Jewish farming in the U.S. is fertile ground for Jewish ethnographer

Dirtying her hands in a field by weeding, harvesting and strengthening agricultural ties is appealing to Adrienne Krone. Doing so and sharing her findings with others, however, is the more meaningful choice, she said.

The Jewish ethnographer who serves as associate professor of Environmental Science & Sustainability and Religious Studies at Allegheny College, and also chair of Jewish Studies, is slated to talk about her work, and her book “Free-Range Religion: Alternative Food Movements and Religious Life in the United States,” on Feb. 19 at 5 p.m. in Room 501 at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning.

The Oakland-based event, Krone told the Chronicle, will shed light on her discoveries while offering insight into her research.

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“As an ethnographer, I go to places and I do whatever the people there are doing,” she said. “If I’m going to a farm, that means I’m out in the fields: I’m weeding, I’m watering, I’m harvesting.”

Not to get lost in the weeds, but Krone’s work requires conducting interviews and field work in a literal field. Occasionally, she has conversations with subjects in “comfier chairs.”

Krone’s approach to understanding religious farming, she said, has taken her around the country and introduced her to Jewish spaces and people who are working to “change how Jews see the environment and how Jews see food.”

Whether adapting the laws of shemitah — the biblically mandated sabbatical year observed every seven years in Israel — to a North American context, or teaching younger generations about orlah, the prohibition on benefiting from a tree’s fruit during its first three years, Jewish farms and farmers have embraced creative approaches.

During the 2014-15 shemitah cycle, Pearlstone, a 182-acre site in Reisterstown, Maryland, paused its annual food production and adopted shemitah-inspired tactics.

Though staff didn’t leave the field barren, and instead elected to plant a cover crop and “do some soil restoration,” Krone said, the idea was to dedicate resources to sustainability while giving workers a chance to “rest and do volunteer work and other things, because people need some time away as well.”

At Coastal Roots Farm in Encinitas, California, Krone continued, staff planted crops in “soil socks, which sit on top of the ground, so that they weren’t planting in the ground during the shemitah year, but rather on top of it.”

Through her writing and teaching, Krone seeks to educate people about the importance of connections to food systems.

“Having some sense of the ways that we do not control — and cannot control — everything about our world, is an important part of what it means to be human and is an important part of what it means to be Jewish,” she said.

It’s an educational process, she continued, that requires appreciating biblical writings and religious undertakings.

“Religion is so connected to how people shape their own food practices,” Krone said. “If we’re not paying attention to the ways that religion is informing how people make decisions then we’re missing key pieces of the conversation and we can’t change the food system and make it better.”

Since starting her professional and educational journey nearly a decade ago, Krone has met numerous Jewish farmers and visited multiple Jewish sites.

Those experiences, which she plans on describing during her upcoming talk, demonstrate a dedicated Jewish corps who are “part of efforts to change the food system,” she said. The people who are invested in food, and environmental and climate justice activism, are “doing it in Jewish community.”

That detail is essential for students and readers to know, she continued. “I think it’s a really helpful thing for understanding contemporary American Judaism.” PJC

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.