Eating Torah

In response to this Jew and the Carrot post “Will they wipe your chin, too?”:
Leah, I am likewise creeped out by the idea of paying someone to pick up and cook your share of produce from a CSA. It seems to me that the point of getting food at a CSA, especially for us city-dwellers, is to involve ourselves more physically and emotionally in the process of bringing food to our tables, so that the joys and satisfaction of this personal engagement with good food will motivate us to social activism for morally responsible and environmentally-aware use of our natural resources. But this is a subjective benefit that is supposed to lead to a more general “objective” social and environmental benefit: smaller, local farms growing a variety of organic vegetables and humanely treated domestic animals as economically viable alternative to the monocultural agro-business mega-farms that are shoving corn down our throats and contaminating our spinach. So it’s hard to disagree with Richard, Aviva, and Rabbi Shmuel’s arguments that businesses like Sweet Deliverance are contributing toward this end, not to mention the opportunities it provides chefs like Kelly Geary and Alix, who are committed to sustainable food, to make a living from it. That’s my my head tells me. But in my guts I’m still creeped out. The people who will rely on Sweet Deliverance have made certain lifestyle choices that preclude them from engaging in the creative ritual activities of cooking and hosting others at meals (the value of which you’ve stressed, Leah). It’s my gut feeling that the more stages of the process of bring our food from soil to the table to our company we’re involved in directly, physically, emotionally - the stronger and deeper our commitment to sustainable activities is likely to be.