Karyn Moskowitz runs the Fresh Stop Project, a food co-op program at a historic black Baptist church in West Louisville, Ky., a low-income, largely African American neighborhood.

One day she and some women at the church were talking about how they cooked fresh greens. One woman said she used bacon fat, like her friends. Moskowitz said she used olive oil, thinking she’d use the conversation as a teaching moment about the health benefits of avoiding saturated fats.

The woman responded: “Olive oil? Where do you get that?”

Moskowitz’s project brought fresh, organic fruits, and vegetables to this community at an affordable price, but there were no real supermarkets in the neighborhood, no place for the residents to purchase other healthful foods. That’s something young Jewish food activists often forget, Moskowitz says.

“We think nothing of driving to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. They do not have that option.”

Moskowitz was speaking at the fourth annual Hazon Food Conference, held Dec. 24-27 in Monterey, Calif. Nearly 650 rabbis, Jewish educators, farmers, and food activists spent four days learning about the connection between Jewish values and sustainable food systems, hearing from young pioneers in the fledgling new Jewish food movement spearheaded by Hazon, and sharing resources from organic farming tips to how to lobby Congress more effectively.

The new Jewish food movement, like the organics movement in general, has been criticized as somewhat elitist. Organic food, especially processed food and grass-fed, humanely-raised meat and poultry, is often more expensive than the conventional alternative — great for those who can afford it, but what of Jewish social justice values, such as feeding the poor?

This year, the food conference created a “food justice” track, providing speakers and workshops focusing on issues including workers’ rights, food access in low-income neighborhoods, Fair Trade operations, and community gardens as a tool for empowerment.

Hazon founder and executive director Nigel Savage says this focus always existed, but over the past year the new Jewish food movement has grown to a level where it can begin to put all the pieces of the social justice puzzle together. And that’s happening in local communities all over the country, he says.

“When we shechted the goats two years ago at our conference, that was before Postville, before the new ethical kosher meat businesses, before Magen Tzedek,” he said, referring to last year’s collapse of the Agriprocessors kosher meat-packing plant and the increased Jewish interest in the social justice aspects of food manufacturing. “We did it as a way to raise communal awareness. Now there’s a huge amount happening on the ground.”

Previous food conferences featured a handful of newly minted experts teaching large groups of their peers about sustainable agriculture and Jewish environmental values. At this year’s gathering, dozens of new, on-the-ground projects initiated by people influenced by past conferences, or by the new Jewish food movement in general, were given center stage.

At one session, four women discussed kosher meat and poultry businesses, the newest of which was launched just six months ago. All their animals are sustainably raised — a term encompassing a range of issues regarding health, the environment and treatment of workers — and compassionately slaughtered.

At least four people in the audience were planning to launch their own similar operations in the near future.

Last year, a handful of Jewish farming schools presented model curricula for teaching children and adults the importance of connecting with the land through community or home gardens. This year, dozens of attendees spoke about gardening programs at their own Jewish community centers or synagogues. And Vicky Kelman, known nationally for her cutting-edge work in Jewish family education, presented a new initiative to get Jewish farm education into more religious schools.

The food justice sessions, however, seemed particularly well attended. “How many people in the world can take off time from work and pay to come to a conference like this?” asked Rabbi Noah Farkas of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif., who presented at three such workshops. “That’s our power and privilege, and we need to find a way to harness it.”

“Access to fresh, local food is a privilege, but it should be a right,” said Elizabeth Schwartz, a garden mentor who helps low-income residents of Portland, Ore., plant, winterize and harvest their home gardens. “I grow my own food, and there’s nothing more satisfying than teaching someone else how to do it.”

Moskowitz launched her project in Kentucky after returning home from last year’s Hazon conference. She and her 10-year-old daughter drive 100 miles every week to an Amish produce market to buy fresh, inexpensive organic fruits and vegetables, which they drive back to the church for volunteers to divide into $12 baskets. Some of the baskets are subsidized. Some of the families can’t afford to participate every week. But this is not a charity project, Moskowitz said. “It’s not me saying to them, let me serve you. It’s them calling me up and saying, I hear you know how to get food, let’s work together.”

That two-way relationship is critical, say activists involved in this work. Adam Edell of Oakland, Calif., teaches garden-based nutrition and coordinates communal nutrition events at an elementary school populated largely by the children of Latino migrant fieldworkers.

Once the children got excited about growing and eating their own produce, they wanted that same food at home. Edell invited a local farmer, also Latino, to set up a regular farmers’ market in the school parking lot so the kids’ parents could buy fresh organic produce at cut-rate prices. The project evolved into a successful Community Supported Agriculture program, where consumers pre-pay a farmer for a regular basket of fresh produce, helping the farmer as well as the families.

Joti Levy runs a garden program for fourth- to eighth-graders in San Francisco’s low-income Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhood. The garden she helped them grow is now the largest school garden in the city, and the students sell the produce in local farmers markets.

Levy, like Edell, Moskowitz and the other young Jewish food activists doing this work, said her Jewish identity is at the heart of what she does. “The Holocaust is not so far away,” Levy mused. “An entire nation was being oppressed, and no one stood up to help.” Today, she said, other ethnic and national groups in this country are facing systemic oppression, and it’s her responsibility as a Jew to lend a hand.

“If we’re not taking care of the lowest rungs on the ladder, the ladder will fall. That comes from deep, deep Jewish values of, don’t turn a blind eye. Let me use the privilege I have and do good work with it.”

JTA

Bruce Prince’s family has been in business for many years. The owners of Prince Embroidery, founded in Hudson County in the 1920s, they watched as the once-thriving garment industry became “uprooted.”

With the price of labor far less overseas, said Prince, a Teaneck resident and owner of the Teaneck General Store, manufacturers began to send their business elsewhere.

“People there were working for small amounts of money,” he said. As a result, “the industry here shut down.”

Recently, the Teaneck shopkeeper realized that this was not just a matter of business.

“The reality hit us that people weren’t being given fair wages,” he said. “The people we employed here were unionized. We were mindful of labor practices. Now it’s cheaper, but for what reason?”

The reason, suggested Prince — who serves on the Fair Trade Teaneck Steering Committee together with other Teaneck residents and business owners — is that employers are engaging in unconscionable labor practices.

According to the group’s fact sheet: “Hundreds of thousands of pre-teen children are victims of trafficking and forced labor; impoverishment is notably the result of exploitation by local middlemen; predatory farming methods are destroying indigenous environments; [and] hazardous labor conditions expose workers to toxic chemicals, compel them to accept low pay, and prevent them from asserting their rights.”

That can be changed, says Dennis Klein, a Teaneck resident and professor of history at Kean College in Union.

Klein, director of Jewish studies at the college, organized the steering committee in the hope that Teaneck might become a fair trade town. According to the committee Website, “Just five establishments selling at least two fair trade product lines will raise Teaneck’s profile as an enlightened business and consumer community.”

The Kean professor said he has long been involved in social change initiatives. A chance encounter with Tim Blunk, owner of Teaneck’s Tiger Lily Flowers, “piqued his interest” in fair trade.

It’s a case where “folks at the local level can do something to help people far away,” he said, explaining that while the local group is part of a national and international movement, the issue is truly an opportunity to “think globally and act locally.”

“I like that approach,” he said, noting that in his visits not only to merchants and public organizations but to synagogues and Jewish schools as well, “we alert people to problems behind the products they’re buying and empower each one of us as local consumers to make choices.”

The idea of “making an ethical choice appeals directly to the Jewish community,” he said.

The steering committee fact sheet notes that “just by purchasing fair-trade certified products, consumers can tip the balance of market share that will favor just labor practices, fair prices, and sustainable farming methods … [defeating] the sources of the present human rights crisis.”

To help bring this about, the American Jewish World Service recently formed a partnership with Equal Exchange, a fair trade product supplier and worker-owned cooperative founded in 1986.

Announcing the partnership, AJWS issued a statement noting that “big companies can afford to significantly undersell smaller growers, who are then forced to lower their prices to the point where they can no longer remain in business.” Members of fair trade cooperatives, however, “receive fair prices for their crops and enjoy long-term trade relationships with trusted partners.”

The AJWS-Equal Exchange venture, Better Beans, was created to sell and distribute fairly traded kosher coffee and chocolate. Such programs exist to “create a global market for these farmers and provide them with access to the financial resources and assistance that they need to operate,” said the AJWS statement, adding that the project “allows congregations, community organizations, and individuals to order high-quality coffee and chocolate while supporting small growers and community-owned cooperatives in the developing world.”

To further this effort, the organization is encouraging the Jewish community to serve only Better Beans coffee and chocolate at their synagogues, schools, and local events. In addition to supporting small farmer co-ops, a portion of every pound of coffee or chocolate purchased through Better Beans will support the AJWS Fighting Hunger from the Ground Up campaign.

Klein pointed out that the Teaneck steering committee “actively visits and provides information” to the groups it hopes to recruit.

“We presented a pitch to the Teaneck Jewish Community Council and got some wonderful responses,” he said. “We’re also visiting Temple Emeth and Cong. Beth Sholom and will go to Orthodox shuls and yeshivas as well.”

So far, he said, 25 groups have said they’re interested, and five have already agreed to promote fair trade products.

While those he visits have been “very sympathetic” to the idea of fair trade, he said, “most are not aware of the movement. We bring them up to speed. Once they hear why this is such an important endeavor, they begin to understand that they can do something at the local level.”

During his visits, he said, “I form a picture of the division of labor in the developing world [explaining that] coffee, tea, wine, and flowers are sometimes produced under impossible conditions of exploitation and child labor abuses.”

Prince said he and Klein became interested in the issue at the same time. He recalled, however, that he had begun to learn something about the subject several years ago when he served as executive director of Temple Beth Or.

“The rabbi [then Peter Berg] was a social activist and began to buy fair trade coffee,” he said, noting that it helped bring the issue to his attention.

Prince spoke positively of Equal Exchange, which embraces the “hierarchy of needs” espoused by Maimonides. “Their approach is to empower the growers,” he said, “to help them become better farmers and lead better lives.”

The shop-owner — whose store boasts a kosher, fair trade coffee counter as well as a variety of other fair trade products — said he visited an Equal Exchange café in Boston to learn how best to brew its coffee.

The extent of the composting and recycling was “breathtaking,” he said. “We spent a full day and a half watching every process.”

He added that not only does he serve the coffee, but he gives educational materials about fair trade to customers. Last month, he sponsored a lecture on the subject, attracting about 30 attendees.

“People do care about it,” he said, adding that his goal is to carry as many fair trade products as possible.

“The Jewish tradition teaches us that when we buy and sell goods, we must treat our partners fairly and honestly,” said Ruth Messinger, AJWS president. “One product at a time, choosing fair trade is a step toward building a global system that treats all producers equitably and embodies the Torah’s vision of a just society.”

All Better Beans products are certified kosher by the Orthodox Union, the Kashruth Council of Canada, or Rabbi Abraham Hochwald, chief rabbi of the Northern Rhine-Germany. For more information, visit www.ajws.org/betterbeans.

When a congregant approached Joel Pitkowsky in December suggesting that he consider replacing the Hershey’s Kisses distributed to children after Shabbat services, the rabbi of Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck took the suggestion quite seriously.

“Hershey’s is kosher, self-contained, and easy to distribute,” said Pitkowsky. “But she told me about the company not wanting to get on board with fair trade.”

“I noticed the rabbi handing out Hershey’s Kisses,” said Marcia Minuskin, the congregant who brought the issue to the rabbi’s attention. “They’re easily recognizable. I told him about the issue and he said to send him the information.”

Minuskin said she learned of the Hershey’s situation from the group Green America, which has been urging companies that make chocolates to buy from plantations that use fair trade practices and are socially responsible — avoiding both child labor and slave labor.

Compiling “scorecards” for each chocolate company, they awarded Hershey’s a failing grade, noting that much of its cocoa comes from West Africa, “a region plagued by forced labor, human trafficking, and abusive child labor. Hershey does not have a system in place to ensure that its cocoa purchased from this region is not tainted by labor rights abuses.”

“They decided to ask Hershey’s to step up their game and reveal where they get their chocolate from,” said Minuskin. “So far, Hershey’s has refused.”

After reviewing this information, Pitkowsky began to do some research of his own, consulting synagogue member Dennis Klein, who several years ago organized Teaneck’s fair trade steering committee.

The educational and advocacy efforts of that group, whose initial members included Teaneck business owners Tim Strunk of Tiger Lily flowers and Bruce Prince, owner of the Teaneck General Store and a member of Beth Sholom, led to Teaneck’s being named, in October 2010, a fair trade town — one of 21 towns in the United States to have that designation. Signs proudly proclaiming that can be seen at Teaneck exits on Route 4.

To win that title, a specific number of businesses and community organizations, depending upon a municipality’s population, must agree to sell or make available at least two fair trade products. According to Prince, eight Teaneck businesses have signed up so far.

“I asked [Klein] for a website to look at that had things for sale, as opposed to just theory,” said Pitkowsky. “He directed me to EqualExchange.com, which partners with the American Jewish World Service (AJWS).”

That partnership, begun in 2010, enables “congregations, community organizations, and individuals to buy top-quality coffee beans and chocolate while supporting the efforts of small growers and co-operatives in the developing world,” said the AJWS statement announcing the new venture.

At the Equal Exchange website, Pitkowsky found “tiny little chocolate bars we could buy in bulk.” Checking the kashrut of the product took a bit longer, since the product has a German hechsher and the rabbi needed to find his way around a second website, this one in German.

“I bought a box and was thrilled to be able to say we are trying to do our part,” he said, noting that the synagogue already uses fair trade coffee and is looking into tea. “We’re trying to show that Judaism, and Conservative Judaism, care not only about ritual and morals, but about everything we should care about — like workers and the environment. We’re trying to make it a reality, no pun intended, in small bites.”

Pitkowsky said that, in addition to Klein and Prince, the members of his synagogue demonstrate “real sensitivity to caring about the world outside of Teaneck.” The shul has inaugurated a recycling program, something he had discussed with the social action committee, and — if possible, said the rabbi — he would love to see the synagogue connect with providers of kosher, free-range beef.

“We’re making a concerted effort to green the synagogue,” he said.

Pitkowsky pointed out that one problem with the new chocolate is its relatively high cost, since a box of 150 bars costs $24, while Hershey’s is much less expensive. He is hopeful, however, that the synagogue will look upon the use of the fair trade chocolate as a way to express its Jewish values, “on Shabbat or at any time.”

“As Jews, we’re supposed to care deeply for the environment and for a safe working environment,” he said. “This is a way to do that. If people care enough, it’s possible to make the switch or to do it in some way that supports people engaged in fair work practices. There was a time when we didn’t know about the work environment for people overseas,” he said. “But it’s out there now. We can’t ignore it.”

According to Prince, Fair Trade USA provides a kind of “hashgachah for human rights,” documenting the manufacturing practices of third-world countries with a track record of abusive labor relations.

The nonprofit group, says its website, uses “a market-based approach that gives farmers fair prices, workers safe conditions, and entire communities resources for fair, healthy, and sustainable lives. We seek to inspire the rise of the conscious consumer and eliminate exploitation.”

Prince challenged the “fallacy” that fair trade products are necessarily more expensive. “The market determines value,” he said. If coffee costs more at some stores that use fair trade beans, “It is because people are willing to pay more for a higher-quality product.”