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.
