Arthur Gordon will be our special guest and speaker at Shabbat services on Oct. 8 and will deliver a d'var Torah about Sukkot, God as manifest in nature, agriculture, and about the mission of the Well Fed Community Garden.

Biography:

Arthur Gordon, the founder and owner of the Irregardless Cafe in Raleigh for its first 45 years, is a rare community member who is a ‘local.’  His grandfather Oscar Goodman was a founding member the Beth Meyer Synagogue and the Raleigh Hebrew Cemetery. His grandmother Celia Goodman was a founding member of Temple Beth Or. Arthur’s parents Hy and Ruth Gordon were founding members of Beth El Synagogue in Durham, and Dan and Alice Satisky, who funded Beth Meyer’s school building, were his uncle and aunt. 

Chef Arthur Gordon has innovated and been a step ahead of the culinary and social trends by serving local produce, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free meals decades before they became accepted trends.  Arthur operated the Irregardless Café as an environmentally and socially responsible business including, recycling cardboard, glass, metal, and compost; being the first restaurant in North Carolina to go non-smoking in 1984; Installing solar hot water panels on the café’s roof in January 2012; and sourcing local produce from the café’s Well Fed Community Garden that Arthur and his wife Anya developed to grow local organic produce for the cafe’s patrons to enjoy. Arthur has always aimed to be a “stand-up guy” in the community – throughout his career he has always tried to do the right thing even when it may not have been best for the café’s bottom line. 

As majority owners of the Well Fed Community Garden, Arthur is exploring transitioning the garden into a place where the community can connect with the earth and each other, cultivate the land, share healthy food, all while weaving sustainability into the fabric of Jewish life.