Guest: Adam Weisberg

Our guest Adam Weisberg is Executive Director of Urban Adamah, located on the west side of Berkeley on 6th Street. It’s located in a neighborhood that contains a Whole Foods, car mechanics, a skate park, a Kosher winery, and UC Berkeley’s family housing all within three blocks of Urban Adamah and its welcoming gates and well-tended paths that lead through edible plantings, chickens, goats, and beehives. It is a fitting location for the intersectional approach of Urban Adamah’s function as a farm and community center that does outreach in myriad ways to support and sustain the world. 

I also have to say it is one of the most beautiful urban farms I’ve ever visited, one filled with peace and a feeling of balance. As one of their missions, Urban Adamah produces and donates over two hundred fifty pounds of produce each month for those who are food insecure. They put on educational programming now available online. And more to the point, Urban Adamah is being thoughtful about how to better the world in the midst of a pandemic. 

In this episode, Adam and I discuss Urban Adamah’s values and missions surrounding Jewish traditions, social action, sustainable agriculture, and mindfulness. We segued, too, into Biblical stories pertaining to gardens and new beginnings in the context of COVID, and the ways in which the responsibility of nurturing plants sustains both the world and our own bodies. I could have talked with Adam for hours--and I learned so much about the forms of agency urban farms and gardening provide. We’re also both literature majors, so you get to see us geeking out on metaphors, too, as we discussed slowing down and the archetype of new beginnings that gardens provide.

I hope you enjoy his story and if and when you do, go check out Urban Adamah. 

Adam Weisberg is the Executive Director at Urban Adamah. Prior to this Adam was the Diller Teen Initiatives Director and served as Camp Tawonga’s Executive Director from 2008-2011 and as Berkeley Hillel’s Executive Director from 2000-2008. Additionally, Adam has worked in a variety of roles in the Jewish community including work with the Council of Jewish Federations in New York, the Jewish Agency in Israel, and two years working with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Bulgaria. Adam has served as a coach/mentor for young professionals through Hillel, Repair the World, the iCenter, BBYO, and the REALITY Check program, a project of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Philanthropic Network.