Join JCOGS & PJ Library in VT for a Tu b'Shvat themed morning with a magical puppet show by puppeteer Anna Sobel, an interactive storytime, music, crafts, and snacks. The puppet show, "Fairies of the Season", explores the changing of our world each calendar year. Every season has unique qualities: the trees look different, different kinds of plants are growing, and people wear and do different things. In this show, set on a handmade dress that twirls as the year turns, each season has its own fairy that takes care of changing the natural world accordingly. Family-friendly, all are welcome!

Musical Shabbat and special talk by Rabbi Michael Cohen. After the service, stay for a catered oneg (RSVP below) and Q&A with Rabbi Cohen.

6-7:15pm Musical Shabbat Service with special talk by Rabbi Michael Cohen

7:15-8:30pm Catered Oneg Dinner and Q&A with Rabbi Michael Cohen. Menu highlights: Rubbed Salmon and Winter Salads

30 years ago the doors of the Arava Institute opend on Kibbutz Ketura. Since then it has brought together Israelis (Jews & Arabs), Palestinians, Jordanians, Moroccans and other college age students from around the world to study and live together.

Register by January 19

Each JCOGS Tikkun Olam committee or initiative is being encouraged to identify or lead a project that reflects their passions, connections, and interests, while fostering collaboration within the broader community whenever possible, and some have already begun. We are looking to address all of the topics generated in our plan for this calendar year! It’s a chance for the whole JCOGS community to come together in service and honor Dr. King’s legacy.

If you’d like to get involved, email jcogs@jcogs.org with your ideas, interests, or ways you can help. Once you email, we can get you connected with a project or initiative. You don’t need to attend in person—any contribution counts!

9:00 AM-12:00 PM | UCC Morrisville
Prep Activities for Homelessness Awareness Day 
1:00–2:30 PM | UCC Morrisville
Community Hospitality – Share lunch and music as part of the UCC resource center
2:30–5:00 PM | JCOGS
Chesed (Kindness in Action) – Visits, calls, and care-based outreach
Cook for Lamoille Community House – Prepare meals for neighbors in need
Cooking & Baking with Kids – Family-friendly service
Draft Dodgers – Make door/window draft stoppers to use or donate (collection box in JCOGS lobby for scrap material donations) 
Tikkun Ha’Bayit – Clean-up and small repairs around JCOGS
USCRI Donations Sorting – Support refugees & immigrants—see below for items needed
Rainbow Coalition Art Project – Create blessing cards for our youth

5:00–6:15 PM | JCOGS
Community Soup Supper – Vegetarian soups, bread, and dessert, with brief clergy reflections on Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Come for one project or stay all day.

Join the folks from Beth Jacob Synagogue for a nature snowshoe walk on one of the many trails at North Branch Nature Center. Learn about native animals of the area, learn back tracking skills, and enjoy the immersion in nature during this Tu B'Shvat season.

*This is a snowshoe trail, not a walking trail. The use of shoes is prohibited on these trails.

In partnership with PJ Library in Vermont

Join Rabbi Tobie Weisman of YFL Creating Soulful Journeys in Cultivating Spiritual Attunement is the third of 8 monthly sessions, we will explore how Torah (Jewish wisdom) frames time as a sacred dimension of Jewish life, engaging classical and modern sources to examine how days, seasons, and cycles shape consciousness, community, and covenant. Together we will consider how marking time with awareness can nurture balance, resilience, and joy. You can sign up for all 8 sessions or just one at a time.

Annual Asian Food and Movie Night on December 25, 2025!

Requested in 2023 as well, this nostalgic film captures the essence of the small, tradition-steeped town of Anatevka, Russia, where Jews and Russians coexist in a delicate balance. Come relax, dine, and sing along!

Food will be ordered from Capitol Pho in Montpelier with selections listed below. Beth Jacob will provide all dishware and beverages.

Registration is required. We hope to see you!

Come skate with JCOGS at Waterbury Ice for a celebration with our Mad River neighbor

Gather with our northern community at United Church in Greensboro for Hanukkah music with Rabbi David, a fabulous potluck, basking in the glow of the seventh candle. Bring your favorite menorah and a creative vegetarian dish to share as we celebrate the Festival of Lights together in the Northeast Kingdom. All are welcome!

Come celebrate the Festival of Lights with the famous JCOGS Iron Chef Competition! Enter with an amazing dish prepared with the secret ingredient* or come hungry and vote. Fantastic prizes from local businesses. Bring your family menorah as we light up the dark together. Dreidel games, latkes, and song.

Join the celebration of Chanukah at the Vermont Statehouse

We’ll gather together outdoors to light the first candle of Hanukkah with song and intention followed by noshing and shmoozing indoors. Open to all.

Join us Sunday, December 14th at 4:30 PM to light our beautiful TWELVE FOOT Menorah. We’ll be giving out light up Chanukah sticks to all the kids (and adults too!) to light up the night as we sing our favorite Chanukah songs and display our huge Jewish pride for all to see!

Once the Menorah is lit we will head indoors to the Black Cap Cafe for a grand Chanukah party. We’ll have all the highlights from years past: crafts, music, games, drinks, chocolate coins and more.

There will be donuts, latkes, spiced apple cider, and new this year: A HOT COCOA BAR- hot cocoa with all the toppings!

Join us for a Potluck with latkes, children's games and

live music by the RJC Klezmer Band!

For more information please contact office@rutlandjewishcenter.org

Music and dancing with Lewis Franco & the Missing Cats, crafts, and dreidel games! Fun for all ages! Potluck: bring your favorite latke, spread or vegetarian dish of choice!

This event is FREE but food donation items appreciated for the food pantry!

Please RSVP

Course participants will explore this deeply troubling but deeply fascinating history of American antisemitism, paying particular attention to the present rise of antisemitism and trying to make historical sense of this moment. Even the antisemitism seen today from those who would decry Israel as an illegitimate state and decry Jews as imperial colonialists that should be shunned, even this idea has its own history which we will explore.

Besides an exploration of history, this course will also be an opportunity to share and reflect on our present experiences in what feels like an old-new moment in America’s relationship with Jews and Judaism.

• JCOGS members receive a discounted cost for this course: $90. Regular: $180. In addition, financial aid is available and should not be a barrier to participation.

• For Registration please click HERE.

Course participants will explore this deeply troubling but deeply fascinating history of American antisemitism, paying particular attention to the present rise of antisemitism and trying to make historical sense of this moment. Even the antisemitism seen today from those who would decry Israel as an illegitimate state and decry Jews as imperial colonialists that should be shunned, even this idea has its own history which we will explore.

Besides an exploration of history, this course will also be an opportunity to share and reflect on our present experiences in what feels like an old-new moment in America’s relationship with Jews and Judaism.

• JCOGS members receive a discounted cost for this course: $90. Regular: $180. In addition, financial aid is available and should not be a barrier to participation.

• For Registration please click HERE.

Over 8 monthly sessions, we will explore how Torah (Jewish wisdom) frames time as a sacred dimension of Jewish life, engaging classical and modern sources to examine how days, seasons, and cycles shape consciousness, community, and covenant. Together we will consider how marking time with awareness can nurture balance, resilience, and joy.

Course participants will explore this deeply troubling but deeply fascinating history of American antisemitism, paying particular attention to the present rise of antisemitism and trying to make historical sense of this moment. Even the antisemitism seen today from those who would decry Israel as an illegitimate state and decry Jews as imperial colonialists that should be shunned, even this idea has its own history which we will explore.

Besides an exploration of history, this course will also be an opportunity to share and reflect on our present experiences in what feels like an old-new moment in America’s relationship with Jews and Judaism.

• JCOGS members receive a discounted cost for this course: $90. Regular: $180. In addition, financial aid is available and should not be a barrier to participation.

• For Registration please click HERE.

Course participants will explore this deeply troubling but deeply fascinating history of American antisemitism, paying particular attention to the present rise of antisemitism and trying to make historical sense of this moment. Even the antisemitism seen today from those who would decry Israel as an illegitimate state and decry Jews as imperial colonialists that should be shunned, even this idea has its own history which we will explore.

Besides an exploration of history, this course will also be an opportunity to share and reflect on our present experiences in what feels like an old-new moment in America’s relationship with Jews and Judaism.

• JCOGS members receive a discounted cost for this course: $90. Regular: $180. In addition, financial aid is available and should not be a barrier to participation.

• For Registration please click HERE.

We are gearing up for another Jewish trip with teens from multiple Vermont and New Hampshire congregations!  This year we are exploring Boston on Veteran’s Day, Tuesday November 11th. 

• Meet to take the 7:40 am Dartmouth Coach, arriving South Station 10:30 am

• 11-11:30 am Visit New England Holocaust memorial

• 11:30 - 12:30 pm Eat lunch at the Kosher Milk Street Cafe, ice cream at JP Licks (also kosher)

• 1 pm Tour of Vilna Shul and Jewish Beacon Hill 

• 3 pm tea party with teens from Sinai in Brookline

• 4:30 pm Mayyim Hayyim tour

• Take the bus home at 6:30 pm, arriving Hanover at 9:30 pm

The cost is estimated to be $190 per person, which includes transportation on the Dartmouth Coach and Boston T Subway, lunch, snacks, and tours of the shul and the mikvah.  (Those using alternate transportation would pay $55 less). The Harriet Feinberg matching teen grant provides a $90 subsidy to each Kol Ha’Emek teen so their cost will be $100 total. Other congregations may also have funds to subsidize teens participating on the trip–please ask your leader.   If the cost is lower, we will return the extra to families.  

Melissa Herman of Kol Ha’Emek will be leading the trip, with support from educators at other congregations in VT and NH.  

If you are interested in participating, please fill out this form and send a deposit of $100 to Kol Ha’Emek, 5 Occom Ridge, Hanover NH 03755, Attn: Teen Trip to Boston.  Balances will be due on October 17.

Using the Jewish Studio Process – a unique methodology combining art therapy practices with a reimagined approach to Jewish learning and spirituality – we’ll explore our deep yearning, to connect to our souls, to each other, and to the sacred world around us. THIS WORKSHOP WILL BE ONLINE ONLY. The link will be sent upon registration. For more information, contact creatingsoulfuljourneys@gmail.com

At 6pm, you are invited for an exclusive end of Shabbat Havdalah ritual with Nefesh Mountain and Rabbi David Fainsilber at Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center. Doors then open at 6:30pm, and the show begins at 7pm.

Use code JCOGS20 to receive 20% off the ticket price

Experience a “taste of Nefesh Mountain” at Shabbat services at JCOGS as the lead band members Doni and Eric join Rabbi David as his special guests. Join us for an uplifting musical service to welcome in Shabbat in community, followed by a delicious Oneg. 

Shows at 2 & 6 Tickets: $8 matinee $10 evening Seniors and students $8 all shows

AMONG NEIGHBORS, a new, award-winning documentary that has been recently released in New York, is coming to the Middlebury Marquis Theatre on October 22!

Produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker Yoav Potash (“Crime After Crime,” Sundance Film Festival) and Executive Produced by Anita Friedman, “Among Neighbors” is an evocative and heart-pounding murder mystery with urgent political relevance. This outstanding film tells an incredible story of a town where history has been silenced, but a brave eyewitness to murder speaks out in search of the Jewish boy she loved.

The film brings the Polish response to the Holocaust to life through the last living eyewitnesses, revealing both love and betrayal as it zeroes in on the only living Holocaust survivor from the town, and an aging eyewitness who saw Jews murdered there, not by Nazis, but by her own Polish neighbors.

Using the Jewish Studio Process – a unique methodology combining art therapy practices with a reimagined approach to Jewish learning and spirituality – we’ll explore our deep yearning, to connect to our souls, to each other, and to the sacred world around us. For more information about this process, go to JewishStudioProject.org or email Rabbi Tobie Weisman at creatingsoulfuljourneys@gmail.com

The October 7 massacre took place on the holiday of Simchat Torah in Israel, and is commemorated in Israel on the days that follow the holiday. As we mark the two year anniversary, we will gather for a traditional Yizkor memorial service for the final days of the fall holidays, marking the lives lost on October 7, while also acknowledging the painful present situation. Further, we will gather in memory of all those beloved family and friends who have passed away.

Join Chabad of Stowe in celebrating the harvest festival of Sukkot with an autumnal spread- cozy, delicious, a little sweet and with a dash of spice.

We’ll have apple cider, pumpkin muffins, banana bread, apple cake, creamy chicken soup, potato knishes, and more!
Grab a sweater, and come on over. We’ll warm up around the fire, eat some delicious food in the Sukkah, shake the lulav and etrog, the kids will be at work creating decorations for our Sukkah, and most importantly we’ll gather together as a community in joy and celebration- one of the most special customs of Sukkot.

Sunday, October 12th, 4:00 PM

This event is free of charge and will take place at Chabad of Stowe:
1357 Maple St, Waterbury Center, VT 05677

You can RSVP at sara@chabadofstowe@.com