Jerusalem of Green: Bustan Brody community garden Downtown Jerusalem is cluttered enough at any time of year, but rarely more so than this past week. Posters for cleaning services and chametz sales imploring people to burn, sell, or otherwise dispose of their leavened bread in preparation for Pesach were pasted on lampposts and notice-boards on every street. Jews are generally partial to consuming food rather than throwing it away, but this time of year is the exception to the rule.

Only a few minutes from my apartment is another exception to the rule: A place where Jerusalemites come each week to throw away their leftovers, no matter the season. Down at Bustan Brody, part of a city-wide network of community gardens, ecologically-minded Israelis bring their unwanted food to dump on the compost heap. The volunteer-run garden is a green oasis in the midst of five-story apartment buildings—an area which was once slated for development during Ehud Olmert’s stint as Jerusalem Mayor, in a bid to reduce the city’s budget deficit by selling off public plots of land for construction.

“We took responsibility for our own backyard, that’s a revolutionary concept,” says Abba Zavidov, one of the founders of the Bustan, which lies within easy walking distance from the Prime Minister’s official residence. “If we’re going to talk about sustainability then we need to prove it can be done. People bringing their kitchen waste to compost at the garden is a great way of showing how."

In Jerusalem, organic refuse like kitchen scraps and garden clippings make up around 40% of the city’s solid waste. If not recycled via composting, it typically ends up contributing to more of the brown landfill mountains like those straddling the road from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, which trick you into thinking that you’re still in the Judean Hills instead of speeding across the (once flat) coastal plain.

And God Said, "Are You Gonna Eat That?': compost in the holy land But it’s not just the Festival of Matzo that inspires a frenzy of food disposal: Figures published last week reveal that folks in my native Britain throw out one-third of all food they buy each year, including over four million apples. And they don’t even have Pesach as an excuse. Waste on such a huge scale has been partly fueled by cheap food culture and marketing ploys like ‘two-for-one’ offers, which encourage over-consumption.

I hope that Rabbis in Israel and the Diaspora will be using their sermons during the Jewish festival of freedom as an opportunity to reflect on the merits of environmental responsibility in a world where not everyone can take their food for granted. In any case, composting can offer a green solution to the stale matzo and indigestion-cookies due to be littering kitchens across Israel next week.

This week on FaithHacker we're excited to welcome guest blogger Getzel Davis.  Getzel is, among other things, an environmental rock star, a former ADAMAH fellow, and pretty much the nicest guy I know.  To start things off I sent him some tough questions, and to no one's surprised, he totally rocked them. -TF

What kind of work are you doing now, and how does it fit into your spiritual journey?

I work for the Teva Learning Center as a Jewish environmental educator. Every week I get a new batch of 6^th grade day school students to try to inspire. We go off into the woods every day and practice feeling radical amazement in nature. After a week of group bonding and ecology lessons, I get to sit down with each child and school to help them brainstorm ways to make the world a healthier and happier place.

What's your favorite spiritual practice? Why?

My favorite spiritual practice at the moment is mikvah. It sounds a hokey, but time I get out of a mikvah, I physically feel spiritually cleansed (even if I am covered in muck from the lake). This year, to prepare for Yom Kippur, I dunked forty-nine times for the forty nine levels of spiritual impurity that people of capable of. When I got out, it felt like I was already at Neilah, the last service of Yom Kippur, when we are finally forgiven of our sins. I went through all the motions of Yom Kippur already knowing that I had been forgiven. It was incredibly powerful.

What's a Jewish ritual that really doesn't speak to you? Why?

Stoning gay people. I can’t imagine a compassionate G!d really wanted us to stone two consenting adults who love each other.

What's your favorite Jewish text to study and why?

My favorite text is the Mei Hashiloach by the Izbitzer Rebbe. Despite the fact that the Izbitzer was a leader of a chassidic ultra-orthodox Jews, half of his discourses are about the flawed nature of Jewish law. His radical theology allows for certain people at certain times to do perform acts contrary to normative Jewish law. This book is a great tool for anyone struggling personally with questions of halachic obligation.

What's a social justice issue that's really important to you and why?

I believe that the greatest issue facing humanity is global warming. Rising oceans and desertification of the land scare the shit of me. The solutions are not going to be easy things like recycling or buying hybrid cars (although both are great). The only way humanity will be able to avoid an incredibly ominous future is by radically changing how we consume things. We need to start holding producers responsible not only for the safety of a product while we own it, but also the impacts of its creation what happens to it after it has been thrown “away.”

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