Tomorrow night the shofar will blow in Jewish temples around the world, calling Jewish people to prayer and to end their fast. It is an ancient tradition. We have emptied our pockets of our sins, done a fair job of asking forgiveness, even asking God to forgive us of those sins we may not even know we committed. I remember thinking that was brilliant when I first started studying Judaism. You don’t have to pony up to the confessional every week and recite your sins to a shadowy priest, then kneel and say a few Hail Marys, or maybe the whole Rosary. Jews get just one chance each year to make things right. And if you forget something, it’s OK, no worries. God will forgive you anyway.
But here’s the thing. You are supposed to fast for 24 hours, from sundown tonight until sundown tomorrow night. There are of course exceptions; pregnant or nursing moms, children before Bar or Bat Mitzvah age, and ER docs. No really, in the Talmud somewhere it says if you are busy saving lives you can eat! So we feast tonight, fast (well, some of us fast), then feast again tomorrow night…followed by Sukkot. A Jewish Thanksgiving that lasts for 7 days, where you not only feast, but you do it outdoors, in a tent.
While the rest of us are planning our kid’s Halloween costumes, you may pass by a house with a makeshift tent in the backyard covered with palms and fruit, a Sukkah or “…a hut of temporary construction with a roof covering of branches.” http://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/4457/jewish/How-is-Sukkot-Observed.htm It figures that food plays a staring role in Jewish holidays, but eating your food outside is really special. Sukkot preceded the farm to table movement by about 3,800 years.
Which is why, on one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar, I must call to your attention our country’s little problem with the Farm Bill. You may not be aware that Congress failed to pass the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act aka the Farm Bill. Disavow yourself of the notion that this is a fight between the huge agri-business conglomerates and smaller organic farmers, or that it’s just a bid to throw more money out to the heartland only to waste resources on growing corn and soybeans that we cannot possibly consume. Only about 14% of the funds would go to farmers to subsidize their crops.
“More than two-thirds of the Farm Bill has nothing to do with farms. It funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—formerly known as food stamps. Spending-phobic Republicans see that as fat to be cut, and the House Agriculture Committee proposed drastic reductions in food assistance for the 2012 legislation. Both sides dug in their heels on the issue this year, and we’re looking at no Farm Bill at all until the next session.” http://www.c-ville.com/on-the-fate-of-the-farm-bill/#.UF3GLEL3CfQ
So dear God, while some of our cities are now allowing food stamps to be used at Farmer’s Markets during this recession, I’m asking you to forgive our legislators on Capital Hill. They are more concerned about saving money and an out-of-date tax code for the wealthiest among us, than they are about feeding the poor.
Leaving the City Market
Really well put together, Chris.