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Jewish Urban Farms Take Root in Australia

Mitch Burnie, who founded Adamama, Australia’s first Jewish urban farm. Courtesy Mitch Burnie.

‘Jews were people of the land before we were people of the book’

By Nomi Kaltmann
Tablet
Nov 7, 2022

Excerpt:

After returning home, Burnie wanted to open an urban Jewish farm in Sydney, but there was a problem: “I didn’t yet have the skills or knowledge.” So, he took a short sabbatical from his job to seek out the training he needed. In early 2019, he was accepted to Hazon’s three-month Adamah Fellowship, a program for adults in their 20s and 30s that integrates organic agriculture, farm-to-table living, Jewish learning, community building, social justice, and spiritual practice.

“I was the first and only Aussie to have ever been on it,” he said. “Before I went, I spoke to the British person who runs the Jewish community urban farm in London. I realized this didn’t just have to be an American thing—it could be global as well.”

The fellowship, which he spent living in a tent on Lake Miriam in Falls Village, Connecticut, at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, was a formative experience for Burnie. “I woke up every day at 5 a.m. and sang the Shema with a group of like-minded Jews from across America,” he recalled. “We were all there learning about regenerative agriculture and how to link it to Jewish festivals. We were delving into our people’s history before exile.”

The main lesson he learned? “Jews were people of the land before we were people of the book,” he said. “We can only be people of the book if we understand the land.”

When the fellowship finished, Burnie had a clear vision for what he wanted to create in Sydney. “I reached out to Hakoah [a local Jewish organization] and asked if I could have a tiny weedy corner in the corner of their massive complex to start our urban farm. They said, ‘Yes, go for it.’”

Read the complete article here.