December 2026 Silent Retreat
To register for this retreat go to Isabella Freedman Retreat Center website.
Adamah Meditation Retreat
December 20 - December 25
Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center (Falls Village, CT) + Google Map
Returning to Our Roots Through Seasons of Change
Slow down and explore life’s deepest truths in a warm and supportive Jewish environment with Shoshana Cooper, Miriam Eisenberger, Bob Pileggi, and Kohenet Elana Brody.
Join us for five days of silence, meditation, and prayer to rest the body, expand the mind, and heal the heart.
Months later I am still accessing the deep peace I experienced on this retreat. I experienced total rejewvination – the reset button was activated fully!
Ken Ross
Retreat Details
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Program Overview
The main form of meditation taught on this retreat is mindfulness, an approach originally derived from Buddhist traditions but now widespread in secular, Jewish, and other contexts. Mindfulness brings forth the natural capacity to notice whatever is happening in your experience with kind, non-judgmental presence. It can lead to profound insights into your personality, the causes (and relief) of stress in your life, even the fundamental facts of existence itself. On this retreat, we cultivate and deepen mindfulness in 45-minute sitting meditations, periods of walking meditation, and throughout the day.
Our daily schedule includes several hours of sitting and walking meditation, soulful Jewish prayer (davening), interviews with teachers, and optional yoga. The retreat is held in warm, supportive silence, and we ask that you turn off your devices and refrain from communication during the five days of retreat.
This is also a Jewish retreat. In addition to daily davening sessions in the Jewish Renewal style, we infuse our teaching with Jewish mystical traditions, contextualize our insights in Jewish language of holiness and the Divine, and build an inclusive Jewish community together. We welcome people with all types of Jewish observance and none, Jews and non-Jews, those who connect with “God” and those disillusioned with religion, new and experienced meditators, and a community that is diverse in age, race, background, and sexual and gender identities. Throughout the retreat, participants are invited to explore the sacred in the diverse ways that speak to them.
This retreat is conducted in the tradition of our teachers, Rabbi David Cooper z”l and Shoshana Cooper.
For more information about accommodations, dining, transportation, and campus amenities, please visit our Guest Information and FAQ page.
DETAILS
Start: December 20
End: December 25
Event Categories: Featured, Isabella Freedman, Retreats
VENUE
Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center
116 Johnson Rd
Falls Village, CT 06031 United StatesPhone +18608245991
2027 Silent Meditation Retreat
To register for this retreat please contact cooper.meditation@gmail.com
TO REGISTER, PLEASE CONTACT cooper.meditation @gmail.com. You cannot register via this website. So sorry!
Sacred PAZ: A Jewish Silent Meditation Retreat June 13–18, 2027 · St. Raphaela Center, Haverford, PA With Shoshana Cooper, Miriam Eisenberger, and Shir Meira Feit
The Hebrew year 5787 ends in the letters פ״ז, paz: fine, refined gold. Gold is softened in the fire and separated from its dross. Paz also sounds like pause. For five days we'll practice the sacred pause together in silence and song, letting the fire do its refining.
This year Shoshana has handed the organizing to the two of us, and we're grateful she'll be with us as a teacher.
Our days include morning contemplative prayer and music, meditation instruction, evening talks, and optional one-on-one meetings with the teachers.
Rooms 🛏️
Single room, private bath: $950 (only a few)
Single room, shared bath: $875
Shared room (double): $725
Holding your place 🪙
Beds are first come, first served. Shared rooms are held with a $250 deposit, with the balance due May 15, 2027. Single rooms are held with full payment. If your room type is full, we'll add you to its waitlist.
We accept Zelle or a personal check, and the form shows you how. If you can, we encourage paying in full now. It helps us plan, and our cancellation policy protects you if plans change.
If plans change 🍃
$100 of every registration is non-refundable and supports admin, scholarships and overhead.
If we fill your spot, you get back everything except that $100, whenever you cancel.
If we can't fill your spot and you cancel by May 15, 2027, you get back anything you paid beyond the $250 deposit. After May 15, there's no refund.
You can always choose to donate your refund to the scholarship fund instead.
If cost is a barrier, you can ask about a scholarship on the form. If you're able to give, gifts to the scholarship fund help someone else come.
Register here ✍️: tally.so/r/QKPWgG
Questions? Just reply, or write to cooper.meditation@gmail.com.
We would love to sit with you again.
With warmth,
Miriam & Shir
IABOUT THE LOCATION
The retreat center is comfortable and beautiful with a deeply saturated sense of lovingkindness. The grounds are like a well-tended park. The food is pescatarian (no shellfish), lovingly prepared, abundant, and tasty. The Center offers limited gluten and dairy free alternatives and can accomodate most allergies for those who let us know in advance. They cannot handle complex special dietary needs however there is a refrigerator available to retreatants who wish to bring their own food. The center has a variety of food items available at all times for snacks and simple alternatives if meals do not meet your needs.
Background Information About Silent Retreats
A silent retreat is one of the essential and most important practices for any spiritual aspirant. Each spiritual discipline and many teachers have unique practices, schedules, relationships between the teachers and students along with other nuances of the training. The retreats we offer have their own flavor.
Mindfulness meditation is frequently learned to find a way to come to some calm and balance in one's everyday life. It is also a phenomenal path to a complete human transformation from a thought obscured person to one who is clear minded. The journey for most is arduous, humbling and incredibly valuable. Upon awakening one must encounter everything in a way that is awesome in its magnitude and far beyond the current human preoccupation of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
This retreat offers a path and brings guidance and collaboration to those who have chosen this journey. It assumes that a strong foundation of ethics and values has already been learned and integrated. The skills needed for this stage are: 1. concentration capacity and discipline 2. powerful mindfulness training practices 3. A thinking mind that can be released into stillness and can grow in that ability in more and more complex engagements. This final skill and stage is not as well mapped as the earlier skills. So collaboration with others can be very helpful to understand some of the commonalities but also the uniqueness that happens in this stage.
On our retreats we emphasize silence. Not every part of the day is silent, we actually chant and sing/pray together every morning. In some instruction periods, questions or comments are invited from the participants. Retreatants have opportunities to engage teachers, either one-on-one or in small groups. In our silence we are committed to not engage one another on a social level. We do not have mundane conversations. We do not greet one another verbally. Why is this so important? The answer is that something happens deep within each of us when we maintain an outer silence as described. An inner silence for practitioners on our retreats arises after a few days. It is a spaciousness that makes itself known on a very deep level. We experience an ease that is uniquely satisfying and deeply content on some kind of soul level that is inexplicable. We begin to feel profoundly connected with others around us, even though we are not speaking. And we begin to experience a fascinating integration with our surroundings, nature, life.
It is true that initially, for the first few days, the experience may feel a bit strange. We are social beings. But we are also very adaptable and soon we begin to realize the extraordinary wonder of the possibility of a moment-to-moment connection with what is happening right now--the magic and mystery of the unfolding NOW. When this happens, the silence becomes a precious gift. Indeed, on our retreats, after the third or fourth day, retreatants love the silence so much they want it to last as long as possible.
The fees for retreats are for room and board only. There is no tuition for teachers, however, free will donations for teachers are asked for and welcomed at the end of each retreat. Normally tuition fees run from $300 to $1000 for a 5 day retreat. We work on a donation system so that those who can pay more do so and those who cannot pay less. It has worked out fairly for over 25 years.