Getting Raw. Getting Back to the Land in a Final Frontier of our Good Ole U.S. of A.

Getting back to our roots as at least partially a blog about Jewish names, we are currently interested in the last name Safron.

We have mentioned one Safran who has hit popular culture big time.  But we didn't get terribly into its meaning.

We have now come across a Jeremy with the last name Safron, and we venture to think that the names are related and they are simply different spellings. 

(side note:  How can we really trust what we can grab on the Internet?  We need an Onomast.  We also should read this article about Jewish names.  Dr. Aaron Demsky is the person who could make sense of any of this.  Safran and Safron the same thing?  Does the Jewish version really lead to the yellow spice  (this site states the "Jewish name is mainly ornamental," leading us to believe no connection there for the Jews)?   Umm.. can folks with this family name in the Jewish world lay claim to the Safran family crest?  Nah...that last part doesn't sound terribly kosher.  It's not like we come from Sheffield, Shetland or Stuart stock.  Those are all Other S's.)

Our humble guess is that Safran and Safron are connected to the Jewish name root Shapiro, which comes from the word "sofer," meaning scribe (our trustworthy torah, mezuzah and tefillin writers of yesteryear...add in another item writable on parchment and you get the whole megillah).


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(side note:  No, neither Hanna nor Barbera were Jewish, but Barbera was born on the Lower East Side and presumably grew up around many Jews, having been exposed to the word megillah possibly while frolicking the halls of Erasmus Hall High School .  Just our guess....)

Back to Safran-Safron-Sofer connection:

You get variations such as Schapiro (as in the wine), Sapir, Safer (as in Morley), Shufro, Shaefer (as in the beer, but highly unlikely those were Jews), Shaffer (as in Paul)...have you caught on to our groove yet?

Now back to Jeremy Safron.

He's a raw foodist, a pioneer in the raw food world.  He is an inventor.  He is youthful.  He is into video games and martial arts, in a peaceful way, if you can imagine that.  He bottles Living Clay  (reminds us of Dead Sea mud, no?).   He created the most delicious snack food, PowerWraps (he sold his idea), which we are trying to get more New Yorkers to enjoy.  Would you believe you can only get them in one spot in NYC?   Jeremy lives in one of the most beautiful places in our country on the island of Maui.   Like all good hippies, we were there in 2002.  We have visited the town of Paia, picked up necessities for our week, saw the road to Haiku up on the right before the infamous Road to Hana begins, spent time at the Tradewinds Cottages, hiked into the Bamboo Forest, and even ate a fresh meat coconut cut by Mike with a machete (for $5...we were ok with that).  How can we forget the vintage bubble letter name mugs produced by Carmel-by-the-Sea that were hanging at Grandma's Coffee (they aren't for sale, just for use by locals...good thing we still have our own from 1980)

Perhaps we could have simplified the above-written paragraph into a haiku of our own.

Or not.
Amazing stuff way out there. 

And a whole lotta Jews, too.



Further to our point:  we are all linked and and if we seek out the goodness on the earth (as you might know, Ram Dass is doing much better than he had and is running his retreats), the earth will be a better place.  So glad to learn that, indeed, the former Richard Alpert has met with Reb Zalman.

At long last, we present Jeremy Safron, author of The Raw Truth:  The Art of Preparing Living Foods.  We believe very much in illumination, however we do believe that Everything truly is connected.