“Have you ever felt that food is sacred? How does food connect you to others? To your family? To Judaism?”

At sunrise on Wednesday mornings in the summer, farmer Phil Stober and his crew pick fresh vegetables and fruit at their farm, Barefoot Organics near Lebanon, PA. and deliver it to Rodeph Shalom every Wednesday afternoon, as part of our Community Supported Agriculture. On Wednesday evenings, RS congregants come in to cook fresh meals, prepared with the produce just-picked that morning and then deliver them (we call them “Mitzvah Meals”) to other RS congregants who are ill, or homebound, or who have recently lost a loved one.

Last Wednesday evening, as I stood in the RS kitchen and watched our team of chefs preparing Mitzvah Meals I was overcome by the feeling that what I was witnessing was the very essence of Judaism.

Can food be sacred? What is the connection between food and Judaism? These are the questions we posed to our congregation this week in our first ever “Crowdsourcing” sermon, where we asked the members of our RS family to offer your thoughts on a different question each week – as our Summer Sermon Series. (As a way to tap into the collective wisdom of our congregation)

This week, we received a lot of very thoughtful responses. Quite a few of the comments focused on the Mitzvah meals, as this has helped provide deeper meaning to the connection between food and Judaism.

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