On Friday, our group departed from Kibbutz Ketura. After a debrief of our time at the Kibbutz, we headed out to Neot Smadar for a two hour tour of a vegetarian Kibbutz that raised goats, grew vegetables, and had its own winery. We finished the tour with an amazing wine tasting! Each wine was a dessert wine, and one had 22 different spices in it symbolizing the 22 letters in the modern hebrew alphabet. With that grand finale, we got back in the bus for another quick road trip.
Our next destination was Mitzpe Ramon. Here, we did a private bread baking class hosted by a Jewish baker where we baked all different types of bread. Each person in our class learned how to roll, fold, and season bread to create different flavors and designs. We had created dozens of rolls by the time our dough was gone: some with sesame seeds, some with zatar and oil, some with sweet potatoes and baba ganoush! All of the different types were baked while we sat down for a lovely meal. The whole group had trouble moving after such a filling meal of breads, sauces, salads, jams, vegetables, and more. It was a highlight of the trip that nobody will be able to forget.
We sat down once again on the bus to travel towards Jerusalem where we would be staying for the night. The time on the bus was used by most of us to recover from our food comas, but we had forgotten that we had another large meal ahead of us! It was the night of our massive Shabbat dinner. In the spirit of Shabbat, we walked 40 minutes to a woman’s house who was kind enough to host our group. By the time our long walk was done, most of us were ready for some more food. We entered the woman’s house, and she walked us through the religious background of Shabbat. We were lucky to have such a knowledgable host who could share some of her stories and experiences with us. Following the religious rules of the holiday, we said the prayer over the bread and the wine and then shared a delicious meal. It consited of the Challah, soup, different salads, grape leaves, hummus, and baba ganoush as the starting dishes. For the main meal, we had an amazing onion flavored rice, salmon, and a vegan quiche with sundried tomato, tofu, and mushroom. The meal was topped off with an apple cobbler and some Ben and Jerrys vanilla ice cream on the side!
After our long day, we headed back to the hostel for a peaceful night of sleep! We had much to look forward to in the days ahead of us.
Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 2)
1/7/2020
Today, we went to Kibbutz Lotan, which is across the street from Kibbutz Ketura. Kibbutz Lotan has a huge focus on mud building and zero waste living, so they have incorporated their trash into mud sculptures. Our day with Mike, one of the original founders of the kibbutz, started with a tour of Kibbutz Lotan. Lotan is known for their funky mud architecture and delicious tea house, which we were lucky enough to experience. The mud dome houses were designed in unique ways to reflect the residents of each house, and they are more energy efficient than the standard structures on the Kibbutz. Mike also showed us the solar cookers and explained to us how they work in an engaging lecture. After that, we had a mini lesson on biogas where the group saw Lotan’s biogas digesters. Lotan is an eco-conscious kibbutz with composting toilets and vermiculture (worm-based compost) in their “Eco Kef” area which is a great time for hands-on opportunities.
One of the hands-on experiences at Lotan was mud brick building. We learned the formula and methodology of mud brick making through discussion and actually building bricks! Personally, I made 3 bricks and had a lot of fun, which I was not expecting. The best experience of the day was the Lotan Tea House, where we ate lunch. The chef was so nice and very accommodating with my dietary restrictions, and she made AMAZING food. We had warm bean and lentil soup, a crisp pistachio apple salad, a chilled barley and tomato salad, a scrumptious sun dried tomato spread on whole wheat bread as an appetizer. This was followed by gooey mozzarella zucchini quiche and an amazingly fluffy coconut and chocolate chip cake. Overall, the day was action-packed and another great day in the Negev desert.
Sarah Parson
Food & Energy Trip to Israel 2020 – Day 1
Greetings readers! In the fall semester of 2019, Jenn Halpin and I co-taught a course called Food and Energy in the USA and Israel. We had a great classroom full of students from many disciplines, as the course was cross listed in Food Studies, Environmental Studies, International Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. Of the 24 students in the course, nine adventuresome travelers signed up for a culminating experience in Israel for the next two weeks. From today until January 19th each member of our group will provide daily updates on this blog on a rotating basis.
The curriculum for the fall course was a broad-spectrum comparative look at food and energy issues in both countries, ranging from Kosher and Halal foods, sustainable farming practices and water resources to hands-on lab exercises in solar and bioenergy production. Also included for context was a deep dive into historical, contemporary and personal aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Each student wrote a research paper on a topic of their choosing. Students on the current trip to Israel are here to gain first-hand exposure to food and energy material in-country and are tasked with furthering their investigations into the Israeli side of their paper topics. Our tour, spanning the country from south to north, will include numerous sites of interest and contact with a wide variety of sources, from academic experts in the field to hands-on practitioners of the food and energy trades.
Today is our first full day in Israel. Our trip thus far has been smooth sailing. All students who flew in as a group met on time at JFK airport, and our ten-hour flight was happily uneventful. After we cleared customs, two students who arrived early to visit family members in Israel (Amelia and Josh) met us at the Tel Aviv airport and we found our Israeli bus driver for a quick exit of the busy city. About an hour south of Tel Aviv, we stopped for our first Israeli falafels at a highway rest stop. Thankfully Josh and Amelia could read the menu! (The gas station falafels were fine – a good start to my personal quest for the perfect falafel sandwich – a baseline above which we can only improve.) Following lunch we all passed out from jet lag for a few hours of bus ride and woke up in the Negev desert of southern Israel. We fell asleep in a semi-arid but green landscape (it has been raining a lot in recent weeks up north) and came to in the brown and tans hills of the Arava valley, dotted here and there with date palm groves. To the east we can see the dry hills of Jordan and from the south we can almost smell the ocean air of the Red Sea coast at Eilat.
Our home for the next four nights is Kibbutz Ketura, a wonderfully productive oasis in the desert. Ketura is home to the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES), a Dickinson partner program in Israel. The AIES offers undergraduate and graduate coursework in renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, water management, ecology, and peace building, all with a trans-boundary focus. The student mix at the AIES is 1/3 Israeli, 1/3 Palestinian and Jordanian, and 1/3 internationals from a variety of countries including the US. The core goal of AIES curriculum is building trust among historically opposing parties in the Middle East through dialogue and solutions-based approaches to regionally shared resource issues. In addition to a long-standing connection with Dickinson (several students from the College have studied abroad at the AIES), the program’s constructive approach to sustainability and conflict resolution fits perfectly with the offerings and philosophy of the College Farm.
Today was all about orientation, including a tour of Ketura with an introduction to Kibbutz life, lectures by experts in renewable energy and intercultural land-use issues, and three meals in the communal dining hall (lots of fresh salad, no deserts, plenty of tahini, very healthy!). We are grounding ourselves in the desert among welcoming, interesting people. It is exciting to hear their stories, to hear and see Hebrew all around us, and to immerse ourselves in a culture that is both foreign and familiar. We are well housed, well fed, and all of the students in the group have great attitudes! Happily, despite the unfortunate escalation in US-Iranian conflict that came to a head just prior to our departure, everything is calm and quiet in Israel and our hosts have reassured us that we can rest easy here in the Arava valley.
Thanks for reading! Please stay tuned for more interesting and exciting posts each day.
Cheers
Matt Steiman (Co-Instructor and College Farm Co-Manager)
As a multidisciplinary endeavor, Food Studies draws on a wide range of methods and ways of knowing. Within the academy, Food Studies courses arise from many disciplines ranging across the curriculum from the arts to the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. This certificate offers robust opportunities for “hands-on” experiential learning with community partners and the Dickinson Farm. Given the wide-ranging problems and possibilities that Food Studies offers, students will find emphasis placed on critical thinking skills in all their courses. Because these courses will range across the curriculum, they will be able to present food questions and issues as multi-faceted and complex.
Food Studies is the critical examination of food – the evolution of its procurement, production, consumption, and cultural meanings within the contexts of the natural and social sciences and humanities. It is a multidisciplinary field of study that involves and attracts philosophers, historians, scientists, literary and language scholars, artists, sociologists, art historians, anthropologists, nutritionists, psychologists, agriculturalists, economists, artists, film producers and critics, policy-makers, and consumers. Complex questions frame food studies: Where does food come from? Why do people eat what they eat? Are current food systems sustainable? What factors will shape the future of food systems, foodways, and food culture?
The Dickinson approach to Food Studies stands to contribute substantially to the development of engaged citizens who are well-equipped to participate thoughtfully and productively in the full range of endeavors that any liberal arts graduate might consider – in business, academia, non-profit work, policy-making, law, and medicine.
The Food Studies certificate exemplifies a useful education, one that affects every member of the community on a daily basis by:
- Combining courses across the curriculum
- Providing hands-on experiential learning opportunities
- Interacting with community partners and
- Integrating the Dickinson College Farm into student learning.