(Courtesy of Bnei Akiva) Gardens may grow inch by inch and row by row but, for the first time this summer, Moshava Ba’ir day camps will “turnip the volume” by launching GrowTorah gardens at five of its summer day camps, including a new garden at Moshava Ba’ir MetroWest on the Kushner campus and an expansion of the current garden at Moshava Ba’ir New Jersey on the Frisch campus. What better way to celebrate Tu B’Shevat this past week than with the new partnership underway.
GrowTorah creates gardens in cooperation with Jewish organizations to help children explore Torah lessons and Jewish values connected to nature and land stewardship. Learning Torah in the garden helps children dig into the complex relationships between humans, their fellow creatures and the earth, fostering new and personal connections through hands-on experiential learning and delicious vegetables they’ve grown themselves.
“Integral to our movement’s mission is to create experiential education that connects our campers and staff to Torah v’Avodah in new ways,” said Rav Shaul Feldman, executive director of Bnei Akiva of the U.S. & Canada and founder of the Moshava Ba’ir day camp network. “Agriculture is an integral component of Bnei Akiva’s founding mission—part of our slogan and even embedded into our semel (logo), and this is a really special opportunity to have our campers experience it first-hand in a tangible way.”
At each Moshava Ba’ir, GrowTorah will train a local staff member to be the GrowTorah educator, teaching them gardening skills and providing curriculum resources for garden lessons about the upcoming parsha and camp-wide tochnit (educational theme), based on what’s growing in the garden.
If this sounds like a dream job, GrowTorah is recruiting for this summer: young adults interested in working as the Moshava Ba’ir garden educators should apply to their camp of choice and note that they’re interested in working specifically as the GrowTorah educator.
A special component of this program will be that each GrowTorah Educator will participate in GrowTorah “Inchwormship.” The Inchwormship will help develop a professional pipeline by training and supporting experiential Torah educators in more communities who have the resources to teach about Jewish values through an environmental lens.
Bringing GrowTorah gardens to the Bnei Akiva summer camps is like coming full circle for Yosef Gillers, founder and co-executive director of GrowTorah. Gillers grew up in Bnei Akiva camps from a young age and worked at multiple Jewish summer camps across North America before launching GrowTorah. The first GrowTorah garden began at Moshava Ba’Ir in Paramus in 2014 as a pilot program, and the organization grew from there. This will be the first summer that GrowTorah will have gardens across the rest of the Moshava Ba’ir summer camps, bringing the garden experience to the wider Bnei Akiva community.
“We absolutely love working with Moshava Ba’ir and the whole Bnei Akiva family,” said Gillers. “It’s truly an extension of GrowTorah. Our missions align seamlessly, and this partnership makes perfect sense. It brings us into new communities and deepens our impact in communities where we’re already planted.”
Last year, GrowTorah gardens donated hundreds of pounds of produce to local food banks. This summer, with new gardens popping up at all Bnei Akiva day camps, that number is expected to increase even further, with baskets of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and beans set to nourish hundreds of people in the community. And kids across the U.S. & Canada at Bnei Akiva day camps will get a chance to dig into the earth and uncover new ways to learn Jewish values, one garden at a thyme.
