Celebrate this Shavuot holiday at our majestic retreat center in the Connecticut Berkshires two hours from New York City.
Enjoy kosher farm-to-table meals with different rooming options including camping (bring your own tent) on our beautiful grounds.
See retreat details below.
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
Scholarships: We believe retreats are important experiences to be shared. Inclusiveness is one of our core values. We strive to ensure that our retreats are as financially accessible as possible. The Tamar Fund makes that aspiration possible – please apply for a scholarship before registering. The Tamar Fund is in loving memory of Tamar Bittelman z’’l. Scholarships are available for the full stay only.
We will have two davening options: an Open Orthodox Minyan and an ALEPH: Jewish Renewal Minyan, supplemented with Minchas led by Eliana Light.
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 are about going deep into prayer through chant, meditation, embodied movement, and more. We will use musical instruments in this minyan.
Shavuot invites us to stand under the chuppah & make a commitment to the Infinite One as Beloved. That’s what it means to stand at Sinai, the place where we are continually receiving the Torah each moment. Shavuot is the marker of this journey of radical amazement that is being in intimate relationship with the Great Mystery. In the words of Rabbi Jay Michaelson, “Give me the guts & tears & life-blood of a prayer unashamed of its nakedness, pleading & demanding, shuckling & clapping, or at times at which the soul is in constriction, just going through the motions in the hope that something, somewhere will loosen.”
You’re invited to the Light Lab, where we’ll play with prayer and hold the gems of our liturgy to the light! Join educator and musician Eliana Light for services & sessions over Shavuot, opportunities to experiment with t’fillah (prayer & liturgy) and see what shines through. When it comes to t’fillah, we’re all experts and we’re all beginners. There’s always more to discover!
Planning for the 2024 retreat is underway. See our previous 2023 retreat schedule here.
Our all-night learning will include Torah and text classes on radical amazement, tefillah, and wonder. Or, join us at the bonfire for an all-night niggun bonfire!
Check out the following examples of classes.
Unlearning Jewish Anxiety offers practical tools for folks who feel anxious about being and doing Jewish in an uncertain world. We’ll explore some internalized anti-Jewish oppression patterns about our safety, worthiness, and belonging in the world. Then we’ll take a brief tour through the fascinating neuroscience of anxiety, habits, and rewards-based learning. The workshop concludes with simple, Jewish embodied practices can help us live more in the present moment with more self-compassion, awareness, curiosity, and courage.
Details coming soon!
The Mishna tells us that Shavuot is a time to gather our bikkurim, the first fruits of our harvest, and bring them as gifts to the Temple in Jerusalem. Join us as we reenact this ancient pilgrimage to celebrate our local first fruits of rye, mustard greens, spring garlic, and more. The ceremony will include costumes, goats, and drums.
Join our Adamah Farm staff on night walks, guided hikes, farm tours, a walk through Chestnutlandia, and more.
Enjoy twice-a-day yoga, gather in song circles, and join a guided reflection on the Omer.
Isabella Freedman’s youth programming is an outdoor-focused, collaborative, and exciting experience for all who choose to join. Grounded in the natural world, 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.
Coming soon
Ezra Weinberg is a rabbi, ritual musician and educator dedicated to facilitating and supporting transformative Jewish rituals. He founded “ReVoice,” a network of resources for Jews going through Divorce, which aims to redefine the communal response to this life stage. He is a native Philadelphian and holds a Master’s Degree in Conflict Transformation. Reb Ezra officiates weddings and Bnai Mitzvot and teaches a University Course called “One G-d, Three Paths” alongside a Minister and an Imam.
Rabbi Ezra Seligsohn is a Rabbi living in Riverdale New York. For the last six years, he served as the Associate Rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale – The Bayit. Hailing from the Philadelphia suburbs, Ezra graduated from Yeshiva University, and received Semikha from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in 2017. In the rare moments when Ezra is not earnestly pursuing human connection and relationship-building, he is also a graphic designer, Third Wave coffee fan, cyclist, and nature lover.
I grew up in the early Jewish Renewal movement as it coalesced around my father, Reb Zalman and went on to receive Orthodox Semicha from Rabbi Riskin of Efrat after nine years of Yeshiva study in Israel. As a modern Breslever Chassid, I strive to draw on the experiential piety of Chasidut in order to face the emerging challenges of the contemporary world. I see Halacha as an indigenous shamanic tradition, and as such I particularly enjoy DIY, farm to table mitzvah projects like doing my own Shechita, making homemade Matzah and tying Tzitzit. As a former football player and coach of Israel’s national (American) football team I incorporate my experience in team sports into building spiritual community. I aspire to integrate my experience in martial arts, dance, and holistic medicine into my Torah and prayer with an eye towards embodiment practice as an emerging modality in serving Hashem and healing the Earth.
Ariel Yisraelah Hendelman is the Spiritual Leader of B’nai Or Boston, a Jewish Renewal community, & a Rabbinic student with the Aleph Ordination Program. Ariel counts chant & meditation as the cornerstones of her spiritual practice, as well as hitbodedut walks in the woods. She co-leads a Rosh Chodesh circle for Or HaLev, as well as retreats in the New England area, centering around rituals & tools for expanded consciousness & deeper connection with Judaism’s sacred spiral time. Ariel’s writing can be found in Ayin Press & Doubleblind Magazine. Her debut album, Prayers for Fire & Water, was released in September & weaves folky Americana with devotional niggunim. Ariel currently lives in Waban, MA with her cat Ezra, who routinely hogs the covers.
Kohenet Elana is a celebrated singer-songwriter, song leader, and Hebrew Priestess rooted in rural Appalachia, with a decade of Jewish life and leadership in New York City. She is an ordained Hebrew Priestess, a student in the ALEPH Ordination Program, and is a rising star in both Jewish and secular music and leadership. Elana creates ritual spaces and musical experiences that move the soul with a deep love for the Divine and Mother Earth that resource all her work. Elana serves as the visionary prayer leader and founder of a blossoming ritual community for earth-based Judaism in Asheville, NC.
Listen to her beautiful, B’Shem Hashem (Angels of Peace)
Here’s her whole-hearted folk song, The Insect. Find out where Elana is offering prayer and ritual and song next here: www.elanabrody.com and @elanatreestar on Instagram
Jake (Ya’akov) Sapon (he/him) is a prayer-leader, educator, musician and poet living in South Philadelphia, PA. A graduate of both ALEPH’s Davennen’ Leadership Training Program and Earth-Based Based Judaism program, Jake is driven by a passion for Jewish spiritual renewal. Jake has worked across the world of experiential education, focusing on youth mentorship, community building, peacebuilding, therapeutic music making, and somatic education. As an earth-based educator and songleader at the Teva Program, Jake makes prayer and music come alive for 5th and 6th grade Jewish day school students. His prayer leadership weaves together music, embodied experience, and heart-felt liturgical connection. As a musician and poet, Jake blends grief and hope, spiritual and secular, into soaring prayers for a world of beauty, joy, and transformation.
Marni Loffman (they/them) is a Jewish composer, vocalist, educator, and ritual leader with over seven years of experience in informal Jewish education and 15 years in musical performance, prayer leadership, and songwriting. Marni’s musical work emerges from multi-denominational Ashkenazi liturgical roots and is culturally influenced by a lifetime of saturation in varied American and world genres. Their debut album the long short path combines rabbinic poetry and prose with original lyrics, inspired melodically by Ashkenazi Nusach as well as by the jazz, indie folk, pop, and international influences of their childhood and current musical relationships. With a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Religion, and an MA in Peacebuilding, Marni’s music is both analytical and embodied, exploring Jewish belonging and identity, as well as providing a space for intra-Jewish and interfaith collaboration. Renowned American Jewish artists, tens of thousands of TikTok and Instagram viewers, clergy, and congregants remark that Marni’s music and voice brings them solace, healing, deep reflection and tears. Marni is a quickly emerging artist and spiritual leader driven by a deep sincerity, love of people, and commitment to healing trauma, harm, and widespread disconnection through the power of music.
Eliana Light believes in the power of t’fillah to change our lives, communities, and world. She is a sought-after t’fillah leader, consultant, musician, and artist-in-residence, and is the founder and co-host of the Light Lab Podcast. She received her MA in Jewish Education from JTS in 2016 and lives in Durham, NC.
Dr. Rachel Feldman is an anthropologist of Judaism and Assistant Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age: Jews, Noahides, and the Third Temple Imaginary (Rutgers, 2024) and her scholarship has focused on messianism, transnational religion, gender studies, and Jewish mysticism. She is currently working on a new book project on health and healing in Breslov Hasidism.
