Sadeh:

Jewish Urban Farming Intensive

Aug 30 – December 19 2027

A four-month residential program for adults ages 21 – 36 that integrates urban farming, Jewish learning, and communal living.

We are excited to announce the relaunch of our fellowship for August 2027 with applications opening in January 2027!

WHAT WILL WE EXPLORE?

Urban
Agriculture

Learn the fundamentals of regenerative agriculture from seed to harvest, by growing food in an urban environment. Explore a range of techniques from composting and pest management to tool maintenance, animal tending, and everything in between! You’ll leave with practical skills, confidence, and a deeper understanding of how to manage and tend to your own small scale urban farm or garden.

Community
Service

Explore our roles and their impacts in our communities through weekly service with food justice partners. Through conversation and practice, we’ll unpack what it means to be in service in meaningful ways, while cultivating a sense of responsibility and empowerment to contribute to positive change in our local and larger communities.

Jewish Living
& Learning

Build intentional community rooted in earth connection and Jewish practice. Discover how 2,000 years of Jewish rituals, texts, and values can speak to our lives today and offer a sense of depth, joy and connection. Explore your own relationship to Jewish practice while connecting with community through land-based ritual, embodied practice and shared experiences.

Homesteading & Ancestral Skills

Deepen your relationship with the land by learning to work with the abundance of natural materials and resources around us. Learn traditional skills like food preservation, herbal remedies, basket weaving and fiber arts, while learning about their roots in local and Jewish traditions. Through using your hands, we’ll develop the knowledge and skills to work with what the land provides and cultivate a more reciprocal relationship with the earth.

Program Content

Avodat Lev (Service of the Heart)

Avodat lev is our daily practice to begin our mornings with intention and presence. Inspired by the traditional Shacharit (morning) prayer, this practice brings us together through meditation, movement, writing, art or song. Avodat Lev is designed to open our hearts to ourselves, each other, our community, and the world. These sessions are led by Urban Adamah staff and guest educators.

Daily

Shomrei Adamah (Stewarding the Land)

Shomrei Adamah is our collective, physical work on the Urban Adamah Farm. Farm work includes a variety of tasks including but not limited to: seeding, transplanting, weeding, bed preparation, harvesting, composting, animal husbandry (chickens, goats, bees, and worms), pest management, setting up for events and general site maintenance.

3 – 4x a week

Areivim (Community Support)

Areivim invites participants to show up in a sustained way to support organizations working on food access, food insecurity and nutrition education in a variety of ways. Fellows learn about allyship and solidarity, food justice issues, community building and empowerment, and so much more.

1x a week

Iyyun (Curriculum Content)

While every aspect of the Sadeh program invites opportunities for learning, we offer a more structured curriculum within the following core content areas. The descriptions below provide an overview of what participants will explore in each area, but are not limited to the topics listed here.

All classes are taught by Urban Adamah faculty and guest lecturers.

3 – 4x a week

Urban Agriculture

Participants learn about soil health, bed preparation, greenhouse management, compost, irrigation, organic farming, crop planning, propagation, cover cropping, pest management, harvesting, animal care (goats, chickens, bees, and worms) and all other elements of an urban farm ecosystem. Through this curriculum and Shomrei Adamah farm work, participants develop practical skills while deepening their understanding of ecological interdependence and their relationship to the land.

Social Justice

Develop a deeper understanding of privilege, oppression, power, and the systems that shape our communities and food systems. Through classes, reflection, and hands-on engagement with food justice work, participants explore the intersections of racial justice, Jewish identity, antisemitism, Indigenous land, and food access. The curriculum invites participants to develop the awareness and tools to engage in social action with greater responsibility and intention.

Earth-Based Judaism

Explore Jewish tradition as a source of meaning, connection, and spiritual practice. Through the Jewish calendar and cycles of time, Shabbat, blessings, Jewish agricultural practices, ethics around animal care and kashrut, and so much more, participants develop a more personal and embodied relationship to Judaism. The curriculum creates space to explore Jewish identity, ritual, and practice while connecting Jewish wisdom to the land, environmental stewardship, mindfulness, social action, and contemporary life.

Homesteading and Ancestral Skills

Learn with your hands by deepening your relationship with the abundance of resources around us. Through food preservation and homesteading practices such as fermentation, cheesemaking, herbal medicine, cob oven bread baking, and farm to table cooking, participants learn ways of transforming, preserving, and working with the harvest. They’ll also explore ancestral skills such as basket weaving, fiber arts, woodworking, wild food foraging, nature awareness, and so much more.

Eidah (Intentional Community Living)

Guided through structured sessions, participants will practice a variety of community building skills including active listening, conflict resolution, leadership training, group processing, non-violent communication, and more. These activities are an essential component of the program in order to build a supportive and thriving community culture.