Millburn Spokes Folks, a team of riders and crew members from Congregation B’nai Israel in Millburn, participated in the eighth annual New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride organized by and benefiting the Jewish environmental organization Hazon.
Photos courtesy Josh Schor
September 11, 2008
A Labor Day bicycle ride and Shabbaton for Jewish environmental awareness drew 36 New Jersey participants, including 25 from Congregation B’nai Israel in Millburn.
Some 300 people gathered at Camp Kinder Ring in New York’s Hudson Valley for Shabbat ahead of a two-day bike ride that offered distances of 100 to 150 miles.
The eighth annual New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride is one of the signature events for Hazon, a New York-based nonprofit that promotes sustainable agriculture projects, a food blog, a hunger relief program, and a yearly conference on Jews and ecology.
Josh Schor, who served as captain of the CBI team, Millburn Spokes Folks, said Hazon is “particularly meaningful” to his family.
Hazon “helps me shift my paradigm of what being Jewish is,” he said. “Judaism is replete with values regarding the environment and agriculture and food, and Hazon helps teach about this and put it into action. It allows us to challenge ourselves both physically and spiritually.”
Josh Schor with his daughter, Shayna, at the ride. Schor served as captain of the B’nai Israel team.
Also participating this year were his wife, Lori, and their daughters, Shayna and Rafaella, who attend Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union in West Orange. (A third daughter, Noemie, is in college and could not participate.)
“Hazon has had a profound impact on our family and kids,” said Schor. “My wife, Lori, who crewed this year but has ridden in the past, just started composting in our backyard. Shayna and Rafaella are active in environmental causes at Schechter.”
The Hazon riders — 171 of them, with 17 from New Jersey — completed a loop on Sunday and rode from Kinder Ring to the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan on Monday. Each rider is required to raise $1,200 for Hazon; the amount is slightly less for additional family or team members. Crew members pay a registration fee but do not have to raise money.
This was the first year the riders spent Shabbat at Camp Kinder Ring. “We outgrew Camp Isabella Freedman, where we held the Shabbat retreat for the past few years,” said Nancy Lipsey, Hazon’s director of outdoor Jewish adventures.
This year, the ride raised a total of close to $250,000 to benefit Jewish environmental issues.
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