week.

 

Wishing you all nourishing weekends, my friends!

 

Warmly,

 

Dan