Modeling Jewish Environmental Ethics and Training Future Leaders

Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center
Falls Village, Connecticut
Jewish, Non-Denominational

Isabella Freedman rests on 450 acres of forested land and lush meadows in the foothills of the southern Berkshires. As fall home to the Teva Learning Center and year-round home for the Adamah Jewish Environmental Fellowship, the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center is a living model of what it looks like to steward the land based on Jewish environmental ethics. Guests at the retreat center's 11 lodges see signs posted throughout the center that explain the connection between environmental stewardship and the Jewish path.

In the early 1990s the agency began to open its doors year-round, and it became the primary retreat center for the Jewish communities of New York and New England. Each year, over 30 Jewish organizations, spanning the denominational spectrum, hold retreats at Isabella Freedman.

In 1994, they developed the Teva Learning Center, an innovative experiential learning program for Jewish elementary school students that integrates ecology, Jewish spirituality, and environmental activism. Each fall, Teva serves over 900 students from Jewish day schools throughout New England who come to Isabella Freedman for four-day programs.

In the spring of 2003, Isabella Freedman developed a new program called ADAMAH: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship. ADAMAH is a leadership training program for Jewish young adults (age 20-29), that teaches the vital connection between Judaism and environmental stewardship. Through a six-month residential program, Adamah Fellows live communally and engage in a hands-on curriculum that integrates organic agriculture and sustainable living skills, Jewish learning and living, leadership development, and community building. ADAMAH Fellows work together, learn together, spend Shabbat and celebrate Jewish holidays together, and plant and harvest together. The program strengthens participants' Jewish identity and commitment to tikkun olam through immersion in an ecologically sustainable, spiritually vibrant, and intergenerationally-connected Jewish community, while exposing countless others to a traditionally rooted yet entirely new way of Jewish living.

In addition, ADAMAH Fellows work with Isabella Freedman staff to develop specific retreat workshops for certain segments of the larger Jewish community. These may include curriculum workshops for Hebrew school teachers that bring gardening into the classroom, "green" facilities courses for Jewish facility managers, and a variety of other programs for children of all ages.