17 Garden Beds Built by the Students of MJBHA at the GrowTorah Garden

In this monthly feature, we showcase one of our Anafim Partners - this month features Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy.

Our brilliant and creative educators at Berman Hebrew Academy are Rabbi Nate Fein and Rabbi Avichai Pepper. In the garden, students learn regularly about the parsha, environmental stewardship, and appreciation for the beauty in nature. Rabbi Fein and Rabbi Pepper started from scratch, weeding and clearing an area next to their track and transforming it into an elegant garden.

They built 17 (!) garden beds with the students, the most of any GrowTorah garden in the country! Rabbis Pepper and Fein included the students in every step of the process - from uprooting the invasive weeds and solarizing the space, to building the beds, filling them with soil, and planting new crops in them. This meaningful engagement throughout the process helped to drive home the values of stewardship and responsibility - L’ovdah U’lshomra. We are so excited to see how the garden grows in the springtime!

In addition to our Shorashim, GrowTorah thrives off of our relationship with our Anafim partners! As one of our Anafim partners, we advise and train school staff to run successful educational garden programs at their school. Among them is Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy, a Preschool-12th grade, Modern Orthodox Jewish Day School serving the Greater Washington D.C. area.

The Anafim initiative was launched with help from a Covenant Foundation Ignition Grant.