Posts tagged "Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center"
The Hazon Food Conference: A Light in the Darkness
December 6-9, 2012
Where will you be lighting the first Hanukkah candle this year? We hope it will be in the Great Hall at Isabella Freedman, among the warm and inspiring community of the Hazon Food Conference. At our 8th annual Food Conference, you can expect to be amazed. Hazon brings the best and brightest leaders of the new Jewish Food Movement to share successes and plan for the future: What does food education look like in synagogues and day schools across the country? How can the Jewish holidays inspire us to take action for a just and sustainable food system? And did you know that beet greens could taste so good? With educational tracks on Food Justice, Institutional Food Change, Jewish Agriculture, Food Preservation, and Cooking and Health, and with delicious farm-to-table food from the Adamah farm, the conference offers food for mind, body, and soul. Register today at our super early bird rate. Question? Contact Anna Hanau.
Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center’s “If Not Now Society” Induction
Please join Hazon at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center for their inaugural “If Not Now Society” Induction.
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Central Synagogue
123 East 55th Street, New York, NY (more…)
Bike the Berkshires!
New York Ride & Retreat – August 31st to September 3rd
Prices Rising May 5th
Moon on the Pond Farm
Don’t have plans for Labor Day? Join us for our 12th Annual New York Ride to get in shape and get inspired! The weekend includes two relaxing days at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, where you can hike, relax by the lake, visit the goats, and meet Jewish farmers at the center of the Jewish Food Movement. (more…)
Emerging & Aspiring Religious Educators Conference at Isabella Freedman
June 24-27
Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, Falls Village, CT
What will we teach our children about each other?
Isabella Freedman and the Manhattan College Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center join together to present this 3 1/2 day conference bringing together aspiring and emerging religious educators in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths to:
- foster relationships among future religious educators;
- explore existing practices in religious education that help to shape narratives that lead to suspicion, misunderstanding, mistrust;
- and explore potential practices, both within communities and through interreligious partnership, that would foster a new narrative promoting respect, understanding, and cooperation.
The Year the Maple Trees Celebrate Purim
Originally posted on The Jew and the Carrot
By Mira Schwartz
This year it seemed that even the Sugar Maple Trees at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT celebrated Purim. We’ve been tapping about 30 trees over the last three weeks, during this short late-winter maple syrup tapping season. On the day before Purim, unlike any other day until now, some of the buckets were bone dry. Maybe the trees were reminding me to fast? Purim night, conditions were terrible for sap flow; the temperature stayed above freezing all night and by nine in the morning it was already over fifty degrees. The trees flow best when it dips below freezing at night and reaches forty degrees during the day, so I would never have predicted that by eleven o’clock on Thursday morning most of the buckets would be full to the brim with cool sweet sap.
Appropriately, on the night of Purim the trees couldn’t tell the difference between good conditions and bad conditions. Thursday morning, I did a mad dash to collect all the sap before the buckets overflowed. (more…)
New Kids on the Block at the Adamah Dairy
Adamah is a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Adamah connects people to their roots, to the land, to community, to Judaism, and to themselves by providing educational programs and products in order to build a more sustainable world. Adamah is a beneficiary of the New York Ride and Retreat.
Originally posted on The Jew and the Carrot
By Stephen A. Sherman and Glenn Katz
Aitan Mizrahi lifted up Schlomo in both arms. The tip of the man’s pitch-black beard brushed the buckling’s back, which was equally dark.
“Okay, it’s time to pass the buck,” he said placing the kid in our arms with a seriousness that belied the playful tone of the pun. The rest of the Adamah staff sang a song, the lyrics of which are stenciled onto a rafter of the milking parlor: Ivdu et HaShem b’simcha – serve God in joy. (more…)
The 7th Hazon Food Conference Back on the East Coast!
Participants shake cream to make butter at the Food Conference
We’re thrilled to bring the Hazon Food Conference back to Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center this winter. Sign up now to meet and mingle with the nation’s foremost thinkers of the New Jewish Food Movement. (more…)
Tour De Farm?
You may or may not have visited a farm, but have you ever biked to one? Just traveling by bike allows us to fully participate in the process of getting from one place to another (making it all the more amazing that our bodies, and these machines, do what they do), visiting a farm reveals the all-to-often hidden mysteries of how food is produced—provoking even more questions about plants, soil, and the interconnections between our bodies and the earth. (more…)
What a week of Tu B’Shvat [Round Up]
What a week of Tu B’Shvat it was! All over the country, Jews gathered in new and traditional ways to celebrate Tu B’Shvat. Here are a few highlights from celebrations on the East and West Coasts. If you did something great for Tu B’Shvat, tell us about it in the comments! (more…)
The New York Ride and Retreat Returns to Isabella Freedman
This year, the New York Ride & Retreat will be hosted at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center!
If you’ve never been to Freedman, you’re in for a treat! Home to the Adamah program, the sprawling site hosts an organic farm with orchards, permaculture planting, bees, chickens, and ducks. The dining hall prepares amazing delicious, local, sustainable kosher food — using pickles, jams, and goat cheese that are made on site, as well as produce from the farm. The center hugs a beautiful lake you can walk around and borders on miles of hiking trails in the rugged Berkshire hills.
Day one of the Ride will explore farms and countryside in northern Connecticut. Day two will take us on rail trails into New York City. On both days, we’ll have a range of different route length options, as well as options for non-riding family members to participate on crew or to cheer from the sidelines.
Registration is currently $175 for adult riders, but prices increase on February 15th.
Learn more about Adamah, hosted by Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center.
