[March 4, 2024] Our interconnectedness with other species is abundantly clear when you are plucking a fresh berry off the vine with a bee nestling into an adjacent flower or while digging a potato out of loose dirt under the flapping wings of a red-tailed hawk. The imperative to be thoughtful in those relationships through food becomes unavoidable….
Wednesday, September 9, 2020 | 20 Elul 5780 Dear All, These of course will be unique chagim. The shuls and rabbis are preparing hard, and now is a time…
Thursday, July 16, 2020 | 24 Tammuz 5780 Dear All, Wave upon wave of change and challenge. For the Jewish community, as for the world, there have been overlapping responses since early…
Thursday, June 23, 2020 | Rosh Chodesh Tammuz 5780 Dear All, I want to explain how and why Freedman has been closed, and also to invite you to join us for an…
Thursday, June 18, 2020 | 26 Sivan 5780 Dear All, Isabella Freedman is closed as a retreat center, but the state of CT has reduced the minimum period for bookings, which…
Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 11th Sivan 5780 Dear All, I don’t feel like I have a lot of wisdom right now. This is hard. The lessons of Jewish history…
Tuesday, May 26, 2020 | 47th day of the omer, hod she’b’malchut Dear All, Normally at this time of year we share updates on our plans for a vibrant summer at Isabella…
December 13, 2018 | 5 Tevet 5779 Isabella Freedman is a place that touches people’s lives individually and strengthens and thickens Jewish institutions……
Dear friends — If you’re like me, you probably spent some of your Yom Kippur last week thinking about how to better live up to your ideals — how to…
by Frances Lasday, Teva, Hazon Parshat Behaalotecha What strikes me most about this week’s parsha, Behaalotecha, is the kvetching. The parsha (Torah portion) spends an entire chapter retelling several instances…
I recently recalled to a friend— just after our festival of Shavuot — that I had now been in attendance at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center for all three of the Shalosh Regalim, which are the three main pilgrimage festivals. Shavuot, Passover, and Sukkot……
From Nigel Savage March 23rd, 2017 | 25th Adar 5777 Significant news from Isabella Freedman… Dear All, How do we maintain balance in the 24/7 news cycle? How do we…
Shana tova – happy new year. I was in shul and I was wondering: if a social psychologist could somehow track the behavior of all the Jewish people in the…
by Mordechai Schram, Director of Food Services It seems like just yesterday that we celebrated Shavuot/Yom Habikurim with a celebration of First Fruits – reveling in the tingling fresh taste…
It’s spring, we’re counting the omer, much is happening. I wanted to say something about the nature of Isabella Freedman as a Jewishly-inflected retreat center – why that is so…
by Mordechai Schram, Director of Food Services Dear friends, in my last blog post I wrote about the delicious sourdough breads that we have been making here in the kitchens…
