Now that you've "grown" interest in food issues in your congregation, capitalize on Food Day as a time to celebrate your work and take it a step further! A few simple event ideas:

• Start a dining club to support local restaurants that prioritize sustainable ingredients, animal welfare or fair trade! Call local restaurants to ask about their practices and remind them that their patrons value food justice
• Host a Sacred Table party: Discuss an essay from the CCAR's Sacred Table book of essays over a meal of local, seasonal foods. www.ccarpress.org
• Food Audit: With your religious school students, complete an "audit" of your synagogue food use: what do you serve at onegs, pre-school programs, youth events etc? Can you do more to encourage healthier and more sustainable eating or reduce food waste?
• Check it out: Visit a site on your food chain before the supermarket like a seed supplier, trucking company, or cannery. See what it takes to get that ear of corn from the ground to your plate
• Put it in writing: Include an article on food justice in your synagogue newsletter with a list of local soup kitchens or food pantries that need volunteers. You can also write about your Food Day events for a food blog or local paper

Suggested Food Day reading from The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic

• Consider what it means to reform the concept of Kashrut.  Read "Kashrut: A New Freedom for Reform Jews" by Richard N. Levy p 67 and "Kashrut: A Reform Point of View" by Simeon J. Maslin, Ed. (page 49)
• Where does all the chocolate, coffee and tea you consume come from? Read "Our Dark Addictions: Chocolate, Coffee, and Tea" by Deborah Prinz (page 287)
• To eat meat or not to eat meat, is that the question? Read "Kindness to animals: Tzaar Baalei Chayim" by Rayna Ellen Gevurtz and "I'll Have What She's Having': Jewish Ethical Vegetarianism" by Mark Sameth (pages 215 and 225)