Jonathan Jaffe Bernhard

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Feb 7, 2025, 8:44 PM

Returning to the Earth: A Call for Green Burials in the Jewish Community

Consider this: acres of uninterrupted, manicured grass under which are housed cement vaults themselves containing coffins. There is no activity, no renewal of life above ground— save cutting the grass - just space reserved for stagnation beneath. Now, imagine...

Aug 13, 2024, 9:00 PM

Aleph b’Elul: Revitalizing the Jewish New Year for Animals

My journey to plant-based eating began in a chicken coop. In 1987, I spent a summer at Kibbutz Givat Oz in Israel, working in the mornings and studying Hebrew in the afternoons. One day, we were tasked with catching...

May 30, 2024, 1:11 AM

Shavuot’s dairy dilemma

(iStock)

Today's milk industry challenges the Torah-based ethics we were taught and our understanding of what it means to keep kosher

Sep 8, 2023, 12:15 AM

Reflecting and Redirecting Our Diets: When Your Teshuvah Is Your Tikkun Olam

Though used easily and spoken fluently among many American Jews, tikkun olam is not an English word. It is just one of those Hebrew words, like “mazal tov,” used so often that it eventually slipped into the American Jewish...

Oct 28, 2022, 6:22 AM

Meat: Have We Lost the Privilege?

It is often noted by clergy and animal advocates that Adam and Eve were vegetarians. This is incorrect. They were vegans, as the Torah teaches: “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole...

Sep 14, 2022, 7:25 AM

Another New Year, Another Drought: Time to reflect

Maria was shocked. As we chatted on the phone, I pointed out that a burger takes 450 gallons of water to produce while a plant-based one only takes two. She looked out at the browning grass in front of her...

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About Me

Rabbi Jonathan Bernhard is the Director of Clergy Engagement at the Center for Jewish Food Ethics and the co-founder of the Valley Chevra Kadisha in the San Fernando Valley.