Joanna Steinhardt

I did preliminary field work from July to August 2013 at three different urban farms in the East Bay, beginning with Urban Adamah in West Berkeley and including, tentatively, City Slickers in West Oakland and the Gill Tract Community Farm in Albany. This research was ultimately abandoned although the fundamental questions (and to some degree, the cultural-historical streams that constitute these sites) inform my current research on amateur mycologists in the Bay Area. The work on urban farms is not yet processed in any form but might generate a paper at some point in the future.

Seeding the new Gill Tract community farm

Me Digging Gill Tract 4:26:14 — An open day at the Gill Tract. I’m in the black brimmed hat.

IMG_20131122_081652 — The Student Organic Garden where I took part in a class taught by argoecologist Miguel Altieri. His tireless GSIs led the practicum in the garden.

UA - Peah Sign — The entrance to the main area of the farm at Urban Adamah. The sign explains the principle of tithing in Jewish Law, signified by the word “pe’ah,” meaning “the corner of the field.” (These laws are explained in the Torah in Leviticus 19:9-10, Leviticus 23:22, and Deuteronomy 24:19-22 and in the second tractate of the first book of the Mishnah, Seder Zera’im.) At Urban Adamah, it is interpreted as a call to charity, in this case a weekly free food stand for “the community in need.”

In 2010, I published an article entitled “American Neo-Hasids in the Land of Israel” in the journal Nova Religio summarizing the research I did among Neo-Hasidic Americans in Israel. I conducted field work at two yeshivot, one in Jerusalem and another in a settlement outside the city, from 2004 to 2006. This research was done for my master’s degree thesis in Cultural Studies at Hebrew University, which I received in 2007.

This article relates to themes of new religious movements, the relationship of American Jews to Israel — both to the state of Israel and to Israel as a religious concept (as referenced in the title of the piece) — and to Zionism as a religious and political ideology. It also relates to the unexpected ramifications of American forms of countercultural spirituality. Particular areas of focus in this article are new expressions of Hasidic spirituality (often referred to as Neo-Hasidism by scholars) and the political complexities and contradictions of these communities.