Yom Huledet Sameach, heebnvegan!

heebnvegan is 2 years old today! I'd like to take this opportunity to reflect back on the last year—everything since the one-year recap.

heebnvegan received twice as many hits in its second year as in its first. As of last week, I've posted to heebnvegan more than 100 times. I've posted vegan and personal perspectives about numerous Jewish holidays. I started featuring guest posts, including outstanding ones from Isa Chandra Moskowitz (about vegan foods on Passover) and Jackie Topol (about how her farming experiences as an Adamah fellow have led her to go vegan).

I've posted to heebnvegan about various significant Jewish experiences that I've had in the last year. In December, I went to San Francisco and Berkeley to cover a Jewish punk Hanukkah tour for the Forward. In June, I went to Israel on a "Peace, Pluralism, and Social Justice" Birthright trip.

I've ventured out into other J-blogs as well. For 49 days in April and May, I posted daily to Counting the Omer, offering a different reason to go vegetarian each day. I've written two guest posts for The Jew & The Carrot: one about my experiences as a carrot mascot and one about the Local Pride kosher slaughterhouse investigation.

I feel like there have been three huge stories that I've been following this summer. The first was the Local Pride investigation, which I covered in depth and wrote the aforementioned guest post about. The second was the Orthodox Union's halachic seudah, about which I wrote a couple of posts and had a letter to the editor printed in the Los Angeles Times. The latest is Hazon's proposal to slaughter one or two goats at its food conference in December, a plan that was revealed this past Wednesday and is very much a developing story. For each of these stories, I've tried to stay on top of things both in the mainstream Jewish media and the blogosphere. I've posted in depth and, as appropriate, with follow-ups. And one of the most gratifying factors, from my perspective, is that I get tips e-mailed to me from heebnvegan readers and other bloggers.

On that note, I want to thank everyone who has kept the conversation going. Thanks for the comments and suggestions (in the comments space and via personal e-mail). Sometimes it's awkward not knowing much about the invisible Internet audience that reads my blog, but I'm very grateful to all of you for making this work. Toda!

Rest assured that there's a ton in the works for the third year!