Sacred and Sustainable Space: Ancient Agriculture and Innovative Judaism

This lecture will offer insight into how Jewish community farms have become a site for North American Jews to enact their values, express their Jewish identities, and reconnect with agricultural aspects of Jewish tradition long marginalized through centuries of Jewish life in the Diaspora. Driven by concerns about environmental degradation, industrial agriculture, animal welfare, and food insecurity, Jews in North American have created alternative spaces and innovative Jewish practices. In these spaces, Jews rethink what it means to be Jewish and find new ways to enact Judaism that are meaningful for Jews and beneficial for the plants, animals, and other humans that live alongside them.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Adrienne Krone is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Jewish Life at Allegheny College. Her research focuses on food and farming practices in contemporary American religions. In her manuscript, “American Manna: Religious Responses to the American Industrial Food System” she investigates the religious complexity present in contemporary food reform movements. Her current project is an ethnographic and historical study of the Jewish community farming movement in North America funded by a grant from Farm Forward and the Leichtag Foundation. When she’s not teaching or writing about food and farming she enjoys gardening, cooking, and canning.