Celebrate Shavuot in the beautiful foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. Join us for an inclusive celebration of revelation that includes delicious farm-to-table foods, all-night learning concluding with a sunrise hike to the top of the mountain, a pilgrimage parade featuring goats, fruits, and more. Our schedule is packed with activities for the whole family. Nourish your mind, body, and soul this Shavuot.
Shavuot is the time when the community gathers around the mountain, and makes pilgrimage to a holy place, for the ultimate transformative experience.
Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi זצ׳ל
We will have two davening options: a Modern Orthodox Minyan and a Renewal Minyan.
Spiritual, meaningful and song-filled services will follow a traditional Orthodox liturgy. Prayer will be supplemented with Kavanot (intentions) and words of Torah from both sides of the mechitzah. All are welcome and may sit in the section that most aligns with one’s gender identity.
Renewal services invite you into a realm of prayer as transformation. Together we will channel ancient and modern spiritual technologies including (but not limited to) sacred chant, meditation, dyads, intention setting, and movement, while keeping aligned with traditional Hebrew prayer rhythms. The service structure follows Jewish holiday and calendar cycles, and will include musical instruments and amplification. Our Shavuot minyan is inclusive, egalitarian and participatory. We come to Jewish practice as seekers of the divine in all of her glory.
Planning for the 2023 retreat is underway and we look forward to sharing more details in the early spring. You can anticipate many similarities to the information below from our 2022 retreat.
Torah Classes: Throughout the weekend, we will have over twenty Torah classes and text study opportunities on a variety of topics presented by renowned teachers and scholars, including an all-night Tikkun Leil Shavuot (torah learning in honor of shavuot).
Other Activities: We will offer nature walks, guided hikes on our trails, twice-a-day yoga, adult sport options, song circles, tours of our organic farm and barnyard, and more.
Isabella Freedman’s youth programming is an outdoor-focused, collaborative, and exciting experience for all who choose to join. Grounded in the natural world as well as in Reggio and Montessori educational principles, our program provides the opportunity for children ages 2-12 to find a place to learn, grow, and enjoy the beautiful outdoors at Camp Adamah.
Camp Teva provides many hands-on and nature-based experiential activities. Some examples include hikes, outdoor games, drama/improv, and farm-related adventures on the Adamah farm. We provide morning and afternoon programming except on arrival and departure days, with times based on the davening schedule. The afternoon session is divided into separate divisions by age.
Parents and guardians can choose to drop off their children or stay with them. Gan Adamah provides a safe and engaging space to play, explore, sing, and move. Children younger than two may attend, but parents/guardians must stay. Programming is provided in the morning except on arrival and departure days, and times are based on the davening schedule.
Sarah Chandler aka Kohenet Shamirah is a Brooklyn-based Jewish educator, artist, activist, healer, and poet. She has been teaching Jewish eco-ritual weaving for over 15 years. She holds a M.A. in Jewish Education and a M.A. in Hebrew Bible from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a certificate in Non-Profit Management and Jewish Communal Leadership from Columbia University. She teaches, writes and consults on a national level on issues related to Judaism, earth-based spiritual practice, mindfulness, dreamwork, and farming. An advanced student of Kabbalistic dream work at The School of Images, Sarah is the founder and lead trainer for “Soft as a Rock: Public Speaking for Sensitive Souls.” softasarock.com.
Rabbi Eliezer Lawrence is a passionate Jewish educator and certified Mohel who uses his various platforms to enrich identity and instill meaning to Jewish texts, language, and ritual. An alumnus of Columbia University, Rabbi Lawrence learned in the Kollel of Yeshivat Ma’aleh Gilboa in Israel and received rabbinic ordination from its Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi David Bigman. Rabbi Lawrence holds MAs in both Bible and Semitic Languages and Teaching Hebrew as a Second Language. He has taught Gemara, Tanakh, Yiddish and Hebrew in Jewish day school, university, yeshiva, and adult educational settings, has served as scholar in residence in different communities across the country and has written about Halacha, language and Jewish identity for various publications including Tablet Magazine and the Jewish link in which he penned a bi-weekly “Ask the Mohel” column. In addition to his community work as a Mohel, Rabbi Lawrence teaches Advanced Hebrew at Yeshiva University and Classical Hebrew and Aramaic at the Beit Midrash Program in Riverdale.
Reb Ezra Weinberg is a Philadelphia-based rabbi and a practitioner of conflict transformation. He is the founder of ReVoice: A Journey of Discovery for Jewish Families After Divorce. Among his various projects, he officiates weddings and b’nai mitzvah; teaches courses on connecting to Jewish prayer; and helps communities get unstuck around the topic of “Israel.”
Koach Baruch (KB) Frazier, Au.D. is a transformer, heartbeat of movements, healer, musician, founder of the Black Trans Torah Club and co-founder of the Tzedek Lab, a network of practitioners working at the intersection of dismantling racism, antisemitism and white supremacy. A collaborative leader, rooted in tradition, curiosity and love, Koach strives to dismantle racism, actualize liberation and transform lives both sonically and spiritually. Koach lives and gardens with their wife, LaJuana and daughter, Aasha in Philadelphia on unceded Lenni-Lenape Land where he is a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
Sara Rozner Lawrence is a 5th year Clinical Psychology doctoral candidate whose professional and personal work focus on the intersection between mental health, sexuality, and Jewish identity. In 2016, she founded a project called Monologues from the Makom to provide a platform for Jewish women to share their personal narratives about sexuality, gender, and body image. The project was featured in the 2017 JOFA conference and was published as an anthology in 2020 by Ben Yehudah Press. In her work as a clinician, Sara is grateful to be training at the Brooklyn VA in sexual health and psycho-oncology, military sexual trauma, and couple’s therapy, and is especially passionate about serving LGBTQ veterans. As a researcher, Sara currently studies anti-LGBTQ bias, and her undergraduate research on Orthodox women’s comfort with sexuality was presented at the Society for Behavioral Medicine in 2017. Sara believes deeply in the power of presence with all of one’s various identities and is excited to bring her full self to the joyous celebration of receiving the Torah at Isabella Freedman!
Rabba Yaffa Epstein is the Senior Scholar and Educator in Residence at the Jewish Education Project. Formerly, she served as the Director of the Wexner Heritage Program at the Wexner Foundation. and as the Director of Education, North America for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies She has also served on the faculties of Yeshivat Maharat and the Drisha Institute and as an Educator and Scholar in Residence for the Dorot Fellowship, Moishe House, Jewish Federation of North America, the Covenant Foundation, the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, Repair the World, the Meorot Fellowship, and the KADIMA Fellowship. She has lectured at numerous Limmud events around the globe, has written curriculum for the Global Day of Jewish Learning and has created innovative educational programming for Hillel. She co-writes a quarterly column on Jewish ethical questions in the SAPIR journal and publishes regularly in the Jerusalem post.
Laynie Soloman (they/them) is a teacher and Torah-lover who seeks to uplift the piously irreverent, queer, and subversive spirit of rabbinic text and theology. Laynie serves as the Associate Rosh Yeshiva at SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, where they co-founded the Trans Halakha Project. Laynie has studied and taught Torah for almost a decade, and they have served on the faculty of Yeshivat Hadar, Romemu Yeshiva, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Laynie is an Ashkenazi, third generation Philadelphian, and when they’re not learning Talmud, you can find Laynie reading about liberation theology, laying in their hammock, and singing nigunim.
Shimmy Feintuch, LCSW CASAC-G is a New York City-based psychotherapist, professor, writer, and public speaker. In his psychotherapy practice, Shimmy’s work focuses on addiction, relationships, and stress reduction. Shimmy has taught courses in addiction and trauma at Touro College’s Mental Health Counseling program and is now teaching at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work.
Shimmy has been practicing mindfulness since 2013, and he is passionate about using mindfulness techniques in his work as a therapist. Shimmy serves on the board of Jewish Queer Youth, an advocacy and support organization. He is committed to advocating for LGBTQ+ issues, especially in Orthodox Jewish spaces. Shimmy lectures regularly on emotional wellness, mindfulness, and the intersection of LGBTQ+ issues and traditional religious values.
As a child, Shoshana Jedwab, would drum on parked cars, plates, tables, books and other people’s bodies. Shoshana Jedwab is a percussionist, singer-songwriter, worship leader, prize-winning Jewish educator and the Jewish Life Coordinator at the A.J. Heschel Middle School. As a Jewish educator, Shoshana has more than 30 years of experience bringing sacred Jewish texts to life. Shoshana Jedwab drums regularly for Romemu and serves as founding faculty member at the Kohenet Institute. Shoshana’s original, hip-shaking sacred music brings the ancestral past into joyous contemporary practice. The original songs of Shoshana’s 2016 debut album, “I Remember,” and her 2018 zipper song single, “Where You Go,” emerged from ceremonies Shoshana was leading, and are now being sung, and danced to, in churches, synagogues, and protest marches around the world. Shoshana Jedwab was included in Jewish Rock Radio’s Jewish Women Who Rock the Worship World. www.shoshanajedwab.com
Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD, author, scholar, ritualist, poet, dreamworker and midrashist, is the Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion (www.ajrsem.org), and co-founder of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute (www.kohenet.org). She is the author of Undertorah: An Earth-Based Kabbalah of Dreaming, Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah, The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women’s Spiritual Leadership (with Taya Shere), The Jewish Book of Days: A Companion for All Seasons, Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women, and The Book of Earth and Other Mysteries. She lives in Manhattan with her family.
Arielle Aronoff is an outdoor educator who brings knowledge of the intersections of Judaism and ecology. She seeks to create an environment in which our natural inclination for exploration, curiosity, and connection can be engaged while developing a meaningful relationship to Jewish tradition, the land, and each other. Arielle is a rising Kohenet, served as the Director of Teva, and will begin her studies in Social Work this summer.
