About Us
Miknaf Ha’aretz (pronounced phonetically Mik-naf Ha-a-retz) literally means end, edge or wing of the earth. There is no doubt we are at an edge, a frightening edge. But an edge with a wing. An edge of emergence.
Miknaf Ha’aretz was founded in 2020 to create a space for radically reimagining Jewish belonging to land beyond zionism, to build community and a movement rooted in principles of earth-based radical-diasporism. Our work aims to re-connect the Jewish community in the UK to regenerative food and farming practices, organise around food and land justice issues, articulate a ‘Jewish land justice’, and collaborate with other diasporic communities to pursue an agro-ecological approach to farming which truly affirms and celebrates the diversity of land-workers across the UK.
Our work aims to heal, repair and transform Jewish belonging to land.
Our Story
Our work emerged through a conviction that there must be other responses to the violence of the Jewish past than the violence of settler-colonialism, which we had witnessed first hand after spending time in Palestine, seeing the impacts of occupation and the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people. We became determined to offer liberated alternatives for Jewish connection and healing on land. We have been deeply inspired by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz’s articulation of ‘Radical-Diasporism’ as a positive alternative of co-liberation beyond nationalism, that seeks healing, belonging and justice alongside all marginalised peoples. This is rooted in the revolutionary idea of Doikeyt from the Jewish Labour Bund (Yiddish, meaning: Hereness), a commitment to the lands you live in and to be in solidarity and fight for justice wherever you are. We were also deeply inspired by partners in the US after exploring the rich and radical Jewish food and farming movement there.
We seek to re-connect the Jewish community back to land and to tend the traumas that have resulted from multiple displacements, genocide and centuries of discriminatory laws preventing Jewish people from accessing land. We insist on uplifting Jewish safety, belonging and re-connection to land, not through the nationalism of zionism but through a politics of solidarity and co-liberation.
Jewish histories of displacement have meant, like for many diasporic communities, that without being around others who share the racialised experience of being Jewish, many in the Jewish community feel fear of living and being in rural spaces. Many of us have felt isolated in rural spaces, land based communities and the food and land justice movement where a Jewish positionality wasn’t being considered or articulated. We wanted to explore our unique set of circumstances within the British Jewish community, and the broader diaspora communities of the UK, whose access to land has been affected by empire, persecution, racism and the diasporic experience.
Our work to build diasporist jewish community is being increasingly recognised as a tangible antidote to the violence of zionism that we are seeing play out right now in its most extreme form. As we fight for justice in Palestine and as many in our community become more and more disillusioned with zionism, our work feels part of a significant shift in the jewish imagination towards collective liberation and belonging to land through solidarity and justice.
“Landlessness had been a central feature of Jewish oppression.”
Who We Are
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Sara Moon
Co-founder
Sara Moon is a nature-connection facilitator, Jewish educator, Kohenet//Hebrew-Priestess and co-founder of Miknaf Ha’aretz and Camp Beenu. After many years of abundant Jewish learning at Pardes & Paideia, environmental education training with Forest School & Wildwise, growing food at Adamah Jewish Food & Farming Fellowship (and market gardens across the North of England), Sara is so excited to be weaving wild Torah and Jewish time with the mossy ecologies of here. She loves wild swimming, cycling & foraging and currently lives in South Devon.
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Samson Hart
Co-founder
Samson Hart is a food grower, facilitator, nature-based educator and co-founder of Miknaf Ha’aretz. He has been tending land and market-gardening for over 8 years, and currently tends a kitchen garden on the edge of Dartmoor. His work explores the intersections of land, ecology, justice, culture & spirituality. Samson holds an MA in Regenerative Economics from Schumacher College, has completed the Adamah Jewish Farming Fellowship, the Aleph Kesher Fellowship in Jewish Spiritual Leadership, collaborated with St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation & Peace and has worked as a collaborative associate at gentle/radical.. He loves cooking, baking bread, wild swimming and reading/writing poetry.
