Shalom everyone :)

shalom y'all! joining today from munsee lenape / mohican land aka the mid hudson valley NY

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curiousity

I love Shamu

Grad student studying archaeology and human/animal relationships!

To see how much I don’t know!

Access to Jewish text

being part of a textual people tradition !

to learn more about engaging with nature through biblical text

Have been observing shmita with a group of growers and farmers, we have a lot of questions about that

Trying to reconnect ourselves and others with how judaism is BASED in agriculture

college student interested in jewish agriculture communities

I am making a new documentary film for PBS on SABBATH and was invited to sit in.

I love words - especially Jewish words

librarian for old books

trying to bring more of my jewish self to my farm and wanting to learn

have been searching for a place to learn about this for awhile and am excited to finally find this space

want to discover new ideas about jewish farming

Exploring human-plant relationships broadly through art and want to learn the ideas within judaism

I've learned a lot recently about Indigenous worldviews and land (in light of unlearning settler colonial worldview), and i'm interested in understanding more about relationship to land in my own Jewish culture

I’m a teacher and a community herbalist and I love Jewish plant traditions A LOT so this seems like a great place to deepen my knowledge

seed

seed-bearing vs fruit with seed in it

fruit

Bearing / fruit

bearing

Seed

of every kind

Earth is animate and reacting to God’s request for plants

“Be *fruitful* and multiply”

Those seeds feed us from our stores, then go back into the ground to repeat the cycle

there is a promise for future abundance in a seed

Everything begins as a seed....humans, animals, bacteria etc... begin at the level of a seed

lshomra is what we do with shabbos also?

creation is saved for the divine, so its a special gift of res to be able to create as wellOn Shabbos we are forbidden to create, what does that mean for the rest of the week/year? Creation is for HaShem, but he has entrusted us with is

I like that adam is meant to work and guard the garden as a whole, not just the trees or the animals or one thing. he is placed in the garden to keep the garden, the whole ecosystem and place which he is a part of

lush

Abundant

Timeless

lush, paradise

Perennial Paradise!

a lot of fruit

Wondering if “work” could be construed as building relationship with land, plants, nonhuman & human animals etc

Green and plentifu

don’t know why but I picture a wall around it

mesopotamia (:

kind of like my backyard honestly, all the plants and animals working together

Bountiful without much work….

food forest!

An orchard is a very different experience!

Full of fruits, I think, because they can be eaten and enjoyed so easily, without processing or a lot of digging and harvest effort

I see it as jungle, wild

There are so many "wild" uncultivated plants that have evolved "created" their own interdependant ecosystem that includes the animals

with conscious awareness of ourselves and our agency, we are granted a gift to shape God’s creation, but are also given responsibility

active work vs reactive guarding / passive "keeping" maybe

Thinking about the long term time component and commitment of perennials is so different from annuals

mmmmm. yup.

^Dana, yes! You plant a tree thinking about the next 20 years, not just this one

Hello everyone :) My name is Adam, I am a college student studying Regenerative Food Systems in Amherst, Massachusetts. My hopes are to work on a community farm/education center. I am searching for summer opportunities in this realm. I would be tremendously grateful if anyone could share opportunities or tell their stories about Jewish land based education or environmental activism. Please reach out to me at afinke@umass.edu. Thank you all and I look forward to connecting

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/377783?lang=bi

Link to text: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/377783?lang=bi

It seems to me like it's saying that humans have a place in the garden, that human tilling and tending is needed and is part of the garden. In other words that human caretaking has a positive role in the natural world.

Fascinating! :)

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/377783?lang=bi

Curse…and “Relief”

exhaustion

Burnout

injuries from over-work

YES! Horrible back pain

battling against the elements!

Numb fingers

Climate extremes closing our farm 🙁

Sunburn

Drought 🙁

blisters

not curse...challenge...invitation toreflect and learn

diseases

are we cursed to till the soil or is the soil cursed because we till it? we disturb the land by cultivating it for our food?

^^^^ i have this Q too

I feel like its a change from working for fun to working for necessity

No till!

Work is not a curse....We are not the Eloi from the novel Time Machine who are "provided for" in exchange for being eaten

In our group we were discussing that maybe it's the relationship between people and land that is cursed

There's a lot of popular historical writing about the development of grain agriculture as the source for hierarchical civilizations

and that there's this "common sense" explanation where concentrations of grain lead to concentrations of power

common historical anthropological misconception that our lives became better when we developed agriculture, more food, better lives. evidence popping up that our diets were more varied, took LESS work to get adequate calories, and we got to hang out and do cultural / social stuff more of the day when we were hunter gatherers!

fascinating

The transition from hunter-gatherer to pastoral to agriculture. There is a great book called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn about this

Sky bread!

And quail

Wow thank you for this interpretation

how does shmita work without storage?

Every part of the ecosystem of the universe "works" that is not a curse...it is human greed that is a self imposed curse

we too become annuals in the curse - for dust you and to dust you shall return

I'm thinking about how this "curse" has changed humanities relationship with plants, questioning if it made us more distant or more in collaboration with botanical life

Does it mean to relieve us?

so many "weeds" that thrive in disturbed areas

Does this have any implication connected to monoculture?

Is that when the admidah switches from asking for dew to asking for rain?

So your food will grow

soil health

soil moisture

More direct information

who else is there

insects

What critters live there!

the tools help save time and makes the work faster but we loose a little bit of connection

microbiology into your literal body

a sense of pride in standing upright

A different view

vs humility in being next to the ground

It was never on purpose Shamu…

hoeing necessitates planting in straight lines

time! it takes longer to weed by hand in close relationship

you’re causing compaction

Some Indigenous herbalists and seed keepers argue that “weed” is a colonial concept, as all plants are our relatives

speed

Deeper disturbance

Disrupting the soil layers

might be killing small animals

you’re potentially saving yourself a lot of hands-on work & working faster at the cost of the soil health

and of course now John Deere has released the “farmer-less tractor”

So did Noah really relieve the curse?

rely on rain

You have to rely on G!d!

you can't rely on human innovation, control, etc.

Do not exploit, take only what you may need

in the natural world (in gan eden?) animals will only take what is needed, not store up extra

that the relief from "the curse" requires relationships with god, the earth and each other

The shmita system also protected people from slavery in ancient times. After the liberation from Egypt, God required Jews who had enslaved other Jews (who could not afford to pay their debts) to release the people they had enslaved after 6 years. There’s a part of Jeremiah where some people are refusing to release, as required, after 6 years, and God gets very angry

Shalom everyone :) My name is Adam, I am a college student studying Regenerative Food Systems in Amherst, Massachusetts. My hopes are to work on a community farm/education center. I am searching for summer opportunities in this realm. I would be tremendously grateful if anyone could share any information or tell their stories about Jewish land-based education or environmental activism. Please feel free to reach out to me at afinke@umass.edu. Thank you all, looking forward to connecting

LImits

Adam….Adamah fellowship with Shamu!!!!

observing the technologies of neighbours and saying “is this a good idea for us?”

just because you have power doesn’t mean you should use it

Working and Guarding

adamah.org :)

Different kinds of work

Kira.rib@usf.edu if you have question Adam…can’t recommend enough

Thank you :)

I'm going to go look up shmr root in my dictionary :)

Thank you so much!

Thanks ya’ll