Cultivating Seeds of Understanding: Teens learn from each other as they plant an organic garden By Mike Fila Owings Mills Times May 17, 2007
	Karae Nixon, right, a student at St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, and Marcie King, of Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Pikesville, plant potatoes at the Pearlstone Conference Center's garden.

Wearing gold belts, chains and necklaces, hoop earrings, maroon neckties and tight jeans, the 40 teens who worked the land at Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center in preparation for an organic garden hardly looked like farmhands.

Atop a hill, one group of teens pulled weeds in preparation for a vineyard. Tilling in preparation for a potato garden, a second group raised hoes high into the sky and clumsily slammed them into the fresh earth to the tune of Kool and the Gang's "Jungle Boogie" playing from a boombox nearby. Still others shuttled compost over to the freshly turned soil.

The teens are all members of BLEWS, the Black/Jewish Forum of Baltimore, a group that brings Jewish and black students together to foster camaraderie and knowledge of their respective cultures. While the group is open to all high school grades, sophomores at the Jewish Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Pikesville and Catholic St. Frances Academy in East Baltimore were paired together for this youth initiative.

"They have a common history of oppression, and out of that, the goal is to get them talking, working to better their communities," said Rabbi Gila Ruskin, of St. Frances, as she watched a handful of Beth Tfiloh and St. Frances students run off together across the hill to weed another overgrown plot.

A former teacher at the Krieger Schechter Day School of Chizuk Amuno Congregation in Pikesville, Ruskin moved to St. Frances in 2005 to teach a religion class. Her goal was to ground her students in a Jewish interpretation of the Bible. Upon her arrival, she became the BLEWS adviser, continuing the Baltimore school's reputation for success in nurturing the intellectual and emotional growth of its predominantly black student body.

"This, for me, is a peak day in my career," Ruskin said, watching some of her former middle-school students, now at Beth Tfiloh, work alongside her current pupils of St. Frances.

Marquia Eaddy, dressed in a white T-shirt and hoop earrings, broke from a line of students in the new potato bed. Clearly, she had no idea what she was in for.

"Rabbi just told us to wear clothes we didn't care about. I had no idea we'd be doing this," she said, wiping a wrist across her glowing brow.

But she wasn't dismayed. This kind of work was not new to Eaddy, who plants a flower garden at her Odenton home every spring. She now travels 45 minutes to St. Frances, which draws its student body from the Baltimore area.

After touring the school in eighth grade, Eaddy knew she needed to go there to change her life. She joined BLEWS to help further her personal growth.

"It's been very helpful," she said of BLEWS. "I like it a lot. I just wish I could have been in it last year, so we could go through (all of high) school together."

Eaddy said she travels 45 minutes to St. Frances, a little more or less depending on traffic, inviting surprise from a Beth Tfiloh student next to her in line. Together they commiserate about the long commute.

Before joining BLEWS, Anthony Simmons III, sophomore class president at St. Frances, said he wasn't familiar with Judaism, but has grown to like his new friends.

"The Beth Tfiloh kids are awesome," he said. "I like the (farm) work. It gets us away from school for a day, we get to hang out but still learn something."

Looking for a community-service activity for her students, Ruskin contacted her friend Dick Goldman, general manager at Pearlstone, which is just north of Reisterstown. Goldman happened to be starting an organic garden on the property. Together they devised the idea that BLEWS students could begin work on the garden project.

Pearlstone, a complex for overnight and weekday conferences, meetings and training sessions, caters to Jewish groups, nonprofits, governments, professional groups and families.

Ruskin said planting the organic garden also will tie into her curriculum. Those who tend the garden will observe the Jewish practices of gleaning, giving leftover or fallen produce to the needy, and leaving each peah, or corner, of the field unharvested for the poor to consume.

Pearlstone, off Route 30, wasn't intended to be an environmental showcase, but Goldman hopes it will function as both a conference center for businesses and an opportunity for visiting groups to bond and learn about sustainable living. By spring of next year, he hopes the 2 acres of available land will be actively farmed.

Beth Tfiloh student Tzipporah Besser was oddly excited about getting her hands dirty, considering she doesn't do yard work at home. The bubbly teen acknowledged that she joined BLEWS partially because the activity would look good on her college application, but also because she wanted to meet people.

"It's been amazing. They're so like us," she said of the St. Frances students. "It's like we're not even separated by race anymore, we share so much history and similarities," she said.

The teens met three times before their farming field trip; initially, at their respective schools to become familiar with one another, and most recently at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, during a tour of the facility. Ruskin hopes the current members stay in BLEWS and continue to meet through the rest of their high school careers.

"It's been such an eye-opening experience for them, but they have so much more to learn," she said.