About a week ago I stumbled across this great resource called “The Better World Shopper” at some little independent bookstore (I think we were in Pasadena). Unfortunately I didn’t buy a copy for myself and have since then,vowed not to buy another book until October, because I have be spending too much and not reading enough as of late. Hum, maybe Tamara wants to buy us a copy?  

Anyhow its a tiny little book not much bigger than a Bencher is, so it’s very portable and IMO just as handy. It basically provides consumers with a graded list (click on the image above for the grading rubric) of a wide variety of products from over 1000 companies.

Here is a description of the books (& sites) basic goal.

BETTER WORLD SHOPPER is a site dedicated to providing people with a comprehensive, up-to-date, reliable account of the social and environmental responsibility of every company on the planet AND making it available in practical forms that individuals can use in their everyday lives. Coming out of more than 5 years of intensive research, this work is based on a comprehensive database of over 1000 companies and utilizes 25+ reliable sources of data to cover everything from the environment to human rights, community development to animal protection.

According to the Authors the problem can be summed up as the following.

Money is power. And wherever large amounts of money collect, so also new centers of power form. The latest historical manifestation of this is the modern corporation.

Make no mistake, these new power centers are not democracies. We don’t vote for the CEO’s or their policies (unless we are: rich enough to be significant shareholders, informed enough to know what’s going one, and compassionate enough to care about more than just personal profit), yet our destinies are increasingly in their hands.

The Better World Shopper goes on to break this problem down into five key issues.  

HUMAN RIGHTS: sweatshops, 3rd world community exploitation, international health issues, divestment, child labor, code of conduct.

THE ENVIRONMENT: global warming, rainforest destruction, pollution, recycling, renewable energy, greenwashing, toxic waste, eco-innovations, illegal dumping, sustainable farming.

ANIMAL PROTECTION: factory farming, animal testing, humane treatment, wild animal habitat.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT: family farms, local business support, volunteer efforts, sustainable growth, philanthropic donations, nonprofit alliances, establishing foundations.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: fair wages, fatalities, union busting efforts, health & safety records, discrimination based on: race, gender, age, ability, religion, sexuality, ethnicity.

What’s nice is that the Better World Shopper doesn’t just identify problems it also proposes solutions.

As these power centers shift, we must shift our own voices if we wish to be heard. As citizens, on average, we might vote once ever 4 years, if at all. As consumers, we vote every single day with the purest form of power…money.
The average American family spends around $18,000 each year on goods and services. Think of it as casting 18,000 votes every year for the kind of world you want to live in. Use this site to take back your power.

Sound Interesting? Well if so, how about watching a video lecture featuring (among others) Dr. Ellis Jones, who is one of the brains behind the book discuss as he discusses a variety of topics related to the guide and social responsibility. I am watching/listening to it know as I write this post and its pretty damn good. So check it out!

I suppose to sum things up, I would say that this is a great guide and a worthy addition to any eco-Kosher toolkit. Essentially the underlying premise behind all of it is “informed Choice” and that’s something I (and suspect many of you) can get behind.

As always feel free to share you thoughts.

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I just stumbled across this on Youtube and thought its was kind of cool, so I’m sharing it here. I don’t know when it originally aired but like I said, I thought it was kind of cool.  

Enjoy!

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Hey this is just a quick FYI post to let people know about the Live Earth concert that is currently pretty much happening on every continent and in over 130 some countries. Neither myself or Tamara had heard anything about it until she stumbled across it on TV, looking for something to watch after Shabbos this evening. So far it’s been pretty cool it’s a mix of live music mixed with celebrity interviews and info on DIY eco-things anyone can do to help address the climate crisis. The commercials and sponsorship around the event even seem to be pretty cool running some sort of a conscious capitalism thing. In fact one of the ads was very cool because it was a service announcement telling people how to get taken off junk mail lists. Nice!

Anyhow if you’re into eco-Kashrut or the whole Tikkun Olam thing you might wanna check out this web site and flip through your TV channels to see if you can find it. We are going to watch it and I’ll try to do a follow-up post on Monday or something.

Enjoy, and if you do check it out please let me know what what you think.

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Up until last week I didn’t know much about Whole Foods or its president John Mackey but with what little information I did know about the company and based on what I saw when I was in Los Angeles last fall, I was more than a little skeptical. However last week I came across an interesting video up on Google featuring none other than John Mackey himself. I watched it on the weekend and liked it so much that I watched it again this morning with breakfast.

The first hour was basically a presentation where Mackey provided a detailed overview of the company’s approach to food production, including various projects and plans for future innovations. Watching him I quickly moved from a place of skepticism into one of complete awe. I couldn’t help but think to myself that this guy whether he knows it or not, is actually working towards establishing what may well be the first comprehensive expression of Eco-Kashrut. He’s certainly way beyond anything crunchy granola Jews are trying to do. Come to think of it he’s pretty much any serious Eco-Kashrutist’s wet dream come true. Okay maybe he’s just my wet dream come true but I’m hoping I’m not alone on this one.

I’m impressed with him and his approach to business and thought he was extremely honest. He’s actually putting together a plan for implementing a new type of organic certification which I believe is a perfect example of what an eco-kosher certification process might look like.

I’m working from memory so I might get things wrong but here is the basic breakdown of this process as I remember it.

He called it something like a star system with one star for meeting the basic organic food production criteria. You know stuff like no GMO’s, no pesticides or chemical fertilizers etc. But this is the bare minimum and only gets a company one star on the certification process.

The other proposed considerations include (again that’s if my memory serves me right)

• Healthfulness of the food - as in is it healthy with vitamins, low fat etc.
• Animal welfare considerations - Are the animals being raised in a humane fashion
• Environmental considerations - what impact is food production having on the environment.
• Economics/social justice considerations - is the food being fairly traded and what our worker conditions and wages like.

Anyhow as far as I’m concerned what he’s outlining here is a near-perfect example of what Eco-Kashrut might look like in practice.

The entire video is worth watching but if you don’t want to commit an hour you can jump to about 40 minutes in because that’s where he starts laying out his plan. At bare minimum I recommend watching the last 10 minutes because he makes some excellent summarizing points.

Anyhow here it is for your viewing pleasure.

Oh also there is a part two which features a Discussion between Mackey and Michael Pollen. It is also worth checking out if you have time.

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I stumbled on to this article Saturday night and thought to myself “wow this sounds like something I just wrote“.

It’s nice to see that I am not just making this stuff up in my deluded mind. Yes indeed it seems that others are just as delude as I am and I just love synchronistic craziness.

Here is a snippet from the article for those of you who are interested in the topic!

Kashrut - rooted in the Bible, and developed by the Rabbis - is the Jewish tradition’s clearly delineated response to this challenge. Kashrut sets limits on what foods we can eat: for example, we can only eat certain (primarily domesticated) animals, and we must slaughter them in the least painful, most respectful way. The blood must be drained and buried, because the life is in the blood and must be returned to the earth. There are also prohibitions against eating shellfish, and the mixing of meat and milk products.

We felt a need to expand this traditional understanding of Kashrut to include global environmental and social issues which the Rabbis of two thousand years ago did not face. In conversation with Jewish people in many communities, we have developed the following tentative guidelines for a Kashrut which speaks to our planetary concerns.

1. We are concerned about the earth as a living being, including the soil, water, air and all the planet’s living systems. It is important to choose foods which are produced, transported and packaged in a way that is sustainable and not harmful to the earth. For us this means buying organic foods even when they cost more, and we also try to choose foods grown locally - or grow our own! This minimizes transportation and connects us to the earth’s natural cycles.

2. We are concerned not only with how animals are slaughtered, but also how they are raised. Animals are often treated as commodities, to be “manufactured” as efficiently as possible for maximum profit. The resulting “factory farms” are appalling places, filled with unspeakable suffering. Upon reading John Robbins’ description of them in Diet for A New America, we decided to avoid all animal products that have not been raised humanely and respectfully.

3. We are concerned about the health of our bodies. We are responsible for taking good care of the bodies that God has given to us. Too much food can be destructive to our systems - especially if it is full of fat and sugar. Tobacco, alcohol, caffeine and other drugs can also be harmful. We eat mostly whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, legumes and nuts. We try to pay attention to how our bodies feel about the food we are eating and to make our meals as nourishing and pleasing as possible.

4. We are concerned about the people who produce and prepare our food. We have extended Kashrut to include concern for how the people who grow and harvest it are treated. We use our food dollars to support growers and producers who demonstrate concern for their workers (and we avoid, for example, commercially produced grapes in response to the United Farm Workers’ boycott). We also use the Council for Economic Priority’s guide Shopping For A Better World to identify and support socially responsible producers.

You can read the entire thing over here if you like.

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I wanted to do a follow-up on a post from a week or so back on Jewish arguments for adopting a vegetarian diet. I feel that my post was incomplete and may have even misrepresented what I was trying to communicate. It was after all something of a knee-jerk reaction to some pictures I saw online. That is not to say that I was upset by them but simply that I saw the images and impulsively replied with a post of my own. So before too much time passes and I completely forget about it I would like to clarify and expand on my original point.

Although my post focused on animal cruelty and vegetarianism it’s really just one part of a larger issue and is not a black and white situation. I for one do not think you have to be a vegetarian to be ethical. Although I personally feel it is the best choice (at least for me) for a couple of reasons. First by abstaining from animal products I am better able to guarantee that I am not promoting and supporting animal cruelty. Secondly by simply adopting a more plant based diet I lessen my ecological footprint which I believe allows me to be more environmentally responsible.

Although I used a PETA video in that post I am not a member nor have I ever been. I also do not agree with much of what the organization stands for. I try to work from a moral reference point that reflects both depth and span. For example I feel that it’s unnecessary to eat animal products in modern Western society. Most of the evidence seems to show that it is in fact healthier to eat a vegetarian diet. More importantly we have all sorts of veggie product alternatives readily available, so it’s no longer a question of hunting and killing to survive.

My basic moral intuition goes something like this. I need to eat to survive however whenever I can I want to do it in a way that has as little negative impact as possible. Animals are higher life forms with cognitive abilities, instincts and have highly developed central nervous systems capable of feeling pain. Plants are lower life forms with no cognitive abilities and to the best of our knowledge are not capable of feeling pain. Therefore it is better for me to eat plants than animals whenever possible as plants have less depth.

However on the other hand if conducting medical research on an animal is going to help cure my stepfather’s Parkinson’s disease, I completely support doing so. Human beings obviously have more depth than animals therefore it is a morally acceptable choice in my opinion. However I am sure many vegans would strongly disagree with me and thats OK.

Again let me reiterate that this is my own basic sense of moral intuition and I am not saying everyone else has to do it the way I do it. For me the act of adopting a plant based diet is one way a fulfilling my commitment to Eco-Kashrut but I realize that there are other ways of meeting this commitment and for some it may not be dependent upon vegetarianism.

I do think that as Jews whether we eat meat or not we have a responsibility to think about what it is that we are doing. We cannot just assume that what we are doing is truly kosher, even if there is a label on the package.

Arthur Green in his book “These Are the Words” describes Kashrut as the following.

Kashrut literally means “fitness,” referring in this case to fitness for eating, though the term is also used in many other areas of Halakah. Kosher (or Kasher in the Sephardic and modern Hebrew pronunciation) means “fit” to be eaten or used to prepare food.

Industrialization has made food both abundant and cheap but it has come at an expense. We have for the most part removed ourselves from the process so much so that we no longer even know what it is that we are eating. We no longer can claim to know what impacts the food we consume is having on the environment, how animals are being raised or even on our own health.

I will not go into cruelty issues here but I am going to suggest that the traditional Kashrut system does not take into account many of the new realities of food production. But because of this I (and many others) believe  it is now essential that we add a new set of criteria to the Kashrut equation, in order to meet the needs of the 21st century. For example Kashrut has no way of dealing with GMO’s and I doubt that the OU is taking into consideration any possible environmental impacts when they certify a plant.

Green’s defines Kashrut as something being fit for eating and I believe that in the 21st century we need to expand this from fit for eating to fit for consumption. We are a society of consumers we consume food, services, products like clothing. We buy vehicles which in turn consume gas and we give little thought to whether or not what we are consuming is actually fit for consumption.

This is why people like Reb Zalman are promoting innovations such as Eco-Kashrut so that we can begin thinking about whether or not the things we use are actually fit for consumption.

Oops it seems I have strayed a little off-topic, so let me bring it back to food.

Regardless of whether one wants to look at consuming plant based foods or animal products we need to come up with a better system for better assessing whether or not to these foods are in fact fit for consumption. I do not have any definitive answers and I am not claiming to be an expert but I personally believe that we need to update our approach.

• We need a system that takes into consideration not only the old criteria but also important new ones.
  
• We need to take into consideration whether the food we are consuming is healthy for us and unfortunately the current kosher system does not do that very well.
  
• We need to update the kosher process to ensure that the foods we eat are not promoting obesity, cancer, diabetes or a host of other illnesses.
  
• We need a system that insurers a minimum standard of animal welfare is met and unfortunately a Kashrut that allows for the current factory farming cannot meet such a standard.
  
• We need a system that promotes Environmental Responsibility with regard to all aspects of food production. Including pesticide use, ecological impacts of growth as well as food transportation and storage.
  
• We need a system that promotes economic sustainability and fair trade. We need to ask ourselves if food that is produced by workers who are exploited or live in poverty is indeed fit for consumption.

Kashrut is meant to sanctify eating and create a sense of holiness but how can this be done unless the above conditions are met?

Humanity has evolved and become much more complex than it was even a mere 100 years ago. We need an ethical system that reflects this new complexity because anything short of this in my opinion only diminishes us in the eyes of G-D.

And with that I will end this long-winded rant and wish you all a pleasant Shabbos.

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A couple of weeks back I found this quote by Mordecai Kaplan somewhere online and saved it for later use in a post. However it’s been so long that I seem to have forgotten just where I snagged it from. I know that it was online and I’m sure it was taken from a relatively reliable source. Come to think of it I have this vague sense that this quote may have originally been in Kaplan’s classic book “Judaism as an Evolving Religious Civilization” but I can’t say for sure.

Anyhow it’s a great quote regardless of where it came from so here it is.

“To believe in God means to take for granted that it is man’s destiny to rise above the brute and to eliminate all forms of violence and exploitation from human society.” 

This quote captures with great elegance and simplicity my own recent thinking on what it means to believe in G-D as well as the implications that such a belief holds. Of course if I want to be picky I can point out that his use of the term “man” is somewhat pejorative towards approximately 50% of those who believe in G-D. However considering that it was most likely written at least 50 or 60 years ago I think that it’s OK to let this one slide.

It is a quote that speaks to me in so many ways and on so many levels. It informs me that to believe in G-D means that I must elevate myself above my own inner darkness and lower nature. I read Kaplan’s words as a call encouraging all of us to stop engaging in violence against ourselves, each other and the world we inhabit. I believe this quote pithily points out the incredible incompatibility between a truly spiritual life and the willful engagement in exploitation, no matter how small it maybe.

I read this as a simple instruction to open my eyes, mind and heart, so that I can better see how it is that I am manifesting in this life I’ve been given. Also just beneath the surface of this quote. I suspect that Kaplan is imploring us to remember that we are but stewards here for a short time and are responsible not only for our Neshamah’s work in this life but also the legacy we leave behind for future generations.

I think Kaplan’s quote grabbed my attention because not only does it speak to the parts of me that I am aware of but also to the parts of me that are just now beginning to emerge as I work my way up the ladder one rung at a time. Reading his words today I couldn’t help but reflect on my last post and think to myself “ yes I understand what you’re saying and in my own muddled way, I’m indeed working on it.”

And on that note Shavua Tov.

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This showed up in my Bloglines this evening and suffice it to say I found it rather repulsive. Don’t get me wrong even though I personally feel such behavior leaves something spiritually and ethically to be desired. I realize not everybody shares that feeling and I also realize that they are entitled to approach things as they see fit. Sorry no offense intended Mottel but dude that was gross!

Anyhow that post contained the term “shecht” which was one that I was unfamiliar with, so I decided to look it up and here’s what I found. I was certainly disturbed by that picture but it did serve to refresh my memory regarding a recent accomplishment of mine. And that would be the fact that I have been off the chicken crack for well over a month now. In fact I’ve been off all meat/poultry since my nasty food poisoning incident back in March.

I won’t say that I don’t miss the taste of chicken but in all honesty it hasn’t been that hard to give up and I think it will even be easier to stay away from it after having seen those pictures. Also I like the idea of incorporating vegetarianism into my sense of Jewish identity and as an expression of commitment to practicing Eco-Kashrut.

PS: anyone else out there who is interested in getting off the chicken crack and would like to learn a little bit more about Judaism and vegetarianism.

Just click the image at the top of this post.

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I know that Global Warming is a Myth and there is lots of evidence to back that fact up.

And yes I also know that the Global Warming “panic” is a recent creation of the liberal controlled media. I mean there certainly wasn’t any talk of this stuff on TV back in the 1950’s or anything. Yes this propaganda is indeed very dangerous but thank goodness for “Fair and Balanced news institutions” like FOX. Because we can all count on them to be true bastions of unbiased reporting that isn’t tied to any industrial corporate agenda.

Now don’t get me wrong I am not trying to place the blame on corporations or anything like that. After all everyone knows (or should know) that corporations are always reasonable, responsible entities and they certainly could never be seen as being psychopathically destructive. I mean that is just plain foolishness but I am sure someone will none the less try to make a documentary about it or something.

And to all those skeptics out there who have a hard time believing me about this big global warming lie, I say to you. Lets just take a look at history because I am sure you will see that big business would never do anything to cover up the truth, especially not when people are at risk.

We all know that the Tobacco Industry never lied, misled or purposely hid the dangers of smoking from the general public, in order to protect their interests.

Nor is there any evidence to support allegations that Car Companies would ever be involved in anything like destroying public access to alternatives such as electric cars. Come to think of it, its not like they (as in BIG, Car, Oil & Tire Businesses) have ever done anything to manipulate the public into becoming more dependant on their products.

What really upsets me about all this Global Warming bullshit is that it only serves to distract us from more pressing issues. We should be focusing on what is truly important like protecting the world from WMD’s or the essential work of bringing freedom to the Iraqi people.

Okay so on the off chance that someone reading this hasn’t caught on to the obvious yet. The above is indeed an attempt at satire.

I mean come on people the research has been done and the evidence is in. It’s time for us to start reflecting on what all of this means and I think Earth Day is an excellent time to start doing just that.

Yes there are those who insist on denying that there is anything to worry about and refer to all of this as The Great Global Warming Swindle. Fortunately or maybe unfortunately depending on your perspective, the types of arguments raised by many of the Climate Change deniers are for the most part easily dismissed when looked at more closely.

If you only watch one video referenced/linked in this post, let the following documentary be the one. Having said that it is much more striking if watched after having first seen The Great Global Warming Swindle video.

As far as I’m concerned enough evidence is in that now’s the time to start changing how we think about the planet and our relationship to it. Even if the case for Global Warming has been overstated (not something I personally believe) we’ve already seen enough to warrant not only concern but action. Hey if someone wants to continue being skeptical that’s fine but the time for denial is over. Even if it’s not the doom and gloom situation that some would have us believe many of the changes being suggested can only serve to make the world a better place. And that my friends is something that makes them worthy pursuits in and of themselves.

And on that note Happy Earth Day!

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Ok its really Will Farrell playing the role of G Dubya on TV but isn’t that better? I mean wouldn’t he be a better all around President?

Anyhow this is just my day before Earth Day warm-up post, so check back tomorrow for something a little more Tikkun Olam’ish on the subject.

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