JustASC Asks: Jeffrey Yoskowitz
Jeff Yoskowitz is a former NJJN intern who has written for us about the “new Jewish food” movement. Now he’s involved in an enterprise called Negev Nectars, which is connecting small-scale Israeli farmers with American consumers. We exchanged e-mails earlier this week:
Your background – First, what are your Jersey connections? Where were you born, raised and educated? Family still here? How old are you? What’s your relevant background for this venture?
I was born in Summit and grew up in Basking Ridge, where my parents still reside, and I spent nursery through 12th grade studying at the Schechter Day School in West Orange.
I am 25 and live in Brooklyn. I’ve been very invested in how we eat as individuals and as a community and have been working in this field for some time. I began working with Marvin Israelow, the founder of Negev Nectars, when I moved to New York and we found that my background in Israel and as an advocate for sustainable food fit perfectly with this project. Marvin’s support of desert agriculture research for the past thirty years was inspiring to me and I was eager to work with him to provide a market for sustainable growers in the Negev.
I’ve been very active in the sustainable food world for the past few years, since I was a student at Brown in Providence where I worked with the local JCC to create healthier and more locally sourced menus, and worked with the Jewish community to launch the Sacred Foods Initiative, ensuring that the campus Jewish community was aware of where it sourced its foods from. I was also responsible for a separate initiative during my first year to import Israeli juice for Shabbat meals, so it’s been something I’ve been thinking about a lot.
Since college I’ve spent time learning organic agriculture and have worked as a fermenter and pickler at the Adamah farm in the Berkshires, making healthy, preserved foods and selling them to markets in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. In New York I give workshops on the side teaching fermenting and pickling to folks who want to gain those unique skills. When I lived in Israel from 2007-8 I was very active in the sustainable food world, as well.
Tell me about your time in Israel – when was that?
I have spent a lot of time in Israel, visiting my family over the years, learning with Schechter, as a research assistant for now ambassador Michael Oren, and most recently as a yearlong research fellow funded by Brown University. I spent 2007-8 researching the political dimensions of the pork industry in Israel. I lived in Tel Aviv, across from the greatest schnitzel shop in the city. I now live in Brooklyn, with no schnitzel in site.
You’ve had a longtime interest in Israeli agriculture. Where did that come from?
My connection to Israeli agriculture goes back to my family on kibbutz Revivim in the Negev. I remember visiting the kibbutz as a child and being fascinated with the differences in lifestyles between my family in New Jersey and my cousins in Israel. I was enchanted, I guess, by their spirit and commitment to working the land. As I grew older I was generally just interested in our modern food system.
More recently I spent a year looking into the raising of pigs on Israeli land as part of a study of the religious tensions in Israeli society. I used the battles over selling and raising pigs over the past sixty plus years as a lens through which to view the larger religious struggles in Israeli society.
How does your research on the pork industry relate to your interest in Negev Nectars?
I lived and worked on a kibbutz in the Negev that was raising pigs and growing vegetables in the least sustainable of ways, wasting tons of water and using harmful chemicals and hormones for the animals, in the shadows of the largest man-made forest in Israel. In the most basic of ways, my pork research showed me the dominant side of Israeli agriculture that was harmful to the land and the people working it. Ever since,when I’ve worked on organic farms, I’ve felt as if I’m still repenting from my two months in the industrial agriculture system.
When not researching pork shops in Israel I was in touch with a number of organic farmers and even visited a few fields, and helped out at Or-Gani, a farm founded by a friend in Binyamina. I even began writing for the middle Eastern environmental blog, The Green Prophet, about sustainable agriculture in Israel.
Negev Nectars is based on the community supported agriculture or CSA model, based on sourcing your food from nearby farmers and producers, but you are shipping your products halfway across the world. Is that a contradiction?
We’ve taken the term community supported agriculture (CSA) at its core–as a way to support sustainable and organic approaches to agriculture as a community. The CSA model is really about consumers supporting farmers by paying for food in advance and sharing the risk of the growing, helping the farmers make it through the year comfortably.
We see our CSA as the perfect companion to CSAs throughout the tri-state area. The reality is that most of the products we are bringing over cannot be grown or produced in the Northeast, our main market. Now similar products are shipped from the Mediterranean, the Middle East and are trucked over from California, and many are not organic. While there is a demand for products such as olive oil in the US, as well as a demand for Israeli products, there will continue to be large-scale producers focused exclusively on the bottom-line. Our partner farms are small-scale and very ecologically focused — we thus see our work as a lessening of the overall carbon footprint.
Our other goal is to reduce the carbon footprint in Israel produced by industrial agriculture. The ultimate goal to come out of this venture is to provide yet one more market for Organic agriculture in Israel and a test ground for sustainable growing practices in the desert. Doron, our olive grower in Ezuz, is looking to grow more olive trees and will be empowered to do so because of Negev Nectars. Soon you’ll see more of his oil in Israel too. Our hope is that more farmers in Israel will see the benefit of going Organic and to have more dunams in Israel be growing without harmful chemicals.
Is the venture totally private, or are you working with any government or NGO assistance?
The venture is private. The Ramat Hanegev regional council has been supportive of this venture, and so have organizations such as Hazon, the home of the New Jewish Food movement, but at the end of the day we are operating as a private company that will reinvest all of its profits into the operations of our partner farms.
What’s the connection between what one eats and how one relates to Judaism and/or Israel?
We’re very much a part of the ethos behind the so-called “new Jewish food movement,” and hoping to reach many folks who love to eat well and want to support organic agriculture. However, we see our project as more than just all that–we see it is an opportunity for deli eaters and kombucha drinkers alike to support small farms and businesses in Israel, and to eat delicious foods, some of which, like olive oil and honey, are staples of most homes. Many people use olive oil, and we think it should be organic and from Israel.
It’s also very Jewish to care about how we treat our neighbors and the land. As news reports and studies of the effects of chemical fertilizers and pesticides come out, many Jews have begun to feel a responsibility to make sure that we’re not harming the earth, the people producing our food or our children. Nowhere is this more relevant than in Israel where so many Jews around the world feel a specifically strong connection to the people and the land.
An example: Our olive grower feels very connected to his grove. He lives in the desert and irrigates his wells from a brackish well that legend holds was the very same well that the 12 spies drank from on their way to scope out Canaan from biblical Kadesh Barnea. He farms with a respect towards his history and the land. There’s a major demand in the US for Israeli products, especially in the Metrowest community, and it’s important to work towards ensuring that the farmers, the farm hands and the land itself is farmed safely.
Let me make sure I have the mechanism right: For an annual fee of $180, “Shareholders” will receive a delivery three times a year, before Hanukkah, Passover and Rosh Hashanah. Each shipment contains a variety of kosher and organically certified (when possible) products produced by sustainable, small-scale agriculture concerns in the Negev. Products include Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Jams and Preserves, Dried Fruits, Herbs, honey. (The charge is higher for those who get their shipments direct.) Right?
Right.
Where will the shipments be available in NJ and when?
Any New Jersey member of Negev Nectars can have their shipments mailed directly to their home. We are very excited to have a pick-up center in Montclair, at Congregation Shomrei Emunah, and we’re working to partner with more locations.
JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 