By now, you're probably tired of hearing me yammer on about sustainability, CSAs, composting, and recycling. I hear you. I too would be pretty bored at this point if I were you (but luckily for me, I'm not). So out of respect to you, dear reader, I am going to continue droning on about sustainability, BUT please imagine me nodding sympathetically as I do. Your concerns are VERY important to me.
Anyhoo, many of you came to our Scholar-in-Residence weekend a few days ago, and had the pleasure of learning from Nigel Savage, the director of Hazon. After the weekend, I received tons of questions
from congregants about one particular story Nigel told us. In 2007, Hazon wanted to push people to really think about what it means to eat meat, and so they slaughtered three goats at their annual Food Conference. You can read all about it here. People at Ohev who heard this story seemed morbidly fascinated, and we got into lengthy discussions about how Hazon could do something like this. The only logical response I could possibly think of was, 'We should try it here.' So that is exactly what we are going to do.
Now obviously, killing a goat would be cruel. Instead, we are going to slaughter a few chickens. As you know, we are about to begin working with a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) called Red Rock
Farm. Even though we are primarily using the CSA for your run-of-the-mill farm items, e.g. vegetables, fruits, eggs, yogurt, and soda, they have graciously offered to provide us with three chickens for this once-in-a-lifetime experience! Isn't that great?? We haven't decided on a date yet, but it would seem most logical to combine it with our Bless the Pets event, sometime over the summer. It also occurred to me, as I was planning the event AND the subsequent menu, that we should combine it with a lesson about Ancient Israelite worship.
This week's Torah portion (didn't think I'd be making a link to our parashah, did you?) deals with the rituals of the High Priest and his sons. We never really get an opportunity to experience what this was all about, so when we undertake this highly-tasteful-and-not-at-all-inappropriate ritual slaughter, we are also going to bring back some of the rituals performed by the Kohanim in the Temple!
David Pollack and Ruth Kaplan, two congregants descended from the priestly tribe, have offered to officiate at this ceremony, which will take place in the synagogue parking lot (you'll understand why in just a minute...). It involves following the procedure described in Exodus, 29:20: "take some of its blood and put it on the ridge of Aaron's right ear and
on the ridges of his sons' right ears, and on the thumbs of their right
hands, and on the big toes of their right feet; and dash the rest of
the blood against every side of the altar round about." I'm VERY excited about this plan! (Please note: Some of the blood might splatter, so make sure to bring a rain coat, and one that washes out tough stains easily...)
What a unique opportunity this will be for Ohev Shalom! We get to learn about the ancient, nitty-gritty rituals of our ancestors; we get to
eat a wonderful chicken dinner together; and we get to be sustainable and animal-friendly in the process. How could it get any better?? I am certain that you have many questions and one or two minor concerns, but primarily I'm sure you're just as THRILLED about this as I am. And I think you'll especially agree that this whole plan is particularly appropriate for this weekend's holiday celebration...
Happy Purim!!
Photos in this blog post:
1. CC image courtesy of uncle.capung on Flickr
2. CC image courtesy of Muffet on Flickr
4. CC image courtesy of fairfaxcounty on Flickr
5. Image courtesy of Rabbi Gerber's very confused iPhone... (Is that edible?) Chicken generously donated by Beverly Weiner, lovingly chosen from her flock for just this purpose.
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