Isabella Freedman

Adamah Farm Fellowship

Now Accepting Applications for the 2024 Fellowships

Summer: May 20 – August 25 (apply by March 31)
Fall: August 21 – November 24 (apply by June 31)

The Adamah Farm Fellowship is a 3-month program for adults in their 20s and 30s that integrates organic agriculture, farm-to-table living, Jewish learning, community building, social justice, and spiritual practice. 

Adamah cultivates the soil and the soul to produce food, to build and transform identities, and to gather a community of people changing the world. We grow vegetables, fruit, herbs, goats, flowers, eggs, and we grow people through experiences with ecology, food production, social justice, spiritual practice, a vibrant evolving Judaism, and intentional community.  

Our goat herd turns poison ivy into milk, meat and manure (which then turns into vegetables), lacto-fermentation (pickling) turns cabbage into luscious super-food sauerkraut, and we learn to listen and support the human and natural community around us through intentional living and song! 

Already a Farmer? Apply for Adamah Farm Apprenticeship at Isabella Freedman

Adamah apprenticeships are full-time, professional, paid positions that require commitment, responsibility and leadership over the term of employment. The apprenticeship runs May-November, with potential for flexible start and end dates.  

I’m a seed, Adamah has been my soil, and the people here have provided sunlight and water to help me grow more fully into myself.

Hana Zweibel

A Typical Day

A typical day is spent on our six-acre farm, in our commercial kitchen and on our goat pasture, helping to create a sustainable business that models ecological design, financial viability and social responsibility. Evenings are spent learning about Judaism and sustainability, building community and cultivating leadership skills. Our amazing staff and assortment of visiting faculty will help you listen to and follow your soul’s yearning for ecological and spiritual wholeness, recraft a Jewish identity that sings to you, and build relationships and skills that will sustain you for the rest of your life.

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Fellowship Fees

We have a sliding scale program fee and no one is turned away for lack of funds!  

What should you pay? 

Adamahniks come from all experiences in terms of class, racial barriers, and financial support from family or others. In recognition of the barriers faced by Jews of Color, we are we are prioritizing applications submitted by Jews of Color.   

Together with foundation support, individual donations, and farm sales, fellowship fees are a critical component in covering the $10,000 cost per fellow of running the Adamah Fellowship. 
 
Some fellows pay $5,000 to support us in making Adamah more financially accessible. Some pay $1,500. And some pay nothing.
 
We depend on each fellow to reflect deeply on their fellowship fees. If you have financial capacity, please contribute $3,600, or more if you have the means. If the fellowship fee looks like a barrier to you, please don’t leave the process- we are excited to see your application. 
 
When considering what you should pay please think about who in your family or community (e.g. Rabbi’s discretionary fund, synagogue, Jewish Federation or other organizations) might want to support you participating in the Adamah Fellowship. We assume that all applicants are looking into any options they have for accessing funds for fellowship fees. 

If you have personal or family resources that enable you to pay the full $3,600 fee or more, we ask you to do so to help us make this program more accessible to others.  

Check out this Income Bracket Guide and chart below by Resource Generation to help you determine where you might fall on our sliding scale.  *Note that this information is a general guide that does not reflect reality for every individual.  No one will be turned away due to lack of funds. 

INCOME AND WEALTH: 2016 AND 2017 DATA 

Three fictional scenarios around payment: 

  • Applicant 1 is from a middle income family who whose parents own their own house and have stable white collar jobs and retirement accounts. They paid for their child’s 4-year university degree. Although Josh has only worked at poorly paying service jobs for the past 2 years, he knows he can ask his parents and the synagogue he grew up in for help. Josh pays a $2500 fellowship fee. 
  • Applicant IV reads over the Resource Generation guide and table to figure out where they might fall on the scale.  Their parents paid for their college tuition, and tells them they’ll receive an inheritance when they turn 26.  They are currently a student, working part time, and living on their own.  Their nuclear family income is over $300,000 a year.  This applicant decides to pay over the full fellowship fee of $3,600, and pays $4,500 to support the effort to make Adamah more financial accessible for others. 
  • Applicant x is having trouble imagining how they’ll pay rent for three months without the monthly paycheck they usually rely on. Their supportive family is super excited to receive pickling advice after the applicant is an expert, but is also relying on a monthly paycheck to make rent.  

It may help to consider what it is that your program fee is helping to cover: 

  • A living wage for our full-time staff, who coordinate the fellowship, the farm, and educational sessions 
  • Seasonal Adamah Alumni residential farm staff 
  • Housing for Fellows, including all utilities 
  • Farm to table meals from our retreat center and Adamah House, valued between $15-40/meal. 
  • Food from our farm: organic produce, milk from our goats, lacto-fermented pickles, jams, and more 
  • Other food staples, and home and kitchen supplies 
  • Class materials and resources 
  • Field trips, including transportation 
  • Bikes for all! 
     

Payment Schedule 

You will be asked to indicate the program fee amount you can pay on our Payment Info form, which you’ll receive when you apply for the Fellowship. 

Upon acceptance, you are asked to pay a $250 non-refundable deposit. We cannot reserve your place without the deposit. Full payment is required approximately two weeks before the start date. 
 

Refunds 

If you cancel for any reason in the two weeks before the start date of your Fellowship, you will receive a full refund minus the $250 deposit. 

In the event that we have to cancel due to COVID-19 related health concerns, you will receive a full refund. 

Testimonials

Adamah has taught me that it is possible to live in accordance with my highest ideals and provided me with knowledge, practical skills and relationships that will help me continue to do so. 

Garth Silberstein

In these three months, I have felt the most present I have in my entire life, I have been blown away by the most supportive community I’ve lived in, and have been reconnected to values of environmental stewardship, service to others, gratitude, and compassion. 

Rachel Salloway

Adamah allowed me to connect with chickens, the sunrise and a beautiful Jewish community. Adamah pushed me to ‘feel’ my Jewish roots and let go of my Jewish critiques. 

Jordan Kahn-Tietz

I have really found a way to heal through Judaism and how to find myself and stay centered, which is more important to me then I could have ever predicted. I now look to Judaism in my every day life to help me heal, celebrate and really live and have fun in my life.  

While at Adamah I have met more people who live out sustainable values in ways I had not witnessed before which brings me excitement and hope for my future life! 

Adamah changed my life, made me a better, more well-rounded person, helped me build deep, meaningful connections, helped me think about my role and responsibility in this world, helped me connect to my Judaism in a powerful, beautiful way, taught me way more than I could have imagined learning in two months anywhere and any time in my life.

Liana

My experience at Adamah was truly life changing. I really think I left the program with a better understanding of what I want out of life and who I am. I am able to see things about life from a more holistic perspective. I had never felt a sense of community in my life before coming to the farm, and I must say, it is a beautiful feeling.  

I came to Adamah knowing very little about farming and living in a manner that connects with and honors the earth was mostly foreign to me. It’s pretty amazing to me how in just 3 months, all of that changed. It has been an incredible journey of learning, spiritual awakening, connection with people and place, and has given me tools to continue this journey onward! 

Adamah is the happiest and most purposeful I have ever felt in my life.

Noah

Adamah Farm Staff

Shamu Sadeh

Shamu Sadeh

Managing Director of Education

Shamu is the co-founder of the Adamah Farm and Fellowship and has been taking people into the woods (Yeah Teva!) and on to the farm for 30 years. He loves leading morning prayers around the fire and schlepping goat fencing, mulch, or compost!

shamu.sadeh@adamah.org

860.816.8973

Isabella Freedman

Janna Siller

Janna Siller

Farm Director and Advocacy Coordinator

Janna leads the Adamah Farm crew in growing organic vegetables; teaches skills and food system context; and generates Jewish grassroots food advocacy opportunities. Physical work in the soil inspires her approach as a farmer, educator, and advocate.

janna.siller@adamah.org

860.816.8975

Isabella Freedman

Luna Manela

Adamah Farm Fellowship Director

After working with the Adamah Farm Fellowship as a farm apprentice for two years, Luna is honored to be back! Chances are you’ll find her singing around a campfire, creating shtick, or marveling at the natural world’s many wonders.

luna.manela@adamah.org

860.318.7412

Isabella Freedman

Adamah Farm Fellowship in the News

860.824.5991 | freedman@adamah.org
116 Johnson Rd, Falls Village, CT 06031