Over three thousand years ago, famine drove a small
tribe of nomadic people to Ancient Egypt seeking food. However,
the unsuspecting tribe entered into a land sustained by exploiting
the hungry. The abundant food of Ancient Egypt was taxed to sustain
a state system that extracted food from productive farmers through
the power of a priesthood, with esoteric knowledge to calculate
the flood seasons, and a ruling class who spent the tax-revenue
to maintain a vast army. Escape from that regime is marked by
a 'seder' that recreates emergence from oppression as both an
inner journey and a formation into a free people. It is not surprising
that the food system that arose from that small tribe was inspired
by ideals of food justice to this day.
After millennia of exile, as Israel returns to her land, Pesach
can offer renewed inspiration for all peoples to transform today's
dominating power; a multi-national food system fed by depletive
farming systems, powered by exploitative labor, causing climate
change and loss of biodiversity on an unprecedented planetary
scale.
If we can grow our own organic gardens, and bake artisan breads,
is it possible to bake our own kosher l'Pesach matzah?
Wheatsheaves Workshops:
1. Wheat Sheaves and Bread
Tales
Experience anew why the agricultural cycle of bread
is holy to the Jewish people. From the fascinating, little-know
ancient Israeli practices to invoke rain and fertility, roasting
parched wheat for Temple sacrifices, baking shmurah matzah from
ancient emmer use din Ancient Egypt, the Lechem Panin (12 breads
for the 'Encounter') of the Mishkon, bake/taste the wheat stored
in Masada 2,000 years ago by by King Herod, to the diverse bread
traditions of the almost-lost tribes of Israel who settled in
Djerba, the Caucasas Mountains, Bukharia and India. Sing the songs
of food justice and renewal for today.
2. Mystery of Matzah
Study source texts, explore ancient Israeli teachings
of wheat and bread, sing Miriam's Song, and restore our matzah
traditions anew. Grind flour from the almost-extinct Mother Wheat,
emmer (Em Ha'Hitah) that sustained our ancestors in Eretz Yisrael,
and bake matzah in the wood-fired oven at the Adamah Farm. Plant
emmer seeds. Begin the journey to reclaim ancient Israeli food
teachings in freedom from today's industrial food system. Learn
to bake kosher matzah with your own hands and heart.
Taste the long-lost 'mother wheat' emmer (cusmin - mistranslated
as 'spelt' that did not exist in the period of ancient Egypt)
that grows wild in Israel, the only wheat eaten in the time of
the Pharohs, used in the original matzah in Ancient Egypt, and
preserved by the very people, Ethiopian Jews that were themselves
almost lost. Almost-extinct einkorn ('shipon' in Hebrew),
eaten by Abraham and Sara in Mesopotamia, was collect in the Golan
Heights, preserved by the ancient Druze peoples. Einkorn is safe
to eat for glutin-intolerant people with celiac disease
