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January 29, 1999/12 Shevat 5759, Vol. 51, No. 18
A garden grows hereMICHELLE ACKERMAN
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 The Stan Kleiner Mitzvah Garden produces more than 500 pounds of food each year. Photo courtesy of Jerry Birnbaum |
Take an unsightly patch of dirt with a swamp and a thicket of weeds, add a good cause and a group of gardeners who can work magic, and what do you get? The Stan Kleiner Mitzvah Garden at Temple Chai.
And for the 270 residents of the independent living apartments at Kivel Campus of Care who savor the flavors and benefit from the sustenance of the food grown, the garden is a fairy-tale come true.
First proposed in 1993 by Rabbi William Berk of Temple Chai, the idea for the garden was sparked by a biblical passage: "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger" (Leviticus 19:9-10).
"(To) keep with this teaching, Temple Chai ... literally set aside a part of our land to grow food for the hungry," explained Berk in an application for the Belle Latchman Award, for community service, submitted to the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix in 1996. (Temple Chai received an honorable mention in the award contest).
Unlike Cinderella's lightning-quick transformation, the metamorphosis of the rough plot of land into a well-groomed, functional garden took a full year.
In early 1994, volunteers began clearing brush and pulling weeds. The cleanup was complicated by a wash running through the plot, with no outlet, creating a swampy pool of water when it rained. The city of Phoenix came to the rescue, filling the area with 100 tons of dirt.
Once the land was leveled, a committee planned the tilling of the soil and an irrigation system. Crews of 8-12 adults invested 3-4 hours on alternate Sunday mornings to prepare the land for planting.
Finally, in the fall of 1995, they put the first seeds in the ground.
Mitzvah Garden chairman is Jerry Birnbaum, a master gardener and account executive at the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. Each week Birnbaum harvests ripened crops - lettuce, radishes, carrots, dill, parsley, tomatoes, beets, zucchini, cucumbers, melons, corn - arranges them in baskets and delivers them to Kivel. Helping Birnbaum each week is Wayne Kaplan, a temple member, along with various youth groups and school classes who come out to volunteer.
"It affects the lives of residents here," says Kivel Chaplain Rabbi Martin Scharf. "Many people in the apartments are on very, very limited incomes. After they pay their rent and put money aside for their (medical expenses) and other bills, (then) pay for their meal programs, there's not much money left to shop for (fresh) vegetables or fruit."
Last Passover, white radish root and parsley from the garden were distributed to congregants for use on their Seder plates.
The garden, which produces more than 500 pounds of food per year, is dedicated to the memory of Stan Kleiner, who died in 1993. As social action chairman at Temple Chai, Kleiner initiated many social action programs at the synagogue.
Unlike the metamorphosis of Cinderella, with its fairy-tale happily-ever-after ending, the story of the Mitzvah Garden has only just begun to be written.