For some South Bay families, the Mitzvah Garden at Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame may just be paradise.
Amid its summer harvesting months, the garden brims with the signs of life.
Blooming dahlias, cosmos, marigolds, bachelor’s buttons and sunflowers encompass a 50-by-40-foot plot, greeting visitors with a colorful countenance.
Organic tomatoes, green peppers, corn, carrots, green beans, squash, lettuce and many other vegetables peek out from the soil and foliage like a healthy mixed salad minus the dressing.
And then there are the volunteers who gather several times a week to weed, water, compost, tie up tomato branches, plow the garden field and — as the food ripens — make deliveries to local shelters.
“Congregants get outside, put their hands in the dirt, relax and get to know one another,” said David Menke, who heads the garden volunteer committee, “all while doing a mitzvah.”
Since its beginnings in 1993, the garden’s purpose has been twofold: Bring congregants together for the harvest and provide fresh food for neighboring shelters and transitional housing programs.
“There’s a great need for food within the community,” said Rabbi Gerald Raiskin. “We thought fresh food would be a wonderful thing to make available.”
Garden volunteer Ida Lowenstein added: “Most food delivered to shelters is in cans. How appetizing is that? We try to supplement the canned food with fresh food.”
Last summer, Peninsula Temple Sholom took the mitzvah one step further, inviting families from the Shelter Network of San Mateo — a nonprofit program for those rendered homeless by the Bay Area housing crisis — to assist in the harvest. Four different families joined temple volunteers on two separate days, “to work as a team,” said volunteer Melinda Nikols.
As one family from the Shelter Network entered the garden to assist in the harvest, the mother admired the outlining dahlias.
“The flowers are indigenous to her native country [Mexico],” said Nikols, recalling the mom’s genuine excitement. “It was a familiar welcoming to a new surrounding.”
And two young children from the program, said Nikols, were head over heels at the sight of a ripening watermelon.
“‘It’s impossible for something that large to be growing on such a thin vine,'” she recounted one saying. “They were so astonished.”
Children collected seeds and put them in envelopes, then labeled them with crayons matching the plant, “to remember the color,” said Nikols, “and perhaps plant a new generation of plants.”
Menke’s children, meanwhile, were fascinated by a steaming mass of mushroom compost, asking him, “‘How’d that happen?'” As for Menke, he found the artichoke plant an awe-inspiring sight. “It’s quite a spectacular purple,” he said.
The joint harvesting taught “lessons beyond the garden,” said Nikols, including a bridging of socioeconomic gaps and a feeling of unity. She hopes to continue the cooperative effort this year.
“We were all out there observing in nature,” she said. “It’s great to share that we as a community are connected. There’s no giver or receiver — just a mutual concern and understanding.”
Even Temple Sholom’s nursery school children understand the garden’s lessons. Recently, Lowenstein escorted a small group of them onto the garden turf.
“We played a game where I asked if they could spot certain vegetables,” she said. “They’d say, ‘There’s the zucchini, there’s the greenbeans.'”
And then Lowenstein asked them a tougher question — What is a mitzvah?
After a long discussion about mitzvot and gardens, Lowenstein said the young children comprehended perfectly.
“They’re only 5,” said Lowenstein, “but they know there are people out there who don’t have enough to eat.”