Israeli Folk Dancing
Come discover your inner Klezmer clarinet
and let the music move you!
Whether you have folk danced before
or you're a newbie, join the fun!
Dress comfortably to move.
No dance experience necessary.
Dances will be taught.
Questions? Contact Diane Roston.
Hanukkah Story Time with PJ Library in Vermont
This week's story time at MCL will feature an interactive Hanukkah story & Hanukkah themed activities!
Appropriate for ages 1-4..
Contact Alison Hill for more information.
WAR AND PEACE: A DEEP DIVE INTO ISRAEL & PALESTINE AND HOPE FOR THE FUTURE
Join CBE for a day of Shabbat learning and discussion on the history, current crisis and hope for the future of Israel/Palestine with CBE Scholar-in-Residence, Jared Goldfarb. Two sessions with a break for brunch. Learn more and register by Dec. 11.
Congregational Hanukkah Party
Congregational Hanukkah party, open to everyone, all ages
Chanukah Party
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
Community Chanukah Musical Celebration
Come celebrate the Festival of Lights at our Community Chanukah Musical Celebration
featuring our own Jason Weinberger along with Cantor Scott Buckner
Enjoy a Pizza Dinner! Sufganiyot! Chanukah Games!Jason Weinberger stands out among musicians of his generation for his wholly contemporary approach to the programming, presentation, and performance of ensemble music. Jason is currently Artistic Director of Iowa's pioneering ensemble wcfsymphony. When Jason is not in lowa for concerts and symphony activities or traveling for guest conducting he resides in Winhall, Vermont where he teaches at Israel Congregation's Hebrew School and coaches alpine ski racing at Stratton Mountain.
Hanukkah 🕎 Party
Brattleboro Area Jewish Community (BAJC) invites you to join us as we celebrate the festival of Hanukkah.
This joyous celebration will feature
Klezmer music & dancing with A Glezele Tey
menorah lighting
latke contest
traditional treats & refreshments
PJ Library book nook for kids and families!
Donation of $10-$20 per adult will be accepted at the door. (Larger donations appreciated!)
Additional donations of $5 per child will be most welcome!
A Glezele Tey (Yiddish for “a little glass of tea”) invites you into their living room for a little glass of tea from the samovar, bringing audiences into an intimate and enthralling world of klezmer, Yiddish folk song, and tkhines (traditional Ashkenazi prayers centering the experiences of women, trans, and gender non-conforming people, set to new melodies). Drawing from old recordings and contemporary culture rooted in the Eastern European Jewish diaspora, A Glezele Tey’s music is an act of deep care—rooted in community gathering, lineage, and ritual. We raise our collective voices to move through grief, inspire action, and build a frayer velt (a freer world). A Glezele Tey is comprised of acclaimed klezmer musicians and composers Ariel Shapiro, Rachel Leader, and Richie Barshay. For more information on this group go here.
Latkes & Light
Join CBE for Latkes and Lights and Shabbat to celebrate the last night of Chanukah. Bring your menorahs and candles and your favorite latkes to share. Fun for the whole family.
Tot Shabbat
Tot shabbat for Jewish children ages birth to 6 years
For information contact Melissa Herman
Jew Crew Goes to Boston!
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.
Montreal 2024
NYC 2023
KRISTALLNACHT MEMORIAL
Join CBE for a Kristallnacht Memorial screening of Etched In Glass, the story of Steve Ross, Holocaust survivor and founder of the Holocaust Memorial in Boston, a heart-wrenching and inspirational. As a child, he survived 10 concentration camps, found a second life in America, and dedicated himself to helping troubled youth and people in need. Susan Moytel, whose father was Ross' close lifelong friend, will introduce the film.
AMONG NEIGHBORS
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.
Sukkah Build
Join Israel Congregation in building the Sukkah! We need you! Volunteers are needed to assist in the assembly of our Sukkah. This is a perfect opportunity for students to do a service project. The only skill needed is a positive attitude and willingness to help.
Call the office: 802-362-4587 and let us know you'll be here to lend a hand
Orchard Tot Shabbat
Orchard Tot Shabbat is co-hosted by UVJC/Kol Ha’Emek & Shir Shalom Woodstock
Age 0-6, all ages welcome
Permaculture Garden Project
All the world’s problems can be solved in a garden.
That’s a quote that gets tossed around in permaculture circles. A lofty saying, for sure, but creating a garden leads to all sorts of good things: food, shade, beauty, connection to nature, support for pollinators, and on.
The CBE community is coming together to build a permaculture garden in the area around our buildings. Featuring fruit trees, native flowering plants, places to sit or chat, and safe learning and play areas for children, the garden will be a place for multi-generational collaboration and gathering, for ritual, e.g. Sukkot, and to set up a chuppa.
This may not solve the world’s problems, but for our little world here it’s at least a start! And we can hold and amplify the larger intention of Tikkun Olam.
We are aiming to have a basic structure up in time for Rosh Hashanah. And stay tuned—there will be plenty of opportunity to get your hands in the dirt!
If you would like to get involved, please contact the office. The next meeting will be Sunday, September 14 at 12:30pm in the Social Hall. Learn more here
Donations needed: stones and rocks approximately 8" diameter. Please bring rocks to the Social Hall and place on the Rock Landing Cardboard in the backyard.
Scholar-in-Residence, Avigail Graetz
Our Scholar-in-Residence, Avigail Graetz, explores how the wisdom of impermanence can guide us during Elul—encouraging both self-examination and an open-hearted gaze outward, toward others and toward the world we share.
Meet and welcome Avigail Graetz! Avigail is a writer, teacher and dharma practitioner whose work explores the intersections of Judaism, Buddhism, and personal narrative. She has a background in literature, film, theater and interfaith dialogue, and is known for weaving spiritual insight with storytelling and social engagement. She holds a B.A and M.F.A from Tel Aviv University and an M.F.A from Ben-Gurion University. Avigail has accompanied individuals facing illness and death, drawing on both Buddhist teachings and her deep Jewish roots. For her novel, A Rabbi's Daughter, the author was awarded both the Pardes Fellowship at the National Library of Israel and the Jewish National Fund-Hebrew Literature Prize (2012). A Rabbi's Daughter was translated into English in 2017. She currently lives in India, where she published a poetry book Just This, Poems of Freedom and is working on a documentary film about her father, Rabbi Michael Graetz, and their shared journey through memory, aging and letting go.
Friday evening 6:00 pm Shabbat Service
Kabbalat Shabbat Presentation:
"Ki Teitzei and the Inner Battlefield: A Teaching on Conflict and Compassion."
Parashat Ki Teitzei opens with war and closes with the command to erase Amalek, yet most of its verses turn to family life and human relationships. As the High Holidays draw near, we ask: do we live as though life itself is a battlefield? Too often our drive to “change ourselves” becomes another act of inner aggression, perpetuating conflict instead of healing it. This teaching will explore how Parashat Ki Teitzei, read through the lens of mindfulness, can be an invitation to step out of cycles of inner war and to cultivate awareness, compassion, and peace.
Saturday morning 9:00 am Study Session
"Kohelet, Job, and the Buddha: Impermanence as a Path of Reflection and Liberation"
As we enter the season of Elul, a time of turning inward and preparing for renewal, the voices of Kohelet, Job, and the Buddha meet in surprising resonance. Each, in their own poetic language, wrestles with impermanence, suffering, and the fleeting nature of life. Together they invite us to look honestly at what passes away, to soften our grip on what we cannot hold, and to cultivate compassion as we face both the vulnerability of our own lives and the wider world.
Comedy Night
Israel Congregation Presents
COMEDY NiCHT
Special Guest NY Comedian
Premium Seating $200/person
General Admission $125/person
Silent & Live Auctions
Israeli Fare - Charcuterie - Wine - Beer - Desserts
To Purchase Tickets
call: 802-362-4578 or email: office@icmvt.org
This evening's event helps to support Israel Congregation.
Artists Shabbat with Israeli Filmmaker Avigail Graetz
On Saturday, August 23 at 10AM, Congregation Beth El in Bennington, VT is honored to offer an inspiring Artists Shabbat with Israeli-American award-winning writer, poet, and filmmaker, Avigail Graetz, who invites us to glimpse contemporary Israeli life through the lens of short cinema and spiritual inquiry. Avigail will screen several short documentaries created in collaboration with her partner, cinematographer Eitan Herman, inviting us to glimpse contemporary Israeli life and exploring questions of belonging, identity, and compassion in a conflicted land. The program will also feature a reading from her recently published poetry collection, Just This: Poems of Freedom.
Q&A and refreshments to follow. For more information, please visit http://www.cbevermont.org
Cultivating Hope in a Time of Conflict: Building the Foundation for a Future of Peace
"Cultivating Hope in a Time of Conflict: Building the Foundation for a Future of Peace"
With Rabbi Michael Cohen of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies & Friends of the Aravah Institute
Come listen, learn, and discuss.
For 30 years, the Arava Institute in southern Israel has brought Israelis and Palestinians together through environmental science and environmental diplomacy, using shared learning and projects to build trust and promote climate resilience.
Since it opened in 1996, Rabbi Michael M. Cohen—rabbi emeritus of the Israel Congregation in Manchester Center, Vermont—has split his time between Vermont and the Institute's campus on Kibbutz Ketura. He will share stories and insights from three decades of work with Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Moroccans, and Americans, showing how the environment can unite people across political divides.
He'll also speak about his experience at the Institute on October 7th and in the difficult year that followed with Israelis and Palestinians together.
Rabbi Michael M. Cohen is a faculty member of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and at Bennington College. He teaches courses on conflict resolution, the Bible, and the environment.
Rabbi Cohen has been a Policy Advisor to the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, and a Speechwriter Adviser to the White House. He also sat on the Advisory Board of the Middle East Peace Partnership (MEPPA) of USAID established by Congress.
*This program is sponsored by Pettee Memorial Library
Jewish Heritage Night
The New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the Double-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Jewish Federation of New Hampshire are inviting you to enjoy a baseball game to celebrate Jewish Heritage Night on Tuesday August 5th 2025 at Delta Dental Stadium. The Fisher Cats will be facing the Reading Fightin Phils, the Double-A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies. Gates will open at 5:35 pm and the first pitch will be at 6:35 pm. This will be the first Jewish Heritage Night that the Fisher Cats have hosted since before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Jews and Canoes
Jews & Canoes starting at Sumner Falls Portage Access (Windsor, VT) and ending at the Path of Life Garden. Takes ~2–3 hrs. If needed, rentals & shuttle are available through Great River Outfitters (10:00 am shuttle)
Lunch afterwards at Harpoon Brewery. Questions: contact Elliot Goodman and Jessie Slack elliot.goodman@shirshalomvt.org
Alfred Dreyfus: Antisemitism and Jewish Identity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Join us as Maurice Samuels draws from his recent biography of Alfred Dreyfus, delving into the Jewish dimension of the Affair, focusing on Dreyfus's own Jewish identity, the role of antisemitism in the case, and its profound effect on Jews around the world.
Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anyan Professor of French at Yale University, where he also chairs the French Department and directs the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Cullman Center Fellowship at the New York Public Library, he is the author of five books. Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, is published in Yale's Jewish Lives Series.
Voices From the War Zone
Project COMMON BOND 2025
Program Overview:
In 2025, Project COMMON BOND will be a 7-day program held at Kripalu, a retreat center. The program will include the following:
Daily dignity groups facilitated by trained mental health clinicians
Daily electives in art, sports, and peace-building
Opportunities to meet new friends, learn and grow
Become a part of a global community dedicated to the practice of peace and dignity
In this setting, each participant shares the experience of loss, which allows the young people to bond with one another while experiencing the dignity and humanity of different cultures.
