Synagogue harvests Healing Heart Garden

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This article was published 23/09/2023 (748 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While harvesting a bounty of pumpkin and squash from the front yard garden at Temple Shalom, volunteer gardener Kim Larcombe also sowed the seeds of a new relationship.

A young boy and his mom, recent arrivals from Ukraine, indicated through the help of a cellphone translation app that they would like a sugar pumpkin. When it was finally ripe, Larcombe texted them to come pick it up.

“She’ll never forget the synagogue or the garden,” says Larcombe, of the joy of the mother and son over receiving the pumpkin.

That connection with newcomers in the neighbourhood was one of the unexpected fruits of the 460-square-foot garden, which runs parallel to Grant Avenue inside a cement-curbed space.

Likely designed for flowers, shrubs and other ornamentals, most of the garden space wasn’t under cultivation in recent years, says Sherry Wolfe Elazar, Jewish learning coordinator for Temple Shalom. Last fall that plot caught the imagination of master gardener Larcombe, who lives nearby, and she offered her gardening skills to grow a vegetable garden, which coincided with Elazar’s plans to work on a reconciliation project.

“Last year, I was thinking about this and thought what an opportunity to grow food,” says Larcombe, who is not Jewish.

Now known as the Healing Heart Garden, Larcombe and a team of volunteers planted the plot with medicinal plants sacred to Indigenous cultures, including cedar, sage, sweetgrass, ornamental tobacco, as well as corn, beans and squash and some giant sunflowers.

More volunteers offered to water the garden daily over the summer, says Elazar.

“It’s not just the garden, it’s also the programming,” adds Elazar. Since Temple Shalom is sharing its building with Congregation Shaarey Zedek for several years, members of both congregations have participated in the garden project

That programming includes a gathering at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1, scheduled during the weeklong Jewish festival of Sukkot and honouring the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, which falls on Saturday, Sept. 30. The free two-hour event includes presentations about Indigenous food wisdom and Jewish food traditions, and an opportunity to make Bannock and braid Challah, the traditional Jewish yeast bread served on Sabbath and holidays. Register by calling 204-453-1625.

Participants will also share a meal of Jewish matzo ball soup and corn, squash and bean soup.

Known as the three sisters, corn, squash and beans are often planted together to improve yields at harvest, a practice originating with Indigenous people and continued in the Healing Heart Garden.

“It’s been an investment in terms of time, energy and money and this isn’t a one-off,” says Elazar of the project partially funded by $2,000 in grants from two Reform Judaism foundations.

“In my vision, it’s a first step in this journey in truth and reconciliation.”

The idea for the garden grew out of the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, says Elazar. Since Judaism emphasizes a behaviour-based lifestyle, Jews value conduct before conviction, which leads them to act even before completely understanding, she explains.

“We’re put on the earth to heal the world, change the world, fix the world,” Elazar says about the Jewish concept Tikkun Olam, a Hebrew term which means repairing the world.

After months of working the soil and tending the plants, Larcombe and her volunteers have done their bit to heal the world. They have harvested about 42 kilograms of squash, 1.5 kilograms of beans and a dozen corn cobs, most of it donated to vulnerable people through Leftovers Foundation, an organization which works to reduce waste by redirecting excess food to community groups.

But the garden’s biggest producer may be harder to measure – the many shoots of curiosity sprouting from people walking along the north side of Grant Avenue, just across from the shopping mall.

“Everybody stopped to talk and look at the garden,” says Larcombe.

Elazar hopes the garden will grow many more seasons at Temple Shalom and even take root in other religious communities around Winnipeg.

“If people were interested, we could guide them to plant their own garden.”

brenda.suderman@freepress.mb.ca

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