As I walked into the kitchen yesterday, my aunt was chopping beets for dinner. Laying off to the side were a pile of the greens about to be tossed in the garbage. I asked her if she usually uses beet greens and with a shrug she told me that she didn't even know they were edible. "Not edible!!" I laughed, "Beets greens are so scrumptious." I quickly washed them and cooked them with some tofu for lunch.

Two years ago, I couldn't tell the difference between a beet and a rutabaga. I grew up as a typical city boy on the fifteenth floor of my apartment building and commuting to high school everyday on a subway. With the exception of summers at Eisner camp in the Berkshires, the only green space I had growing up was Central Park. I knew that my food came from supermarkets and restaurants, but had never stepped foot on a farm.

In the summer of ‘06, I spent three months as a Jewish organic farmer at the Adamah program in south western Connecticut. I lived, with a dozen others, in tents in the woods and "commuted" by bike to a nearby farm. The only car we had was a big old pickup truck that we ran on bio-diesel that we brewed ourselves. Together we farmed four acres and grew thousands of pounds of organic vegetables.

Before that summer, I had never done anything like growing my own food. It was amazing to find that by simply performing manual tasks like planting, weeding, watering and harvesting, I was able to grow significant amounts of food. A quarter of a potato can yield almost a dozen new potatoes. A carrot seed the size of a point of a pin can grow into a foot long carrot. I know that science can explain plant growth, but there is also an incredible wondering in farming that feelings like I am partnering with G!d. Every morning Jews around the world say the prayer Ahavah Rabah, which stresses how much G!d loves us. I had mumbled it hundreds of times, but before grew my own produce, I don't think I ever felt that love. The psalmist wrote, "you open your hand and satiate all living things according to your will" (145:16), but I never understood it before staring at the beauty of a squash blossom that I myself had grown.

All over the Torah and Talmud there are references to farming. There are detailed rules about what you can plant, how you can plant, and when you can plant. Some of them like shmitah (letting your land rest every seven years), yovel (redistributing property to make sure that everyone has some), and leket (leaving dropped harvests for the needy) are by today's standards radical ways of redistributing income and looking after the poor. Unfortunately, unlike kashrut or even tzitzit, these laws do not have practical implications for many modern Jews. They only apply to the land of Israel, and are thus not binding on anyone living ‘exile. In addition , for much of our history, we have been forbidden from owning lands by local governments, making even questions of how the laws might apply outside of the land moot.

With the growth of Zionism, there has been a resurgence of interest in Jewish agricultural law. For most of the last century, this consisted of some Jews on kibbutzim following the ancient laws as carefully as they can. Recently, there is a new phenomenon afoot. Increasing numbers of Jews living in "exile" are beginning to investigate the connections between Judaism and the land where they live. Organizations like Hazon, Teva, and Adamah, have begun offering opportunities for American Jews with these questions in new and innovative ways.

Later today I will blog about how some of these American groups have been engaging with these ancient laws and modernizing them to make them relevant to their lives today. Stay tuned.