Sukkahfest at Freedman is perhaps the most joyous and diverse celebration of this holiday you will find. It takes the full spectrum of our Jewish community to manifest the joy of Sukkahfest. Join us!
Enjoy Sukkot with us surrounded by the natural beauty of the Berkshires! Mornings are filled with meaningful spirited prayer led by inspiring leaders in the beautiful setting of the Berkshires amongst the tall trees and sparkling lake. Afternoons and evenings are packed with leisure activities, classes and fun, including special programs for children. We offer the highest quality organic kosher meals to Jews of all denominations and backgrounds.
We feature two prayer options:
Partnership Mechitza Minyan: led by Rabbis Shuli Passow, Ezra Weinberg, Avram Mlotek, and National Jewish Book Award Winning Author Michal Fox Smart, with a trichitza (separate seating for men, women, and an egalitarian/mixed gender section).
Renewal Minyan led by Beit Kohenet: Led by Shoshana Jedwab, Rabbi Jill Hammer, Kohenet Shamirah Bechirah, and more!
Please note: our sister Sukkahfest retreat at Pearlstone will feature a Traditional Orthodox Mechitza minyan and a Traditional Egalitarian minyan, for a total of four prayer options across two retreats!
We will be hosting two separate retreats: Sukkahfest over the start of Sukkot and Simchafest over Simchat Torah. The option to stay on site during Chol HaMoed is not available. Shabbat is included in both holiday retreats.
We feature two prayer options:
Partnership Mechitza Minyan: Partnership Minyanim have women leading Kabbalat Shabbat, Pseukei D’Zimra, Hallel, the Torah Service, and Yizkor. In many cases, these are specifically done by women and gender non-conforming folks. Anyone can read Torah, and other than Kohen and Levi aliyot (which must be men), anyone can get an aliyah. There will be a trichitza (separate seating for men, women, and an egalitarian/mixed gender section).
Renewal Minyan: This Beit Kohenet-led service will have an earth-based, embodied, feminist approach that includes chant, meditation, and embodied practice as well as traditional forms of prayer. We use a mix of feminine, gender-neutral, and masculine G!d-language, and invite joyful, intentional worship. All are welcome!
Pluralism at Freedman: All Streams of Judaism flow from One Source! “AllStream” is our name for the gathering of diverse Jewish communities at Sukkahfest. AllStream (rather than “Mainstream”) Judaism seeks to validate all streams of Jewish spiritual expression, recognizing that All of the ways of being Jewish flow from and return to One Source.
Please note: our sister Sukkahfest retreat at Pearlstone will feature a Traditional Orthodox Mechitza minyan and a Traditional Egalitarian minyan, for a total of four prayer options across two retreats!
On Sukkot, we dwell outside under the sun, moon, and stars. We top our sukkot with plants, and we carry plants as we pray. Sukkot invites us to commune with nature in a profound way.
We will be featuring thoughtful Chag-specific shiurim, and joyful prayer in Partnership Mechitza and Renewal minyanim. Educators and prayer leaders alike, such as Rabbis Shuli Passow, Ezra Weinberg, Avram Mlotek, and National Jewish Book Award Winning Author Michal Fox Smart will lead our community through thoughtful learning and ritual!
We also offer a series of outdoor classes throughout the holiday, as well as yoga, tours of our organic farm, and guided hikes on our trails.
While many of our activities are family friendly, there will also be some dedicated programs for kids. These will make use of our farm and the natural environment of the retreat center.
The Beit Kohenet track at Sukkahfest will help you connect to the more-than-human world—trees, creatures, stones, water, and earth, and the great Mystery—through Jewish sources, meditative practice, nature connection, and prayer.
Some of our session topics will include Jewish tales of sentient trees and stones, learning about the Shekhinah/feminine divine as a being who dwells within our ecosystem, animals in Jewish tradition, singing to connect to all of creation, and mystical, meditative experiences out in nature. We’ll pray in a joyful Jewish Renewal style that celebrates bodies and the earth, includes instruments, and uses multigendered God-language. Join us and enter the sukkah of the world, with a floor of soil, a roof of branches and the sky above.
This track is sponsored by Beit Kohenet, a house of mystical, earth-based, feminist Jewish seeking, and will be staffed by Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD, Shoshana Jedwab, Kohenet Liviah Wessely, Kohenet Harriette Wimms, and Kohenet Shamirah Chandler.
Camp Adamah offers engaging programming for children ages 2-12. Adamah’s values of cultivating vibrant Jewish life in deep connection with the earth through joy, love, and hope are exemplified in all of our activities. At our holiday retreats, children will have the opportunity to explore the land, forest and farm. All activities are shabbat and holiday friendly. Activities include meeting the chickens, hiking to the magnificent overlook, forest games, nature art, field games, and more! Gan Adamah, ages 2-4, is scheduled each morning of the retreat and Camp Adamah (ages 5-12) is held in the mornings and afternoons. We look forward to welcoming your family to our campus!
Kids programming will be outdoors as much as possible, including in the rain; a raincoat, rain boots, hiking boots or sneakers, and a labeled water bottle are required.
Rabbi Ezra Weinberg is a shaliach tzibur, officiant and Jewish educator dedicated to creating connection and community. He is a native Philadelphian and holds an MA in Conflict Transformation. Reb Ezra officiates weddings and Bnai Mitzvot, teaches a University course called, “One G-d, Three Paths”, alongside a priest and Imam. He currently works with individuals and families within the Jewish community and founded ReVoice, a network of resources for Jewish going through divorce.
Rabbi Shuli Passow is delighted to be spending Sukkot at Isabella Freedman with her family for the 8th time. Shuli oversees adult engagement and programming at B’nai Jeshurun, a large synagogue in Manhattan, and finds deep gratification in her work of community building. As a lay leader, Shuli serves on the board of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She is a certified yoga instructor and has recently added circus arts to her repertoire of embodied practices. She lives in Manhattan with her husband David and their sons Idan and Azi.
Michal Fox Smart has led ground-breaking work in the field of Jewish education for more than thirty years, working at the nexus of personal, spiritual, and professional development. Michal helps professionals and private clients in and beyond the Jewish community to discover the riches of Jewish tradition and to show up as their fullest and most resourced selves. Years ago, Michal pioneered Jewish outdoor and environmental education in the U.S., co-founding COEJL, TEVA, and directing the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center. Michal served as Associate Principal of Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy and then Director of Ayeka North America, emerging as a national leader on soulful pedagogy and the spiritual development of educators. Her book Kaddish: Women’s Voices, Winner of the National Jewish Book Award, addresses issues of inclusion in Jewish communal life, complex family dynamics, as well as the powerful role that ritual and prayer can play in healing. As Chief Program Officer for IJS, Michal deepened and expanded the reach of Jewish mindfulness and spirituality. A resident of Stamford CT, Michal is the proud Ema of five emerging adults, each deliciously different. She is delighted to join and co-lead the Sukkahfest community in meaningful learning and joyful prayer.
Avram Mlotek is a rabbi, cantor, actor, writer and social worker. Grandchild of Holocaust refugees and Yiddish cultural leaders, he is the co-founder of Base now operating in ten cities. Mlotek is the author of two books (Why Jews Do That, Passover in a Pandemic) and works as a psychotherapist at Blanton-Peale Institute and Counseling Center in New York. He is the proud Tati to Ravi, Hillel Yosl and Shabtai
Shoshana Jedwab is an intuitive who feels gifted by uncanny experiences that have helped her to orient in this incarnation. Shoshana (Batshemesh) Jedwab served as founding faculty member and sacred drummer for the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute where she facilitated powerful primal prayer, vibrant Torah service ritual translations, and taught Jewish sacred foolery, contemporary mystical experience, Jewish spiritual practices, and Jewish history. Shoshana Jedwab lives in the world as a percussionist, singer-songwriter, worship leader, prize-winning Jewish educator and the Jewish Life Coordinator at the A.J. Heschel Middle School. Shoshana Jedwab’s original, hip-shaking, prayer music grounds body and spirit, and brings the ancestral past into joyous contemporary practice. The original songs of Shoshana’s 2016 debut album, “I Remember,” and her 2018 anthem, “Where You Go,” emerged from ceremonies Shoshana was leading, and are now being sung, and danced to, in churches, synagogues, weddings and protest marches around the world. Shoshana Jedwab released her popular prayer singles, “Openings” in 2020, “Torah Orah” in 2022 and “Life Is Born” in 2023. Shoshana Jedwab was included in Jewish Rock Radio’s Jewish Women Who Rock the Worship World. http://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 a co-founder of Beit Kohenet, a house of Jewish, mystical, earth-based, feminist seeking. 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, The Omer Calendar of Biblical Women, Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women, and The Book of Earth and Other Mysteries. She is also the author of academic articles published in Religion and Literature, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Studies, The Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and The Journal of Lesbian Studies, as well as anthologies including Best Jewish Writing 2002 and the Encyclopedia of Women and World Religions. She is the translator of The Romemu Siddur and of Siddur haKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook. Her forthcoming novel is called The Moonstone Covenant. She has written a children’s book, The Garden of Time. She lives in Manhattan with her family.
Kohenet Shamirah Bechirah aka Sarah Chandler is a Brooklyn-based Jewish educator, artist, activist, healer, and poet. She teaches, writes and consults on issues related to Judaism, earth-based spiritual practice, respectful workplaces, mindfulness, and farming. Previously, Sarah served as the Director of Romemu Yeshiva, Chief Compassion Officer of Jewish Initiative for Animals, and Director of Earth Based Spiritual Practices at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. An advanced student of Kabbalistic dream work at The School of Images, Shamirah is the founder and lead trainer for “Soft as a Rock: Public Speaking for Sensitive Souls.” softasarock.com. Currently she is the CEO of Shamir Collective, as a coach and consultant to high profile artists and authors to launch new music and books.
Kohenet Liviah Wessely, priestess, guardian, and song-weaver, has regularly held ritual space for the Kohenet community, as well as leading, co-leading and acting as cybergabbai. She writes and arranges liturgical music for chanting and choral settings. K’Liviah has led or co-led for Yelala, Kesher Pittsburgh, the Nechama Minyon, and numerous rituals, including weddings, funerals, and shiva services. She has catered events and taught cooking classes through her company MamaBakes, teaches college theater, English and Humanities, and is a theater director, producer, designer and dramaturge. Liviah is the mother of three adults: a painter and poet, an opera singer, and an engineer, plus two cats—Cary Grant and Grace Kelly—residing in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Kohenet Dr. Harriette E. Wimms is a Maryland licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in providing compassion-infused mental health care to children, adolescents, adults, and families across the age span. K’Harriette is a prayer leader in both the Kohenet community and at Hinenu: The Baltimore Justice Shtiebl. Dr. Wimms is also the inaugural Jews of Engagement Fellow at The Associated, Baltimore Jewish Federation (the first position of its type within any Jewish Federation System). A current Schusterman Fellow, Dr. Wimms is a Selah cohort 17 fellow; a contract trainer for Keshet, and the founder and executive director of the Jews of Color Mishpacha Project as well as the organization’s signature JOCSM Shabbatonim (JOCMishpacha.org). She is a proud Black, disabled, Jew by choice, and is most proud of being mother to her neurodiverse 18-year-old.
Kohenet Arielle Aronoff is an outdoor educator and naturalist 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’s training has come from many paths. She has a BA in Anthropology and Environmental Studies from SUNY Geneseo, a Permaculture Design Certificate from Kibbutz Lotan Center for Creative Ecology and Wilderness First Responder certification from the American Outdoor School. In addition, Arielle attends workshops and conferences to develop her knowledge in Earth skills such as awareness, wildcrafting, fire tending, and community building. She served as Director of Teva, a program of Adamah, founded a Forest Hebrew School with Kol Hai, Jewish Renewal, and worked as an educator and field guide in many nature based programs. Arielle leads trainings in environmental education both in Jewish and secular settings.
More to come!
